What to Tell the Truant Officer

Some years ago, my daughter was asked by a woman in a shop why she wasn't in school. She gave the answer I had previously suggested, half in jest. "My daddy doesn't believe in your schools. He says they're controlled by the communists." Further deponent sayeth not.

Religious Oaths for Computer Security and Digital Commerce Applications

"I swear by Almighty God that I have not given any cryptographic keys or other electronic access devices under my control to any other person or entity including government employees."

-- Suggested oath from the forthcoming paper "Religious Oaths for Computer Security and Digital Commerce Applications" by Duncan Frissell, JD and Robert Bader, DD.

Back to the '50s

Register Communists not Firearms!

-- Courtesy of the National Commission for the Preservation of Ancient Right Wing Slogans.

Committing an Unknown Crime & an Unknown Sin

Now legalized by Lawrence v Texas (but still sinners) young ladies of the '90s discover that they have committed a Sin, But Cannot Speak its Name:

"My mom went down to the library and looked [fornication] up in the dictionary," said Amanda Smisek, a 17-year-old-girl recently charged with the crime along with her boyfriend. "Nobody ever told us it was illegal for two people of the same age to [have sex]." "Forn-if-cation?" asked another puzzled 17-year-old. "What's that?"

-- Emmett, Idaho teens discussing jurisprudence in the wake of a prosecutor's decision to prosecute fornicators who apply for public assistance (with children).

An Anarchist Lawyer

Q. How can you, an anarchist, be a lawyer?

A. My father was a physician. That doesn't mean he believed in disease.

Love in the Naughties

Police work in the new age:

Journal of Forensic Sciences -- Autoerotic Fatalities with Power Hydraulics

Abstract

We report two cases in which men used the hydraulic shovels on tractors to suspend themselves for masochistic sexual stimulation. One man developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor. ...

Such behavior has constitutional protection under Lawrence v. Texas, does it not?

Thanks (I think) to Eugene Volokh.

Great Moments in American Cinema

Susan Sarandon (as Sally): "You're so smart. I can't remember my Social Security Number. I bet you can remember your Social Security Number."

Burt Lancaster (as Lou): "I don't have a Social Security Number."

--Atlantic City (1980)

January 1, 1965 in New Jersey

Moderns will find it hard to credit that the sun rose on the Garden State on January 1st 1965. Why will they be shocked? Because on that day New Jersey had neither a state sales tax nor a state income tax.

During that first month of 1965, schools opened and closed, streets were filled with the flow of traffic, crimes were committed and punished, people were born and died. And all of this occurred in the absence of state sales and income taxes.

How was it possible?

That's not important. What is important is that it happened. It was possible. It is possible now (in Alaska & New Hampshire for example). It could even happen again in New Jersey or in your state.

All you have to do is imagine it.

And while you're imagining that, imagine how the United States managed without a Federal Income Tax from 1789 until 1916!

School Principal Says Gays are Violent

In a visicous slander on the alternatively sexed, San Diego School administrators called homosexuals prone to violence.

Gay, straight teens polarized; suit filed

By Onell R. Soto UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2004

The animosity between gay and straight students at Poway High School was so
volatile last spring that school officials said they had to prevent a teenager
from wearing an anti-gay slogan on a T-shirt in class.

Administrators feared that violence might erupt over the shirt, according to legal papers that for the first time detail the school district's side of a controversy that has spilled into the courts.

Mods vs. Trads

Mods are much less likely than Trads to form lasting family relationships, they kill themselves and others much more frequently, they suffer more from drug and substance abuse, they are more prone to disease, they even have a higher accident rate, they have lower family incomes, their MMPIs are much more jagged, their life expectancy is shorter, and they score lower on tests designed to show levels of personal happiness or satisfaction.

Sounds like a maladaption to me.

Law Schools and the Solomon Amendment

Good Slate article on the Pentagon vs. Law Schools over invidious discrimination against the alternatively sexed.

Too bad the schools' adhearance to priciple doesn't extend to eschewing government funds. They were warned in the 1950s by a gathering of university presidents that federal funding would bring federal control. I guess they didn't believe the obvious.

Hardball Grammar

Wednesday night's Hardball with Chris Matthews included a vicious grammar exchange that people of my ilk like but that most professional rhetoricians eschew:

The first segment featured the late presidential hopeful Howard Dean and Republican Representative David Dreier talking with Chris about Bush's Germany and Korea troop withdrawals and Kerry's response thereto.

KERRY (via clip): "this hastily announced plan"

DEAN: "hastily conceived
plan"

DREIER: And you let him get by with his opening statement, which
was just absolutely outrageous.

MATTHEWS: OK, what did I let him get by
with?

DREIER: You know what he said? He described what you just went
through as a “hastily drawn” plan.

MATTHEWS: Right.

DREIER: 2001
... Rumsfeld ... talked about Western Europe and Asia...the Korean peninsula.
And that was something that was in the works long, long ago. And you let Howard
Dean get off with his opening statement by describing this, and you know it
wasn‘t a hastily drawn-up plan.

MATTHEWS: It is—it is—and I do give you
leeway in that regard because it is a political season. I give people the right
to any adjective they want to anything they want to talk about.

DREIER:
Yes, well, but let me—that was an adverb, by the way, not an adjective. But
the...

MATTHEWS: Hastily drawn?

DREIER: Hastily. Hastily.

MATTHEWS: It wasn‘t a gerund?

DREIER: Yes. Exactly.

MATTHEWS: OK.

Hastily announced, hastily conceived, and hastily drawn are verb phrases used to modify the noun "plan". A gerund is a verb converted to a noun (ending in -ing like singing, speeding, traveling etc.).

Dreier's grammatical criticism is technically correct (hastily is an adverb modifying the verbs announced, conceived, and drawn) but the phrases themselves modify a noun so pointing out that hastily is an adverb is being a bit pedantic.

But that sort of thing is my second favorite sin too (after Sloth) and I like to see it done on TV on a back-and-forth show like Hardball with a bullying host.

Matthews' "gerund" question is a common rhetorical gimmick in modern discourse where the speaker deliberately suggests a word that neither he nor the audience is supposed to know so that they can bond in their collective ignorance.

The Strange Case of the MV Queen Victoria

On 31 March 2003, Cunard (ie Carnival) announced the 2005 launch of the Queen Victoria.

http://www.rmsqueenmary.fsnet.co.uk/queen_victoria.htm

Originally ordered as the fifth in a series of five 'Vista' class ships for
sister company Holland America, the contact was signed over to Cunard before the keel was laid and Holland America then ordered a further ship for delivery to
them in 2006. The lead ship in the series Zuiderdam entered service in December
2002.

Cunard held to a 2005 launch of the rebadged ship as late as 11 July 2003.

But then on 05 April 2004, following the success of the QM II, Cunard announced the 2007 launch of a 'new' Queen Victoria and transferred the earlier QV to P&O Cruises.

Apparently, Cunard wanted a ship more like the QM II which is not just a large modern cruise ship but reflects some of the Cunard Transatlantic Liner tradition.

Another Carnival innovation -- they are both a Corp and a Plc connected to each other in some creative fashion and listed on the NY and London stock exchanges:

"Carnival Corporation & plc is a global cruise company with a portfolio of 12 distinct brands comprised of the leading cruise operators in both North America, Europe and Austrailia. Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn Cruise Line, Windstar Cruises, AIDA Costa Cruises, Cunard Line, P&O Cruises, Ocean Village, Swan Hellenic, and P&O Cruises Australia are all included in this group.

Together, these brands operate 75 ships totaling more than 123,000 lower berths with nine new ships scheduled for delivery between April 2004 and mid-2006. It also operates the leading tour companies in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, Holland America Tours and Princess Tours. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only entity in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices."

Proof Anglicans have a Sense of Humor

I know Anglicans have a sense of humor because whenever I tell this joke, Anglicans laugh:

I was destined to be an Anglican.

How do I know? My family comes from a small village outside of Genoa and if you find it on a map, you discover that it's halfway between Rome and Geneva.

So naturally I had to become an Anglican.

New Jersey Governor Says Adultery is Wrong

In a public statement that shocked many of his political persuasion, the Democrat Governor of New Jersey James McGreevey said:

I am also here today because, shamefully, I engaged in an adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable.
...
Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign.

His callousness for the feelings of the millions of adulterous Americans was unusual among modern public figures. The norm for those who announce their alternative sexuality is to say that they had dump the wife and kids to be true to their natures. Mods have a problem with concepts such as: "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above."

Many Parents Unaware of Teen Sex, Study Finds

Not the Onion but Reuters.

Aug. 12, 2004 — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many parents seem to be in the dark about the sex lives of their adolescents, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

They found that 84 percent of parents they surveyed did not think their teenager was sexually active -- despite a recent government study showing that nearly half of ninth through 12th graders aged 14 to 18 have had sex.

Who'd a thunk it?

More shocking data from the same story:

Black teenage girls are more likely have sex and are more at risk of sexually transmitted diseases than white girls the same age, said Laura Salazar of Atlanta's Emory University.

I learned that from watching Good Times!

Rosie Exiled to Lewd Cohabitation

Bad news for Rosie O'Donnell and 8000 others.

Yesterday she was (presumptively) lawfully wed. Today she and wife Kelli Carpenter are back in the familiar status of lewd cohabitation (a state they have individually and collectively inhabited for much of their adulthoods). Good news for the couple -- they can get their $82 license fee back.

[I hate it when I google a term to get a definition and the first item is a post of mine.]

Bar Pickups

Young ladies, your parents may have attempted to discourage you from getting picked up by strange men in bars. Generally, it doesn't work out.

In certain bars at certain times (the Slip Inn -- Sydney Australia -- 15 September 2000) for certain people (Mary Elizabeth Donaldson) it does, however, work out.

Free UK Phone Number

Who can resist a free UK phone number?

UK2me is a service that will assign (map) a UK National Rate phone number [maximum cost 7.91p/min] to any phone number in the US or Canada.  That means that if you call the UK (0870) number, it will ring at the US number it has been mapped to.  (I even got a wrong number call for a UK insurance company today.)

The call is completed as a Voice Over IP call over the Internet.  The voice quality is very good.

This is a free service and you do not need to "own" the US phone number to assign it.  All that you need to do is to go to the website and enter the US number and you will be given a UK number.

J2 charges $15.00 a month for a UK voice mail or fax number.  UK2me is free.

Under telecoms deregulation in the UK, UK2me gets a cut of the cost of calls to UK National Rate numbers.  This is how they can do it for free. Note that depending on one's specific telephone plan, time of day, and day of week the actual cost of a UK National Rate call will be less than the maximum amount listed above.

All About Love

Let's Parse this Puppy: The Seattle Times: Letourneau released from prison today

After serving most of a 7 1/2-year sentence for child rape, Mary K. Letourneau was released from prison early this morning, and within hours the former pupil she was convicted of raping filed a motion to lift the no-contact order that would keep the two apart.

The attorneys for the former student, Vili Fualaau, who was 12-years-old at the time of the crimes, filed a motion in King County Superior Court this morning seeking to have the no-contact order lifted.

The term "child rape" is a modern reformulation of what was formerly called statutory rape but is actually more properly referred to as unlawful sexual intercourse. Mods hate to use direct descriptives because they would be forced to recognize that what they are doing is to actually outlaw a specific sexual act. Trads didn't have that problem because they outlawed plenty of sex acts and they knew that statutory rape didn't mean forcible rape but just meant sex with those under the age of consent.

"Mr.. Fualaau is now 21 years old," the three-page document says. "He does not fear Mary K. Letourneau. He is now an adult and is now requesting that the court allow him to associate with other adults of his own choosing, specifically Mary
K. Letourneau so long as no crime is committed."

This was inevitable. True love cannot be denied.

When Letourneau , 42, and Fualaau were having sexual encounters, she was 34 and he was 12.

Though contrite at times, she has steadfastly maintained that their unusual union was strictly about love. While in prison, in violation of the no-contact order, she sent Fualaau more than 20 letters, which were mostly affectionate. In one, though, she threatened him with "castration" if he ever dated anyone else.

Perhaps they should move to Massachusetts. The Bay State is very accepting of alternative domestic arrangements. Mary K. seems a little intense, however.

Yesterday morning at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Fualaau told KING-TV reporter Linda Byron that he still loved Letourneau. Fualaau was on his way to New York City with a friend for national media interviews.

The Road to Fame and Fortune.

October 1995: Mary K. Letourneau learns her father is dying of cancer, an event that a therapist later says was critical to her state of mind when she became sexually involved with Vili Fualaau.

Ah therapy!

In the years since the relationship, Fualaau has acknowledged that he has consumed illegal drugs and alcohol, been fired from a fast-food job, assaulted his mother, dropped out of high school, been arrested for car theft and spent time in a psychiatric hospital.

He and his mother, Soona, received approximately $200,000 from various tabloid, book and movie deals, including a book published in France. But the money was spent on elaborate parties, trips and hotels.

Fualaau's father has spent much of his life in prison and has 18 children by five women. During the 2002 civil trial, Fualaau was asked how he felt about
Letourneau. He said she was the best thing that ever happened to his life.

I guess that Vili had a few problems before he met Mary K. How does someone manage to be dedicated enough to both "spend much of his life in prison" and father 18 children by 5 women. I'm no sure I could do it.

Perhaps if all of those involved had to work for a living instead of receiving government largesse, they might have been a bit too busy to produce and abandon so many children.

Since this article was written, the court has decided to lift the no-contact order that would have kept the lovebirds apart Still to be decided, who gets the two kids they have produced so far? That will be an interesting custody case.

Crimes Against Nature -- The Kennedy Version

New RFK Jr book:Crimes Against Nature, How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.

Am I missing something? I thought that Crimes Against Nature were recently legalized?

Libertarian Anarchists Should Remember They're Anarchists

The recent contretemps has posed many challenges for libertarians.

The split between minarchists and anarchists has widened, both camps have suffered from internal splits over WWIV, and libertarianism has suffered a decline in what little prestige it had managed to achieve in the larger world of ideologies.

I place myself generally in the anarchist pro-war camp (and yes there is such a camp).

My general advice to those libertarians to whom I've spoken has been the same advice I've given to the pro-war forces in general: "Remember when I told you that there would be difficult days ahead? Well this is one of them!"

Clinton's Self Help Advice for Ordinary Citizens

 
Are you an "ordinary citizen" of the US who just doesn't have enough money and power? Would you like more money and power without having to work hard to get them?

William Jefferson Clinton gives you easy advice in his Monday night address to the Democrat National Convention:

They [Wascally Wepublicans] believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their economic, political and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on important matters like health care and retirement security.

So if you want to be showered with money and power, all you have to do is embrace the economic, political, and social views of the Republican Party.  Sounds like easy work to me.     So what are those views?  Who knew -- they even have an Oath!  Read it and sign on the bottom line and wealth and power will be yours. 

Stem Cell Research

 
At least George has almost adopted the libertarian position on stem cell research.

He banned Federal funding of embryonic stem cell rearch.

Now if only he'd ban all Federal funding of stem cell research.

That is the libertarian position, isn't it?

In practice, not much stem cell research of any kind is going on with Federal funds.  Isn't that a good thing?

Two Wedding Dresses

For fans of wedding dresses:

Mrs John Kerry (May 1970)

Mrs John Kerry (May 1995)

Official Survival Advice

 
Fans of government survival advice can compare two separate booklets of such advice produced by the UK government a generation apart: 

Protect and Survive (1980)

Preparing for Emergencies (2004)

Unmentioned by either booklet -- the topic of Survival Guns. 

Why We Hate Them

Since September 11th, Muslims have been troubled by the question of why we (Kafirs) hate them.

As my previous post explained, in one sense Western attitudes are understandable. Is not the unconquered territory of the West the Dar al-Harb or the House of War while the region which has accepted God's commands is the Dar al-Islam or the House of Islam (of submission/Law/Salaam/Peace). Is it not logical that we unconquered outlaws would hate the Realm of Law.

But perhaps there's more to it. Perhaps the "Kafir Street" has a long memory.

When the Prophet died in 632 A.D., the Arabian Peninsula was not occupied by foreign oppressors (foreign oppressors have generally sought lusher territory). The Children of the Prophet were being left in peace. And yet in the 120 years following 632, Muslim armies attacked and conquered two-thirds of Christendom including 3 of that faith's 5 holiest cities.

In those days, the Christian World consisted of the ring of settled land around the Mediterranean. Britain was not fully converted. Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia were not in the church. The Five Archbishoprics of the Ancient Church: Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Rome were the spiritual centers of the Faith.

In a rapid and unprovoked series of attacks, the House of Peace conquered Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia. Then in succession Iran, Tripoli, Cyprus, and Armenia. Muslim naval forces destroyed the Byzantine fleet and occupied Sicily. Islamic armies put Constantinople under siege for seven years. North Africa (including Carthage), Spain, and the Sind (India/Pakistan) came under Muslim control. Later Central Asia and the northern half of India were subjugated.

In the course of this campaign, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch were captured. Constantinople held out until 1453. Churches were converted into mosques. Over time, Muslim rule was extended along the sea lanes of Southeast Asia as far as the southern Philippines. Kafirs recaptured Spain by 1492 but the other conquests remained remarkably stable. Perhaps we infidels are still upset over those military losses.

Now recently various academics and progressives (but I repeat myself) have complained about how bad the Crusades were. Such analysts neglect the fact that they were a response to Muslim aggression. They attacked Christendom first and conquered big chunks of it -- not the other way around.

Then there's the issue of discrimination against Christians (and all other non-Muslim faiths) which may rankle. There are mosques in Canterbury, Rome, Geneva, and Moscow (even Salt Lake City). But there are no churches (or Synagogues) in all of Saudi Arabia. Priests in the Sudan are prohibited from possessing communion wine. Pakistani Christians are regularly executed for their faith. Maybe the Kafir Street merely seeks to redress this invidious discrimination in the same way that the EEOC does in the US.

Or maybe it's the general human rights problems of the Dar al-Islam. Europe abolished slavery by around 1200 or so. The European colonies (including us) abolished it by the middle of the 19th century. Saudi Arabia abolished it in 1962. Sudan has been too busy killing its black population for the last 40 years to get around to abolishing it at all. The Arabian peninsula imported more black African slaves over the years than North America did. The descendents of our slaves are called the Secretary of Defense, etc. Where are the descendents of Saudi Arabia's slaves? And forget about the status of women -- the Dar al-Islam certainly has.

But perhaps the answer is even simpler. Perhaps Kafirs hate their enemies. It is axiomatic that if war is declared, one is at war. War was declared on the Kafirs of the world in 1996. The Kafirs didn't pay much attention for a while (which must have been very upsetting to some) but finally the message got through.

Hatred of one's enemies is easy to understand. It's something that brings all of mankind together.

Gratuitous Atomic Cannon Post

When I was looking for a nuclear weapons photo for a previous post, I immediately thought of the only live firing of an atomic cannon (in the US, that is). So I hunted up the famous photo of Shot Grable 10 (isn't the Net convenient?) and found that most of the images were poor scans. Finally I "borrowed" a good one and thought I'd actually post so you don't have to follow a link to see it. This is an actual photo of an actual atomic cannon firing an actual atomic shell. No editing or fakery involved.

Operation Upshot Knothole
Shot Grable 10
Frenchman's Flat, Nevada 25 May 1953
Mark 9 Gun Weapon - 280mm
Range 7 miles

Stop and Identify Statutes

Thanks to those dedicated Supreme Court Clerks, we have a list from page 3 of the Supreme Court's decision in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty of those states that have "Stop and Identify" statutes that punish those who undergo a police Terry Stop and refuse to identify themselves.

They are: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin.

If you're not in those 20 states, the newly drafted Hiibel Rule doesn't apply to you. Of course, more states may enact such statutes now that the Supremes have OK'd them.

Remember too that Mr. Hiibel only had to pay a $250 fine for violation of the statute so one could just think of it as a privacy tax.

Here are the cites to the specific statutes:

Ala. Code §15?5?30 (West 2003); Ark. Code Ann. §5?71?213(a)(1) (2004); Colo. Rev. Stat. §16?3?103(1) (2003); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §§1902(a), 1321(6) (2003); Fla. Stat. §856.021(2) (2003); Ga. Code Ann. §16?11?36(b) (2003); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 725, §5/107?14 (2004); Kan. Stat. Ann. §22?2402(1) (2003); La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 215.1(A) (West 2004); Mo. Rev. Stat. §84.710(2) (2003); Mont. Code Ann. §46?5?401(2)(a) (2003); Neb. Rev. Stat. §29?829 (2003); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§594:2 and 644:6 (Lexis 2003); N. M. Stat. Ann. §30?22?3 (2004); N. Y. Crim. Proc. Law §140.50(1) (West 2004); N. D. Cent. Code §29?29?21 (2003); R. I. Gen. Laws §12?7?1 (2003); Utah Code Ann. §77?7?15 (2003); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 24, §1983 (Supp. 2003); Wis. Stat. §968.24 (2003)

If Bush Were Hitler...

You may have heard that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler and the US is Nazi Germany and "The Most Dangerous Nation" on Earth.

No one's said this to me in person but an obvious retort would be, "If Bush were Hitler, we'd be busy shoveling your corpse into a pit right about now. Since I observe that we are not, Bush must not be Hitler."

But what if I'm wrong? What if Bush magically became Hitler and the US magically became Nazi Germany? What would happen?

1) Canada is toast. The Pentagon dusts off the old Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan--Red from the 1920s and the amphibious assault on Halifax and the armored columns pouring north from New York towards Toronto and Montreal would make quick work of the Canadian Defense Forces.

2) One carrier battle group (out of our 12) would sail out of Hampton Roads to challenge the combined naval forces of the EU (assuming they are capable of combining). Fifteen minutes later...

3) The marine guards from the US Embassy in Paris (assisted by infiltrated crewcut "tourists" who flew in on Air France from Dulles) capture the Elysee Palace. Similar seizures occur in Brussels and Berlin.

4) Unconditional surrender demands are received by the national governments of some 192 countries backed up by nuclear targeting of some of the more significant capital cities of those countries. Beijing is accidentally incinerated. Offers of surrender pour in.

5) The heretofore secret FEMA civil disorder control squads fan out in Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area, the West Side of LA, Boston, certain islands off the Massachusetts coast, and Manhattan to offer mental health services to various actors, filmmakers, commentators, and academics. These mental health services which had been sadly neglected in the "bad old days", became available under the recently enacted Secret Emergency Order 2004-23432-2345 establishing a single-payer National Health Care System.

6) Reflecting the Great Leader's famed concern for the natural environment, the EPA issues strict regulations concerning the handling and disposal of human and animal remains. Previous high-pollution methods such as incineration are replaced with modern irradiation and conversion into compost for use in agriculture and in the National Parks.

7) Under the guidance of the Great Leader, Christianity experiences an unprecedented flowering as His careful study of other faiths causes Him to adopt some of their techniques of proselytizing. He borrows conversion by the sword from Islam which serves to swell the ranks of believers.

8) Medina and Mecca are accidentally destroyed in a tragic B2 training accident. The Great Leader in compensation agrees to accept from Islam the burden of ruling the Christian Holy Cities of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Istanbul (now Constantinople) conquered so long ago.

9) The Great Leader, showing his concern for the confusions inherent in the many Christian denominations, guides The Faith to a new form of Methodism that is reconciled with its Anglican roots. The Great Leader sacrifices Himself for the spiritual needs of His people and becomes Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith.

Contractions of Rights by Amendments

In a discussion of the Federal Marriage Amendment, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes:

It's true that the Constitution has been amended to do other things besides expand rights, for example, but the only contraction of rights -- Prohibition -- was swiftly repealed. Other amendments have either been on unrelated topics, or have expanded rights.

What about:

13th Amendment - Reduced the rights of slave owners.

16th Amendment - Reduced the rights of those earning income to be free from unequal taxation. [The 16th Amendment in particular was a very significant rights deprivation. I find it hard to believe that Glenn and Andrew Sullivan have ignored it as a counterexample. It certainly made massive monetary exactions possible.]

17th Amendment - Reduced the rights of State Legislators [to elect Senators].

18th Amendment - Reduced the rights of drinkers [as you noted].

19th Amendment - Reduced the rights of male voters [by dilution].

22nd Amendment - Reduced the rights of Presidents to run for more than 2 terms.

23rd, 24th, & 26th Amendments - Reduced the rights of non-DC, financially comfortable, and older voters respectively [by dilution].

Some of the other Amendments probably reduced rights as well but I'm too lazy to do the analysis. For example -- I might prefer that the President and Congress not be sworn in until March but the 20th Amendment deprived me of same.

Cut Medical Costs -- It's Trivial!

If you're worried (in a political sense) about the cost of medical care, you don't have to. Dramatically cutting medical costs is cheap (if not easy).

1) Shut down the FDA. It adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of drug and medical device development. We all have access to enough information these days to decide what's good and what's not. After all, surgical techniques are unlicensed. Any surgeon can start cutting away any way he likes. He's free to develop new techniques and start using them without government permission. If that's reasonably safe, and it is, why not go the same way with drugs and medical devices?

2) Eliminate the prescription drug system. If all drugs could be bought directly by patients, they wouldn't have to pay off physicians to obtain prescriptions. They can self-prescribe. Saves a great deal of cash.

3) Open immigration. Much of the cost of medical care consists of the labor cost of both skilled and unskilled custodial care. Open immigration for health-care workers will reduce those costs by increasing the supply of labor.

4) Hospital deregulation. If the supply of hospital beds increased, the cost would go down.

5) Doctor deregulation. If the supply of doctors increased because restrictive licensure was eliminated, the cost of their services would go down.

6) Insurance deregulation. If insurance contracts were not being added to by state legislators in the interest of gaining freebies for their constituents without having to spend money, health insurance would be a lot cheaper. It's not accidental that a one-minute trip over the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania would drop your medical insurance costs by thousands of dollars a year. If one is not forced to buy mental health coverage, contraception, or first dollar coverage, one can spend much less for insurance and is -- therefore -- much more likely to possess it.

Anarchists, War, & Gay Marriage

I'm shocked, shocked and appalled, to note that some libertarian anarchists oppose the invasion of "other countries" and that some others do not oppose civil marriage for homosexuals (and by inference) heterosexuals.

If one does not believe in countries, sovereignty, borders, weapons control, or immigration control; one can hardly object to armed strangers traveling from point A to point B (in the absence of trespass on private property).

One can, of course, object to "invasions" of other "countries" that involve travel paid for by tax dollars. And one can object to common law crimes committed by the "invaders" against the residents of the zone that they have traveled to.

It is a challenging question of libertarian theory, BTW, as to how careful one has to be to protect innocent life when one is fighting a revolution or defensive war. This is a very difficult problem because artillery tends to go astray from time to time and anarchists do not (collectively) prohibit such risky behavior as the private ownership of nuclear weapons.

As for the civil marriage question...

Libertarian anarchists cannot in good conscience support the extension of civil marriage licenses to homosexuals. State licensing of sexual congress and/or family formation is a major human rights violation whether done to hetero- or homo-sexuals.

As with military conscription, libertarian anarchists should not favor the extension of a form of oppression to another group (say, women) in the name of equality. If oppression of one group is wrong, extension of the oppression to a new group (who had heretofore been exempt) is likewise wrong.

The whole concept of government regulation of domestic relations (dom rel law) is an outrage.

Self-Hatred Among the Demon-Cats

Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash

Paul Newman decried "tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me" as "borderline criminal."

The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid." And Whoopi Goldberg, after joking about refusing to submit her material to campaign censors, made an extended sexual pun on the president's surname.

"This campaign will be a celebration of real American values," Mr. Edwards promised, saying that voters "deserve a president who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong."

Mr. Kerry, inviting his and Mr. Edwards's adult children onstage for a sing-along of "This Land Is Your Land," told the crowd that "every single performer" on the bill had "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

Accused Army Deserter Leaves for Reunion

ABCNEWS.com : Accused Army Deserter Leaves for Reunion

PYONGYANG, North Korea July 8, 2004 — An American accused of deserting his Army unit 40 years ago to defect to North Korea left Pyongyang on Friday with his two daughters to be reunited with his Japanese wife in Indonesia.

Soga was abducted by spies and taken to the North in 1978 and then repatriated to Japan nearly two years ago. She had to return home alone because Jenkins, who allegedly deserted his Army unit in 1965, would face extradition to the United States and a court martial if he were to join her in Japan.

I would think that if he decided to return to the US, the Feds should decline to prosecute. What punishment for desertion could be worse than time served -- 40 years in North Korea!

One Minute to Literacy

For the past few years, the National Endowment for the Arts has taken it upon itself to measure our interest in what it calls "literary reading".

Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline, According to National Endowment for the Arts Survey

Fewer Than Half of American Adults Now Read Literature

July 8, 2004

New York, N.Y. - Literary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature, according to a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) survey released today. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline - 28 percent - occurring in the youngest age groups.

Now the NEA's standard for literary reading is pretty low: The 2002 SPPA asked respondents if, during the past 12 months, they had read any novels or short stories, plays, or poetry. A positive response to any of those three categories is counted as reading literature, including popular genres such as mysteries, as well as contemporary and classic literary fiction. No distinctions were drawn on the quality of literary works.

Thus you have an opportunity to achieve official certified government literacy in less than a minute. Simply read the following Rudyard Kipling poem and the next time the NEA calls (this is an annual survey) you can report yourself as literate:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling -- 1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place.
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: Stick to the Devil you know.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: The Wages of Sin is Death.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: If you don't work you die.

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four --
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man --
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began --
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire --

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

Can VoIP survive Congress?

Declan McCullah asks Can VoIP survive Congress?

The answer is "yes". If the Feds get too uppity, I'll just run my own SIP server and switch my own damn phone calls.

And as for "interfacing with the PSTN", I'll spend the whole $59 + $39 for PCPhoneline's Sip Gateway and Port Converter and connect my own damn VOIP calls to the PSTN.

No taxes and no CALEA problems.

Happy 4th of July

Freedom - English (German root)
Liberty - English (French root)
Freiheit - German
Liberte - French
Libertas - Latin
Libertad - Spanish & Portugese
Uhuru - Swahili
Kuokoa - Hawaiian

Most Successful Documentary?

Say, isn't The Passion of the Christ likely to be the most successful documentary film of all time?

I think it was intended as a documentary.

Why Massed Demos Don't Work in America

The commies are upset that all of their demonstrating doesn't get them anything here in the US. They seem to have more success with these tactics in other countries.

Right wing nuts are sometimes upset that right wing nuts can't seem to stage large demos like the commies do. P. J. O'Rourke jokes that right wingers don't demonstrate as much as commies because they all have jobs.

A large demonstration is supposed to change minds by what is, in essence, a show of force. One side collects and deploys these thousands of bodies in a quasi-military movement and observers are supposed react like good primates to the demonstration of power and change their political views.

Unfortunately for commies, this gimmick only works if the observers feel intimidated. A mass of men may be frightening in muscle-age communities but machine- and information-age observers react differently.

An undisciplined mass of sloppily dressed men, womyn, the differently gendered, and victims of color is not calculated to impress. Those who see these demos on TV screens are removed from the scene and unlikely to be frightened.

And the commies of America have given up the gun. They have deliberately disarmed themselves. Commies are overrepresented in the 60% of American households that have no firearms. (All stats are from Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms May 1997.)

Whereas right wingers are heavily armed. They are (greatly) overrepresented among the 10 million Americans who own 50% of US guns.

The effect of this is that armed individuals are unlikely to respond to the "argument" represented by a massed demonstration. Since those with arms are capable of "putting the street under fire" whenever the need arises, unarmed commie mobs do not evoke a primate dominance-subordinance reaction in this country as they do in other countries.

What to Say to the FBI When it Comes to Call

Portland Attorney (and vindicated Madrid bombing suspect) Brandon Mayfield may not be a wildly successful attorney but he certainly knows what to say when the FBI shows up.

On May 6, Mr. Mayfield heard a curious knock on the door of his law office, on the first floor of a beige office building in Beaverton, a Portland suburb. It was about 10 in the morning and Mr. Mayfield, who had opened his still-fledgling solo immigration and family law practice a few years ago, was not expecting anyone.

At the door were two agents with the F.B.I., a pair Mr. Mayfield described in an interview as "good cop, bad cop," "tall one, short one," a burly male agent and a diminutive female agent. Reading from a list on the search warrant, which was contained in court records unsealed last week, the agents told Mr. Mayfield they were searching for, among other things, "explosives, blasting agents and detonators."

The court records show that the agents confiscated a large number of items from the office, including computer disks, bank statements, yellow Post-it Notes and confidential client files. Meanwhile, agents were confiscating things from the Mayfield's home, including a .22-caliber handgun and .22-caliber rifle, his Koran, and what was described in the search warrant return report as "miscellaneous Spanish documents," which turned out to be Spanish homework belonging to Mr. Mayfield's children, family members said.

In the office that morning, Mr. Mayfield, not yet understanding the gravity of the situation, was almost dismissive of the agents. He recalled telling the agents, "If you have questions, put them in writing, I'll review them and I might get back to you."

This did not go over well, Mr. Mayfield recalled, and soon enough, he was frisked and handcuffed and marched out to a Ford Explorer that would take him to the federal courthouse in downtown Portland.

"If you have questions, put them in writing, I'll review them and I might get back to you."

Memorize that sentence and put it to good use.

Politically Incorrect Singing

In the Capitol Rotunda ceremony for Regan's Lying-In-State, the Air Force choral group the Singing Sergeants sang America the Beautiful including the usually banned second verse (which they sang as a fourth verse):

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

The Realm of Order vs The Realm of Chaos

The Name is (sometimes) the Thing.

Those who wonder about the source of the conflict between Us & Them, between Islam and Everybody Else, should consider the matter of names.

For Muslims who understand Arabic (and certainly all Muslim men should), the territory ruled by Islam is Dar al-Islam roughly translated into less poetic tongues as the House of Islam (of submission/Law/Salaam/Peace).

The (so far) unconquered territory of the Rest of the World is called Dar al-Harb or the House of War (of conflict between men and between man and God).

Note that Nations are not directly involved. The House of Peace and the House of War are not Nations -- they are regions.

As you must always keep in mind, Islam doesn't mean peace it means submission. Salaam means peace. The two words are related because (in theory) submission is a form of peace (as is the Grave). Meanwhile in the House of War, we are in conflict not only with each other and with Islam but also with God.

Now it's possible to read a little history of Islam and wonder why the Dar al-Islam fails to show much in the way of internal peace, but that would be unkind.

The Realm of Submission is also the Realm of Order because its residents have submitted to Shari'ah -- the revealed Law of God. Islam has the advantage of not having to legislate on its own. God in his mercy dictated the Law to the Prophet (in Arabic) sans human intervention. We in the Dar al-Harb have to roll our own.

We, then, are (by definition) outlaws who live in a Realm of (human) Chaos separated from God. When we are eventually incorporated into the Dar al-Islam, we'll presumably be better off.

The point of all this? That it is hard to avoid a war between Order and Chaos. It seems somehow natural. Note too the parallels between this view of the split in the world and the philosophical split between believers in the chaos of Free Markets and believers in the order of socialized controls.

Heinlein once said that to understand all is not necessarily to forgive all. The more we understand some things the less we forgive them.

This lesson in multicultural understanding (and Arabic) is merely an intro to my follow-on post -- Why We Hate Them.

State Auto Insurance/Financial Responsibility Laws

Students of state auto insurance mandates have got to read this fabulous article from the Insurance Information Institute:

Compulsory Auto Insurance
THE TOPIC

FEBRUARY 2004

Most states require drivers to have auto liability insurance before they can legally drive a car. (Liability insurance pays the other driverÂ?s medical, car repair and other costs when the policyholder is at fault in an auto accident.) All states have laws that set the minimum amounts of insurance or other financial security drivers must have to pay for the harm caused by their negligence behind the wheel if an accident occurs. The public generally supports compulsory auto insurance and wants these laws enforced.

Laws in most states have proven ineffective in reducing the number of drivers who are uninsured. There are many reasons for this. Some drivers canÂ?t afford insurance and some drivers with surcharges for accidents or serious traffic violations donÂ?t want to pay the high premiums that result from a poor driving record. With the percentage of uninsured motorists as high as 30 percent in some states, it is costly to track down violators of compulsory insurance laws. And unless the odds of getting caught are high and the penalties severe, drivers will continue to flout the law.

KEY FACTS

Liability insurance is compulsory in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Only New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wisconsin do not have compulsory auto insurance liability laws.

About 14 percent of drivers in the United States are uninsured, despite laws that prohibit it.

More than 20 states have considered Â?no pay, no playÂ? legislation, a concept which sets limits on the amount of compensation uninsured motorists can receive in an accident.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS

Ineffectiveness of Compulsory Auto Insurance Laws: Over the long term, compulsory auto insurance laws have not reduced the uninsured driver population in the United States. Although the number of uninsured drivers in a state declines when a compulsory law first goes into effect, some drivers allow the coverage to expire and gradually the uninsured driver levels increase, according to the National Association of Independent Insurers, an organization representing property/casualty insurance companies now known as the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) (see Background).

Then there's this comment:

Compulsory auto liability insurance is not necessarily the most effective solution. A 1994 study by the National Association of Independent Insurers (now known as PCI) found that New Hampshire, a state that does not have compulsory insurance laws, had a smaller percentage of uninsured drivers than the nearby states of Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut. Only 10 other states had fewer uninsured drivers. The state had the lowest percentage of uninsured drivers -- 9.5 percent -- of all the states without compulsory laws.

Be sure to also check out the great chart at the end of the article.

Don't Believe That Social Insecurity is Voluntary?

Read it and weep:

THE PAPERWORK/PRIVACY ACT AND YOUR APPLICATION

The Privacy Act of 1974 requires us to give each person the following notice when applying for a Social Security number.

Sections 205(c) and 702 of the Social Security Act allow us to collect the facts we ask for on this form.

We use the facts you provide on this form to assign you a Social Security number and to issue you a Social Security card. You do not have to give us these facts, however, without them we cannot issue you a Social Security number or a card. Without a number, you may not be able to get a job and could lose Social Security benefits in the future.

False Imprisonment of Newborns

Yet another argument in favor of giving birth at home.

My wife shocked me the other day by informing me that hospitals "won't let the new mother and baby leave" unless the party is in possession of a car seat.

I couldn't believe it. "You mean they will commit the crime of false imprisonment?", I asked. "No, they'll just call the cops.", my wife said. As usual I popped up with something my wife took to be a smartass remark, "What if you're walking home?"

One more example of the loss of our natural liberty protected by the 5th & the 14th Amendments. Professor Barnett please note.

It's a miracle I made it home from Alameda Hospital in 1951 without such an apparatus. I wonder how I survived.

It should be obvious that transporting an infant in a car without a car seat is not an inherently dangerous activity. It's only a problem if you have a crash (and if your vehicle is light enough to be affected by the crash).

By the government standard (slightly increased risk of harm), bathing the baby at home is dangerous, carrying the baby is dangerous (you might drop it), and certainly sending the baby to government schools is dangerous. Why are these acts not outlawed too?

Unlawful Law School Jokes

When I entered Law School (just as the film version of The Paper Chase was released) certain ancient jokes were fading from the curriculum. In the interest of historic preservation, these are the only ones I can remember:

----

Why is a tight skirt like a covenant running with the land?

Because they both bind the assignee.

----

Why does the Law of Torts call it the "Reasonable Man Test"?

Because there's no such thing as a reasonable woman.

[Few, today, will credit that we actually called it the Reasonable Man Test for hundreds of years.]

----

There was a young lawyer named Rex
who had a diminutive instrument of sex.

Charged with indecent exposure
he pleaded with composure:

De minimis non curat lex.

----

--Courtesy of the National Commission for the Preservation of Politically Incorrect Law School Jokes.

Mirror of Justice: Bishops, Politics, and Excommunication

It's one thing for godless, atheistic, communist bloggers and other media to make theological errors in discussing Catholic Church responses to straying Catholic politicians, but it's quite another when Vince Rougeau at Mirror of Justice does it. After an excellent review of Catholic bishops promoting integration during the Civil Rights Era, he says:

it seems curious that some bishops think that a person who simply supports a candidate who is pro-choice should not receive communion. The Church has also been quite explicit in its condemnation of the Iraq war, and a substantial body of Church teaching finds preemptive war immoral. Given what has been going on in Iraq (and Abu-Ghraib is just part of the story), can a Catholic vote for George Bush? Should Catholics who are active supporters of a war the Church opposes be excommunicated?

First the bishops haven't been talking a lot about excommunication, they've been talking about the fact that those who (by their own actions) prove that they've left the church should not receive communion (since they aren't in communion). The bishops have been careful to restrict their comments to abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage because the Church has determined that those are clear evils which are never to be committed.

War and the death penalty on the other hand are permissible in some circumstances and the individual consciences of Catholics must judge their specific application.

Thus the Catechism of the Church (here and here)reads:

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion....Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

..."It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material."[83]

2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. ... Under no circumstances can they be approved.

on the other hand:

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. ... These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

and

2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.

It is clear that some things are always and everywhere evil and others are not. The Church distinguishes between them. Even secularists feel this way about different things (read PETA's stuff for example).

Now non-Catholics will not care about the Catechism but Catholics and Catholic bishops should not be thought strange if they do.

Most clubs have rules.

And one last picky point. The Bush administration has justified future preemptive war in some circumstances but Iraq is not a preemptive war. We've been at war with Iraq since January 1991 with loads of international support (including the Politburo of the Soviet Union -- remember them!) in response to their aggression against Kuwait. We signed a ceasefire with Iraq later in 1991 but they violated it immediately (by firing at aircraft) so we had the right to resume hostilities at any time.

Desire to smash a bureaucrat

Claire Wolfe expresses an understandable "Desire to smash a bureaucrat" when she encounters problems obtaining "something" from one.

I've structured my life so I rarely have to deal with petty government bureaucrats. But today I had to go take care of an ordinary little matter I've been putting off for several years -- something most folk do about once a year or so, but that I've managed to avoid until now.

I thought I had all my ducks in a row, all my information structured so that I could breeze through this process with both minimal hassle and more importantly, minimal database invasion of my very private life. Then I got there and found that the state, in its infinite nosiness, had just adopted a new paperwork requirement. Do I need to mention that it's a highly invasive paperwork requirement?

...something most folk do about once a year or so

I'm going to take a wild guess that Claire's problem involves vehicle registration. This is an easy call since persons of Claire's (and my) persuation only approach the state in a very few circumstances and car registration is the only significant contact which is usually annual.

Things to say in the course of vehicle registration (which may not get your vehicle registered but will make you feel better):

* Can't the homeless register their vehicles in this state?

* Is it the official policy of this state to discriminate against homeless persons?

* My residence has never been assigned a street address or a Rural Route number. [Works best in rural areas.]

* My parents never registered my birth with the government. They chose instead to register my birth with a genealogical organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. They felt that government birth registration was the first step to a Communist takeover of the US. In retrospect, I see that they were right.

* I don't have telephone, cable, electric, or gas service. As far as I can determine, one is not required to purchase those services.

* The telephone, cable, electric, and gas service at my residence is not in my name but in the name of another person. Is it the public policy of this state to inquire into the domestic arrangements of its residents?

* My residence does not have mail delivery (aren't government cutbacks terrible?). I receive all my correspondence at an accommodation address at my local UPS Store.

* I never obtained a Social Security number. If you read the application you will note that submitting it is not mandatory. Since it is voluntary, I chose not to volunteer.

* Since fictitious entities such as partnerships, trusts, estates, private and municipal corporations, and even the Government of the United States can register vehicles in this state without birth certificates, photo IDs, or SSNs; why can't I?

* Do you know the Great State of Mississippi manages to survive without even having a DMV. The cops handle licenses and the tax commission handles vehicles. Maybe we should try that approach.

* Maybe I should move to Iowa, New Hampshire, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, or Wisconsin where I don't have to pay off the blood-sucking insurance companies to drive my vehicle.

* How come a Saudi fresh off the plane can rent or borrow a car anywhere in North America and drive it in this state on his Saudi DL without even telling you about it but a loyal American like me has to stand in line and fill out all these nasty forms before I can do so?

* You won't register my car? Fine, I guess I'll break down and pay a lawyer to form a trust or a corporation, register the car to that entity, and then I'll drive it without telling you a thing.

* Back in 1914, my 13-year-old grandfather drove unregistered trucks on the streets of San Francisco without a driver's license (because California had no such requirements). San Francisco survived. This state would survive too.

[Check back for future additions.]

Traditional Treatment of Prisoners in the Region

Since so much interest has been shown, of late, in the treatment of prisoners in the Muslim world, I thought that you might be interested in the traditions that were in place prior to the introduction of corrupt Western practices.

My source is a fascinating work that has been on my bookshelf for many years: Under the Absolute Amir. By Frank A. Martin. For Eight Years Engineer-in-Chief Successively to the Amir Abdur Rahmam and Habibullah, and for the Greater Part of that period the only Englishman in Kabul. Illustrated by the author's drawings and photographs, and by other photographs. London: Harper & Brothers 1907. 1st ed., xii, 330pp. + plates.

It's not necessary to read the whole work. Simply reading the Table of Contents of Chapter X -- Tortures and Methods of Execution is sufficient:

Amir's iron rule--Hanging by hair and skinning alive--Beating to death with sticks--Cutting men in pieces--Throwing down mountain-side--Starving to death in cages--Boiling woman to soup and man drinking it before execution--Punishment by exposure and starvation--Scaffold scenes--Burying alive--Throwing into soap boilers--Cutting off hands--Blinding--Tying to bent trees and disrupting--Blowing from guns--Hanging, etc.

It's too bad that such rich cultural traditions have been (somewhat) replaced by oppressive Western methods of dealing with prisoners.

Sleeping in Interrogation Class

I must have missed the day they taught the slick interrogation technique in which the interrogators have sex with each other in front of the targets to break their will.

"Close your eyes and think of America."

It would certainly cause me to talk.

Abuse in Iraq -- Program Suggestion

Letter I just sent to CBS' 60 Minutes II:

Gentlemen:

Since you first showed the photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq, don't you
think you owe it to your audience to show the full video of the
beheading of Nick Berg?

This would establish your consistency and place the problems of our
current war in their proper context.

If you are concerned about "Program Standards and Practices" you could
at least makes it available on your website.

If neither you nor any other US media company chooses to show the full
video, we can infer that you wish to harm your country but not to harm
the enemies of your country.

Oh Boy! Yet another service that won't find my music.

Now how did I know that AT&T Wireless Services' new Music Recognition Service wouldn't help me.

I've grown accustomed to various CDDB services not identifying my CDs so here was yet another service that would not help me.

So I fired up Sparky and Rhonda Rucker's Battle Cry of Freedom from The Blue and Gray in Black and White and held the phone up to the speakers and, sure enough, immediately received a text message saying, "Sorry, we were unable to identity the song."

I then fired up New York Mining Disaster 1941 by the BeeGees. I immediately received a text message with the correct ID. Likewise Al-Di-La by Jerry Vale.

Unfortunately, I'm usually listening to less popular items.

New Justification for Men

You may recall some years ago that feminists calculated that a housewife's work was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (if bought at market rates).

A Men's Rights activist group then retaliated by valuing men's domestic services higher (mostly based on the provision of all-night security guard services).

Well mod tech has given men a new household task they can justify their existence with -- network administrator. I spend increasing amounts of time keeping the home wireless network (and the computers attached to it) going. And the ladies of the house get very upset when outages occur.

I wonder what a 12-hours-a-day network administrator costs?

OP Book Search Engines

These are the two OP (Out-Of-Print) book metasearch engines that I use. FYI.

They include searches of most of the other online book services.

http://www.bookfinder.com/.

http://used.addall.com/.

John Forbes Kerry -- Draft Dodger

Citing His Vietnam Service, Kerry Assails Cheney, Rove
Neither Cheney nor Rove served in the military. Cheney received student deferments and later a deferment as a new father during the Vietnam War.

According to the Bush campaign, Rove drew the number 84 in the draft lottery when he graduated from high school in 1969 and received a student deferment upon enrolling at the University of Utah that fall. In the fall of 1971, after transferring to the University of Maryland, he was notified by his draft board in Salt Lake City that his student deferment had been revoked. Rove then was put into the extended priority status, which Schmidt said made him among the first eligible to be called in early 1972, but he was not called.

John Forbes Kerry and other Lefties have been attempting to make the student deferment the equivalent of "dodging the draft" and perhaps it was (though only for a limited period of time) but if so then John Forbes Kerry was also a draft dodger.

JFK (the current JFK) was an undergraduate at Yale from 1962 to 1966. In January 1966, he signed a "delayed entry" contract to join the Navy after graduation and the Summer. He entered the Navy late in August 1966.

But what was he doing from 1962 to the beginning of 1966. He hasn't said but it's obvious that he was a II-S during that entire period.

He was thus -- by the modern standard -- a (temporary) draft dodger.

Of course those who weren't there forget that the student deferment was just that -- a deferment. Draft eligibility ended at 26 in that era but if you took a II-S, your eligibility was extended to 28 or 35.

Ski resorts must return 5 howitzers to the Army

You know we're a bit short of military equipment when Ski resorts must return 5 howitzers to the Army.

Avalanche duty ends with a return to war

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Associated Press

RENO, Nev. -- The U.S. military is demanding the return of five howitzers that two Sierra Nevada ski resorts use to prevent avalanches, saying it needs the guns for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain received the artillery pieces on loan from the Army and began using them last year to fire rounds into mountainsides and knock snow loose.

Many additional questions are raised by this story. Why is the Army out of howitzers? Why are the Feds subsidizing ski resorts? Shouldn't they be buying their own artillery? I had always heard gun control advocates say (of semiauto rifles) that, "Civilians have no legitimate need for these weapons of war". I guess they were wrong. Do most Americans realize that private possession of firearms regulated by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (barrel<16' or 18', bore >0.5", full-auto, etc.) is legal in most states if you file the paperwork and pay the tax?

Do the resorts have to pay the Federal Transfer Tax (circa $200/round) on the ammunition like the rest of us would or are they exempt? Where do they get the howitzer rounds from? If attacked by ecoterrorists, can resorts defend themselves with artillery?

Howitzers are short-barreled cannons that typically are pulled by a vehicle. They fire three to 10 rounds a minute at a range of about five to 10 miles. Replacing a 119-A -- the type used at the resorts -- would cost around $1 million, Bowen said yesterday.

Howitzers were originally developed to lob rounds over the walls of fortified cities so they would seem to be ideal for operations in mountainous terrain.

The Forest Service said it is working to secure older howitzers for the ski resorts, and the Army's Bowen said he is optimistic that will happen.

Nice to hear that they won't be disarmed for the duration.

Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain are the only ski resorts in the nation using the 119-A howitzer, the most modern model available, said Bob Moore, a U.S. Forest Service specialist in Truckee, Calif. Other resorts have older 105 mm howitzers.

Pam Murphy, senior vice president at Mammoth Mountain just east of Yosemite National Park, said the military has provided the ski resort with recoilless rifles and other guns for avalanche control for 30 years. The howitzers are the most effective, Murphy said.

No kidding! But who knew that this "weapons welfare" program has been going on for so long.

Preempting Iraq

Randy Barnett writes:
"I generally concur with this writer--especially in his assertion that there is a divide between those who think we have been in a state of war since 9/11 and those who do not think we have been at war since then--but I still think that, in this media age, when asserting a controversial doctrine of preemption--which is necessarily based on intelligence of present capability and future intentions--when the capability turns out not to be as predicted, the President or someone in his administration should make some effort to explain why everyone was fooled by the intelligence. "

The Admin has stated that Iraq is not an application of the new Doctrine of Preemption and that would seem to be logically correct.

The US had been in a state of war with Iraq since at least January 1991. They attacked Iraq forces to free Kuwait with the authorization of the UN Security Council, the Politburo of the then Soviet Union, and even the United States Senate. A few months later, the US signed a ceasefire with Iraqi forces, and a few months after that, Iraq violated the ceasefire. Violations continued for 12 years and at any time the US was free to resume hostilities. No preemption.

World War IV Victory Conditions

My cubicle mate (a person of the female persuasion) recently asked me the quite reasonable question, "How will we know we've won the war?" (by which she meant our current religious conflict).

I said, "Wait 40 years, look in the mirror, see if you're wearing a Burka."

Young People Who Don't Drink "Because It's Illegal"

Jonah Goldberg encounters 'youths' who don't drink alcohol because they think it's illegal.
Anyway, while I was imbibing my beverage(s) along with the few young scholars of legal drinking age, a couple of the guys brought an interesting cultural development to my attention. Several of the young squires under the age of 21 informed me that they don't drink because it is against the law. One very bright fellow in particular assured me that when he's 21 he will avail himself of legal inebriants, but until that time he did his very best to eschew the demon rum (and scotch and beer etc). He also assured me that he was not alone in this attitudinal forbearance of illegal imbibition.

I'm shocked by the lack of education shown by today's youngsters. Most of them think that it's illegal for them to drink but the truth is that it's not.

If you carefully read the liquor laws of even so totalitarian state as Massachusetts, you'll find plenty of loopholes.

It is generally illegal for those under 21 to purchase or publicly possess booze in Massachusetts. It is also illegal to "furnish" booze to those under the age of 21 (unless you are the parent, grandparent, or spouse) of the under-age person.

But then the exceptions:

For example it is (or probably is) legal for a person under the age of 21 to drink:

* Booze supplied by his parents, grandparents, guardian, or spouse at home (and in some cases in public).
* Booze manufactured at home by the minor.
* Booze consumed publicly as part of religious ceremonies (ie Communion under both species).
* Booze inherited by a minor that is located in his home.
* Booze sent to a minor by a third party in another state without the minor having requested it. (Perhaps as a political protest against liquor laws).
* Booze purchased (and consumed) by a minor in other countries with lower drinking ages.

The above list is not definitive. Generally, then, as long as the minor finds some way of being at home with booze (without ordering it himself) he can legally drink it. It is not the drinking that is restricted, it is the acquisition and public possession.

Now the State has thrown various barriers in the way of a minor drinking booze but that is just challenge for the dedicated.

Why Mods Have Difficulties Forming Relationships

Because they think that this is a Romance Collection.

Queen Mary 2's First Arrival in NYC

The QM2 in New York Harbor

Circa 0700 hours this AM at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ (formerly the terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey).

The haze was natural and not a camera artifact. The Queen Mary 2 is (for now) the world's largest passenger liner.

More photos of this morning's arrival can be seen here.

Unitentional BBC Humor from the Front

The BBC News 24 Live News Summary of this hostage story from Iraq contains the immortal line:

Gary Teeley -- a 37-year-old laundry industry consultant -- was freed with the help of Italian Special Forces.

Punishments of students and teachers for violently themed literature

The Volokh Conspiracy reports:
The quiet freshman from Seattle who sat in the back row had submitted a disturbing short story, a fictitious first-person account of a young serial killer. The story was so rife with gruesome details about sexual torture, dismemberment and bloodlust that the teacher [Jan Richman] panicked, wondering what to do now that she had already handed out copies to her class to take home and read....

After a brief interrogation in his dormitory, the student, who did not respond to The Chronicle's requests for comment, was put on a plane and sent home to his family. The next day, according to Richman, the young man's parents called the university, alleging that their son had been encouraged to write about violence after reading a short story assigned in Richman's Narrative Storytelling class. . . .

The story was "Girl With Curious Hair," the title piece of a 1988 collection by David Foster Wallace, author of "Infinite Jest," one of the most widely acclaimed novel of the 1990s. "Girl With Curious Hair" features a character called Sick Puppy, a yuppie who hangs out with a crowd of punk rockers for cheap thrills. One of the young women lets him extinguish matches on her skin....

[The administration then] sent an e-mail informing Richman that Rowley would not rehire her for the new semester. . . .

Instead of punishment, why don't institutions simply restore their teacher's traditional prerogatives of free comment. A statement like, "Young man, you are one sick puppy" might serve to guide wayward youth onto the right path.

Missing from the UC Berkeley History Page

Is there some hidden reason that Cal Berkeley's History Page neglects to mention who the University (and the City) were named after?

Why are REs Renouncing US Citizenship?

I finally updated my Official Taxpatriates Page. The IRS is a few Quarters behind (as usual) in its listings of those Americans who have renounced their citizenship.

But that's not the story.

The interesting story is that a small number of REs (Reinsurance Companies) have been appearing on these lists:

2Q 2000
RBC Reinsurance Ltd.

1Q 2003
ING Re

2Q 2003
Imagine International Reinsurance Ltd.

Why are these REs renouncing a US citizenship that they presumably never had in the first place and why are they appearing on this list which, according to the statute, would seem to be restricted to individuals? And why REs? Why not other entities?

I have no idea.

An Illegal Alien for 80 Years

Citizen Finnerty, or so she thought

For 80 years, if there was one thing Catherine Finnerty was sure of, one part of her identity there was never any question about, it was the fact that she is an American.

She paid taxes, married a U.S. serviceman and watched him go off to fight in World War II. Her front lawn in Hazlet sports tiny American flags, and a larger flag is draped across the front of her house. Each night, she takes out her rosary beads and prays for the troops overseas.

"I'm an American through and through," she said.

Or so she thought.

Last September, eight decades after she arrived in this country as a newborn in the arms of her Irish immigrant mother, Finnerty was stunned to learn she may not be a U.S. citizen after all.

She was "caught" when she applied for federally subsidized senior housing. Oops!

This is not an unusual story. My wife and I helped a woman establish her mother's citizenship in the same circumstances. A lot of Irish babes in arms entered the country in the 1930s and were accidentally not listed on their parents citizenship petitions because it wasn't seen as vital.

Until she applied for HUD housing, she had never been asked.

When her brother enlisted in the Navy and went off to fight in World War II, no one said he wasn't a citizen. When Finnerty registered to vote and went to the polls each year for decades, it never came up. When she applied for Social Security benefits in 1985, she was accepted, without hesitation.

It wasn't until this past spring, when she applied for an apartment at Bethany Towers, a federally subsidized senior citizen housing complex in Keyport, that HUD denied her application for lack of legal residency.

So watch out. If you're an illegal alien, don't apply for federal subsidies. If you're not positive you're legal -- don't apply for federal subsidies.

Video of Rush Limbaugh's Hearing before Florida Appeals Court

Fans of state appellate court practice (and/or Rush Limbaugh) can see streaming video of a full hearing from Florida's 4th District Court of Appeal on Rush's petition to quash a search warrant for his medical records.

The above link is on this page of Rush Limbaugh's site which has a great deal of other video, audio, and transcripts related to his case.

The site is a fabulous demonstration of the power of litigants/defendants to publicize their own case arguments in the modern era.

Personal Religious Beliefs

The Roman Candidate:

Kerry has said that, as an elected official, he must separate his personal religious views from his actions as a legislator and that it is not "appropriate in the United States for a legislator to legislate personal religious beliefs for the rest of the country."

But, I assume, it is OK for a communist legislator to legislate his personal communist beliefs for the rest of the country?

Why don't faithless Catholic politicians simply say that they are imposing their beliefs on us but that those beliefs are not the beliefs of their church; that (in fact) they don't share most of the beliefs of their church; and that they only maintain the pretense of faith for crass political advantage.

How Commie are You?

With all the Libertarian Purity Test action in the blogosphere, I thought that someone should give you a chance to figure out how Commie you are. Here's an easy self-scoring test straight from the Communist Manifesto. There are 10 statements. Count how many you agree with. If you agree with 1 you're 10% Commie if you agree with all 10 you're ready to teach at Berkeley. [Note: Cal Berkeley's History Page doesn't inform the readers who the University and City were named after. I wonder why?]

Here goes:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

Girls, Gays, and the Godless

The Boy Scouts have been permitted to discriminate against the 3 G's in their membership requirements but some think that they should not exercise this discretion.

So Eugene Volokh and Mark Kleinman both have blog posts on the topic of Should the Boy Scouts discriminate against the godless. (See here and here.)

The basic argument is that the Scouts have a constitutional right to discriminate against atheists but shouldn't because religious discrimination is bad. As Prof. Volokh put it: "If the Scouts excluded Catholics -- everyone else, Jewish, Protestant, or what have you is fine, but not Catholics -- we'd rightly condemn them..." And Mr. Kleinman made the same argument at greater length.

There are several possible responses to this argument including such throw away lines as "Harvard discriminates against Catholics without being denounced for it; so the practice is not universally condemned." (The % of Catholics at Harvard is much lower than the general pop.) But that would be too easy.

The real argument being made is that discrimination (of some types) is "bad" and that argument should be addressed directly.

The truth is that "discrimination" is normal behavior for primates like us. Primates normally form "troops" (Scout Troops?) and violently exclude non-troop members that they encounter.

Now my misspent youth consisted of being excluded from various "affinity groups" because I was a Haole, fat, unathletic, and uncool. I suffered because of my exclusion. I never considered wheeling on into federal court to sue the asses my fellow students who were discriminating against me. Luckily for them, I support the right to discriminate. When I picked my wife, I discriminated on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, political philosophy, education, and intelligence as well as other factors I can't even specify.

But we don't even have to go that far in this case. There is a good reason for an organization like the Boy Scouts to discriminate against the three G's (girls, gays, and the godless). [They allow gay male scouts but not leaders.] The American Boy Scouts have tried to remain slightly closer to the founding principles of the Scouting movement than the rest of the politically correct bunch have. There's nothing wrong with a little institutional differentiation:

On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my Country and obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Proud, Commie, and Port Huron

Port Huron Statement - Students for a Democratic Society
Apparently, the Revolution will be Copyrighted.

This text, made available by the Sixties Project, is copyright (c) 1993 by the Author or by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., all rights reserved. This text may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law. This text may not be archived, printed, or redistributed in any form for a fee, without the consent of the copyright holder. This notice must accompany any redistribution of the text. The Sixties Project, sponsored by Viet Nam Generation Inc. and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is a collective of humanities scholars working together on the Internet to use electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the 1960s.

So the founding document of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is copyrighted? Presumably just this representation.

But the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) did it first in 1960 and it's not copyrighted.