Alito

Sorry I'm late with this news. I forgot to tell you: a man named Samuel Alito was nominated to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. He's apparently a lot like Scalia, right down to the Italian heritage. Considering I once supported human cloning for the very purpose of filling SCotUS with Scalia and Thomas clones, he really can't be enough like Scalia for me. But I hold out hope he comes close.

Considering this all started with needing to nominate a woman to mollify Laura, I don't see why he didn't nominate Janice Rogers Brown. Let's hope Justice Ginsburg decides to retire, so Bush will have another chance to nominate JRB.

SRS

Immigration

When the whole campaign finance reform (CFR) debate was going on, I supported a plan that eliminated restricitions on how much could be contributed and spent, or what could be said and when, and merely tracked who was giving money to whom - a plan called no limits, full disclosure. This plan would not violate the First Amendment as does the plan that passed congress and was signed into law. And it would allow voters more information about special interests than they've ever had before, thereby effectively accomplishing all the good things that McCain and Feingold promised us, without their plan's nasty side effects (like the end of free political speech).

No, I did not mislabel this article. I'd like to make the case that the same plan that would have worked so well in CFR could be implemented at our border: no limits, full disclosure (NLFD). Essentially, allow in anyone who wants to come to our country, as long as they aren't wanted by interpol or associated with known terrorist organizations. No limits, full disclosure. Obviously, there are some countries where the government is less friendly, and we might have to look a little closer at people from those countries (Syria, Iran, PRC, France, etcetera). With NLFD, we wouldn't have to open up factories overseas, because all the low-wage labor would be here. And the price of baseball players would plummet, allowing other teams to have a shot at winning the AL East.

Everyone not on some wanted list could get an immigrant worker ID to give to employers in place of the SSN we Americans give to our employers. Anyone trying to get a job without an ID can be reported to a much smaller, leaner INS for investigation and possibly deportation. Since all you have to do to get in the country legitimately and get an ID is show that you're not a known criminal or terrorist, every good guy in the country will have an ID. Really simple. It won't be a major privacy issue, because it won't have any personal information except when you came to the country, what country you're from, and what your name is.

Now as to the economic impact of having an unlimited supply of unskilled labor depressing everyone's wages: that will only affect the jobs unskilled laborers can do. Yes, there are unskilled laborers in the U.S., but they chose their lot by choosing to drop out of high school and not get jobs. Unskilled laborers in countries that don't provide government-funded education (and have 15% or higher unemployment) didn't choose their lot. Ultimately, it's not a question of whether or not it's moral to allow unlimited immigration of law-abiding people from around the world. It's adiaphora. The pertinent question is "Is it beneficial?" The answer is yes. The economy is improved when there is more being produced. That is, the more people you have being productive, the more stuff there will be (and the better). That simple, common-sense truism is the secret behind supply-side economics.

Immigration control is one form of trade protectionism. It protects an inflated price for something from foreign competition: labor. Some might argue that while sugar is clearly not worth trade protections, the labor market as a whole is, because, well, those are our jobs. For one thing, just because we're talking about jobs instead of sugar or textiles doesn't mean the laws of economics don't apply anymore. It's still imperative to think beyond stage one. In ancient times, where did economic progress and technological development take place? Was it in the wilderness among the nomads or out in the woods where the hunter-gatherers were? Or was it in the densely populated cities and the farms that supported them? Population density is remarkably beneficial to economic and technological develoment even today. Even more that we now have easily accessible education that seeks out its own talent instead of waiting for the occasional convergence of wealth and genius to come to them.

Someone might ask: "If population density is so great for the economy, why are there so many poor in the cities?" There are a number of reasons that poverty exists in inner cities, not least of which is inept government policy. But perhaps the question should be "Why are there jobs and industries still forming in cities where there is more crime, inept government, and taxes than elsewhere?" There may seem to be many answers to that question, but almost all come back, ultimately, to population density. The more people you have interacting, sharing ideas, and trading with one another, the more they all will prosper, as we have seen throughout world history, and continue to see today.

The most worrisome question for the NLFD plan for immigration is: "What if we are overrun by uneducated, antisemitic Muslim thugs, as Europe was?" That is actually a very good question. But it won't happen in the U.S. for many reasons. First, the only segment of Islamic society that is both dangerous and numerous is the ignorant antisemitic people who are living in Europe and totalitarian countries. As noted above, immigrants from these countries could be more closely monitored, or limited in number. Other Muslims, from countries such as Kuwait, or now Iraq and Afghanistan are far more peaceful than the sort slumming in Europe.

Second, antisemitism itself would be far less welcome here than in Europe, where many natives have that much in common with the Islamic fundamentalists who immigrate there. Here, despite what the left would have you believe, antisemitism has been marginalized. You see, free markets make antisemitism, racism - and every other kind of prejudice - very expensive, and after a generation or two, no one's willing to put their livelihood on the line for an unpopular, wrongheaded idea.

Third, there's much less of a welfare state, and much more genuine economic opportunity here than in Europe. That means that productive people (not thugs) are more likely to want to come here, and unproductive people (i.e. thugs) are less likely to want to come here.

So we might have a few issues that need to be worked out first, but NLFD immigration policy can unltimately work, at least for immigrants from most countries. One of the most remarkable things about trade is that everyone involved can become more prosperous. The same can be true of immigration.

SRS

Top Story: Steve Gilliard is black

Apparently the blogger who put blackface on Michael Steele's photograph is himself black. I guess that means it's okay.

I retract everything I have said in criticism of his actions, and want to apologize for having disagreed with a black person. Because it's okay for black people to slander black people. It's wrong only if a white person does it.

If I can be serious for a moment? Steve Gilliard's actions are symptomatic of a very despicable way of thinking: that if you have the right skin colour and the right (or I should say left) politics, you should be allowed to do things that white people (and conservatives "of colour") could never get away with. I guess if a taxi passes you by, everyone suddenly has to defer to you in all political discussions, unless you're a conservative.

Here's what's really sad: any time a black person comes up with a good idea or has a proposal that would truly help black people in America, he's attacked and shunned by 90% of the other black people in America. It has nothing to do with the idea's merits or demerits, but whether or not it's a Republican idea - if it's got an "R" next to it, it's evil, or so black people are raised to believe. After all Republicans have always been the party of racism, right? Oh wait, no, they were the party founded expressly to end the racist institution of slavery in America. The Democrats were the ones for slavery. But they changed soon afterwards: in 18- uh, 19-... the 1960's! 'Cause that's when they tried to stop the Civil Rights Act from being passed... oh wait, that was the Democrats again. They went after the first black president in the 90's! Except he was actually white. Come to think of it, Republicans have:

1. Ended slavery in America (1860's)
2. Fought racist democrats in the south to their knees, both militarily and politically (1860's-present)
3. Opposed minimum wage laws which dramatically increase black unemployment (1930's-present)
4. Passed civil rights legislation (1960's)
5. Fought for school vouchers, which would increase economic opportunity for American blacks more than anything except repeal of the minimum wage (19??-present)
6. Forced the first black president to enact welfare reform laws, increasing economic opportunity for blacks (1990's)

So why would any black in his right mind support a party that has fought to keep slavery, keep racial segregation in schools, impose racial segregation on the military, impose minimum wage laws (read: young black male unemployment laws), oppose civil rights legislation, oppose school vouchers, and now takes the black vote for granted?

It takes lies about history, and thorough indoctrination; it takes despicable role models like Revs. Jackson and Sharpton; it takes vicious lies about those who do stand up for what's right (labeling them "Uncle Tom" or "Sambo"); it takes a generation of youngsters who know more about 50 Cent than about Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, Larry Elder, Michael Steele, and all of conservative thought; it takes the rotten education that these kids will continue to get in the rotten schools that they're stuck in without vouchers; but it can be done, as we are seeing. Can anything be done to the contrary? I'm glad you asked. Yes, we can overcome all the advantages the left holds in the battle for the hearts and minds of blacks. We just have to be unafraid of the attacks that are a natural reaction to the truth. We must continue to speak the truth, even when accused of racism. Most black leftists are woefully undereducated and misled by the schools and their "leaders," but they are not stupid or dishonest. If we are persistent and honest, most of them will see the truth.

SRS

New pick for SCOTUS

Now, can anyone tell me why Janice Rogers Brown is not a perfect fit for the Supreme Court of the United States?

SRS

Credibility

My dear colleague(s) at crooksandliars.com opined that the right has lost all credibility on the issue of "Is the judicial confirmation process too nasty?" Just because we express legitimate opinions, rooted in fact, with concern to a nominee's qualifications and experience, does not mean we're borking. In fact, looking up "bork" in the wikipedia, one finds it lays out the distinction nicely. For those of you too lazy to click that link, I'll explain.

When the Democrats (and their nastiest accomplices) attacked Robert Bork, nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. in 1987, they lied, slandered, libeled, and all that sort of thing, dragging through the mud the good name of a good man (who was extremely qualified to sit on the Supreme Court). All the accusations leveled at him were baseless, but they had to be done to prevent an excellent, conservative legal mind from joining the Supreme Court at the time. It worked, and Bork's nomination was defeated in the Senate. After a former pot-head was briefly considered, Anthony Kennedy wound up getting the job, a major victory for the American left. Since then "to bork" has been used as a verb meaning "to attempt to destroy a person's reputation through falsehood or unfounded rumour, especially to prevent that person from being confirmed as a justice in the American judicial system." It is well known that Clarence Thomas was borked when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, but the borking failed, and he was confirmed by a narrow margin. If one wishes to apply the term to cabinet appointments, one could easily demonstrate that Alberto Gonzales was borked when nominated to be Attorney General of the U.S. in 2004, as was John Bolton when he was nominated to the ambassadorship to the U.N., though both of these examples pale in comparison to the hatred evident when the Supreme Court is at stake.

Either way, questioning whether or not Harriet Miers has adequate experience to sit on the Supreme Court is nothing at all like accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual assault or accusing Robert Bork of trying to return the country to forced segregation. For one thing, what was said about Miers was true. For another, nobody (but nobody) on the right side of the fence said or implied that Miers was anything less than a wonderful person. The point was that she was a wonderful person who did not deserve to sit on the Supreme Court.

It is ironic that a left wing blogger would write about credibility.

SRS

Miers withdraws her nomination...

for justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Story here.

SRS

Burning bodies...

terrorist style. You see, American soldiers make one important distinction when they burn human bodies: they make sure the bodies are dead first. Nadir-of-the-depths-of-evil Islamic terrorists, on the other hand, make the distinction the other way around. They hate human life, and they desire suffering. They are rapists, racists, and hypocrites. They raise their children to thirst for blood, and they have no humanity or reason, only violent urges over which they have forfeited control. They can't distinguish between friend and foe, because rational thought is foreign to them. They long to become animals, soulless and utterly depraved.

And of course, they will be lauded as heroes by the American left, who are so divorced from reality by their hatred of individual political figures that they celebrate the deaths of the valiant, all the while deluding themselves into thinking that their hatred is still directed at the "elite." They are the elite in their own world view, because they think they know the whole inside scoop, all the secrets and lies of "the ruling class" - it is this arrogance that prevents them from seeing their own depravity.

So there you have it, depravity overseas, matched by depravity in America.

I still like Ann Coulter's idea for our response to the September 11 attacks: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." That sounds better than ever. Check out the full article.

SRS

Our colleagues on the left side of the blogosphere...

are racists, as seen here. This comes hard upon the news that the folks at USA Today risk looking like racists in an idiotic, partisan photoshopping of the Secretary of State, as seen here (and pretty much everywhere else on the right side of the blogosphere). This is old news. Leftists use black people for political advantage, despise them in their personal lives, and then accuse the right of doing the same things, while denying the truth about themselves. But the truth gets out.

SRS

Check out...

this article at the Claremont Institute. If you want to know my views on Miers, federalism, or Oregon's euthanasia law, this guy expresses them better than I could.

SRS

My blog is completely worthless

Observe:

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

New title

New title, same old look. I also expanded on the description, because I'm not sure either of my readers got it: "A pinionated, inciteful commentary" - though I'm not sure explaining it makes it any funnier. Oh well.

SRS

I think this is why I like Bush...

despite our many differences on his domestic agenda: click here.

SRS

I thought you might want to see...

this post from one of my other blogs. It's a little suggestive of political satire, but I still felt it fit in better with my silly blog. Click on one of the colorful words above to read it.

SRS

One of my favourite things about Walter Williams....

is that he is just the sort of economist who would offer an economic explanation for the song lyrics "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/Never make a pretty woman your wife...."

The communism of the free market

What is communism? Taken at its root meaning, what is it really? Is it not the unity of society, oriented towards a common goal? If not, isn't that at least the purpose of advocating a communist society: to unite us and drive us towards a singular goal? It is an admirable purpose, is it not?

However, in every attempt at communism in recorded history, there have remained divisions, stratification, suspicion, and bitterness: the very things communism was supposed to end. What went wrong? Smarter men than I have written extensively on the subject. But I think it might be educational to think in terms of "what could we do that would go right?"

One thing we could do is examine the economic processes of capitalism (or, more accurately, free markets), which communism tried to abolish. In a free (or relatively free) market, a person generally produces goods or services which are not particularly useful to himself, at least not in the amounts he produces. Why does he do this silly, wasteful thing? Well, so he can exchange the goods or services he produces for the goods or services produced by others. Since the development of currency, it has become obvious that a person can acquire more goods for himself by producing one thing in abundance and then trading it, via currency, for the other things he wants or needs, than by trying to produce on his own everything he wants or needs.

But all of this is selfish and, if our goal is unity and cooperation, counterproductive. Or is it? If everyone is working for himself, specializing in one thing each, and trying in this way to gain all he can for himself, he is participating in the process of producing goods for strangers, and for society at large. Think of an assembly line: attaching widget A to widget B might seem useless, until all the other widgets have been affixed, and you have a brand-new, functioning thingamajig. An excellent example of cooperation brought to you by the free market.

I can hear you objecting: "But what about a spirit of unity, feelings of commonality, a zeitgeist of good will?" (You're awfully redundant.) I would like for you to suppose for a moment that there is a man aware of himself, his situation, and such. This man - let's call him Kweisi - is truly interested in himself, his own well-being, and the satisfaction of his own needs and desires. He is a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, and he cares nothing for the well-being of strangers, and every action of his is carefully planned to advance his own material holdings. He would be quite willing to steal and defraud, except that is against the law, and he fears punishment under the law. But he is willing to employ children, pay employees as little as he can get away with, place people in unsafe working conditions, and form monopolies, all of which is allowed under the free market system. His only criterion for an action is: will it increase my personal wealth? You might call Kweisi any number of things inappropriate for a family-friendly blog, and you would be quite right to do so. Now suppose that his workers start dying because of unsafe conditions in his dungeonlike factory. He's losing valuable worker production, the other guy's factory implements safety features and hires Kweisi's best men, and some leave for safer, lower-paying work. Now Kweisi's production is down, and morale is low. Kweisi is hemorrhaging cash by keeping an unproductive factory around (and cash represents the purchasing power of precious possessions) and he is forced to implement safety measures in his own factory, and perhaps increase pay, to attract workers back to his factory, so he can start earning revenues to replace the cash he's losing and start turning a profit again.

Now imagine Kweisi has a retail outlet in a poor neighborhood, and there's a crime wave. But fortunately, his stuff is safe, because he has the latest security features, and some muscle-headed goons, just in case. However, all the people that would have shopped at his retail outlet have been robbed (or murdered), and can't spend any money at his store. So Kweisi goes on a mission to root out the corruption at the local police force and get the boys in blue to crack down on crime, so his store can start turning a profit again. Also, he starts exploiting the local teens in his store, paying them a microscopic wage to work from the time school lets out until their parents get home, so he can keep them out of trouble and take advantage of their desire for dating money, and providing them with money to spend in his store - burning his candle at both ends and in the middle.

Now suppose that the flu is sweeping the country, killing hundreds, thousands, and more with each passing day. Well, of course Kweisi is going to do his level best to discover and mass produce the cure, hoping to sell it to the masses. The rich probably wouldn't pay through the nose for it, because they could just go to their mountain retreat to get away from the blasted virus - but the millions who are stuck in the path of the oncoming epidemic, they will pay whatever they can, and Kweisi is just the man to exploit that opportunity. He mass produces the cure for the flu, selling it at the middle-class price for the first day or two, and then selling it at a clearance to the poor, after most of the middle class has already been soaked.

What's the point? The point is, even though Kweisi is a total creep, he renovated his factory with needed safety features; he fought crime; he employed teens who need job experience more than they needed their free time; he funded the discovery of the cure for the flu, and provided it to millions, saving countless lives. Even though he's a creep. Why did he do all this? Because there was the potential for reward for his actions: the market made him do it, you might say. The truth is, a free market convinces even the worst people to do good things, and it doesn't discourage good people from doing good. The free market unleashes a spirit of unity and cooperation that communism, forced socialism, and the welfare state all stifle. Under communism (as it was practised in the USSR and elsewhere), the wealthy joined the government and protected their wealth, maintaining an appalling disparity of quality of life between the government officials and the rest of the country. Under forced socialism, the more productive will always resent the less productive, instead of feeling generous towards them, as many do in a free market. And the welfare state alienates giver from recipient, lowering the morale of both.

One might object that I'm forgetting about the virtues of justice and equality. Well, you are right that the outcome of a free market is inequitable. But to treat two people unequally before the law, so that they can be equal in possessions and lifestyle, that is unjust. This is dramatically illustrated in the case of a wealthy young man who inherited all of his wealth, and who gambles and gets drunk, and buys and destroys things until all of his money is gone, and a woman who was born poor but worked hard to provide a good life for herself and her family - in a welfare state, she has to pay his bills. In a free market, he has to marry her or talk her out of her money to get at it; either way, he at least has to make some kind of effort. But the point is, if you believe in equality of result or outcome, she has to give him half of her money. If you believe in equality before the law, and the traditional definition of justice, she gets to do what she wants with the money and possessions that are hers, just as he did what he wanted with his money. Equality before the law is not just more considerate of different inputs than equality of outcome, it's also much easier to maintain and carry out. If you think about it, it's very equitable.

So there you have it: the free market is everything communism wished that it could be. There's so much unity and cooperation and good will and equality, the free market is, in a literal sense, very communist.

SRS

Note: for more on equality before the law versus equality of results, I highly recommend Thomas Sowell's excellent book The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Also available at BarnesandNoble.com and Overstock.com (and presumably other places you could find without my help).

Axiom 2

The closer a man comes to fully understanding two conflicting ideas, the closer he is to choosing the better over the worse, the better being the one to afford him greater advantage either materially or morally.

USAF has clear aluminum

Check out the story here.

Credit Neh for noticing this.

SRS

Exactly what happened on Bill Bennet's radio show

Here's exactly what happened on Bill Bennett's radio show:

Bill Bennett was discussing good vs. bad reasons to oppose abortion, and he was making the case that social and economic reasons were bad reasons to oppose abortion. A caller had said that abortion was bad because if we didn't have abortion, we wouldn't have a problem funding social security. Bennett said that was a terrible reason to oppose abortion, saying that one could make the case for aborting all black babies in the U.S. if one wanted to reduce the crime rate (an argument quite similar to one a left-wing economist had already made); Bennett maintained that such an action would be morally reprehensible and ridiculous, but pointed out that such is the thinking of those who try to relate abortion to economic ills or social benefits.

Then, left wing politicians immediately accused Mr. Bennett of being a racist, a monster, and generally a horrible person, by taking out of context his statement that you could reduce the crime rate by aborting all black babies. To give you an example of how dishonest that was, it would be like me quoting Dr. Walter E. Williams as saying "if a young lady agrees to marry me, and a third party initiates force to prevent the transaction, my rights have been violated" in this column, then concluding that he wants to commit polygamy (since Dr. Williams is already married). The main difference is that calling Dr. Williams a lobbyist for polygamy rights is not on the same level of vile slander as calling Mr. Bennett a racist who lobbies for genocide. Another difference is that I agree with what Dr. Williams was saying in the misquoted article, but leftist politicians disagree with Bennett's opposition to abortion. This makes it rather funny that they accidentally helped his case by calling the hypothetical unborn victims "people." But I digress.

The point is, be careful who you trust to quote people. Go look at the original context whenever possible, and be skeptical when you can't. A lot of people are liars.

SRS

Exactly what happened in Toledo

Here's exactly what happened in Toledo:

A bunch of racist slimeballs wanted to prove that black people are the cause of all evil. A bunch of (mostly) black thugs wanted to break things and steal stuff. So the slimeballs had a brilliant idea to make everyone happy: hold an obviously racist public rally. So the (mostly) black thugs come out of their holes and break things and steal stuff and, as a bonus, assault police officers - all justified by the racist public rally, of course. And the slimeballs have proved their point: look how bad black people are! They break things and steal stuff and assault police officers, and white people just want to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights!

So everybody's happy. Except the 90% of Toledoans who are neither slimeballs nor thugs.

So what do we do? Ideally, racist slimeballs would be hired by nuclear power plants with poor safety records, and thus be sterilized by radiation. Thugs would be put in jail, and society would stop making excuses for them. Both of these seem awfully unrealistic, but maybe we can work together and do something productive towards these goals.

SRS

Davis-Bacon and the minimum wage

I haven't yet heard anyone say what I'm about to say in this post. But it needs to be said that suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act is necessary to rebuild those areas hit by Katrina that aren't urgent at the same time as the rebuilding of the areas that are urgent.

For those of you who don't know, the Davis-Bacon Act requires contractors rebuilding after a natural disaster to pay the "prevailing wage in the region" or higher to all those involved in rebuilding. Well, Bush suspended the law in Katrina-affected areas, and leftists threw a tantrum. "You're going to allow greedy corporations to chisel their employees!" they cried. Well, it turns out that the free market is attracting construction workers to needed tasks with a higher wage than was necessary under the silly law.

So what was the point in suspending it if it wasn't going to make a difference anyway? Well, it still could have made a difference - by keeping contractors from doing jobs that aren't worth $9 an hour. They can hire the less skilled, less productive people to do the less urgent, less important tasks for $8, $7, or (gasp!) even $6 an hour, if anyone unable to attract a higher wage is wont to accept it. Under Davis-Bacon, they wouldn't have a job at all, making them and the rebuilding effort both worse off. As the estimable Walter E. Williams demonstrates in the article of his I directed my readers to in an earlier post, it is the poor, young, unskilled workers who suffer from minimum wage laws (and Davis-Bacon is a minimum wage law). That's because they can't do the jobs that employers are willing to pay minimum wage or higher for, and employers are thus going to hire better-educated, more productive people who are worthy of the wage anyway. Instead of hiring someone they would have hired below the minimum wage, they may pay some highly productive over-educated bachelor gobs of money to work overtime. Or the work, as already noted, might not get done at all.

Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, both brilliant economists, have proved that minimum wage laws effectively punish the poorest members of society, and help to maintain any existing racism in hiring. Also, if I may depart from the Katrina/Davis-Bacon issue a moment, high school students, dropouts, and even middle school students who are priced out of work by minimum wage could work after school (or in the case of dropouts, all day) doing light work worth $3 or $4, if they wanted to, if there were no minimum wage laws. This would help them build job experience, increase their personal wealth, keep them away from crime, and increase the overall standard of living in society by increasing the number of productive (wealth-creating) people. Sure, their prospects might not seem pleasant, and many of them may not choose to avail themselves of these new options. But at least they'd have the freedom to work.

SRS

An oldie but goodie...

from Walter E. Williams. Everyone who hasn't already should read this article. Now, having read that, please leave me a comment explaining why anyone should support minimum wage laws.

SRS

The First Amendment...

to the Constitution of the United States is something about which people display a dismaying level of ignorance. And what might be seen as ignorance on the part of the educated, I can only take to be deceit. For instance, the issue often arises: "Will we display these controversial artistic endeavours in an art gallery?" If the answer should ever come back "No," then we will certainly hear the artist and the ACLU and the New York Times and everyone else of that ilk cry out "You're violating my/his/her freedom of speech!" The implication is that after the artist has created his art, the private or taxpayer-funded art gallery has an obligation to house the art using the space they pay money to obtain and maintain, pay money to promote the display, defend the art and artist from all opposition, potentially at the cost of the gallery's reputation. And all this is the least we can do to protect the artist's free speech rights, we are told.

I threw a bag of trash in the dumpster at my apartment the other day. That represents to me the way we are being treated by the government. This is performance art, I am an artist, and it is my free speech right to be given money for this. Hand over the cash, suckah.

Okay, that was just a brief fantasy tangent. In reality, free speech rights protect an artist from being told he can't create a particular piece of art. It doesn't guarantee that someone will pay for it or use their resources to house or display it. If no one else in the world (or even everyone else in the world except those who fund art galleries) wants it in an art gallery, it shouldn't be put in an art gallery.

One way to make this simlper would be to eliminate all government funding for everything related to the arts. Imagine how much simpler it would be to interpret the First Amendment! Speech could someday mean speech again!

On the other hand, Campaign Finance Reform laws restrict what people can say, when and how they can say it, and only right wing extremists sit up and take notice. This is a direct assault on the First Amendment and everything it was established to protect. To the ACLU's credit, they did speak out against the worst CFR proposals. But they seem more interested in protecting murderers and making sure that the inmates at Guantanamo Bay aren't served cold rice pilaf than they are in protecting political speech. And the rest of the crucifix-in-urine crowd supports CFR.

So the First Amendment mandates funding for a crucifix in urine, yet doesn't guarantee the right to use one's own money to buy an ad on a consenting TV network to tell the truth about the actions of a politician? Come on.

SRS

Watching the local news

I am staying up too late, watching the local news, and I just saw a very offensive "special report" about some new marine recruits. The photogenic white reporterette seemed genuinely curious how anyone could voluntarily join the military during a time of war. And not with the respect or gratitude that you or I would have for these brave souls, just a sort of detached bemusement one might display over an animal behaving unexpectedly.

"Do you ever feel that the rest of America does not support the war in Iraq?" She asked condescendingly.

"All the time," the marine recruit said. He went on to suggest that a lack of support for the war in Iraq might be the result of forgetfulness regarding 9/11. Without having the courage to say it to his face, the reporterette suggested in a voice-over that "politicians might argue over whether the two are related." If she'd had the decency to stand up for her beliefs the way the recruit did, he might have had the opportunity to point out to her that Saddam harbored and trained Al Qaeda operatives, provided fuselages in which to practice the hijacking of airplanes, defied WMD inspectors, and openly opposed the U.S. in a region where we need all the allies we can get. Even though it would probably be impossible to convict Saddam of direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks in a court of law, we do have proof he was one of the world's top sponsors of Al Qaeda (remember: the people who did the 9/11 attacks), and the case for his removal was airtight - and the U.S. is safer now than in 2002.

It's sad that our men in uniform feel like Americans don't support the war they're (voluntarily!) risking everything to fight. It's even sadder that there are people in (somewhat) influential positions in the media who will go out of their way to make them feel that way, smugly quoting their regurgitated distortions all the while.

Hats off to all the men and women sacrificing for our freedom and that of Iraq. The strong right straight humbly and gratefully salutes you.

SRS

Different responses - a quick ideological diagnostic

I was just catching up on my Malkin, and I came upon a fascinating story, sent to her by a reader, regarding to the new self-defense law in Florida. Here's the meat of it:

An unfortunate example of this case law in action... a paramedic responding to a heart
attack call broke a window next to the front door of the home in order to gain entry to
help the victim. Unfortunately, the window belonged to the duplex next door, and not
to the home of the victim. The elderly occupant next door shot the intruder, not
realizing he was a paramedic. It was ruled justifiable under the Castle Doctrine.

If you want to know what your ideology is and what it would be called, take this quick test.

Question 1: What was your initial response to the above story?
A.) A sad story, but no laws were broken.
B.) The gunman should be held responsible in some way. An innocent man was shot!
C.) A man was shot! If the elderly man hadn't had the gun, it wouldn't have happened. The manufacturers of the gun should be sued for their neglect of important gun safety features that could have prevented this tragedy.
D.) We should ban private gun ownership, and this would never happen again.
E.) We should ban foods high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt, and mandate physical exercise; that way people wouldn't have heart attacks, and this would never happen again.
F.) The paramedic was probably a Gore supporter in 2000, and the elderly man was probably an undercover agent of the Rove administration.

If you answered:
A - You're a libertarian/conservative/right-wing: the principle of personal liberty ruled by evenly-applied laws is important to you
B - You're right-wing, but your love of law and order is smothering your love of liberty (or you're not a very careful reader)
C - You're a moderate or a left-winger: you're willing to compromise constitutional principles in order to make life better/safer for the ignorant masses.
D - You're far-left: the constitution and any other law in your way can go to hell, because you're on a quest for cosmic justice.
E - (See "D")
F - You're a kook-fringe conspiracy-theorist, and I want to invite you to be a guest blogger on my humour blog. Just leave a comment on BB's Blog explaining you got an "F" on my SRS ideology test. Since BB and I are the same person, I should know what you're talking about.

Thanks for taking my little test. I hope you're happy with your score. (Note I didn't issue points, because in some places you get big points for answering D, E, or F. On the other hand, some people will respect you a lot if you believe in A. It all depends on whose admiration you're striving for.)

SRS

Government interference

This article deals with old issues, so it may not seem timely, but this misunderstanding needs to be addressed, and I was reminded of it by something I read just last minute.

Leftists sometimes ask why right-wingers claim to oppose government interference in people's lives, then demand it when it suits them. An example of this was said to be Terri Schiavo's case, wherein some conservatives (myself included) wanted government to stop her feeding tube from being removed. "Aha!" a leftist might say. "There you are supporting government interference into people's lives you hypocrite!" (And it is true that I don't support government forcing dying people to continue living.) But what would have happened without government interference? Her parents would have paid the cost of her hospital room and feeding tube. Why not allow them to do this? Because her husband, Michael Schiavo, had power of attorney over her, and she had the right to die - which her husband exercised for her. So he not only had the legal right to stop provinding for her, he had the legal right to block her parents from doing so also.

Maybe Terri Schiavo had told her husband and members of his family years ago that she would want to die in such a situation, maybe she didn't. Maybe she said she wanted to die if she was severely brain-damaged, but her idea of what "brain-damaged" meant differed from Michael's idea of what that meant. We don't know. The point is, in every other case of someone needing life support where we don't know the patient's wishes, we err on the side of life. The only reason to do differently in this case is because her husband, who was living and procreating with another woman, said to. Who says that he gets to decide what happens to Terri Schiavo when he clearly is behaving like he's married to someone else? The government. Who says Terri's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Schindler, aren't allowed to pony up their own money and keep her on the feeding tube and hope for a miracle? The government.

So who supported government interference? Only those who wanted her to die. Everyone else would have be happy for the government to back off and let her parents take care of her the way they see fit. Maybe Michael Schiavo fought to remove her feeding tube because he really thought that's what she wanted. Maybe the reason was nefarious. It doesn't matter: the fact is, he relied upon government interference to get it done. So who's the libertarian now?

While I'm on it: Republicans relied on a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to end the presidential ballot recounts in Florida in 2000. So how hypocritical was it for them to rely on an over-stepping judicial branch for their victory? Surprise answer: not very. See, the Florida state Supreme Court had already ruled against the rules, effectively legislating from the bench that recounts would go on as long as necessary to find a way for Gore to win. This abomination of a ruling was appealed to federal courts which quickly overturned it, with Gore's people appealing it from their until the US supremes put it to rest once and for all. Rehnquist and his bunch didn't "select" Bush. They did their duty in getting the damnably corrupt Florida supremes out of the election process so it could continue as it was, by law, supposed to. And according to the laws of this country and of Florida, Bush won the 2000 presidential election. According to a popular vote, Gore won. According to people in Florida who claimed they voted for Buchanan by mistake (and why else would any Jew or minority vote for Buchanan), Gore won. According to the Florida Supreme Court and the New York Times, Gore won. But according to the Constitution, the laws of this country and of the state of Florida, due process, and the five or six most reliable counts of the ballots of Florida, Bush won. Move on, as they say.

So who supports government interference? I suppose if you think that government interference has already screwed things up, you might support government stepping in to stop mistakes in another part of government. Pretty convoluted, huh? Here's hoping that someday this country will be free again, and we won't have to deal with the omnipresence of government anymore.

SRS

John Stossel owes me $100

Defend the nation from foreign military threats. Now John Stossel owes me $100. Since Stossel is a conservative, I will accept a personal check; I can also take a cashier's check, or money order. If I'm more computer literate by then, I may be able to start accepting PayPal by this weekend. I seem to have left my credit card scanner in my other pants, so no credit cards.

SRS

More salve for the Miers-afflicted conservative soul

My other favourite columnist, Thomas Sowell has an excellent article available here. The upshot is: Miers may not talk like Scalia (or Thomas), but she just might vote like him, and that would be good enough; and considering how panty-waisted some Senate Republicans are, Miers is the best he can do right now. I agree, but am deeply concerned that she (and/or Roberts) will vote very much unlike Scalia (or Thomas). Just have to wait and see, I guess.

What is it about the Supreme court (of the last thirty years, anyway) that seems to be several degrees to the left of the average president who appointed them? For instance, if you have six Republican-appointed justices, youn usually have 5-4 or 6-3 leftist rulings. If you have seven Republican-appointed judges, as was the case before the recent departures and will be the case after Miers (or whoever is confirmed by the Senate) is sworn in, you have a shot at Constitutionally sound rulings (5-4), but as we see all too often, there is no guarantee even with seven Republican appointees, and sometimes there is still a 6-3 ruling against the clearly worded text of the Constitution. So with Miers, if we're lucky, we're looking at a good shot at some good 5-4 rulings, and probably some bad ones too, depending on whether AK gets up on the right or left side of the bed on the morning of that particular ruling.

So how can good presidents (Reagan comes to mind) appoint such bad SCOTUS justices? Why, if the country votes for the right-side presidential candidate, do we get left-side rulings from the High Court made up of their appointees? I think it is probably similar to the reason that the most educated people (the faculty at Ivy league schools) have and support some of the stupidest ideas in the world. I'm not an expert at such things, and I have no idea how the two could be related, but I'll mull it over, and I'll get let you, my readers, know if I have any brilliant insights into this mystery.

SRS

The most comforting thing I've read about Miers

I'm a pretty devout fan of Ann Coulter's writings, so I was pretty discouraged by the Miers nomination (to the Supreme Court of the U.S., for those of you who read this blog while hiding under your rocks). This from Jonah Goldberg on NRO was very encouraging, though.

I did a quick review of the bios of the current Justices. If you leave out the departing O’Connor, the only Justice with any significant private practice experience left on the Court is Kennedy, at about 14 years. Souter and Scalia had a handful of years right out of law school; believe me when I tell you that doesn’t count. Thomas had a couple of years in-house at Monsanto between government positions. Roberts had 10 years at Hogan & Hartson, but as I understand it, it was exclusively appellate work, which only barely counts.

J. Harvie Wilkinson (my Con Law professor years ago) has no private practice experience. Michael Luttig had about 4 years.

Miers, by contrast, has over 25 years as a commercial litigator. Though I’ve seen some of the derisive comments about the intellectual rigor of that branch of the profession as compared to the supposedly more rarified field of Constitutional Law, that is nonsense. A good commercial litigator’s practice is, in fact, one of the most intellectually challenging careers in the profession. Every case, every business you represent, and every deal is different. You have to explain unfamiliar and complex commercial issues (which are found in both “large” and “small” cases) to judges and juries.

If you confine appointments to Constitutional scholars, you’re going to have nothing but academics and government lawyers, which is what you’ve basically got there now.

My point is that if Miers is a good lawyer, the fact that she hasn’t had an opportunity to deal with search and seizure issues in her career is not disqualifying. In fact, her familiarity with many of the regulatory, tax and other commercial issues faced by the Court will be much greater than her colleagues. And maybe we’ll have fewer of those ridiculous 7-part tests to deal with.

If you want to see the kiped text in its original context, click here. You'll have to do some scrolling. (That's why I kiped it.) The bold-faced headline is MIERS' EXPERIENCE. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken 33 here, but if anyone knows how to link to a particular place on a web page, please tell me. (I'm a greedy bugger, ain't I?)

SRS

The future of CFR

I was just at the website of an advocacy group based in the U.K. There I saw the future of CFR (Campaign Finance Reform) and it looked like this.

I am not supporting nor opposing this website or any of its claims or opinions. I just thought it was kind of sad that one of their ads was being banned, apparently because it was taken to support a specific party. Same old story: CFR vs. Ideals of Free Speech.

SRS

Conservative president

Is there anyone out there who wants help campaigning for a conservative presidential candidate? Considering what a mess we're in now, I figure we need to start working before year's end and keep working until November, '08 if we want a truly conservative president - the first in 20 years. Yeah, it's been good having a hawk for commander-in-chief, but his domestic policy (if he can really be said to have one) almost seems left of Clinton's. For example:

No Child Left Behind - more spending, no vouchers. Key word: "left."

Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit - hundreds of billions of dollars for a wasteful program that nobody really wanted anyway. Conservatives take heed: hate any government proposal that has the word "benefit" in it.

Steel tariffs and trade protection for wasteful domestic sugar producers - c'mon, even Clinton was a free trader!

Continuing and starting politically-motivated prosecutions (or was that persecutions?) of Microsoft and Martha Stewart - even though Gates and Stewart are liberals (and probably will be for life now), these despicable show trials were frontal assaults on the freedom of the market and private property rights, just like

Eminent domain abuses - okay, so they aren't exactly a Bush policy, but he hasn't really taken the lead in stopping them, either. And in fact, his newly confirmed appointment to the Supreme Court also has a history of supporting government infringements of private property rights.

Pork - yeah, congress did it, but he could have vetoed it, and he didn't.

And last but not least, supporting illegal immigration - this is probably the most infuriating of all. There is overwhelming support in this country for enforcing immigration laws. Though hard, it's the right thing to do to make our country safe. It would sharply decrease the percentage of immigrants who would join violent gangs or even terrorist cells. It would decrease the amount of government handouts (because illegals in leftist states often join welfare rolls and get government-paid healthcare). And it's made easier by patriotic volunteers like the Minutemen of the Minuteman Project - whom Bush slanderously labeled "vigilantes."

All of these acts are the acts of a leftist - someone with contempt for the ideals of small government (read: "freedom"), private property rights, and national security.

So, does anyone know a conservative presidential candidate who's going to need backing?

SRS

Posting means new blog entry

While I'm plagiarizing NRO, I thought this was funny:

RE: WHY DID I BUY THE NYTIMES TODAY? [Andy McCarthy]
K-Lo, obviously, you really bought the Times today because you were stunned by the blaring lead headline over Adam Liptak's shocking story on Page One: "To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars." I believe it's the first in a series of similarly helpful features. Next Sunday's is "To More Death Row Inmates, Capital Sentence Means Dying Behind Bars." Then comes, "To More Restaurant Patrons, Ordering Means Waiter Brings Meal." You know, all the news that's fit to print ...

Frist, a look at politics

I was browsing some stuff at NRO and I saw this:

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) indicates that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist appears to have a very good defense to suspicions about whether he traded on inside information in selling his HCA stock. Specifically, there is a paper trail showing he set his stock sales in motion long before there was a public warning about earnings expectations. Further, Frist had an incentive to shed his stock that had nothing to do with its value.

To which I reply: So what! Martha Stewart had almost the exact same excuses, and we the people nailed her anyway. You see, when rich and/or powerful people sell stock, they should be put in jail, regardless of the circumstances. Just ask Eliot Spitzer. Also, if two Republicans have a conversation in private, it's a conspiracy. Ronnie Earle will bear me out in that. And you have to believe he wouldn't lie, because he's on a mission from GOD. Just like the Blues Brothers.

SRS

Is a fetus a "living human being"?

I was reading another blog recently, and it raised the question: is a human fetus really a "living human being"? The blogger stated that people asked to describe characteristics of a living human being outside of a context of the abortion would likely come up with descriptions that would not at all resemble a human fetus (though I think the blogger was probably thinking of a human embryo instead). Let's assume for a moment that the way people describe a "living human being" is such that no fetus would fit the description: does that preclude the fetus from being considered human? If you asked me to describe a "living human being" I would probably include things like "two hands with prehensile digits" and "two eyes" - does that mean someone loses his humanity if he loses one or both of his hands... or one or both of his eyes? I don't think very many people would maintain that's the case. So if a fetus (or embryo) has only two or three out of a hundred characteristics one associates with "living human beings," does that mean it should be automatically considered nonhuman? Or nonliving? Which is it, by the way? Isn't an embryo (let alone a fetus) living? Isn't it human?

I have heard the argument that before a fetus is born, it is "living, but not a life" - this doesn't make sense to me. What defines "a life"? According to common usage, "a life" is the life of a person. A person is a unique human individual: someone who is distinct from all other persons (and whose rights, under the law, are not contingent on any other person's consent or allowance). A human embryo is perfectly unique: it ceases to be a mere part of its mother as soon as it is formed by the uniting of her haploid gamete with a paternal haploid gamete. In layman's terms, there's a unique person as soon as a man and a woman's sex makes the woman pregnant. From that time on, there is a unique person that did not exist before. Not a Bible-thumping religious belief, not an ideological supposition, not a guess: biological fact. Science can teach us that a human embryo is, from fertilization, a living human individual. It's not a matter of faith. The only question now is "When will it be a matter of law?" Those appalled by the millions of deaths caused by the legality of abortion in this country can only hope it is soon.

SRS

P.S. Some who oppose the legality of abortion object to the use of the term "fetus." To an extent, I can sympathize. To most people such a word dehumanizes those it is used to describe. However, fetus is latin for "baby." Specifically, the young of the species that produced it. In this case, that would be human.