A Stitch in Haste

The doggie hotel where Diamond stays when I'm away is very nice and the staff are true professionals. But dogs will be dogs and there's obviously a lot of barking and I don't think Diamond gets much sleep when she's there. Whenever I pick her up, she has little interest in anything other than sleep:



And maybe a little TV:


Of course, I generally feel the same way after traveling.

Best dog in the world.

(Carnivalized at Modulator's Friday Ark and Mickey's Musings' Carnival of the Dogs.)

Has anyone else noticed that interest rates have gone way up, way fast?

Has anyone else ever taken an introductory macroeconomics class and learned that government budget deficits drive up interest rates?

Actions have consequences.

Next step: The housing market and the bubble that isn't really a bubble ... until it turns out to be a bubble after all.

And as I've mentioned previously, this is all happening in a so-called "Goldilocks" economy, with relatively low unemployment and relatively low inflation.

Stated differently, it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

And that's before 2017 rolls around.

Carry on...

Two Democratic House members are introducing legislation barring members of Congress and their staffs from trading stocks based on inside information they acquire in the course of their duties: (WSJ -$)

In addition to banning trading on inside information, the proposal would require that lawmakers and their top aides disclose within 30 days any stock trades. Congressional rules now require lawmakers to disclose their trades once a year.
...
Unlike members of Congress, executive-branch employees already are banned from trading on inside information. Employees of several federal agencies are prohibited from investing in companies that have business before them.

As I noted during the Bill Frist stock scandal, it seems to me that members of Congress should simply be barred from trading corporate securities, period. The rules for Wall Street insiders (such as myself) should be the minimum for those who, like Frist, actually make the laws that can influence stock prices. And those Wall Street rules are far more restrictive than even this new proposal.

Some hasty stitches:

--One would think that members of Congress would be too busy running the country to be able to play the stock market. What reason would they have to trade at all except to exploit material nonpublic information?

--A total trading ban on equities would in no way "impoverish" legislators or their staffs, since they could be allowed to invest in passively managed index funds -- just like we tend to do on Wall Street. Alternatively, they could be permitted to use truly blind trusts (as opposed to the faux blind trusts that Frist essentially directly controlled despite his initial protestations that he did not).

--Neither would the members be "trapped" into riding losing stocks as they declined in price. The same "10b-5 plan" arrangement that corporate insiders can utilize -- where a fixed amount of stock is sold on a regular basis and therefore independent of any inside information or other news -- could be established for Congress.

--Wouldn't it be an inspiring show of patriotism if our elected representatives put their money into Treasury bonds instead of stocks, "for the good of the country"?

If the politicians want to insist that they are "public servants," then let them prove it in this minor, inobtrusive way. Isn't power enough for them without also making a killing in the stock market?

Other thoughts from W$J Blog (times two), Securities Litigation Watch, White Collar Crime Prof Blog, Ideoblog, Financial Rounds, Point of Law Forum.

If you reduce the issue down to petty politics, it's just as well that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a 1913 law that generally prevents those who could not marry in their domicile state from coming to Massachusetts, strictly as transients, to get married. The upshot is that gay non-residents cannot come into Massachusetts simply for "drive-by" same-sex marriages.

Some hasty stitches:

--No state owes any non-resident anything except fair and equal treatment. And this law, if applied consistently, is — for better or worse — fair and equal.

--States do, however, owe other states a certain accommodation and respect for their domestic policies aside and apart from the constitutional demands of full faith and credit. That principle will help more than harm the progress of gay marriage rights, as same-sex couples from Massachusetts (and Vermont and Connecticut and, over time, elsewhere) start to leave Massachusetts and seek this "interstate comity" outside of their original gay-friendly states.

--The law in question does not appear particularly oppressive in terms of establishing residency in Massachusetts. Same-sex couples who truly seek to move to Massachusetts to marry will not be impeded by this law.

--The ruling provides a handy counterexample to the Kyl-style lament that all gay marriage rights are the doing of "activist judges." Here the court was decidedly inactivist — just as they were in requiring same-sex marriage in the first place. They interpreted this non-resident marriage statute as they were called upon to do, just as they interpreted the Massachusetts Constitution as they were called upon to do in the original Goodridge same-sex marriage decision. So what precisely is the big deal, and where precisely is the "judicial activism"?

The case is Cote-Whitacre v. Department of Public Health (PDF / text). The law in question is Massachusetts General Law 207.11.

More thoughts from defcon:blog.

The single stupidest economic policy ever conceived by any level of government in the United States is alive and well:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday extended the city's rent stabilization law for another three years, citing an ongoing housing emergency in the city's rental market.

In 2005, the number of rent-stabilized units, where the median household annual income was $32,000, was nearly unchanged at 1.04 million, according to the 2005 Housing and Vacancy Survey, conducted the U.S. Census Bureau and the city’s Department of Preservation and Development.

That same survey showed vacancy rates in the city of just over 3%. It needs to be at least 5% before rent regulation can be discontinued, according to the law.

For perspective, this housing "emergency" has existed since World War II.

To review: deny property owners the ability to charge a market-clearing rent and thereby make a market-clearing profit, and -- presto! -- the market doesn't clear. Try again the next year -- same result. Continue the process for 60 years -- same result. Same "emergency," same response, same outcome. Forever and ever...

And remember, rent regulation only benefits those fortunate enough to score an apartment. And those people are not necessarily poor. There is no means testing for rent regulated apartments. Middle- and upper-income earners are as likely, perhaps even more likely, to be able to game the system to acquire, keep and pass on rent-regulated apartments.

The laws of economics are much closer to the laws of physics than most people realize or most politicians are willing to admit. Disturb the laws of supply and demand, and only disequilibrium can result. For sixty years the government has restricted supply only to lament the fact that supply is inadequate. It boggles the mind.

If you really care about low-income housing or helping the poor, then the first thing you should do is totally deregulate the housing market, let the rich pay market-based rents for market-based average or luxury apartments, thereby freeing up the lower-end housing stock for the middle class and working poor. Either that, or just use vouchers. But if the problem is that New York City needs more housing, then the answer is to give developers an incentive to build it -- the exact opposite of the current approach.

So much for Mayor Bloomberg's "business acumen" or the lie that he is anything other than a same-old-same-old hack politician.

There is a myth in pop law that the Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for any crime except murder and treason.

It's a little more complicated than that. What the Court held, in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), was that rape without a resulting death is not heinous enough to warrant the death penalty. Since rape is — so the logic goes — the worst possible crime short of murder, Coker must by deductive reasoning proscribe capital punishment for any offense other than murder (or treason).

Well, South Carolina is trying to throw a monkey wrench into that reasoning:

The state Senate on Tuesday endorsed making repeat child rapists eligible for the death penalty, setting aside arguments the move might be unconstitutional.
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The proposal allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty for sex offenders who are convicted twice of raping a child younger than 11.

Currently in South Carolina, murder is the only crime eligible for the death penalty.

So the question, in two parts, becomes:

1. Is repeat child molestation a "worse" crime than rape?

2. If so, then is it sufficiently "worse" to meet the Court's other tests for constitutionality of the death penalty?

Personally, I think the answer to Question #1 is "yes" but the answer to Question #2 is "no." The South Carolina law is, therefore, unconstitutional in my opinion and should serve as an opportunity for the courts to make explicit Coker's heretofore implicit dictate that the death penalty is impermissible for any offense other than murder or treason.

An adult can, at least in some circumstances, put up some defense to a rapist. A child presumptively cannot. Also, the trauma of adult rape, although of course severe, is arguably less damaging than the psychological scar of having been molested as a child. The damage is, I submit, worse for a child victim than for an adult victim. Hence the crime of child molestation is worse than the crime of adult rape.

Also (and I admit that I'm walking on dangerous ground), I submit that society's outrage toward child molesters is, correctly, greater when it comes to child molestation than for adult rape. It is not an endorsement of rape to believe that child molestation is simply a worse crime that warrants a worse punishment.

Nevertheless, given the principle that punishment should be proportional to the crime and that naked bloodlust is not a legitimate societal interest, I believe that child molestation, although worse than rape, is not so much worse to elevate it to a capital offense.

I can see no way to argue that execution is "proportional" for anything other than murder. Imprisonment, even for life without the possibility of parole, can be defended as a reasonable societal response to a sufficiently terrible crime. But execution sits on an entirely differently sphere, one that cannot be reached without the taking of human life by the convicted.

Personally, I think that the death penalty is proper in one and only one domestic circumstance (I have no opinion on treason as a capital offense): the premeditated murder of a law enforcement official — a police officer, corrections officer, judge, prosecutor, FBI agent, etc. There is something especially damnable about those who would not only kill, but also kill those who defend others from being killed. Those who strike at the institutions that (in theory at least) exist to protect individual rights have forfeited all such rights for themselves and have no legitimate claim for mercy from even the most humane and forgiving society. We should not be required to waste our resources attempting, or even contemplating attempting, the rehabilitation of such criminals. Fry 'em and move on.

Comments are wide open: Should repeat child molesters get the death penalty?

More thoughts from Sentencing Law & Policy.

UPDATE: Oklahoma has also passed a similar law, bringing the number to five.

I wish I understood Randy Quaid's gripe about Brokeback Mountain --

Oscar-nominated actor Randy Quaid alleges he was underpaid for his supporting role in "Brokeback Mountain," according to a $10 million lawsuit he filed Thursday against the film's producers.

Quaid, 55, claims producers James Schamus and David Linde, through Focus Features and Del Mar Productions, convinced him to be in the award-winning film for "effectively a donation of his time" by "falsely representing it as a low-budget, art house film, with no prospect of making any money."
...
Quaid played the rancher who gives jobs to Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger), the cowboys who fall in love in the film.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

I could certainly understand if a celebrity were defrauded into performing for a charitable event that turned out not to be charitable. But does an independent film qualify as a charity, as Quaid seems to assert? I think the answer is a resounding "no." So why should the profitability of the film have been an issue at all, let alone one that warrants a lawsuit? (The reciprocal of Quaid's claim, when actors receive little if any profit-sharing because of creative accounting that makes blockbuster movies somehow "unprofitable," is a completely different phenomenon with a completely different analysis.)

Fraud requires not just a misrepresentation ("This movie won't make a profit.") and not just reliance upon the misrepresentation ("I believe you when you say this movie won't make a profit."), but also that the reliance is justified ("No reasonable person would accept this role for this fee unless the movie was not going to make a profit.") I think Quaid's claim implodes at that last step.

Meanwhile, does anyone think that the next Ang Lee making the next Brokeback Mountain is going to consider Randy Quaid for a bit part? What is he thinking?

Quaid was offered a (very small) part, for a (very small) fee. He accepted the offer. He fulfilled his contractual obligations and the studio executives fulfilled theirs. The contract was discharged. Everyone goes home happy.

It really ought to be that simple.

More thoughts at W$J Blog.

The Objectivist Club at New York University, in cooperation with the Ayn Rand Institute, had planned to hold a panel discussion tonight about the Muslim anti-cartoon riots.

However, when the NYU administration learned that the panelists intended to display the cartoons, they abruptly informed the Objectivist Club that the event would have to be closed to the public. About 150 people had registered to attend the event.

So much for academic freedom and the omnipresent lie that NYU is somehow an "elite" institution.

There's nothing elite about cowards.

---

Here is ARI's statement on the incident (sent by email):

"In a seemingly mundane decision, New York University has sacrificed the principle underlying the survival of civilization -- free speech," said Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. NYU is refusing to protect a student group's right to display the Danish cartoons of Mohammad at a panel discussion on free speech on March 29.

The group's event was to be open to the public, but at the last minute NYU retreated. Under the pretense of maintaining campus security, the administration contradicted its own stated policy on free speech by requiring that, if the cartoons are displayed, the event be limited only to "members of the NYU community." The student group now must turn away more than 150 members of the public who had planned to attend the panel.

"The university's shameful appeasement of Muslim and anti-free-speech groups -- which have vowed to protest the event -- underscores the urgent need to display the cartoons in defense of freedom of speech," said Dr. Brook.

"Free speech protects the rational mind: it is the freedom to think, to reach conclusions and express one's views without fear of coercion of any kind. And it must include the right to express unpopular and offensive views, including outright criticism of religion. NYU -- which like other universities grants tenure to protect intellectual freedom -- ought to recognize the crucial importance of this principle and defend it.

"If intimidation and threats are allowed to compel writers, cartoonists, thinkers and institutions of learning into self-censorship, the right to free speech is lost. If Muslims are allowed to pressure critics of Islam into silence, critics of religion will be next. And then everyone else."

---

Here is a press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. More thoughts from Joanne Jacobs, Charles Mitchell.

How can you not love Tom DeLay?

The Sugar Land Republican said some commentators — the "chattering classes" — will argue that there is no war on Christianity in this country.

"But in a sense, there always has been and always will be," he said. "Our faith has always been in direct conflict with the values of the world. We are, after all, a society that provides abortion on demand, has killed millions of innocent children, degrades the institution of marriage and all but treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition."

Despite those factors, DeLay said, "we have been chosen to live as Christians at a time when our culture is being poisoned. ... God made us specifically for it. ... Jesus Christ himself made us just so that we could live in this nation at this time."

Of course, this is the same "Christian" who is suing to get his concealed handgun permit back while he is under indictment.

Because good Christians should always be packing heat.

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

(Via Fark.)

Some final pictures from Iceland:



The great megalopolis of Reykjavik. There are 300,000 people in Iceland, sixty percent of whom live in Reykjavik (and that percentage is increasing, as the country has been undergoing a steady de-ruralification in recent years).



Duck pond in the city center. Iceland is the only place in the world where American and European fowl cohabitate. Northern Iceland has a large bird sanctuary, but it was out of season, so no I didn't see any puffins.



The rift at Gullfoss. The left side is North America, the right side is Europe. The plates are moving apart (i.e., splitting Iceland into two) by two centimeters per year.



The falls at Gullfoss. While it was about 30 degrees outside, the wind chill was so ferocious that you could not leave your hands exposed (i.e., to use the camera) for more than a few seconds.



Little Geysir -- the English word "geyser" comes from the town in Iceland where these hot springs are located. The larger geyser erupts every few minutes, but not as regularly as Old Faithful. So people have to stand in that fierce wind watching for the main spring to erupt. But it's worth the wait. Sorry I can't post the video here.

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My next trip will be to Prague around Labor Day -- anyone want to join me?

And if I can ever be of any help to anyone traveling to New York City -- anything from sightseeing advice to a free couch -- feel free to ask.

The Republican Policy Committee of the United States Senate — Jon Kyl, Chairman — has issued a 16-page bulletin on "Why a Marriage Amendment is Necessary."

The four-word 16-page Jon Kyl answer is, unsurprisingly, "Because of activist judges."

Of course, the real answer is almost as succinct: "Because it's an election year."

The bulletin is actually quite factual — it mostly summarizes the various lawsuits being filed "by the same cadre of legal activists at the American Civil Liberties Union, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, and the Freedom to Marry coalition." (The fact that there are real people, real victims of discrimination, behind all these lawsuits is conveniently omitted.) I don't quibble with the nitty-gritty of the bulletin — just the histrionics.

I will quibble, however, with this:

It is hard to imagine how the nation could function with vastly different answers to the marriage question on a state-by-state basis.

That's an odd thing to say, since marriage laws have been crafted on a state-by-state basis since the Founding. Marriage has always been a state issue.

It's also an odd thing for a Republican to say — unless of course it's an election year. So much for the Republican tradition of embracing federalism. It's a great thing until it isn't, in which case federal solutions, including constitutional amendments, suddenly become "necessary."

Put differently, state referendums were the right way to do it — until the Republicans ran out of states. Then, just in time for another important election, it suddenly wasn't the right way to do it anymore. Funny how Kyl wasn't mentioning how ineffective or inadequate all those bigot amendments were going to be back when Republicans were introducing them ad nauseum. Go figure.

Kyl's problem is of course not with "patchwork laws" or "full faith and credit," but with the fact that in some places — quite a few actually — things simply aren't going his way. Kyl's other problem is that nothing else is going well for the Republicans these days either. So they must pander to the last unwavering (i.e., unthinking) fragment of their base they have left — the red state redneck bigots.

Meanwhile, Kyl's explanation as to:

--why equal protection, equal treatment and equal dignity in marriage law should be subject to majority vote (i.e., mob rule)

--how gay marriage is a true "threat" to anything

--why those states that choose not to go down the bigot path should be forced to accommodate those that do

will, I suppose, all have to wait for a future RPC bulletin.

In a recent post I noted that the school of statutory interpretation that relies on "legislative intent" is inherently flawed not only because there can be no such thing as "legislative intent" (only individuals can have intent, not groups), but also because the purported indicia of legislative intent — namely the legislative record — often consists of post facto revisions that do not reflect any actual debate. Congress is especially notorious for the practice of "revising and extending remarks" after the actual vote takes place.

Well, here's an especially egregious recent example of an activist legislator — Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona — distorting the legislative record and in the process distorting the judicial review of a very controversial law:

In the few minutes that it took the Senate to complete passage of the Detainee Treatment Act last Dec. 21, little was said in the chamber beyond a round of congratulations for a job well done. But the Congressional Record for that very brief legislative effort now runs to 21 pages, with three columns of small print per page.
...
The Record then moves to a lengthy exchange between the new law's two other key sponsors, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and [Jon] Kyl of Arizona. Kyl begins, and it sounds as if he is on the Senate floor: "I would like to say a few words" about the legislation, which he said "expels lawsuits brought by enemy combatants from United States courts." He then comments, realistically: "I see that my colleague, the senior senator from South Carolina, is also on the floor."
...
When the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the Hamdan case under the detainee law, it cited the exchange and commented that "legislative history supports the conclusion that Congress was aware that the act's jurisdiction-ousting rule would extend to pending cases, including this case."

There's much more, including follow-up briefs and missing bullet points, that suggest that Senator Kyl may have deliberately attempted to deceive the judges of the circuit court and the Supreme Court into believing that this floor debate actually took place. Why use the "is also on the floor" fiction except to deceive later readers of the legislative record, including judges?

I haven't blogged about the Hamdan case and won't start now. The point here is simply to reiterate that the "legislative record" is highly unreliable as a reflection of legislative intent. Therefore, legislative intent is highly unreliable as a method of statutory interpretation. It should therefore be avoided whenever possible.

More thoughts from Unclaimed Territory.

Well, the road to Viti, or "Hell," in northern Iceland was paved not with good intentions but rather with snow drifts, so we couldn't go.

But here are some other pictures of the Akureyri and Lake Myvatn areas:



Meet the Fokker... (or, "I've got the little Fokker in my sights...")


Godafoss, or "Falls of the Gods."


Viti Crater from a distance. NASA brought the Apollo astronauts to this part of Iceland to train, since it was the closest thing to the lunar landscape available on Earth.


Snowmobiling on frozen Lake Myvatn. Notice the kids being dragged on sleds. Neat-o.


Geo-thermal mudpit.


Geo-thermal mudbrains.


Lava piles. The geology is a bit complicated, but the short version is that a natural dam burst and the lava that was in the process of cooling drained away leaving these already-cooled piles.

I'll try to post pictures of Reykjavik later.

Apparently I was too smart for my own good and some people interpreted the "*" in "I*eland" as a snowflake and simply thought I was talking about Iceland all along. (For the record, I've been to Ireland twice and love the place and would gladly go again with anybody at any time.)

And a salute to all those who recognized the white building as the "Peace House," where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held an impromptu summit to discuss nuclear disarmament in October 1986.

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Anyway, here's a travel tip: If you ever have the opportunity to explore a cave formed by a prehistoric lava tube -- don't.



I'm not saying it wasn't fascinating; it definitely was.



It's just too much work. The brochure said "must be able to walk on coarse ground." Okay, I reasoned, sounds like a typical Brooklyn sidewalk. Well, something certainly got lost in translation because "walk" does not mean crawl on your hands and knees on ice-covered rocks for two hours.

For the excessively spritual types who see the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese sandwiches and such:


"The Lord is my icicle, I shall not want..."

Of course, the Lord promptly smote me for thinking that by intelligently designing a loose rock in my path that maketh me and my blasphemy to lie down in fall down onto tumble over and crash into green pastures coarse ground ice-covered rocks. And I have the stigmata to prove it. Ouch. I'll spare you the picture of that.

Anyway, Reykjavik is pretty cool (and cold too). Tomorrow I've off to Akureyri, which at 15,000 people is the second largest city in Iceland. I think more than 15,000 people live on my block on the Upper East Side. My destination there is the volcanic crater called Viti.

"Viti" is Icelandic for "Hell."

I'm sensing a pattern here...

For those still guessing which I*eland I'm in, here's a clue:



Students of geopolitics should recognize the structure.

Comments are closed for this post.

Every so often I get asked what exactly it is that I do for a living. What does all that gobbledygook in the sidebar mean?

So while I'm here in I*eland I've asked a coworker to step in and explain what I do for a living.

(Hat tip to Rossputin.)

As promised, here are some pictures of Diamond with her new "monster bone" that she was given as a gift from a loyal reader:







Gee, this might take a while...



Like a good Xbox 360 game -- it takes a while to defeat the final challenge:



Best dog in the world.

By the time this is posted I will have arrived at my vacation destination -- a charming, beautiful, little green European island where the people all speak English and drink heavily.

Sláinte!

And you wouldn't arrest Jesus, would you?

Invoking Biblical themes, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton joined immigration advocates Wednesday to vow and block legislation seeking to criminalize undocumented immigrants.
...
"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures," Clinton said, "because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."

First of all: "Scriptures?" Who in New York uses the term, "Scriptures"? It's "the Bible" here, just like it's "soda" and not "pop." Who, I wonder, was her target audience?

In any case, I don't like to wade in the muck of political campaigning, but it's time to reiterate a point I've made previously. Hillary Clinton has never really been tested as a political candidate. Anyone remember Baby Face Lazio? And it is increasingly likely that she will not be tested as a candidate this year either — anyone remember ... aw heck, even I don't remember what's-her-name-with-the-missing-sheet-from-her-speech. And who's running against her now — Nixon's son-in-law? Some female Reagan Pentagon has-been résumé-padder? Give me a break.

But rest assured that if Clinton runs for president in 2008, she will certainly be tested, both by other Democrats seeking the nomination and — if she wins the primaries — by the Republican nominee.

And from what we've seen from her so far, she might very well get trounced, mostly by herself.

(Via Running Scared.)

I'm leaving for a short vacation tonight. Hint: My destination starts with "I" and ends with "eland." Don't rush to guess. ;-)

Other than photoblogging, I probably won't be posting much through Tuesday.

Sláinte!

The Supreme Court today upheld a rudimentary legal concept: one person cannot waive the rights of another --

The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 on Wednesday that it is unconstitutional for police without a warrant to search a home, if two occupants are present at the time and one consents but the other objects. The search may not go forward in the face of that objection, but the occupant must be present to have the objection count, the Court said in a decision written by Justice David H. Souter.

The case is Georgia v. Randolph (04-1067). I blogged about it previously.

Now this is of course a Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure case, and in some respects it's a limp-wristed decision (the police will now simply manipulate the circumstances whenever possible to get the potential objecting resident "away from the door").

But still, the underlying bedrock principle has been vindicated: one person may not waive the rights of another.

Something that the apologists for unbridled majoritarianism might want to keep in mind when they claim that rights should be subject to majority vote. There are some lines that the police — and the "will of the majority" — should simply not be allowed to cross.

There are six different opinions — the ruling, two concurrences and three dissents. SCOTUSblog has all the links.

POST SCRIPT: Read Justice Stevens' two-page concurrence smacking down Justice Scalia's "original meaning" brand of interpretation (Scalia responds to Stevens here). Is Stevens also suggesting that there should be a sort of "Miranda warning" for consent searches? "You have the right to refuse me entry, since I do not have a warrant..." I could certainly live with such a requirement!

Before the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, the conventional wisdom was that if the colleges wanted to stand up for their principles, then they simply could turn down the government's money. "He who pays the piper" and such.

As it turned out, the conventional wisdom was dead wrong -- the Court held that the money was entirely besides the point and that the colleges couldn't keep the recruiters off campus under any circumstances. But the "strings attached" view perseveres.

Okay, fine. But here are two more examples of opposition to the "strings attached" theory in which people's principles are -- surprise -- becoming a bit opaque.

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First, the IRS is cracking down on clerics who abuse the tax exemption enjoyed by their respective houses of worship:

Weeks after the Internal Revenue Service announced a crackdown on political activities by churches and other tax-exempt organizations, a coalition of nonprofit conservative groups is holding training sessions to enlist Pennsylvania pastors in turning out voters for the November elections.

Experts in tax law said the sessions, organized by four groups as the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, could test the promises by the tax agency to step up enforcement of the law that prohibits such activity by exempt organizations.
...
Although the tax agency has often overlooked political activity by churches, it has repeatedly warned the clergy and religious groups that it intends to enforce its rules with new vigor this year, in part to correct what it considers to have been too much political intervention by churches and charities in 2004.

One politician involved in this Pennsylvania exercise is Senator Rick Santorum, one of the most viciously anti-gay members of Congress and one who no doubt celebrated the ruling in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. Where are his principles now?

A targeted tax break is no different from a targeted government subsidy. And the restriction against political endorsements by tax-exempt organizations is certainly more reasonable than the Solomon Amendment. So will we see any hyper-conservatives or anti-gay bigots stepping up to the plate to condemn Santorum and his tax-abusing preacher-supporters? I won't hold my breath.

More thoughts from Running Scared.

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Meanwhile, the government also attaches strings to the receipt of financial aid for college -- one of which is not getting convicted of drug crimes:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today challenging the constitutionality of a federal law that denies financial aid to any college student convicted of a drug offense.

“This law creates an unfair and irrational barrier to education and singles out working class Americans,” said Adam Wolf, a staff attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. “Closing the campus gates denies these students a crucial chance to get themselves back on track by staying in school.”

The case is SSDP v. Spellings and has been filed in federal court in South Dakota. The legal reasoning is two-fold: a patently absurd double-jeopardy argument and an only slightly more cogent equal protection challenge asserting failure of the rational basis test. Yeah right, good luck with that -- even without the headwind of Rumsfeld v. FAIR.

Now many of the students fighting this restriction probably also opposed the Solomon Amendment. So unlike the tax-cheat preachers, these kids might not be flat-out hypocrites. But with friends like these, who needs Rick Santorum? As a conviction-free, drug-free gay who found it quite easy to stay out of trouble in college, I'm not eager to be lumped in with kids who can't abstain from pot while they're receiving my tax dollars. It's easier to be drug-free for four years than to be "gay-free" for any length of time. These kids are simply not on a par with the law schools -- or with gays.

Assuming you agree with the very concept of financial aid (a big "if" among libertarians), you certainly cannot think that the government is not entitled to limit funding to those who won't spend the money on drugs. The students' lawsuit specifically, and their lament generally, is preposterous.

More thoughts from Overlawyered, Hit & Run.

Robert J. Samuelson on keeping unskilled immigrant labor out of the country:

To be sure, some Americans get cheap housecleaning or landscaping services. But if more mowed their own lawns or did their own laundry, it wouldn't be a tragedy.

So to the elderly arthritic with enough money to pay a kid, or an immigrant, to mow his lawn for him: Too bad so sad; Robert Samuelson knows what's best.

Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.

(Via Kling's Econlog.)

Maintenance inspectors have discovered a civil defense stash of emergency supplies dating from the 1950s in a vault under the Brooklyn Bridge.

A modern-day expert suggests that the provisions -- crackers, water, blankets, etc. -- would have been of little use in the event of a nuclear attack, other than provide a false sense of preparedness, much like the Cold War advice to "duck and cover" if you were to see a bright flash of light:

The provisions were probably comforting but would likely have been useless in the case of a nuclear attack, said Graham Allison, a former assistant secretary of defense who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "At least people would think they were doing something, even if it didn't have any effect," he said.

Fortunately we don't engage in such official warm-fuzzy-feeling deception anymore.

Right?

More thoughts at Gothamist.

Gregorio Igartúa de la Rosa needs a new hobby.

His old hobby was suing — and suing, and suing, and then suing again — to try to circumvent the Constitution's plain dictate that only residents of bona fide states (and, since 1961, the District of Columbia) get to participate in the vote for Electoral College process of selecting the president and vice president.

But now the Supreme Court has denied certiorari to the last of Igartúa de la Rosa's appeals and the issue is (one would hope) dead, dead, dead — as it should have been from the outset. Igartúa de la Rosa has been clogging the courts with this nonsense since (at least) 1994. There have been (at least) eight judicial decisions or actions in this matter, every single one siding against Igartúa de la Rosa's asinine claim.

Why is it so hard for some people to accept that, sometimes at least, the Constitution says what it means and means what it says?

I'm not a blind supporter of the Electoral College. And I have no problem with Puerto Ricans wanting to vote for president. But let them attain the vote the old-fashioned way: either by amending the Constitution or by what one would think is the obvious path of least resistance: simply petitioning to become a state.

Wanting to have your cake and eat it too is not "seeking to correct an historical injustice and denial of due process."

It's just whining.

Marginal Revolution has a good meme post:

What is your most absurd view? [It] should be crazy but serious too. It should refer to a view which you actually hold, but many other smart people consider untenable and bizarre.

Here is my answer:

That science will completely triumph over organized religion in my lifetime.

Runner-Up:

That there will NOT be nationwide legally recognized same-sex marriage in my lifetime.

Incidentally, I'm 39.

Comments are wide open. What is your most absurd belief? How absurd are mine?

It's been too long since we checked in on our friend, Turkmenistan President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov:

Saparmurat Niyazov announced on state television that anyone reading his philosophical work three times would be assured a place in heaven.

"Anyone who reads the Rukhnama three times will find spiritual wealth, will become more intelligent, will recognise the divine being and will go straight to heaven," Niyazov said Monday.

The Turkmen leader said he had "called on Allah" while working on the two-volume book to ensure that enthusiastic readers would be given quicker access to heaven.
...
The Rukhnama, a collection of philosophical and religious writings, is compulsory reading for schoolchildren and government officials across the former Soviet republic in Central Asian.

Gee, sounds a bit like another "Allah is my co-author" zealot from a while back.

Surely acting like a modern-day Muhammed is some kind of Islamic abomination worthy of riots and fatwas and jihads, no? Shouldn't acting like the Prophet be more blasphemous than merely drawing a picture of him?

So why no outrage here? Maybe they think he's imitating Joseph Smith instead?

(Via Fark.)

Much is being made of the report that Congress is at a pace to be in session for only 97 days this year.

Yeah, whatever.

Members of Congress scare me, it's true.

But their staffs scare me even more. Who do you think really writes all those bills?

Congressional Quarterly's "Congressional Staff Directory" is 1,500 pages long.

And, as far as I know, the Congressional staff works full-time, even if the actual Members don't.

Perhaps the answer to our activist Congress is not to think in terms of their hours, but simply to limit their staffs -- perhaps to one associate and one receptionist. The leadership could maybe have two.

I'll bet they'd do a lot less as a group that way.

Here is a sampling of the various titles each and every member of Congress has on his or her staff:

--Administrative Assistant or Chief of Staff
--Legislative Director, Senior Legislative Assistant, Legislative Coordinator
--Press Secretary or Communications Director
--Appointment Secretary, Personal Secretary, or Scheduler
--Caseworker
--Executive Assistant, Legislative Correspondent
--Executive Secretary, Office Manager, Receptionist

And they all outrank "constituent."

Also, remember that not only do Members of Congress have staffs, but so do the committees and subcommittees.

So it really doesn't matter whether Congress is "working" or not. For better or worse -- mostly worse -- the work of Congress will keep getting done.

What do you call it when the government manipulates the learning process of children to inculcate a blind sense of acceptance, obedience and submission?

Indoctrination?

No -- an online game:

Doing good deeds, volunteering on building sites and obtaining Chairman Mao's autograph are some of the objectives of "Learn from Lei Feng," a new online game starring the Chinese Communist Party's legendary hero.

The plot revolves around Lei Feng, a humble selfless People's Liberation Army soldier who, the myth goes, spent all his spare time and money helping the needy and serving the Party until tragically dying in an accident in 1962.
...
While the new online game includes a treasure hunt, the prize is not a special weapon or pile of gold but a copy of Mao's collected works.

Personally I prefer destroying the Nexus, speeding along in my Popka Meltfire and thwarting the evil (Chinese) villainess Mai Hem.

But then again, I'm not a Communist dictator trying to brainwash children. Go figure.

---

Speaking of Communist dictators and their online games:

A Chinese teacher was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for posting a "subversive" article advocating democracy online, a human rights group reported.

Secondary school teacher Ren Zhiyuan was convicted by a court in Jining, Shandong province, of "subversion of state power" because of an article he posted on the Internet called "The Road to Democracy," the New York-based Human Rights in China said in a statement released Friday.

In the article, Ren reportedly expressed the opinion that people have the right to use violence to overthrow tyranny. The indictment against him also said he had planned to set up an illegal organization called Mainland Democracy Frontline.

"Use violence to overthrow tyranny..."? Anyone care to wager whether V for Vendetta will be allowed in China?

There's been quite a bit of chest-thumping and fist-pounding over the announcement that an Afghan man is being tried, and could be sentenced to death, for the "crime" of converting away from Islam.

Meanwhile, as I noted during the port controversy, our "trusted ally," the United Arab Emirates, criminalizes attempted conversion of Muslims.

In the language of vector mathematics, the magnitude may be less but the direction is the same.

Anyone care to try to spin their way out of that double-standard?

---

Meanwhile, Danish Muslims are planning to sue the newspaper that first printed the "offensive but accurate" cartoons mocking Islamofascism.

Because apparently "hurt feelings" is an actionable tort in Europe.

These same Muslims are also filing a complaint with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Because apparently freedom of the press is now a crime against humanity.

Go figure.

More from professional crackpot Peter Singer:

Why should we assume that sellers have the right to get as much as the market will bear? Two families acquire similar looking acreages of Texas grazing lands. One is fortunate: their land has oil beneath the surface and they become fabulously wealthy. The other is unfortunate: their land has no oil, and despite working as hard as their neighbors, and applying similar intelligence, they remain poor. What gives the former "a right" to their wealth? We believe in an inherent right to property because we believe that somehow rugged individuals living in a state of nature can acquire and retain wealth. That is nonsense, of course.

So I suppose Bill Gates was "fortunate" enough to acquire a random plot of land with Windows underneath it, or Pfizer was "fortunate" enough to acquire a random plot of land with Lipitor underneath it?

The first rule of haters of capitalism is to blank out the role of the capitalist -- to deny the existence of entrepreneurship and risk taking as a factor of production and just pretend that the whole world is one giant lottery.

More:

"Would interfering with market mechanisms make people, on the whole and in the long run, better off?" That's an empirical question, and the answer will obviously depend on the precise nature of the interference, and the context in which it occurs.

And whom, I wonder, would Singer propose try to answer this (impossible to answer) "empirical question"?

I'm going to start calling it Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always -- always -- envisions himself as the central planner.

Only someone like Justice Antonin Scalia could equate the suffrage movement with criminalizing gay sex:

Scalia railed against the era of the "judge-moralist," saying judges are no better qualified than "Joe Sixpack" to decide moral questions such as abortion and gay marriage.
...
The 70-year-old justice said the public, through elected legislatures -- not the courts -- should decide watershed questions such as the legality of abortion.

Scalia decried his own court's recent overturning of a state anti-sodomy law...

He pointed to the granting of voting rights to women in 1920 through a constitutional amendment as the proper way for a democracy to fundamentally change its laws.

"Judicial hegemony" has replaced the public's right to decide important moral questions, he said.

Of course, the true alternative, namely having no one -- not judges, not politicians, not voters -- use and abuse the law to impose morality at all, never comes up. Go figure.

It seems to me best way to prevent "judicial hegemony" (whatever that means) would be to limit the law to its only legitimate function -- the protection of individual rights -- and not to impose the morality of some, even a majority, on everyone else. But that concept is apparently totally alien to Scalia.

And there's a certain perversity in having the man who wrote the most vicious, mean-spirited Supreme Court opinion of modern times lamenting "judge-made morality." "Moral superiority for me but not for thee" is hardly a robust jurisprudential approach.

Sitting back and allowing legislatures, or electorates, to quash the rights of insular minorities and trample basic human dignities is not "judicial restraint." It's judicial cowardice. And analogizing it to the woman's suffrage movement makes Scalia -- to use his preferred term -- an idiot.

This time it's James Q. Wilson (WSJ -$):

Suppose, in response to a lawsuit brought against the South Dakota law, Roe were overturned. Abortion would not disappear. Women would not visit quack doctors or travel to Sweden. Abortion would be legalized in many states (it was legal in five before Roe was decided), but having been made legal by state legislatures, the laws would, as in Europe, accommodate the diverse views of proponents and opponents.

How many times are conservatives (and some libertarians) going to repeat this lie?

If Roe were overturned, Congress would immediately pass and the President would immediately sign (at least this Congress and this President would) a Federal Right to Life Act, which would in turn be upheld by the Supreme Court (at least this Supreme Court would) as a valid exercise of the Commerce Power.

Don't believe me?

Still don't believe me?

How about now?

It's bad enough when people worship the false god of federalism (do you really care whether your rights are being trampled by the federal government or "merely" the state?). But it's even worse when people invoke a federalism that simply does not exist.

It's perfectly rational to oppose Roe. It's not at all rational to oppose it on federalism grounds.

More thoughts from Rossputin.

I have previously explained why the "gay marriage demands polygamy" thesis is invalid.

But let's use Charles Krauthammer as an excuse to revisit the issue:

Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

People who take Krauthammer's position do not understand the actual nitty-gritty implications of marriage qua legal status. Love and self-expression aren't the issue here -- how would you make it work legally is the Great Unanswered.

---

Here's a math question for you: If you want to cut something into two equal pieces, then how many cuts are required?

The answer is, of course, not two but one. To cut anything into n equal pieces requires n-1 cuts, not n.

Same with marriage: the magic number is not the "arbitrary" number of two (as in two people) but the anything-but-arbitrary number of 2-1=1, (as in one marriage to one spouse).

This number (which is, again, the number one, not two) is not "arbitrary" -- it is axiomatic for marriage qua legal status.

It is not "prejudice" to recognize what marriage qua legal status attempts to achieve: a simple, contract-free, bureaucratically efficient system of elevating a single person above all others in terms of legal claims to (and against) another person. This form of elevation -- that of a single person -- is the only form of elevation that is possible, which is why "legal polygamy" is a contradiction in terms.

And that is why gay marriage is perfectly reasonable and polygamy is perfectly nonsensical.

---

Sometimes you hear a response like this: "If businesses can have partnerships of more than two people, then why can't we have marriages of more than two people? Isn't marriage like a partnership?"

Well, no. Entering into a partnership is an act of legal equalization; marriage is an act of legal elevation. It is a declaration, as a matter of law and not just love, that one person has superior claims to the spouse (and against the spouse) than any other person.

But this elevation must, as a matter of metaphysics, be limited to a single person; it is a discrete and indivisible concept. Mathematically, A cannot be both greater than B and less than B simultaneously. Legally, Spouse A cannot have both a greater legal claim and a lesser legal claim than Spouse B simultaneously.

This is not prejudice, this is not parochialism, this is not sophistry. It is simple math, simple logic and simple law.

The better business analogy to marriage is not a partnership but a corporation. It is impossible to have multiple, truly equal "co-CEOs." The very nature of "elevation" requires that, when push comes to shove, one person be elevated above all others -- by force of law if necessary.

Or consider an autocratic triumvirate of the old Roman Empire variety -- it is impossible to have truly equal "co-dictators." In the end, "there can be only one."

Back to the legal nitty gritty: What do we mean by "elevation"? Consider the various manifestations. How exactly is divorce supposed to work in a polygamous arrangement? Estate law? Child custody? Testimonial privilege? Employment benefits?

"We'll figure it out later..." is not an answer. The whole point is that it can't be figured out at all. Neither is the snark of "Just have contracts..." You can't contract away your child's rights, or give yourself testimonial privilege by contract, or a hundred other facets of marriage that cannot be replicated by contract. Finally, "The government should just get out of the marriage business..." is not a noble libertarian proclamation but a limp-wristed cop-out.

Anyone who, unlike Krauthammer, thinks about the issue, in terms of marriage qua legal status, for more than ten seconds realizes how absurd the "gay marriage implies polygamy" argument is.

---

Other thoughts at To The People, Good As You, PoliBlog, Unrepentant Individual, Below the Beltway.

Here are the lyrics to one of my two favorite Irish-American songs, "Staten Island."

---

We sailed our ship up the Hudson River,
To the wild Atlantic we said farewell.
On Staten Island when we landed
There we had our tale to tell.

We're the poor, the huddled masses,
We have crossed the lonely sea.
Left the Old World for the New World,
Left the old ways to be free.

We left our homes in forty-seven.
Turned our backs against the wind.
From our ships of creaking timber
We bid farewell to a famished land.

We're the poor, the huddled masses,
We have crossed the lonely sea.
Left the Old World for the New World,
Left the old ways to be free.

With heavy hearts we left behind us
Memories of better days.
Old men talking, children laughing
As we danced the night away.

We're the poor, the huddled masses,
We have crossed the lonely sea.
Left the Old World for the New World,
left the old ways to be free.

Still we hear their voices calling
On the wind we hear the sound.
Friends and loved ones, old and young ones
Lie beneath the famine mount.

We're the poor, the huddled masses,
We have crossed the lonely sea.
Left the Old World for the New World,
Left the old ways to be free.

Now those years are far behind us,
Now our spirits have grown strong.
In this land that gave us freedom
And the will to carry on.

We're the poor, the huddled masses,
we have crossed the lonely sea.
Left the Old World for the New World,
left the old ways to be free.

---

For those knowledgeable about such things, my other favorite Irish-American song is "Uncle Benji." Maybe I'll share it with you someday.

In celebration of the U.S. premiere of the new Doctor Who series tonight on SciFi, Diamond has graciously offered her weekly spotlight to everybody's favorite time-traveling, chess-playing, laser-snouting cyber-dog, K-9:









Diamond returns next week.

One of my favorite "I'm not a bigot" bigots is Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby. I've critiqued his (non-)bigotry before.

Now he wants to prove how not-a-bigot he is regarding gay adoption:

In psychology, "projection" occurs when someone attributes to others his own unpleasant beliefs or motivations. It is projection, for instance, when a liar assumes that everyone he deals with is dishonest, or when a man tempted by adultery accuses his spouse of planning to deceive him. Projection occurs in the public arena as well, as when supporters of racial preferences label "racist" those who believe the law should be strictly colorblind.

A fresh example of projection arrived the other day by way of a news release from the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organizations [via a press release] headlined "Boston Catholic Charities Puts Ugly Political Agenda Before Child Welfare," and a more perfect illustration of psychological projection would be hard to imagine.

So when gays dare to get uppity about being summarily dismissed as deviant perverts inarguably unqualified to raise children, we're "projecting," on a par with liars, adulterers and racists. And Jacoby is of course not a bigot for suggesting (projecting?) as much.

More:

Catholic Charities of Boston had announced that it was being forced to shut down its highly regarded adoption services, since it could not in good conscience comply with the government's demand that it place children for adoption with homosexual couples.

This is patently false. Catholic Charities is perfectly willing to place children with gay couples. Its board of trustees voted unanimously, 42-0, to reiterate that position. Eight members of the board resigned in protest over the "no gays need apply" announcement.

Catholic Charities is not being shut down by the government. Catholic Charities is not being shut down by its own "good conscience."

Catholic Charities is being shut down by Massachusetts' four Catholic bishops, who are acting against the very wishes of the organization itself.

And who are, of course, not bigots.

As the saying goes: You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.

Those who, like Jacoby, believe otherwise are just projecting.

ADDENDUM: And for those who think that Jacoby is too mild of a not-a-bigot, be sure to check out the wasabi version, Mike S. Adams, who is selecting a new religion based solely on how much it hates gays. But of course he's not a bigot either.

A real-life Oliver St. John-Mollusc:

When a dump truck backed into Curtis Gokey's car, he decided to sue the city for damages. Only thing is, he was the one driving the dump truck. But that minor detail didn't stop Gokey, a Lodi city employee, from filing a $3,600 claim for the December accident, even after admitting the crash was his fault.

After the city denied that claim because Gokey was, in essence, suing himself, he and his wife, Rhonda, decided to file a new claim under her name.

I'm actually amazed that the city's bureaucrats were able to figure this one out and deny the claim.

On the other hand, I think Gokey should indeed be allowed to sue himself — with the city docking his paycheck for the damages and then firing him for gross incompetence. Oh, at let's not forget court costs.

And for those unfamiliar with Oliver St. John-Mollusc, see here.

Via Overlawyered. See also Unrepentant Individual, Coyote Blog, PointOfLaw Forum.

On the one hand:
--Texas' anti-discrimination law does not include sexual orientation.
--Texas' hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation.
--Texas does not offer domestic partnership benefits for state employees.
--Lawrence v. Texas was about, um, Texas.
--In November, Texas voters passed a bigot amendment by roughly a 3-1 margin.

On the other hand:

Houston hosts one of the biggest and best gay pride parades in the county, while Dallas' parade pales in comparison. Yet, Big D recently made headlines by creating a direct link to gay travel on the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau Web site.

"Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender travelers spend $65 billion a year on travel and we want to make sure Dallas positions itself to take advantage of that," said Dallas CVB chief executive officer Phillip Jones.

"I don't think Dallas has anything to be proud of. They're definitely not doing as well as Houston is right now," GHCVB president Jordy Tollet said. "We're not bragging about putting one picture up with no real information."
...
"As we like to say in the chamber, diversity is green when it comes to economics. Houston needs to embrace that," GLBT Chamber of Commerce President Cory Tow said.

Which invites two questions:

1. Precisely what kind of bipolar-schizophrenic-Alzheimers type of mental disorder do Texans suffer from that would make them think that they can convince themselves, let alone gay tourists, that Texas is somehow "gay-friendly" and a worthy vacation destination?

2. How self-loathing does a gay have to be to say "Gee, I think I'll vacation in Texas this year!"?

Discuss.

(Via Fark.)

---

As an aside, I'll remind readers that the so-called "statistics" about gay economics are, for the most part, utter nonsense.

(Cross-posted at Spectrum Bloggers.)

Suppose there is a married couple who file a joint tax return. Each spouse has investments that they manage independently of one another. Assume that in one tax year the husband has realized capital gains from trading stocks totaling $10,000, but the wife had trading losses in that same year totaling $10,000. So, on their joint return, they truthfully indicate that they, as a household, had no net capital gains to pay taxes on and in fact pay no taxes on that part of their finances.

Would it be fair to say that the husband "didn't pay his taxes"? Would anybody call this a "tax loophole"?

If not, then what the heck is this story about?

Many electric utility companies across the nation are collecting billions of dollars from their customers for corporate income taxes, then keeping the money rather than sending it to the government.

The practice is legal in most states. The companies say it is smart business.

But some representatives of utility customers say that the practice, which involves using losses from other subsidiaries to reduce taxes owed, is not fair. They say that money that utilities are required to collect for federal and state taxes -- typically a nickel on each dollar paid for electricity -- should go for just that, or not be included in electric bills.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

The regulated utility part of the "big, evil corporation," the part collecting tax surcharges from customers, does in fact have a real tax liability, just as the husband does from his stock trading in our example. The fact that other subsidiaries of the corporation have operating losses that can be used to offset the tax liabilities of the regulated utility makes absolutely no difference -- just as using the wife's stock losses on the couple's return doesn't make the husband a "tax cheat."

A corporation filing a single tax return is entitled to net out all its tax liabilities and credits from all its subsidiaries just as a couple can net out the losses of one spouse with the income of the other. Exact same concept, exact same outcome, exact same non-issue.

So which activist politician do you think will be the first to demand an investigation or introduce legislation to correct this "outrage"?

Hope you don't plan to be in the U.K. on March 28:

Up to 1.5 million local authority workers are to stage a one-day strike in a bitter row over pensions which union leaders warned will close council services across the country.

The walk-out on March 28 will be the biggest bout of industrial unrest since the 1926 General Strike and will be the largest stoppage yet by women.

Members of nine unions, ranging from school dinner ladies and refuse collectors to architects and school assistants, voted overwhelmingly in favour of strikes in protest at planned changes to their pension scheme.

Once again, the issue is pensions.

In the U.S., meanwhile, state and local pension funds are underfunded by about $279 billion at last count. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is almost certainly going to require a taxpayer balilout. And the fraud of the Social Security "trust fund" is only 11 years away from being irrefutably exposed once and for all.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse.

Can you guess what the following graph represents?



Give up?

It's the price of sugar.

That's right -- sugar.

Why has the price of sugar skyrocketed like a dot-com stock?

Mainly because of the price of oil.

You see, when oil -- or anything else -- becomes too expensive, people begin looking for substitutes. Ethanol is a leading substitute for oil, and sugar is the primary component of ethanol. When the price of oil becomes high enough, it becomes increasingly cost-effective to use ethanol instead of fossil fuels, so refineries start buying sugar instead of oil.

Higher price of oil = higher demand for ethanol = higher demand for sugar = higher price for sugar.

or

Higher price of oil = higher demand for ethanol = lower quantity demanded of oil.

Stated differently, it's possible for oil to "price itself out of the market." In fact, it's not only possible, it's inevitable if the supply of oil is truly "fixed" (but that's a very big "if").

And this is just sugar-ethanol. Now add in corn-ethanol, natural gas, coal, nuclear and eco-friendly sources of energy, all of which become increasingly viable economically as the price of oil rises.

Now remind me again how "the world will someday run out of oil"?

Suggested Reading:

Dilbert creator Scott Adams:

I recommend a new standard for deciding right and wrong. We have lots of opinion polls, and they seem reasonably accurate. I say that any time two-thirds of the citizens have the same point of view on an issue that that point of view is automatically called “right” and the alternative is called “wrong.” My reasoning is that two-thirds of the adult citizen population would be enough to amend the constitution, assuming they all voted and lived in the right places.

Um, no. Although Article V of the Constitution does impose a two-thirds supermajority vote in both chambers of Congress for constitutional amendments, three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment.

On the other hand, it would take only "50% +1," not two-thirds, of the voters in each election district to elect all the Congressmen and state legislators, who could then amend the Constitution with unanimous ease. So "two-thirds" is wrong in the opposite direction too.

So which is scarier -- Scott Adams' civics illiteracy or the fact that so many Americans actually believe in the unbridled majoritarian view of "right" -- and rights -- that Adams is satirizing?

Apparently there are 2.6 million man-made ponds in the U.S. And these ponds, we are told, are capturing (stealing?) sediment that would have otherwise found its way into the American river and delta system.

So we can now expect that some would-be central planner will soon call for a "pond tax" to internalize this supposed externality.

It wouldn't be any more ridiculous that New Hampshire's "view tax."

Or maybe not — maybe they'll just call for an outright ban on ponds instead.

Mark my words...

POST SCRIPT: Is it still politically incorrect to say "man-made" instead of "artificial"? The article used the former term, so I will too. Any of my female readers take offense?

Professor Lawrence Solum has added two entries to his ongoing cyber-project, "Legal Theory Lexicon," that readers of this blog might fight particularly interesting. The Lexicon is specifically intended for first-year law students and other non-lawyers.

The first entry is an overview of public goods and their relevance to economics and the law. An excerpt:

As you might expect, the argument for government provision of public goods and market provision of private goods is controversial. Socialists argue that governments may do a better job of providing private goods, because government planning can create welfare benefits that cannot be realized by markets. Libertarian legal theorists argue that markets can provide most if not all private goods for various reasons, including arguments that nonexcludability can often be overcome by ingenious market solutions.

To me a big part of the problem with more radical libertarians is that they see these "ingenious market solutions" where they don't exist (or where they are far too expensive to implement and maintain to be truly efficient). Sometimes it's easy, even trivial, to deduce that something is not a public good and should not be provided by the government (e.g., wireless Internet access). On the other hand, should we really bother trying to privatize Central Park? It could be done, but would it really be worth it? Some issues fall in between (e.g., is elementary and secondary education a public good that should be publicly provided, publicly financed, or neither?).

---

The other entry is about textualism, my preferred version of statutory interpretation:

If we view textualism as a normative theory of interpretation, we need to ask to ask why interpreters of legal texts should aim for interpretations that yield that “plain meaning of the text.” The usual answer to this question is that plain meaning best serves the rule of law values of publicity, predictability, certainty, and stability of the law. One of the important rule of law values is publicity: the law should be accessible to ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens are likely to interpret statutes to have their plain meaning, because ordinary folks rarely have the training to understand legislative history and even if they did have such training, it would simply be too costly to analyze the legislative history of statutes to determine their meaning.

Damn right. But there's another reason to prefer textualism (i.e., plain modern meaning) over original (i.e., 1789, dead-white-male) meaning of the Scalia variety, or the even worse alternative, "original intent."

Original meaning very often simply cannot accommodate the issues of modern life. Many current legal disputes — abortion, gay rights, telecommunications law, right-to-die issues, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. — were simply not anticipated fully (or at all) by the Framers. Original meaning often doesn't get you to square one.

Original intent is even worse. Legislatures, as opposed to legislators, do not have "intent." Even in ancient times — the Civil War Amendments, for example — legislators would insert indications of their personal "intent" into the legislative record, to be dug up by judges later as laws are litigated. What many call "legislative intent" is really just the legislative record — testimony, speeches, exhibits, reports and so on — that are compiled into a amalgam buried under the actual law that is passed. Often, politicians who had absolutely nothing to do with crafting a bill (other than voting on it) will insert statements — never actually made aloud during debate — into the record to become a supposed reflection of the "legislative intent" behind the law.

It is far too easy now for a judge to cherry-pick whichever speech from whichever single legislator happened to agree with him and cite it as the "legislative intent" behind the law. Congressmen are fully aware of this and now insert carefully crafted, brief-like testimonials into the record for the specific purpose of empowering judges to "interpret it their way" after the law is passed. The newest iteration of this perverse practice — the presidential "signing statement" — will only make matters worse.

It's almost like Occam's Razor — the most obvious method tends to be the best method. Textualism is statutory interpretation for the masses, and for the ages, and it should always be the presumptively correct approach.

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UPDATE: Dale in the comments asks for an example of a court improperly relying on legislative history as "legislative intent." Here's an example I quickly yanked out of an old casebook, Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U.S. 87 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring):

That the Court should refer to the citation of three District Court cases in a document issued by a single committee of a single house as the action of Congress displays the level of unreality that our unrestrained use of legislative history has attained. I am confident that only a small proportion of the Members of Congress read either one of the Committee Reports in question, even if (as is not always the case) the Reports happened to have been published before the vote; that very few of those who did read them set off for the nearest law library to check out what was actually said in the four cases at issue (or in the more than 50 other cases cited by the House and Senate Reports)...

Soon after, in Wisconsin Public Intervenor v. Mortier, 501 U.S. 597 (1991), the Court went out of its way to pooh-pooh Justice Scalia's rejection of legislative history:

As for the propriety of using legislative history at all, common sense suggests that inquiry benefits from reviewing additional information, rather than ignoring it. As Chief Justice Marshall put it, "[w]here the mind labours to discover the design of the legislature, it seizes everything from which aid can be derived." ... Legislative history materials are not generally so misleading that jurists should never employ them in a good faith effort to discern legislative intent. Our precedents demonstrate that the Court's practice of utilizing legislative history reaches well into its past. ... We suspect that the practice will likewise reach well into the future.

I still pooh-pooh Justice Scalia's preference of original meaning over plain meaning, but we agree that either is better than the fiction of "legislative intent."

It's about time:

Officials from the American Red Cross, speaking at a recent blood donation conference in Maryland, called for an end to the federal government's ban on gay and bisexual blood donors, the Washington Blade reports.

A Food and Drug Administration policy in place since 1985 bans donations from any man who's ever had sex with another man -- even one time -- since 1977. Even gay men who've tested negative for HIV antibodies and those who are in monogamous relationships are barred for life from donating blood.
...
"The [American Association of Blood Banks, America's Blood Centers] and ARC believe that the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted and recommend that deferral criteria be modified and made compatible with criteria for other groups at increased risk for sexual transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections," the groups said in a joint statement issued at the advisory panel meeting.

The shift in position had been widely anticipated in the days before the FDA conference.

The ARC and the FDA have had something of an incestuous relationship regarding the gay blood ban, with the ARC insisting that it was an FDA policy and the FDA insisting that the ARC supported it. Meanwhile, in the pharmaceutical arena, the FDA almost always adopts the recommendations of its advisory panels. Hopefully the same deference to experts w