A Stitch in Haste

I think I'm getting better at this "video editing" stuff:


Unfortunately the uploading process seems to skew the synchronization a bit. The version on my hard drive flows better with the end of the music. Oh well.

More videos forthcoming at the YouTube page.

(Incidentally, that's the flag of the Inca nation, not the gay pride flag.)

Time to clean out the aggregator —

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ITEM: The situation in Burma has become very troubling, as the military junta has cut off Internet access and apparently has spilled blood. It is for the moment very fashionable to care about Burma and to cheer on their protesting Buddhist monks, just as it is now very fashionable to call the country "Burma." Some of us, meanwhile, were well ahead of the curve.

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ITEM: The Senate is taking up a federal journalist shield law. I am on record as opposing "journalist privilege" for the simple reason that journalists are not privileged people. The Senate version does, on the other hand, extend to bloggers — a point of significant contention among various versions of the proposed privilege.

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ITEM: A proposal to implement the District Method of allocating Electoral College votes in California appears to have imploded. Watching the hysteria by radical liberals, who somehow consider California's 55 E.C. votes an entitlement, was both entertaining and informative. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: The Washington Post ran yet another feature article on the insanity underlying federal farm subsidies. This time we are shown how record high corn prices, proximately caused by Congress' capitulation to the ethanol mania, do not stop corn farmers — who are seeing both record incomes and record real estate prices for their farmland — from getting "annual automatic payments" of taxpayer money. The mind reels. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: The New Jersey government is undertaking a study to see whether that state's insulting "separate but equal" civil union regime for gay couples is indeed "equal." The answer, as we all knew from the outset, is of course, "Of course not."

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ITEM: A new study suggests that "in denial" gay college students (i.e., those who identify as straight but experience same-sex attraction) are significantly more likely than "out" students to ideate about suicide ("off the charts" is how the study's author describes it). "Out" gay youths are, meanwhile, also more likely to ideate about suicide than straight youths if they experience anti-gay harassment, but that is not new news. The study, meanwhile, was based on a relatively small sample size at the University of Washington; one wonders what kind of data a sample of students at Brigham Young or St. John's might produce. (Via InterstateQ.)

The lead blogger of Crime & Federalism is leaving that blawg to launch his own site. We await it eagerly.

In the meantime, I am substituting QuizLaw for C&F in The Elite Eleven. Light-hearted legal commentary with an emphasis on frivolous lawsuits. Good stuff.

What is The Elite Eleven?

Sticking with the dating service meme, let's see whether the lukettylwillie online dating service is any better than last week's:


So far, it seems that Greta is getting the most inquiries from potential suitors. Go figure.

Two dispatches from the Religion of Peace:

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ITEM: The Palestinian Authority has deployed "Ramadan police" --

One recent afternoon, vice squad Lieutenant Murad Qendah got a radio call telling him a suspect was spotted in the street imbibing karoub -- a local soft drink made from carob pods. He ordered his six-man squad to seize the man's papers pending investigation. Police say violators are usually held for 24 hours.

"If anybody violates respect for Ramadan in the street, we take their identity papers and hold them for investigation," said Qendah, 27, whose officers wear red shoulder badges that say "morality police."
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"The duty of the morality police is to preserve public manners in public places and to preserve the feelings of the people who are fasting," he said. "Violating the holiness of Ramadan is a violation of people's freedom."

Read that jaw-dropping illogic again: Exercising one's freedom not to be a Muslim violates the rights of Muslims. Can there be a better example of why the term "democratic theocracy" is simultaneously scary and silly?


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ITEM: What's wrong with this story --

In a recent episode of Saudi Arabia's most popular television show airing during Ramadan this month, a Saudi man of the future is seen sitting in his house as his daughter pulls into the driveway, her kids piled into the back of the car.

"Where have you been?" the father asks.

"The kids were bored, so I took them to the movies," she replies, matter-of-factly, as she gets out of the driver's seat.

A) Women are forbidden to drive in Saudi Arabia.
B) Movie theaters are forbidden in Saudi Arabia.
C) Both.

If this scenario is indeed the Saudi Arabia of the future, then it will be despite, not because of, that backward nation's adherence to Islam, which -- like almost all organized religions -- is anti-modernity, anti-progress, anti-liberation and generally anti-life-on-this-earth.

Two soulless anti-gay throwbacks to an embarrassing and disappearing time are back in the news for their last hurrahs.

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ITEM: Self-loathing gay senator Larry Craig is insolently breaking his pledge to resign on September 30, now that the judge hearing his frivolous petition to withdraw his guilty plea has indicated that no decision will be forthcoming before then. If there was a ever a real-word version of the decrepit, corrupted and corroded character Gollum, then it is Craig: a man so hopelessly at war with himself and so entranced by his ("precious") political office that he simply cannot grasp how meaningless, and how hopeless, his own repulsive existence has become. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, another hopeless and repulsive man, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, was graciously afforded an opportunity to publicly redeem himself before a Senate committee after his bilious remarks about gays (not just gays in the military, but all gays). Instead, he told the senators, and gays across America, to suck it. Even in the Twenty-First Century, a senior military officer -- a man whose entire adult life has been devoted to devising more and better ways to kill and destroy -- can still, somehow, pretend to represent "God's Law." The road is long, very long. Previous post here.

Specifically, the Democrats of 1935:

"But I don't understand why somebody who makes $50 million a year pays Social Security tax on the first $97,000 and somebody -- and not on the rest..."

Edwards is of course referring to the (ever-increasing) Social Security wage cap.

The resolution of the wage cap non-paradox is of course self-apparent to anyone who, unlike Edwards, is not an advocate of class warfare. When Social Security was crafted as a cornerstone of New Deal socialism, its creators -- its liberal Democratic creators -- were adamant that the program be structured, at least nominally, as a compulsory retirement saving plan and not "just another entitlement."

The scheme had and has many more bells and whistles than that, to be sure. But the all-important prime directive behind Social Security's founding was that it would not be presented as "a welfare program." To this day, reminding people of Social Security's progressive-redistributionist (i.e., welfare) structure will bring the scheme's apologists chasing after you like screeching Ringwraiths.

This explains, for example, the (preposterous) description of payroll taxes as "contributions," the naming of the program as "insurance" (as in "Old Age Survivor and Disability Insurance") -- and the wage cap.

In the compulsory saving (or old-age insurance) model of Social Security, wage earners are required to "purchase" (i.e., fund via their payroll taxes) a future minimal annuity stream for their post retirement years. But it only takes so much money to fund such an annuity, just as it only takes so much money to buy a basic, minimal meal. Once a taxpayer has "paid up" for his future Social Security annuity (by hitting the wage cap), then why require her to buy even more annuity?

Remember: Paying more FICA tax means receiving a greater Social Security benefit after retirement. Scrap-the-cap is not "free money" for the government; it is offset by higher benefit obligations for the rich down the road.

So if the purpose of Social Security is not to soak the rich, but to ensure that no elderly be impoverished, then why require the rich to pay into the system beyond the "not impoverished" level? Why force them to buy very high benefits via very payroll taxes if the goal is merely to insure against elderly poverty? (Stated differently: Why force the rich to over-participate in Social Security to the point where they are more than simply "not-impoverished" but actually "very not-impoverished"?)

Meanwhile, scrap-the-cap would delay the Social Security crisis by a few years at best. It "solves" nothing. This demonstrates even more starkly why Edwards (and Obama and almost certainly Clinton) are flat-out lying when they advocate scrap-the-cap as a "solution" to the Social Security crisis rather than a naked class warfare appeal to radical liberal malcontents.

Bottom line: If you believe in Social Security as a "post-retirement safety net," then the cap is perfectly reasonable. It is fact absolutely necessary if the program is to be logically consistent. But if you believe in Social Security as backdoor income redistribution, as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge way to soak the rich (who, recall, also pay almost all the federal income tax), and as an insolent impediment to your dreams of class warfare, then the wage cap is indeed an illogical abomination.

No wonder John Edwards is confused.

(Via Tax Policy Blog.)

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Did I mention that scrap-the-cap would be the largest tax increase in American history?

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Meanwhile: Poor little rich boy. Or poor boy. Or something.

Now emphasizing the cradle:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.
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The New York senator did not offer any estimate of the total cost of such a program or how she would pay for it. Approximately 4 million babies are born each year in the United States.

As much as I yearn for the expiration of the Bush presidency, I fear, literally fear, the thought of any of the current hopeless gaggle of Democratic moral defectives taking office with a fully Democratic Congress cheering on his, or her, inevitable tax-and-spend fiscal recklessness. Why did the Republicans have to lose the Senate too? (With the odds of them also losing filibuster strength in 2008 increasing with each passing scandal.)

This is the woman who so brazenly lies about how her pervert husband was "fiscally responsible," taking credit for what was wholly attributable to gridlock, the dot.com boom and the (long-ago-squandered) "peace dividend"? This is the woman who lays claim to the legacy of "the era of big government is over"?

Meanwhile, economists might, if they thought it would do any good, point out the pesky fact that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. The solution to "economically disadvantaged children" is not paying people, especially economically disadvantaged people, to have more babies. How is this a difficult concept?

Add in the indoctrination factor: What better way to inculcate a love for, and a dependency on, the state (oops, sorry — the "village") than to point, literally from Day One, to your "baby bond" as proof of just how truly wonderful is Big Government (the era of which is, again, apparently not over). The government has loved you since the day you were born, so you should love it back until the day you die. Huxley would be humbled.

And in case you were wondering: Yes there are politicians even dumber than Senator Clinton:

"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Rep. Stephanie Stubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat who attended the event and has already endorsed Clinton. "Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until their 18?"

The best way to offset $27,000 in debt is to go $5,000 deeper in debt? When a subprime mortgage company says that, it's "predatory lending." When a tax-and-spend hyper-liberal Democrat in Congress says it, it's "a wonderful idea."

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

More thoughts at Catallarchy, no third solution, Greg Mankiw.

"Want a billion dollars? A cool, neat, billion dollars?"
        "Which I'll have to produce, for you to give me?"
--Atlas Shrugged

--Is it a proper function of government to impose dress codes on bank customers in order to deter robbers? (Via CrimProf Blog.)

--Another from CrimProf Blog: "Prison pink as punishment"?

--What is the point of expanding Medicare if doctors can't afford to accept it? (Via Kevin, M.D., who adds, "you can't practice medicine if you go bankrupt.")

--Should an apartment building be permitted to refuse to rent to a prospective tenant solely because he has a tattoo? (Via Fark.)

--A special guest question: "Do we have 5 Great Powers, based on nuclear weapons, or 12, based on GDP?" (To which I'll append another question: Shouldn't GDP per capita count too? Who can seriously suggest that India (relatively high GDP, but relatively low GDP per capita) is now or might soon be an economic "Great Power"?)

(Pun intended.)

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ITEM: A federal transit bureaucracy has cleared a $1.3 billion allocation of federal tax dollars to the New York City transit bureaucracy to help underwrite a new subway line under Second Avenue in Manhattan. Why exactly taxpayers in, e.g., California, Utah or Missouri (or, for that matter, New York) should be expected to pay for a new subway line in Manhattan — that they will likely never use in a neighborhood they will likely never visit — is left unexplained. But such "everybody pays for everything" schemes are, somehow, more "enlightened" than simply having those who use mass transit pay for it (with, if truly necessary, means-tested discounts for the poor). Previous post here.

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ITEM: Speaking of discounts —

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed charging people less if they ride subways or buses during off-peak periods, in hopes of easing overcrowding during the commuting rushes.
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Elliot G. Sander, the chief executive of the authority, said the alternative structure could help address the system’s rush hour congestion as well as generate more money.
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It would be relatively easy to program the turnstiles to charge different rates at different hours, officials said.

One of the reasons that a flat-fare mass transit system actually made more sense than a distance-based fare was precisely because it was cheaper to implement: drop a coin (later a token) into a turnstile and go. No need for "honor systems" backed up by random ticket inspections and the threat of fines, as is done in most of Europe and in some American cities.

As I explained in this post: the cost structure of mass transit also argued in favor of a flat fare, despite the intuitive, almost market-sounding presumption of "ride farther, pay more." But the more accurate heuristic — "cost more, pay more" — actually argues against zone-based fares: the marginal cost of riding the subway a longer distance is essentially zero, hence the additional fare should also be zero (i.e., a flat fare).

But capacity pricing — a higher rush hour fare — was, as I noted, another question altogether. Now that the technology exists (via encodable fare cards and computerized turnstiles) to easily implement peak versus off-peak fares, it is perfectly sensible to do so. Those who cause the required capacity of the subway system to be larger at one time of day rather than at another (i.e., those who impose a significant marginal cost on the system) should be expected to pay for that larger capacity. "Peak versus off-peak fares" is a perfectly sensible system that should definitely be implemented.

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ITEM: A special subway "Question" — Cell phones on subway platforms: Normal technological progress or cacophonous nightmare?

Now available at the YouTube page.

September 21, 2007, episode: Abizaid, Ahmadinejad, HillaryCare 2.0, and a prediction!

Check it out.

It's not paranoia if they're really after you...

Now, for the first time, The Identity Project makes it easy for you to request the unclassified parts of the dossier that the DHS has complied on you.
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No reason need be given for the request. Costs may be charged for photocopying or printing your dossier, but not for the search itself.

Instructions and forms here.

A sample Passenger Name Record ("PNR") here.

(Via Boing Boing and Threat Level.)

This story will no doubt incense the malcontents who are still fuming over Apple's sloppy, but in no way immoral, timing of a significant price cut for the iPhone:

After taking apart the nano, iSuppli estimates that all the parts inside cost Apple $58.85 for the $149 model with 4 gigabytes of storage capacity, and $82.85 for the 8GB version priced at $199. For the lower-priced model, that would represent a drop of more than $13 per unit in costs compared with the 4GB nano that Apple introduced a year ago. That's also more than $31 cheaper per unit than the parts in the original 2GB nano introduced in September, 2005.

Charging $150 for $60 worth of stuff? What could possibly by more oppressive? Surely there's an antitrust violation in there somewhere. Just ask Microsoft.

Of course, the devil-slayer is in the details:

iSuppli's estimates don't account for nonhardware costs, including software development, intellectual property, packaging, final assembly, and distribution.

Stated differently, iSupply's statistics are totally worthless (except to a handful of trade specialists, engineers and investment analysts).

Still, the Big Lie of Marxist-Leninism and its offspring (modern socialism, the New Deal, antitrust law, Michael Moore, etc.) is precisely this notion that a manufactured good is nothing more than the sum of its components — the little pieces and the little people who put them together (after being shown how). The omissions — especially "development" but also marketing, financing, etc. — all the intangibles to which one cannot point as one can point to a button or battery, are somehow not "real components" and are therefore not "real costs."

From there, it is a short step to concluding that what's left over, even after subtracting intangible costs (i.e., "profit"), is even less "legitimate" a component of a good's price than the intangible costs of R&D or marketing. Profits cease to be a return to a factor of production, on an equal footing with wages, rent and interest, but instead are a "residual." Profits, in this model, are not ascribable to a "component" of the good being sold, and are therefore not "earned" in the way that the seller of a component or worker on the assembly line "earns" their share of the price of the final good.

Wholly preposterous. And yet that is precisely what almost every single introductory economics student in every capitalist economy is taught.

Entrepreneurship — innovation and risk-taking — is a factor of production no different in principle, or in ethical underpinning, from labor, capital or land. And the return to entrepreneurship — profit — is no different in principle, or in ethical underpinning, from wages, interest or rent. iPods do not grow on trees, and those who brought them into being are exploiting no one by selling them — at any price to any willing buyer. By definition, not a single supplier, employee or customer of Apple, or of any other entrepreneurial venture, has ever been "exploited" (outside of collusive rent-seeking conspiracies with government — which of course is not "capitalism" but rather the most insolent form of anti-capitalism). "Exploitative capitalism" is simply an oxymoron.

Add that to your intellectual playlist.

(Via Slashdot.)

In a recent "Questions" post I asked:

Should airlines show R-rated movies on flights with children on board?

Now two activist legislators have answered, "No!"

Prompted by parents' complaints about sex and violence in inflight movies, two congressmen introduced legislation Tuesday calling for airlines to create kid-friendly zones on planes.

"The airlines have chosen to put our children in a situation that I don't feel comfortable with," said Rep. Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat.

He and Republican Rep. Walter Jones, also from North Carolina, call their proposal the Family Friendly Flights Act.

"This legislation will be one avenue to help parents take back their right to determine the appropriateness of the content to which their children are exposed," Jones said in a statement.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Even conceding the notion of "airline as common carrier," with all that such a designation implies regarding non-discrimination and such, since when is there:

--A "right" to fly on an airplane at all?

(Note: A "right not to be discriminated against" is not the same as a "right to be accommodated in every way under every circumstance.")

--A "right to fly with small children at all"?

--A "right to fly with small children and not have their 'fragile little eyes' offended by the in-flight entertainment"?

This is the same kind of anti-capitalism, anti-property, anti-rights, warm-fuzzy-feeling nanny-statism underlying such insults to liberty as smoking bans in bars and trans fat bans in restaurants (not to mention the ever-popular, if ever-unconstitutional, bans on violent video game sales to minors). The only "right" implicated here is the right of a private firm to run its private business as it sees fit (i.e., to give customers -- rather than malcontent activists -- what they want and are willing to pay for).

If there is a demand for "family-friendly flights," then airlines will offer them. Compare the presence -- or absence -- of "G-rated flights" to, e.g., Chuck E. Cheese restaurants or Disney Cruise Line. Not to mention, of course, JetBlue's "screen in the headrest" cabin model, which is increasingly being imitated by other airlines and will likely become universal in a few years' time, making all this activist legislator chest-thumping moot anyway.

Demand creates it own supply. And a lack of demand explains -- and vindicates -- a lack of supply. No meddling by self-appointed "I'm smarter than you" politicians, who are merely pandering to a handful of whiner-brat parents, is required or justified.

Whether in the air, in the kitchen or behind the counter: Leave business to businesspeople.

It's entirely plausible:

A man accused of murder as a hate crime in the death of a gay man presented evidence of his own homosexuality in State Supreme Court yesterday. Prosecutors have said the defendant, Anthony Fortunato, 21, used his computer to lure the victim, Michael J. Sandy, 29, to a beach in Sheepshead Bay.

Mr. Sandy was chased into traffic, prosecutors said, and died of his injuries. During the cross-examination of a computer crimes detective, Mr. Fortunato's lawyer put into evidence gay pornographic images recovered from his client's e-mail account. The lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, has said he hopes to show that because Mr. Fortunato is homosexual, he would be unlikely to single out a gay man to commit a crime against.

A few hasty stitches:

--Gay porn on a computer is not proof of gayness. Indicative, perhaps — but it could just as easily be indicative of a premeditated effort to avoid a hate crimes charge (i.e., he's merely posing as gay to avoid the anti-gay presumption). Is the defendant that clever, or that stupid? Who knows?

--In any event, there is no shortage of gays who hate other gays.

--Most importantly, one must remember that the term "hate crime" is sloppy shorthand. "Hate" is not an element of most "hate crime" laws, and definitely not New York's:

A person commits a hate crime when he or she commits a specified offense and either:

(a) intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct, or

(b) intentionally commits the act or acts constituting the offense in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct.

So, for instance, a mugger who intentionally selects as his prey an elderly person need not "hate" the elderly to be guilty of violating New York's "hate crime" law. He need only believe, correctly or incorrectly, that the elderly are, e.g., weaker or more frail than others and therefore easier to prey upon. By this standard, an elderly mugger who targets an elderly victim has still violated the hate crime law, even in the absence of any "hatred" of the elderly.

Similarly, a robber who intentionally selects as his prey a Hasidic man near 47th Street in Manhattan need not be anti-Semitic to be guilty of violating New York's "hate crime" law. He need only believe, correctly or incorrectly, that Hasidic men are more likely to be carrying diamonds and therefore represent, probabilistically, a more lucrative target. By this standard, a Jewish robber who targets a Jewish victim has still violated New York's hate crime law, even in the absence of any "hatred" of Jews.

So too with gay-on-gay violence. Despite the unfortunately inaccurate term — "hate crime" — such laws are better labeled as "victim targeting" crimes. To target a gay victim in any way because of his gayness is the punishable aggravator, not "hatred" of gays per se. Just as to target women because of their gender, or the elderly because of their age, or the disabled because of their condition, all trigger the "hate crime" offense escalation, even in the absence of any "hate," commonly defined.

This caveat is an important element underpinning why "hate crime" laws are not nearly as pernicious as some libertarians like to insist. The "punishing thought" meme is indeed chilling, but wholly misplaced. As I have explained previously, we punish the same crime differently under different circumstances all the time. To use victim targeting — which is not synonymous with "hate" or "thought" — as a differentiator is neither subjective, offensive nor totalitarian. It is, generally if not always, an objective and reasonable calculus in criminal law.

A "gay-on-gay hate crime" is not a reductio ad absurdum. It is merely a demonstration of the need for better syntax.

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Meanwhile, tomorrow the Senate takes up the Matthew Shepard Act (S.1105), which adds sexual identity to the pre-existing federal hate crime law. Even if you find hate crime laws problematic, you should still insist that such laws that are already on the books be applied intelligently and consistently — which demands that sexual orientation be included. This is the same argument as with the radical libertarian position on marriage: do not use your general distaste for "government being in the marriage business" as an excuse to oppose fair and equal access to marriage for gays.

No wonder class warriors such as John Edwards and Barack Obama are so incensed. Just look at the absolute squalor now spreading across America:

Lori and Steven Siravo earn $56,000 a year and say they can't afford health insurance.

They consider themselves lucky to live in New Jersey, where the family's income isn't too high to qualify their 16-year-old daughter, Carlie, for U.S. government-subsidized coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
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Steven, 49, drives a Chevrolet Caprice Classic that's almost 20 years old, and she drives a 5-year-old Chevy Monte Carlo. The above-ground pool out back is 17 years old, bought when "we had money" before Carlie was born, Lori said.

The one luxury is a full-size pinball machine Steven bought for his wife on her 40th birthday.

The family's monthly bills consume most of their take-home income. Pulling out her checkbook, Lori said there's the mortgage ($1,500), utilities ($743), phones and Internet service ($200), car insurance and gasoline ($205), property taxes ($230), basic cable television ($48), food ($600) and credit-card payments ($325) on an outstanding $11,000 balance. That's $46,212 a year, not including clothes, school books and extra-curricular activities for Carlie.
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There's also $352 a month on a home-equity loan the Siravos took out to send Carlie to a private Catholic high school.

Read that again: Apparently "poverty in America" now means having "only" two cars, "only" basic cable, "only" an above-ground pool and "only" a private education. Oh, and "only" one pinball machine.

If that's your (deprived) lifestyle, then you are, to SCHIP apologists, "poor" and in need of health insurance welfare underwritten by other people's taxes.

This is what Democrats decry as "poverty in America." These are the people to whom President Bush is being "cruel" by threatening a veto of SCHIP expansion. These are the miserable, contemptible, utterly hopeless forty-something whiner-brats who lay claim to other people's income, insisting that — their words — "life is stressful enough without worrying about your health."

Or, apparently, worrying about being middle-class leeches on other taxpayers.

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UPDATE: Just to be clear, this family is not "uninsurable." They have access to typical, ordinary private health insurance. They choose, however, to opt -- immorally if not irrationally -- to enroll in SCHIP for less than one-third the cost of private, middle-class health insurance. Behold "enlightened" socialized medicine schemes -- corrupting otherwise reasonable people into becoming welfare bums.

Madness. Sheer madness.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

Weird:

Europeans have little faith that their continent can compete economically with fast-growing Asian countries -- but are even more convinced that it should not become more like the US.

The wary attitude of Europeans towards US-style capitalism and the gloom of many about economic prospects are revealed in an FT/Harris poll. The results suggest even the recent revival in economic growth has not convinced Europeans that the Continent is on the right track.
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It shows that multinational corporations are seen by Europeans as more powerful than governments, while those polled generally believed that regulations protecting workers' rights should be strengthened rather than relaxed.

Put aside the untenable idiocy of thinking that any corporation is more powerful than any government. (How many tanks does Procter & Gamble have? Is Intel stockpiling WMDs?) Now it apparently is fashionable in Europe to dislike, or distrust, multi-national corporations, on the basis that they are -- gasp! -- "too American."

"Multi-national corporations" -- such as, say, Nestlé? Daimler? Philips? Allianz? Nokia? adidas? Diageo? Santander? Bayer?

Sorry, but to hate corporate capitalism is to hate European capitalism as much as American capitalism. For Europeans to blank-out the nature of their own economy (not to mention their own prosperity) simply in order to take a gratuitous swipe at the U.S. is either extreme insolence or extreme schizophrenia -- there's no easy way to tell which.

In any case, such patronizing "of course we're better than America" sanctimony would be damnable hypocrisy if it weren't so laughably silly.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

Now up at the Flickr page.

Videos at the YouTube page will be forthcoming.

Blogging will still be a bit light this week as I continue to play catch-up.

Carry on...

--Should the American Cancer Society spend its entire advertising budget next year not on urging Americans to stop smoking or to get mammograms, but rather on campaigning for a government takeover of the U.S. health-care system? ("This is perverse: It's hard to imagine anything worse for cancer patients than government-run health care.")

--"Don't commit crime..."?

--Does a "gay-themed airline flight" really require "drag queens, pink cocktails and a cabaret performed by the flight crew" (more: "even the pilot was wearing fairy wings and got into it")? At what point does the flight cross from the friendly skies of inclusiveness into the turbulence of stereotyping? (Via Box Turtle Bulletin.)

--Does having twins when you only wanted one child constitute a "wrongful birth" lawsuit against the fertility clinic? Is the fact that the plaintiffs are a lesbian couple make any difference?

--Is a college bookstore's list of titles and prices, openly and notoriously displayed to all students, somehow "confidential information," such that it can forbid students from taking notes about them in order to comparison shop? (Via Slashdot.)

The phrase, "Time to clean out the aggregator" takes on a new meaning this week, as — despite my best efforts whilst in Peru — my aggregator had several thousand unread items as of Friday morning. Here are my best efforts:

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ITEM: The leading spokestheocrat of the faux libertarian Constitution Party has endorsed faux libertarian Ron Paul for president, in large part because "Rep. Paul believes, correctly, that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant word of God..." If these people are "libertarians," then I'm a Communist. Previous posts here.

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ITEM: Gay marriage litigation failed in Maryland, mainly on the facially absurd and jurisprudentially illegitimate "fostering procreation" quasi-reasoning that judicial abdicationists relied on in New York and Washington states, and that is, for now, apparently the gold standard for rationalizing anti-gay bigotry and unequal protection of law. Any other form of discriminatory access to rights and benefits that were as wildly over- and underinclusive in its application as same-sex marriage bans would almost certainly be unanimously struck down at every level of the judicial process. Most recent gay marriage post (on the Iowa ruling) here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, California Republican governor Schwarzenegger has indicated that he will veto any and all same-sex marriage bills sent to him by the (democratically elected, will-of-the-people) legislature. Although Schwarzenegger originally had a plausible (though weak and strictly procedural) justification for his earlier veto, he apparently has now defaulted to unreasoning, base-pandering, "hasta la vista, baby" chest-thumping. All this, incidentally, while conveniently ignoring the fact that he is forcing "activist judges" to take up the issue. Go figure.

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ITEM: Venezuelan lunatic leader Hugo Chavez has announced the latest victim of his "glorious socialist revolution" — private schools, which will be seized if they don't agree to adopt an indoctrination curriculum. Can the "Chavez Youth" be far behind? Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Meanwhile, Buddhist monks in Burma are staging unprecedented, and wonderfully inspirational, protests against that nation's regime of lunatics. Hopefully the military junta will not pull a Tiananmen Square massacre on them. Previous posts here.

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ITEM: Fresh on the heels of my recent post on the appropriateness of tasering, a University of Florida student was needlessly tasered by sadistic, or lazy, police officers. My thesis is unchanged: The taser is only legitimate as an alternative to a firearm, and is legitimately used if — and only if — the use of a firearm would also be legitimate, which was indisputably not the case here. (Meanwhile, here is a less widely discussed story about a sadistic, or lazy, Ohio police officer who repeatedly tasered an intoxicated and helpless woman, even after she was handcuffed.)

I was the only solo traveler in the Peru tour group, and while everyone was very nice and friendly to me, it made me wonder whether it was time to hunker down and find that special someone.

Perhaps I should try a dating service, as jonlajoie's "Mr. Desp" did:


I think I could make a better impression with a video dating tape than Mr. Desp did.

Or not...

Well, not really, but I am all alone in the Lima airport, after my 0830 flight became a 2350 flight (and now delayed to 0025 -- stay tuned).

To which my response is: Thank God capitalism for PriorityPass.

So show me how powerful Web 2.0 is: Where are you stuck right now? And where would you rather be?

And so much for the current Sidebar Sidetrack.

Pop Quiz: Who sang the song, "All Alone in the World"?

It's always a bit heart-wrenching to read on Page A1 that a politician or court is using "children do best with a (heterosexual) mother and father" as an excuse to maintain anti-gay bigotry and then turn to Page B1 to see stories such as this or this...

...or this:

No charges will be filed against a middle school administrator whose toddler daughter died when she was left in her mother’s SUV for about eight hours on a day when temperatures reached about 100 degrees, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Leaving the child in the car was "a substantial lapse of due care" but did not meet the definition of reckless conduct necessary for prosecution, said Clermont County Prosecutor Don White.

Prosecutorial discretion is plenary, so that's that.

But as QuizLaw notes with some indignation, how does one reconcile that with this?

A suburban police officer is accused of leaving a police dog in a patrol car for more than 12 hours on a 109-degree day, killing the animal.

Chandler police Sgt. Tom Lovejoy was booked into the Maricopa County jail on a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty after a two-week investigation into the death of a 5-year-old Belgian Malinois named Bandit.
...
The sheriff's investigation showed Bandit was in Lovejoy's patrol car from about 9 a.m. to shortly after 10 p.m. Aug. 11. During that time, the investigation found, the officer ran errands, napped and ate out with his wife. Lovejoy later found the dog dead in the car.

There is only one basis I can fathom for rationalizing justifying such a disparity: That the police officer, as a law enforcement professional, is subject to a higher standard of care than an ordinary parent. It's essentially a "malpractice" argument: the standard of care for a police officer is not a reasonable person but a reasonable expert. The cop should know better.

But does that argument withstand scrutiny? I mean honestly, who doesn't know in Twenty-First Century America not to leave a child in a car — under any circumstances, let alone with the windows up in sweltering heat?

As I've said before (e.g., here): Not even the most extreme libertarian can seriously argue that there is a "right to neglect or abuse one's child." The only reasonable debate is over defining the words "neglect" and "abuse."

Discuss.

Economic historian John Steele Gordon:

For the first time in 10,000 years, agriculture is no longer the primary source of global employment. According to the report, in 2006 industry employed 21.9 percent of the world's workers, services 42 percent, and agriculture 36.1 percent. Ten years ago, agriculture was at 42 percent and services at 37 percent. That is a very rapid change indeed.
...
Agriculture made civilization possible, but it made prosperity possible for only the few. And for millennia civilized societies were islands surrounded by barbarians. For 200 years industrialized societies were islands of ever-increasing and ever-more-widespread prosperity surrounded by those who still lived at a subsistence level except for the few.

Stated differently, it was back-breaking agricultural drudgery that saved humanity from starvation, but that in no way changes the fact that it was back-breaking drudgery.

It was industrial capitalism, meanwhile, that saved humanity from back-breaking drudgery. The same industrial capitalism that lying malcontents of the past and sanctimonious morons of the present still love to hate. Go figure.

And now we are seeing post-industrial capitalism — "service capitalism" — saving the whole world not only from starvation, not only from back-breaking drudgery, but even from mere comfort and into ubiquitous prosperity. If only the last of the collectivists, megalomaniacs and other assorted madmen would get out of the way.

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A fellow historian postscripts Gordon:

We have a tendency to imagine rural life as virtuous and just, with the city as the zone of corruption and wretchedness. This is perverse sentimentality held with remarkable tenacity, and it affects people who ought to know better.

Indeed. Who didn't at some point want to live in Walnut Grove? (Actually, I didn't. Go figure. And don't get me started on how no Ingalls or Walton child ever turned out to be gay.)

In Kip Clip #2, I mentioned that the Larry Craig scandal got a lot of libertarians thinking about the propriety of public decency laws and "bathroom sting operations." See this post.

Another scandal that led to similar debates was of course the Michael Vick incident. Do only humans have "human rights"? Are different forms of life to be valued differently — and if so, then how is the differential to be determined?

To answer these non-trivial questions, let's jump in the TARDIS and vortex our way down the slippery slope:


I can't get quite comfortable with that last line. There's a similar line in another episode: "If I don't like it, then it will end." As much as I loathe utilitarianism, I loathe the dictator principle even more. Damn activist Time Lord...

"We are pleased to provide you with this 2007 Middle Class STAR [property tax] rebate check."
--New York State Department of Taxation and Finance

To review: If a government imposes a proportional tax (e.g., a flat-rate property tax) and then rebates a fixed amount (complete with "we are pleased" letters signed by "running for re-election at the time" politicians) to each taxpayer, then that makes the "proportional" tax progressive: Pay $300 in tax, get $300 rebated; pay $3,000 in tax, get $300 back; pay $30,000 in tax, get $300 back. Get the idea?

But even that is, apparently, not progressive enough:

Your rebate amount is not only based on your property tax burden, but it is also based on your ability to pay, factoring in your income.

So now not only is the property tax directly progressive, but it has also morphed into a mutant "property-income tax" hybrid, complete with two levels of progressivity.

Meanwhile, the straightforward alternative of having an income tax for income and a property tax for property, with no commingling of the two — is apparently too simplistic for our advanced thinkers in Albany. Just as the idea of not having a clumsy rebate program in the first place (i.e., just lowering the tax rates upfront) is too simplistic.

"Empire State" apparently now means an empire of taxes, micromanaged and warm-fuzzy-feelinged down to the penny. That certainly gives new meaning to the term "progressive taxation."

In Kip Clip #4, Carl Sagan discussed radical social change and recreated the great Library of Alexandria — which was destroyed in the early Fifth Century, on orders from the (Christian) Roman Emperor Theodosius I that all pagan temples be destroyed. The scrolls the library housed were burned as fuel to warm nearby baths.

Fortunately, in the modern era people would never consider doing such a thing as burning knowledge for the sake of feeling warm, right?


Before there were bloggers and blogging, there was John Boy Walton and his journal. "Words on paper must be very important." Or on a computer screen...

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

One ubiquitous way that politicians manifest this defectiveness is by slapping their name on a dizzying variety of stuff. Highways, post offices, bureaucracy buildings — and don't forget rebate checks.

In my opinion, it's all a bunch of garbage:



That's right: The Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer Memorial Trash Can.


Put aside for the moment the fact that New York City borough presidents don't actually perform any legitimate governmental function — they are utterly impotent positions (except for their pork "capital and expense budgets").

And put aside the question of just how egomaniacal (or ego deficient) a person would have to be to actually want to see his name on a trash can.

What about the simple fact that Scott M. Stringer didn't pay one cent for this trash can? I did. I and my neighbors. How about once, just once, having some public good or public building read something like, "Sponsored by the Taxpayers of Manhattan"? More truthful, and more modest.

But less political, so it will of course never happen.

To acknowledge my journey to Machu Picchu today, I thought this would be an appropriate Kip Clip, and one that needs little comment from me. You are free to add your own.

Today I arrive in Aguas Calientes in Peru's "Sacred Valley." Tomorrow we venture out to Machu Picchu.

I have selected two Kip Clips appropriate for the destination. In the first, we get a reminder from the late Carl Sagan that radical social change, such as "the eradication of anti-gay bigotry," can and often does happen more rapidly than anyone envisions at the time. We also get a warning about what can and often does happen to a society when radical social change does not occur.

It did not go unnoticed in the blogosphere that Alberto Gonzales' announced resignation date — today — is also "Constitution Day," one of those innumerable, asinine warm-fuzzy-feeling designations by Congress and the President.

But even before Gonzales and Constitution Day 2007, this particular "holiday" was especially irksome to those who actually take the Constitution seriously.

This is now the third year that I have posted a version of this piece, "It Became Necessary to Shred the Constitution in Order to Teach It."

---

"In the summer of 1787, delegates convened in Philadelphia to create 'a more perfect Union' and craft the document that is the foundation of our country. With great diligence, they worked to develop a framework that would balance authority and inherent freedoms, Federal interests and State powers, individual rights and national unity. On September 17th of the same year, the delegates signed the Constitution of the United States."
--President George W. Bush, Proclamation, 21 August 2007

In mockery celebration of Constitution Day, I am reposting this piece, originally published on May 24, 2005 (see also this post).

---

This is wrong on so many levels:

The Education Department outlined Tuesday how it plans to enforce a little-known provision that Congress passed in 2004: Every school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

Schools can determine what kind of educational program they want, but they must hold one every year on the now-named "Constitution Day and Citizenship Day." And if Sept. 17 falls on a weekend or holiday, schools must schedule a program immediately before or after that date.

Historically, the federal government has avoided dictating what or when anything must be taught because those powers rest with the states under the 10th Amendment. The Education Department's Web site even underlines that point, saying matters such as the development of curricula and the setting of course requirements fall outside federal authority.
...
The federal law championed by [Senator Robert] Byrd also affects all federal agencies. They will have to train new employees about the Constitution during orientation and train all employees about the document every Sept. 17. The Office of Personnel Management is expected to post guidelines in those areas soon.

Some hasty stitches:

--We are talking about an intrusive federal law mandating that states introduce a specific curriculum extolling, among other constitutional provisions, the virtues of Tenth Amendment federalism. Does no politician see the irony in that?

--On the other hand, there's actually nothing in the Tenth Amendment or its jurisprudence declaring education as a "power reserved to the states." That's a convenient overlay that has been repeatedly paid lip service, but little else. No Child Left Behind was merely the last nail in the coffin burying the fiction of "leave the schools to the states."

--As for that "all federal agencies" provision, I'd be just as happy, if not more so, if federal employees actually did their jobs on September 17 rather than watched prepackaged videos about separation of powers or federalism. This is just another paid holiday for them.

--What if, as part of "Constitution Day," classrooms had debates about the Federal Marriage Amendment, or Roe v. Wade, or the constitutionality of capital punishment for crimes committed as minors, or of compulsory drug testing for high school students? I suspect a Bush Department of Education might have second thoughts about that kind of "Constitution Day."

--Two words: activist legislature. Okay, some more words: The Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling.

--What's so important about when the Constitution was adopted? Isn't when it was ratified (March 4, 1789) far more symbolic?

Class dismissed.

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POST SCRIPT: Your homework is to read the Constitution in its entirety, including the Bill of Rights and later Amendments. Every American should read it end-to-end at least once in his lifetime.

Time to clean out the aggregator —

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ITEM: The Senate has rejected the Administration's proposed cuts to Amtrak's obscene and economically nonsensical $1.4 billion subsidy. Because Amtrak enjoys "great support among lawmakers." Too bad it doesn't enjoy such support from travelers, who repeatedly and universally embrace other options. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: A trial court in New York State has upheld the recognition of same-sex marriages with respect to government employee pension benefits. As I pointed out in critiquing the state's highest court's decision denying flat-out marriage equality, New York has no DOMA or bigot amendment — and the court therefore had no basis not to authorize same-sex marriage, even putting aside the constitutional arguments. This recent decision reflects this common sense jurisprudential approach. (The case is Godfrey v. DiNapoli, argued again by the heroes of Lambda Legal.) Related post here.

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ITEM: Not an update, but many readers probably read elsewhere about Stephen Dunn, the anti-gay bigot in Massachusetts who flunked that state's bar exam and then sued the state over its inclusion of a question concerning same-sex marriage. Well, he has withdrawn the suit. His "lawyerly" logic: Since the next administration of the exam had no comparable question, the question is now moot, not only for him but for all similarly situatied bigots. The Massachsuetts bar, meanwhile, has of course stated unambiguously that it "maintains its right to test bar applicants on that same subject matter in future examinations." (Via Religion Clause.)

I've been meaning to designate Chris Leavins of cutewithchris.com as a Sunday Cute YouTuber for some time now, in a sort of Mobius Strip sort of inverse refraction theory (he posts cuties too — just not human ones).

Well, given that I'm traveling he gave me the perfect video to use.


My travails thus far have been before the flight, not during it. Go figure.

But wait, there's more! Since my blogging is light whilst I'm on vacation, here's a brief Bonus Sunday Cute YouTuber:


James Kotecki, d/b/a Emergency Cheese, is becoming an important cyber-pundit on YouTube. Keep an eye on him this election season.

Thinking about Larry Craig again, and the presidential race in general, I will admit that sometimes, every so often, I wonder whether I'm too cynical. Maybe, just maybe, not all politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

Then I watch House of Cards and the feeling quickly goes away (the men's restroom in this Kip Clip is strictly a coincidence):


Can you guess what Chief Whip Francis Urquhart meant by "this is just the start"?

If you listen to only one legal theory podcast in your entire life, then let it be this one:

Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago and Stanford's Hoover Institute (currently visiting at NYU) ... is known as one of the most articulate and prolific academic defenders of libertarian or classical liberal approaches to the law. In this episode, he discusses one of his current projects, a volume to be published by Basic Books on the classical liberal history of the constitution.

From Slaughterhouse to Wickard to Kelo, Epstein holds no punches in describing just how insanely anti-liberty our Supreme Court jurisprudence has become and how both liberal and conservative jurists are betraying the rights-based principles of the Constitution. Incredible stuff.

Download and listen to it. Now.

The Larry Craig scandal caused a deluge of debate regarding the propriety of sting operations related to public sexual lewdness. Did Craig even commit a crime? (I say yes.)

For whatever bizarre reason, Craig initially had no lawyer, not even Eugene Young of The Practice:


Was Craig entitled to "the presumption of dignity"? "In the United States of America"? Discuss.

Since I'm vacationing, here's an apropos post ("apropost"?).

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A favorite maneuver of local governments, especially tourist destinations such as New York, is to "tax the visitor." My favorite example in the Big Apple is our obscene hotel tax, currently at 13.75% + $2-4/room-day.

A hotel tax is by definition overwhelmingly, almost exclusively, paid by visitors. Point conceded — for now. But what about other "visitor taxes" — such as a rental car tax?

Members of Flexcar, the national car-sharing company that started in Seattle, will now have to pay the state and King County car rental tax, according to the state Department of Revenue.
...
Flexcar spokesman John Williams said the company started operating in Seattle in 2000 and this is the first time the car-rental-tax issue has come up. "Our issue is that Flexcar is a car-sharing company, not a car rental company," he said. "Over 90 percent of the users are Seattle residents."

The purpose of a tax is to raise revenue. Therefore, the purpose of a tax collector is to apply the tax as expansively as possible. This is not new news. The notion that "locals will be spared" always comes with the footnote, "until we decide otherwise."

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As for conceding the point that "a hotel tax is by definition overwhelmingly, almost exclusively, paid by visitors," that is only true superficially and partially.

Suppose there were no hotel tax at all. The tourist would have that much more money in her pocket whilst visiting. Perhaps she would go to one more show. Maybe she would spend more in restaurants, shops and clubs. Maybe she should stay an extra day, making the hotel itself better off. Perhaps her friend back home — who couldn't afford the hotel with the tax — would end up tagging along. And so on.

The visitor remits the tax, but does not necessarily pay all of it. A tax on tourists is passed on, at least in part, to the businesses that cater to those visitors. And, derivatively, to the employees of and investors in those businesses.

A "visitor tax" would only make perfect sense if visitors brought negative externalities with them — if the visitor tax were a Pigou tax. But that can't be right: travel destinations like tourists, don't they?

Bottom line: Another economic absurdity peddled as "smart policy" to dumb residents, voters and taxpayers. Plus ça change...

(Via Tax Policy Blog.)

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On a tangent:

FlexCar is a tax-paying company, unlike its competitors ZipCar and City Carshare which number among the annoyingly large group of companies that provide commercial services but have somehow persuaded the government to qualify them as nonprofit organizations that don't have to pay income tax.

You can probably guess which faux non-profit company evokes my ire the most.

I recently responded thusly to a comment:

I realize that some more vocal libertarians feel a desperate need to loathe and mistrust police the way that I loathe and mistrust politicians. The difference is that my worldview, unlike theirs, is grounded in consistent empirical evidence, not paranoia and stray anecdotes.

So for our first Kip Clip, we turn to my favorite fictional cop, Captain Frank Furillo of Hill Street Blues:


Have ordinary beat cops become "just another vicious street gang"? Or is the problem from higher up the chain of command — perhaps all the way to the civilian leadership (i.e., politicians and bureaucrats)? Who are the true "bunch of nightriders"?

(Note also the relevance of "there are enough guns out there" to the news that the District Of Columbia has asked the Supreme Court to review the broad question of gun control and Second Amendment rights.)

I'm off to Peru for eight days.

Besides the fact that I'll actually be sightseeing, I've been warned by the tour coordinator* that Internet access will be spotty at best. So not only will there be little same-day blogging, but replies to comments and emails will be delayed.

I have a few long-shelf-life posts in the can and set to post automatically while I'm away. And for your in-flight entertainment I have selected a variety of brief video snippets to post here — one for each day I'm away. I call them "Kip Clips." Most are inspired by current events and are meant to spark a discussion in the comments. Please feel free to do so.

As a reminder, a Kip Clip might look like this:


or like this:


or like this:


Regular blogging resumes on or about September 24th.

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*Did I mention that it's a gay tour group? My first one. I can envision quite some lively dinner conversations taking place...

--Is sending spy planes equipped with heat-sensing cameras over residential neighborhoods to identify, and make public, "energy wasteful" homes a legitimate function of government? Stated differently: Is there a right to be wasteful? Is there a right to be wasteful privately? (Via TechDirt.)

--Detained at the airport for three peaches?

--One for my Jewish readers this Rosh Hashanah: "Torah timeshare"?

--Is refusing to authorize gynecomastia correction for a 13-year old boy "child abuse"? Would your answer change if the refuser were Medicaid? (Via Kevin, M.D.)

--A classic question from the tort archives: Is falsely being called gay — monogamously gay, in fact — actionable defamation?

Kay Hymowitz requires almost 3,600 words to try to debunk describe libertarianism.

I can do it in three:

Freedom ... with responsibility.
Any and every attempt I've ever seen to "refute" libertarianism (including Hymowitz') inevitably relies -- directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, innocently or disingenuously -- on omitting or wildly distorting the last two words.

It's quite simple really: Libertarianism is not anarchism.

Two quick examples from Hymowitz:

On the one hand, libertarians make a fetish of freedom; it is their totalizing goal [sic!]. On the other hand, libertarians depend on the family -- an institution that, in crucial respects, is unfree -- to produce the sort of people best suited to life in a free-market system (not to mention future members of their own movement). The complex, dynamic economy that libertarians have done so much to expand needs highly advanced human capital -- that is, individuals of great moral, cognitive and emotional sophistication. Reams of social-science research prove that these qualities are best produced in traditional families with married parents.

"Freedom" is not the "totalizing goal" of libertarians; "freedom ... with responsibility" is. I don't know a single libertarian who would, for example, suggest that a person has a right to bring a child into the world and then abandon, neglect or abuse that child. We may disagree on the precise definitions of "abandon," "neglect" or "abuse," but not on the applicability of the words themselves.

Meanwhile, the idea that a family is an "unfree institution" requires a totally upside-down definition of "unfree" (not to mention "institution"). People are "unfree" regarding the decision to get married in the first place? People are "unfree" to decide whether and when to have children? Of course not (thanks, let's recall, to "activist judges" subverting "the will of the majority" by "inventing" new rights). People -- parents -- are only "unfree" to violate their children's rights, in the same way and for the same reasons that they are "unfree" to violate their neighbors' rights. This is not a difficult concept.

[Incidentally, you know full well that in polite company Hymowitz would include the word "heterosexual" in the phrase "traditional families with married parents." Indeed, she already has.]

Second:

The civil-rights movement is an instructive case. ... [I]t is a perfect example of the inability of libertarians to find a political and moral framework suitable to the big questions of American public life. If people ought to be able to do what they want, then certainly hating blacks -- either by oneself or in the company of like-minded souls -- is nobody else's business, including the federal government's. To the extent that libertarians are remembered at all for their role in the civil-rights era, it is not for marching on Selma but rather for their enthusiastic support of states' rights and the freedom of white racists to associate with one another.

Flat-out incorrect, both as matters of history and of libertarian theory. Libertarians do not ever, under any circumstances, support "states' rights." States have no rights; only individuals have rights. States have powers -- powers that they can and do abuse. (This is, it bears repeating, precisely why Ron Paul, contrary to Hymowitz' uninformed pronouncement, is not a libertarian.)

As for the civil rights movement, it is true that asymptotic libertarianism would allow private individuals to run private businesses as they see fit, including with racist policies offensive to vast swaths of the population (and, therefore, the economy). However, asymptotic libertarianism would also demand that such racist business owners not collude with local governments to catalyze their racism via government coercion under the illegitimate trappings of "states rights" (as were omnipresent throughout the Jim Crow South). And, of course, asymptotic libertarians would themselves not be racist. The two "isms" are mutually exclusive: one simply cannot be a truly libertarian racist (or sexist or nationalist or heterosexist); it is a facial absurdity.

(Incidentally, the word "libertarian" as currently used and understood wasn't even in widespread use in the early 1960s; the big-L Libertarian Party wasn't founded until 1971. It's a bit silly to try to assign a "civil rights original sin" to a movement that hadn't even been founded yet. Stated differently, Strom Thurmond was no libertarian then and is no hero to libertarians today.)

Bottom line: Resorting to anti-libertarian solutions in order to correct anti-libertarian problems is hardly a legitimate data point against libertarianism. It would be akin to suggesting that using chemotherapy to treat cancer somehow "disproves" optometry.

(The rest of the Hymowitz piece is an overcooked stew of sweeping generalizations, red herrings, straw men, guilt-by-associations and flat-out historical inaccuracies. See how many you can find.)

WashingtonWatch.com has released its analysis of the FY2008 federal appropriation bills (none of which have yet been passed, incidentally, despite the fact that FY2008 begins October 1, 2007 — less than three weeks from today).

The twelve pending appropriations bills amount to more than $15,000 in spending per U.S. family. At this late date, Congress is likely to pass these important bills hurriedly and without careful consideration, perhaps in an omnibus package.

Of course, "spending per family" is crude scalpel with which to dissect a two trillion dollar federal budget (give or take). First and foremost, a better metric would be "spending per taxpayer," since about half of all households pay no federal income tax in the first place.

But more intriguing is this pair of numbers:

Defense - Costs: $4,625.93

Labor/HHS/Education - Costs: $5,861.36

The overwhelming bulk of the HHS budget is of course Medicare and Medicaid. Our federal "socialized medicine lite" system is already bigger than the Pentagon. Which doesn't stop supposedly "enlightened" liberals from insisting that we "don't have our priorities straight" or some equivalent form of gobbledygook.

So remind me again how "the government isn't spending enough on health care"?

To review: In the millions, perhaps billions of instances where consumers have popped microwave popcorn, exactly one person has developed a health problem doing so. And he, for whatever reason, made a habit of — I am not making this up — inhaling the fumes directly from the popped bags. The only other purported risk of microwave popcorn is occupational: some workers have apparently been overexposed to a harmful chemical. That is unfortunate, and they deserve to be compensated accordingly.

All of which, meanwhile, ought have nothing to do with Ted Kennedy:

Senator Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said, "Recent reports that both manufacturing workers and consumers are suffering from 'popcorn lung' disease make clear that exposure to the chemical diacetyl in artificial flavoring is a serious health risk.

Actually no, it demonstrates the exact opposite: The fact that only one moron — who literally breathed popcorn — got sick, while every other consumer, in the entire history of microwave popcorn, is just doing fine, thank you very much, means precisely that there is no serious health risk from eating microwave popcorn.

If one imbecile decides to regularly crack open ball point pens and drink the ink, does that mean that pens pose a "serious health risk"? Of course not. Given enough opportunities and a sufficiently low IQ, anything can be a "health risk." But not a "serious" one, and not one worthy of the chest-thumping indignation of an activist senator, who preposterously describes his new-found popcorn crisis to be — his word — "shocking."

Whatever.

I suppose we will inevitably see a "Warning: Do Not Inhale Fumes!" label on popcorn bags, in the spirit of "Caution: Contents Hot!" on our coffee cups. And if that's as far as it goes, then the impact will of course be minimal.

But when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're an activist legislator, everything looks like a problem to be investigated, reported on and, ultimately, legislated about.

(Via TortsProf.)

Sickening:

The suicide bomber behind last week's attack at an Algerian naval barracks which killed 30 was a 15-year-old student, according to a statement from Al-Qaeda's self-styled offshoot quoted Monday.

Nabil Belkacemi, who carried out Saturday's blast at the port town of Dellys, 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Algiers, had assumed the nom-de-guerre Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after a Jordanian Al-Qaeda leader killed by US forces in Iraq, the Al-Watan daily said, quoting the statement.
...
"He spent the night in the mosque and then he disappeared," [his mother] told Al-Watan. "He called me on a cellphone and asked me not to worry and said he would be back soon. It was ten days before a critical school exam," she said.

But in another telephone call, he said: "Mother, I am scared, I don't know where I am. I would like to escape but I am scared they (the Islamists) will kill you. They told me that if I ever escaped, they would take it out on you.

So we have authoritarian Christians raping children and authoritarian Muslims blowing them up (and not for the first time). And about the only moral premise they seem to share is an insistence that homosexuality is a sin — oh, and a threat to children.

Madness. Sheer madness.

I am on record as opposing jury nullification. It subverts the rule of law, usually requires violating a sworn oath, and can just as easily be used for ill as well as for good.

Having said that, I am now crafting an exception:

On any and all criminal juries on which I may ever be empaneled, if any fellow juror ever quotes the Bible or any other religious text as a substantive component of deliberations, then I will summarily vote "not guilty" without any further consideration of either the facts or the law.

However, since I don't live in the Ninth Circuit, I probably won't have to invoke such a nuclear option:

In a surprising en banc ruling, the Ninth Circuit has rejected a death row inmate's claims that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated when the jury foreman researched and shared Biblical quotes about capital punishment during sentencing deliberations. The district court granted habeas relief, finding that the notes were extrinsic materials that had swayed the jury to vote for the death penalty.
...
By a vote of 9-6, the Court rejects the petitioner's claims of jury bias. The majority holds that the juror's notes were not improper extrinsic evidence but simply "notions of general currency that inform the moral judgment" of juries in capital cases.

So be it. They have their "notions of general currency that inform moral judgment" -- and I have mine.

The case is Fields v. Brown, No. 00-99005 (9th Cir., Sept. 10, 2007) (PDF - 99 pages).

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Incidentally, it has been noted elsewhere that this case is now among the longest running death row appeals in American history -- 28 years and counting. Discuss.

Some Los Angeles politicians want to super-size the nanny state by making people walk an extra block or two for their double-cheeseburgers:

Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants — a tactic that could be called health zoning.
...
A [Los Angeles] Times analysis of the city's roughly 8,200 restaurants found that South Los Angeles has the highest concentration of fast-food eateries. Per capita, the area has fewer eating establishments of any kind than the Westside, downtown or Hollywood, and about the same as the Valley. But a much higher percentage of those are fast-food chains. South L.A. also has far fewer grocery stores.

Put aside the pesky fact that competent consenting adults have — or ought have — a fundamental constitutional due process right to own property and to operate (or patronize) otherwise lawful businesses as they see fit. Put aside the fact that a random, arbitrary and capricious limit on an industry is a windfall for those who already own and operate the businesses within that industry — at the expense, incidentally, of those who might want to enter the business later (including those who intend to compete by improving service via offering lower prices, higher quality or wider variety). Great government-granted barrier to entry — if you can get it.

No, here is where the jaw-dropping stupidity of local hack politicians is the clearest:

"The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there," said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan.

Behold the thought processes of this typical activist legislator: The reason there are so many fast food restaurants is because people don't want them.

You might want to read that last sentence again.

Could you imagine someone seriously suggesting that Starbucks does so well because people hate coffee, or that iPod sales are driven by people's dislike of music? You can almost hear the crickets chirping inside the dark void where Councilwoman Perry's intellect is supposed to be.

And remind me again why judges should defer to the "rational bases" of people like this?

Meanwhile:

"While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle," said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.

The "Center for Food & Justice"? What's next — "Amnesty International House of Pancakes"?

The line between reality and The Onion continues to blur.

--Which Republican presidential candidate was seen cavorting in a gay bar in 2002?

--Is "finding dark energy" a proper function of government?

--Pornographic radio?

--Should the IRS be allowed to subpoena "the names of people who acquired materials from a Web site on how to defeat the tax laws"? Does merely "acquiring materials" constitute "tax fraud" or even "attempted tax fraud"?

--How should one approach riding the New York City subway? This way or this way?

I mostly gave up blogging about the Sex Offender Mania for lack of time and no lack of other blawgs covering the topic in greater detail than I ever could.

Nevertheless, here are some updates:

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ITEM: Yet another study, this one in Tennessee, debunks the myth that sex offenders are "incurable recidivists" and indeed shows that they may actually be less likely to repeat-offend. This myth, along with the refusal to acknowledge that most child molesters know the child and are not strangers, are the main justifications for the registry and residency restriction mania that is sweeping the country. Previous post here. (Via Sex Crimes Blog.)

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ITEM: Meanwhile: "More than 2,700 recently paroled sex offenders in California have been told they have to move because they are violating a new law that bars them from living near schools and parks." Sweeping residency restrictions can easily become de facto banishment, which is a constitutionally suspect penalty.

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ITEM: A federal judge in North Carolina has struck down the civil commitment provision of the federal Adam Walsh Act as a violation of the commerce clause (i.e., in the spirit of U.S. v. Lopez and U.S. v. Morrison). That's a bold approach given recent retrenchments away from such jurisprudence (e.g., Gonzales v. Raich). The case is U.S. v. Comstock, No. 5:06-HC-02195-BR (E.D.N.C. Sept. 7, 2007) (PDF - 59 pages). Coverage at Sentencing Law & Policy and Sex Crimes Blawg.

Time to clean out the aggregator —

ITEM: Another nine-digit settlement by the Roman Catholic Church to settle 144 sex abuse claims, this time in San Diego. Has there ever been a more hypocritical institution than the Vatican? Previous post here.

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ITEM: The District of Columbia has formally requested that the Supreme Court review the overturning of its draconian handgun ban. The Court is widely expected to take the case, thereby revisiting for the first time in 68 years the question of what the Second Amendment means or ought to mean. Previous posts here.

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ITEM: A federal judge has struck down recent revisions to the PATRIOT Act that vastly expand the power of the FBI to issue and implement so-called "National Security Letters." At issue was not whether the government could issue NSLs, but whether it is exempt from having to justify (i.e., to a court) keeping an NSL secret after the fact. Previous post here.

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ITEM: A federal judge upheld a controversial voter ID law in Georgia. Various versions of the law have been bouncing around in the courts for a few years now, and this decision will likely be appealed too. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: An American female journalist held hostage by the Iranian government, under the guise of committing "crimes against national security," has been allowed to leave the country after supporters paid a ransom cloaked as "bail." Four other American citizens remain imprisoned or detained. Previous post here.

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ITEM: The British government is considering regulating "violent" video games. Since there is no First Amendment in the U.K., they might very well succeed in imposing censorship — "for the children." Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, having dug himself and his people into a hole of starvation and misery after imposing wage and price controls, has now filled the pit with excrement by devaluing the currency. The IMF warns that inflation in Zimbabwe "could reach 100,000% by the end of the year." Mugabe has been devaluing the lives of his people far worse and for far longer. Recent post here.

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ITEM: This week's "socialized medicine rations too" anecdote comes (as it often does) from Australia, where politicians and bureaucrats decided that there is a "right to an ambulance." So they made ambulance rides "free." Which of course means that they actually levied a special tax to fund "free" ambulance rides. Meanwhile, now that ambulance rides are "free" (i.e., paid for by someone else), people have overused ambulances ("We go to things like stubbed toes. People have got an appointment at the doctor's — they want the ambulance because it is covered under this levy.") Socialized medicine archive here.

So my YouTube page is doing adequately. People are subscribing; people are watching "Kip Does McLaughlin." So far so good.

But as with blogging, the best way to improve your vlogging is to watch what other people do and learn from them.

Here, for example, is a lad with some YouTubing advice:


Like dabestdude, many YouTubers encounter haters, and then blog responses to them. Maybe I'll post a string of "Cute YouTube Responses to Haters" someday. Stay tuned...

A European man who has never fathered a child and who has never wanted for anything his entire life is blasting Europe for not having enough children and for "wanting everything for themselves."

Stated differently, the Roman Catholic Church has gone from being the single most evil institution in human history to the single most asinine.

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Meanwhile.

Wired Science Blog laments international chest-thumping while the North Pole melts:

A full ocean-to-ocean passage can now be made through the waters above Canada, and countries are jockeying for ownership of undersea oil and gas reserves. Seeing as how their claims revolve around such flimsy cases as "showing that a chain of underwater mountains that runs across the region are connected to their respective continental shelves," here's an idea: how about assigning ownership of those reserves to all of humanity, and kicking back the proceeds to green energy research, subsidies for food prices sent soaring by climate change, and fighting new diseases in freshly tropical places? And then shake out some leftovers for people who've been left homeless by rising seas, and local Inuit whose lifestyles are being radically changed and are stuck giving guided tours to hunters.

I take no position — at least not in this post — on arctic melting, global warming, what's really causing "agflation" and what, if anything, the Inuit people deserve for their modernity-inflicted woes (perhaps a Bridge to Nowhere?).

I do, however, take a position on this:

--Which nation led the charge to declare Outer Space, especially the Moon, "off limits" for anything other than peaceful, globally oriented pursuits?

--Which nation got that idea from having led the charge, just a few years earlier, to declare Antarctica "off limits" for anything other than peaceful, globally oriented pursuits?

Hint: It's a nation that is abstaining from making any creative (i.e., dubious) claims to the newly accessible resources of the Arctic. It's also a nation supposedly full of "greedy capitalist bastards."

Go figure.

And not just his home state -- he also hates New York and California, among others:

Mitt Romney is set to propose eliminating taxes on most investment earnings for families that make under $200,000 a year, the first in what his campaign says will be a series of announcements throughout the fall on the specifics of his tax policy.

The plan entails eliminating taxes on interest earnings, capital gains and dividend income for households that earn less than that income threshold, said Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for the campaign. Mr. Romney plans to promote the proposal Friday while campaigning in northern New Hampshire.

If you're having trouble following my reasoning, let me explain in three simple words: tax-free municipal bonds.

As you may know, the Internal Revenue Code excludes from taxable income, for most taxpayers in most circumstances, the interest from most bonds issued by state & local governments. As a result, those states can offer a lower interest rate and still be competitive with corporate bonds on an "after-tax" basis. This is no great secret.

But if the differential (i.e., preferential) tax treatment of municipal bonds were eliminated, then states, cities, counties, school districts, bridge & tunnel authorities, etc., would suddenly have to compete, on a level playing field, with ExxonMobil, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, etc. Local governments would suddenly have to offer much higher interest rates on their debt, which in turn would mean higher interest expense in their budgets, which would then of course mean higher taxes or budget deficits on state & local taxpayers.

Note also that anyone who already owns a municipal bond would suddenly see the value of the tax benefit wiped out, via a precipitous and permanent decline in the price of the bond.

So I ask again: Why does Mitt Romney hate Massachusetts -- and Massachusetts taxpayers?

Of course, the real problem isn't that Mitt Romney hates Massachusetts (he may very well hate his home state -- that's another blogpost). The real problem is that changing the tax code post facto has ripple effects (sometimes "aftershocks" would be a better descriptor).

Innocent people make decisions, make long-term plans, based on the current tax code, and changing that tax code can be not only disruptive, but downright calamitous to people who were hardly "gaming the system." They were merely responding to the very incentives that the politicians crafted in the first place (e.g., to invest in municipal bonds rather than corporate bonds). Government tries to manipulate behavior (i.e., control people's lives) via the tax code, succeeds, then -- presto! -- changes the rules. Thus ever with taxes.

All in the name of "fairness" or "equality" or "growth" (or, worst of all, "vote for me").

It's quite simple really: The purpose of tax policy should be to raise revenue -- and nothing else. It is an abomination to liberty, it is central planner hubris, to use taxes to control people -- to reward them for "correct" behavior and punish them for "incorrect" behavior.

Because, just like in a courtroom, sometimes the innocent get punished too.

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Incidentally, states already have enough to worry about regarding their fiscal situations. The Romney plan would only exacerbate the problem.

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For Discussion: I am on record as opposing eliminating the deductibility of home mortgage interest, on much the same "detrimental reliance" argument I'm making here. If I were crafting an income tax from scratch, I would vehemently oppose such a deduction. But now that we have it, it would be manifestly unfair to remove it. Am I correct, or is the proper policy "too bad so sad"?

"In Britain, the police don't have guns, and the criminals don't have guns. So if you commit a crime, the police yell, 'Stop or I'll ... yell Stop again!"
--Robin Williams

Actually, now it seems that Britain — like many communities in America, will increasingly rely on "Stop or I'll tase!"

Officers in 10 forces, who are not firearms specialists, will be able to use the 50,000-volt Tasers to protect themselves or the public.
...
Until now, about 3,000 Tasers had been issued in Britain, but only to members of police firearms units.
...
The Home Office said officers would not be routinely equipped with Tasers. Instead, there would be a selection procedure and only specially trained officers who completed a training programme approved by the Association of Chief Police Officers would be issued with one.

Meanwhile, Taser is now selling "personal tasers" geared specifically for women (cost: $350; color options: five, including pink).

All this occurring, meanwhile, as accounts of "taser abuse" accumulate:

--Hospital security guard tasers a man holding a newborn.

--Campus police taser a UCLA student who refuses to show ID in the school library. (Video.)

--Tasering a dog to death during a drug bust.

--Several recent accounts of "death by taser."

A big part of the problem with tasers is that they were originally marketed as a substitute for guns, but have become a substitute for exertion. Tasers are, increasingly, not used to save lives but to merely make cops' lives easier.

If the rule were: "Never use your taser unless you would also be willing to shoot your firearm..." then I can't imagine too many incidents of "taser brutality." (See, e.g., here.) But instead the rule seems too often to be: "Use your taser whenever you perceive a risk to yourself." Or, worse: "Use you taser whenever you deem it convenient."

That simply cannot be right — not to the tune of 50,000 volts.

So the question becomes: Is the taser debate just a typical, predictable and (hopefully) temporary "feeling out" process that will eventually settle into a widely accepted consensus on proper use? Or is the corruptibility of law enforcement, like the corruptibility of politics, so endemic and ubiquitous as to make the taser a losing proposition from the outset?

(Via Danger Room.)

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As for private tasers, I think there is unarguably a right for competent adults to possess them. The rules and standards for their use should be no different than any paradigm for the private use of force: both a proper justification (e.g., self-defense, defense of others) and an objective standard of reasonableness (i.e., non-negligence) should be required, otherwise the conduct should be both a crime and a tort.

Now available at the YouTube Video Blog.

August 31, 2007 episode: Special topic: Bloggers and the rise of "new media"!

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"Kip Does McLaughlin" will be on hiatus until the week of 24 September 2007.

--Is "the last letter written by Davy Crockett" a legitimate public good?

--Should airlines show R-rated movies on flights with children on board?

--The Google Gate Bridge?

--Circuit training for tots? (Via Junkfood Science.)

--A special guest question: "Why are so many nerds libertarians?"

Apparently the dictionary is still on holiday:

California's senate passed a bill last week that would protect people from having RFID tags forcibly implanted beneath their skin. All that's left is for Governor Schwarzenegger to sign it, and then the state will become the third to pass such legislation (after Wisconsin and North Dakota).

The motivations for the bill were to prevent people from being forcibly tracked and to protect them from identity theft should someone electronically sniff data stored on the tag.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

It's quite simple really: Only the government (or an armed thug) can "force" anyone to do anything. No employer can ever "force" an employee to accept any rule, policy or prerequisite.

An employer can only require that employees, or prospective employees, abide by certain rules as a condition of employment. If an employee does not wish to abide by those policies, then she is free to quit. If a prospective employee does not wish to abide by those policies, then he is free not to work for that employer in the first place.

Bottom line: "Force" is impossible in any voluntary employment -- indeed in any voluntary contract.

An employer cannot "force" employees to accept RFID implants any more than it can "force" them to wear clothes to work. It can only extend an offer of employment, which people can accept or reject.

Meanwhile, if a company wants to "tag" its workers, then the company (hopefully) has a reason -- such a chip-implanting scheme would not be costless, hence there must be some benefit. At least a portion of that benefit could be expected to accrue to the workers themselves, through higher wages or more workers being hired overall.

In any case, the notion that restricting the ability of competent consenting adults to enter into voluntary private employment contracts actually makes them better off is an ill-conceived anachronism that was illegitimate and counterproductive even in the New Deal that spawned it, let alone in post-industrial Twenty-First Century America.

To review: There are only three "dials to fiddle with" in addressing the Social Security crisis:

1. cut / curtail benefits


2. raise the retirement age


3. raise taxes

There are no other approaches, no other options. This is more than basic economics — it's basic metaphysics.

Armed with that:

Hillary Rodham Clinton promised retirees that if elected president she will not cut Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age or privatize the taxpayer-funded system.

Okay, no benefit cuts and no increase in the retirement age. So she's promising to raise your taxes — because she cares about you.

Just one problem: she doesn't mention taxes either:

Clinton said instead she will protect the program through fiscal responsibility and criticized President Bush's leadership on the issue.

"Fiscal responsibility"? What kind of spineless blather is that?

no benefit cuts + no raised retirement age = tax increases
This is the moral defective who dares to claim that she represents "strong leadership"? But she's too much the coward to actually say what she means. To her the word "tax" is the political mouse that sends her shrieking atop the kitchen table like a caricature 1950s housewife?

At least the first President Bush, when he lied about "no new taxes," actually used the word "taxes" as part of the lie. He gave us "Read my lips..." — Clinton gives us "Read between the lines..."

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There is of course another possibility: Clinton simply thinks her supporters are all morons. Hey — she's the one implying it. So scowl at her, not me. On the other hand, I reiterate my befuddlement toward those who somehow conclude that "Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton" is the solution rather than the problem.

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Another hasty stitch:

"This is the most successful domestic program in the history of the United States," Clinton said to applause from seniors gathered in Washington to push their policy agenda.

Liar.

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One more, via the New York Times' blog, The Caucus:

"We need to get back to the fiscal responsibility of the 1990's when we weren't raiding the social security trust fund"

Given that Congress will certainly stay under Democratic control after the election, anyone who yearns for "the fiscal responsibility of the 1990's" must, by definition, vote Republican in 2008, since it was gridlock, not the supposed budgetary genius of Bill Clinton, that kept government spending in check from 1995-2000.

Time to clean out deodorize the aggregator --

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ITEM: Burma's military dictators have concluded their constitutional convention, purportedly designed to begin the process of devolving power back to democratically elected civilians. The convention took fourteen years -- and resulted not in a constitution, but in an "outline" for what a future constitution might look like. Oh, and it was drafted by 1,000 delegates hand-picked by the junta. Not exactly Madison & Hamilton, is it? Previous posts here.

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ITEM: Speaking of "democratically elected civilians," dictator Hugo Chavez now says that he intends to remain "democratically elected" through 2027 in order "to establish a socialist economic model in Venezuela." Assuming he doesn't wreck the oil fields before then. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: As I noted over the weekend, Zimbabwe's bloodthirsty dictator, Robert Mugabe, and his henchmen have relaxed -- slightly -- some of the crippling wage and price controls that have paralyzed that country's economy and plunged its people to the brink of anarchy. The laws of economics are not subject to repeal by any legislature or dictator. Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Can't have a post like this without including China:

China's top legislature has adopted a measure allowing the government to seize private homes on state-owned land, as long as owners are compensated and properly resettled, state media reported Thursday.

Government seizure of private property has been a controversial issue as China prepares to host the Beijing Olympics next year. Some activists has accused Beijing of forcing more than 1 million people from their homes to make way for new sports venues.

"Private homes on state-owned land"? What does that even mean? Such is the farce of "market-based Communism." Then again, are we much better? Previous post here.

I'm too drained after my last post to give John Edwards' outrageous, terrifying and patently un-American (un-Two-American?) proposal to establish health care totalitarianism — in the form of compulsory preventive care — the proper critique that it so obviously deserves.

So I will settle for posting this comment I left on another blog:

There is a fundamental and self-apparent difference between Medicaid and universal health care: Medicaid is not universal — it is welfare. It is those who don't benefit from it paying for those who do. So there is of course a basis — perhaps a heartless one, but a basis nonetheless — for attaching strings to Medicaid eligibility that do not carry over to bona fide universal health care (including Medicare).

Socialized medicine (including Medicare) is different from Medicaid: it is taxing people to fund a compulsory universal scheme, then saying that because the health care is "free" (!), the government can attach strings on the very people who (involuntarily) paid for the coverage in the first place.

So the government takes my money, and then demands that I conform to its (i.e., politicians' and bureaucrats') standards of "correct" lifestyle choices in order to get my money back. All in the name of establishing a "compassionate" and "enlightened" paradigm.

This is what I have previously dubbed "The Krugman Lie."

The era of Big Government is what?

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More thoughts from Liberty Papers, PoliBlog, Cato@Liberty.

You can get the news summary regarding the trial court decision invalidating Iowa's DOMA statute (it is not a state constitutional amendment) via the heroes at Lambda Legal.

Here, meanwhile, are my hasty stitches:

--The first ten pages of the 63-page decision are a discussion of, mostly, whether certain expert witnesses should have been allowed to offer testimony. One "expert" opponent of gay marriage

specifically eschews empirical research and methods of logical reasoning in favor of "moral intuition." She has no training in empirical research and admits having no knowledge of existing social science research relevant to this case.

Another "expert" opponent "has no expertise relating to child development nor has he conducted any empirical research concerning same." Of course, gays are very familiar with such "experts" who omit, falsify, distort or otherwise "eschew" reality-based evidence regarding gay individuals, couples and families. The judge rightly rules that such "experts" have nothing to offer in a law- and rights-based analysis of the same-sex marriage debate and excludes their testimony.

--The next part of the decision discusses what issues of fact are and are not challenged by the parties. The interesting part here is that the judge does not allow the government to simply "guess" the way that, e.g., the New York high court allowed the opponents of gay marriage to guess about the nature of gay coupling. A sample:

Defendant and his authorities strive to make the point that same-sex couples do not procreate by accident. ... On the other hand, heterosexual couples may procreate and frequently do procreate without forethought or planning, which gives rise to the purported governmental interest in encouraging heterosexual couples to procreate, i.e., within the context of a stable, committed relationship — marriage.

Or, as I recently phrased it with respect to the New York case:

Translation: The Legislature can guess that straight couples need to be bribed into getting married in a way that gays need not be (don't worry — no one else understands it either).

This time, however, the judge does what judges are supposed to do: demand evidence, demand proof:

Because [a government "expert"] admittedly is unable to evaluate current social science regarding gay and lesbian parenting generally or critique the methodology upon which that science is based, [he] apparently is not commenting upon ... how children do by various measures when reared by heterosexual couples as opposed to same-sex couples[.]

In other words, there is (contrary to lying bigots) no evidence whatsoever that straight couples make better parents than gay couples, and this judge is not going to let the government pretend otherwise.

--Next up is a detailed discussion of the statute in question (Iowa Code §595.2) and how the current litigation came about. The judge notes that Iowa has no "separate but equal" or even "separate but unequal" alternative legal recognition such as civil unions or domestic partnerships (indeed, Iowa has no statewide legal protections for gays in any form or context, except hate crimes).

The ruling discusses the specific legal harms suffered by the six couples and their minor children. It notes that the case is arising solely under Iowa law and the Iowa Constitution (i.e., no "activist" federal judges will be involved) — this is almost always the case with such litigation. The judge notes that not all the legal benefits of marriage can be "replicated by contract" (and to the extent they can be, it is costly to do so).

The ruling notes — not decrees, but simply notes — that "Homosexuality is a normal expression of human sexuality." Someone tell Larry Craig — or Justice Scalia. Further down: "Being gay or lesbian poses no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy and productive life." If we're miserable, it's because you make us so.

Next the judge looks beyond the six couples to Iowa's gay community generally: 5,800 same-sex couples based on census data — more than one-third raising minor children. The judge reiterates:

Social science literature demonstrates that children who are reared by a married mother and father have more positive outcomes[.] ... However, same-sex couples are not included amongst the "other adequately studied family structures[.]" (Emphasis in original.)

The bigot talking point that "children do best with a mom and dad" is not the same as "children do best with straight parents." All else is willful falsehood.

The judge moves on to debunk, quite indignantly, another bigot talking point: that "traditional marriage" has existed unchanged for 5,000 years (or whatever duration the bigots like to imagine). He notes that Iowa law originally acknowledged coverture (cf., this post), that Iowa was the third state in the union to repeal its anti-miscegenation law and the second to institute no-fault divorce.

This part of the decision concludes with an acknowledgement of the persistence of anti-gay discrimination, both in marriage and generally, and notes — this is very important — the "relative political powerlessness of the gay community." Footnote Four lives again.

--The actual legal analysis is relatively short, less than 20 pages. The bullet points:

• The Iowa Constitution's due process and equal protection clauses are at least as expansive as the Fourteenth Amendment's.



• Marriage is a fundamental right, therefore strict scrutiny applies to any "intrusive means" used to curtail it. Iowa law in no way contradicts Zablocki v. Redhail, which reiterated that "Loving was not just about race."



• Iowa law recognizes that due process rights evolve over time. You will find no cop-out "see Glucksberg" references in this opinion.



• Strict scrutiny requires a "compelling state interest." The government identifies five purported interests for banning gay marriage:

  1. promoting procreation
  2. promoting child-rearing by heterosexual couples
  3. promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships
  4. conservation of state and private resources
  5. defending traditional marriage

  The judge first rules that these interests, whether legitimate or not, are simply not compelling state interests, hence the state's DOMA statute fails strict scrutiny and violates the state constitution's due process clause.



• Later in the opinion (I'm bouncing around a bit), the judge reviews the ban under the lower rational basis standard: is the discriminatory regime rationally related to a legitimate state interest? The judge finds that all but the last are indeed legitimate state interests (more on that later), but none are compelling state interests for the purposes of strict scrutiny review. I would have liked to have seen a reference to Romer v. Evans in dismissing "defending traditional marriage" as an illegitimate interest. Oh well.



• The judge then dismisses the children as plaintiffs. Bottom line: Although there may be some "derivative" claim (the judge's term) not to be deemed an illegitimate child (i.e., since children of gay parents are "out of wedlock"), this lawsuit is not the forum to enforce that right.



• The court then moves on to the equal protection claim. The key point here is stunning: The judge embraces an argument that most courts have insolently rejected: the common sense tautology that saying "a man can marry a woman but not a man" and "a woman can marry a man but not a woman" is gender-based discrimination and not just sexual orientation discrimination. As such, even if the Iowa DOMA does not warrant "strict scrutiny" under due process / fundamental rights analysis, it still warrants "intermediate-level scrutiny" under equal protection / suspect classification analysis. Cutting to the chase, the judge unsurprisingly concludes that the gay marriage ban fails intermediate scrutiny: it is not substantially related to an important state interest.

--I previously wrote:

I've skimmed the Iowa ruling, and I can say this upfront: It's everything the New York ruling wasn't but ought to have been.

This was what I meant by that: When Hernandez v. Robles was handed down, I wrote the following:

The fact that limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, because "it's all about the children," is both underinclusive (we don't limit straight marriage to fertile couples, we don't compel straight couples to bear children, nor do we summarily dissolve straight marriages that do not result in children) and overinclusive (gays have children too, just not by accident), means nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Here's what the Iowa judge wrote:

§595.2(1) is at the same time grossly under-inlcusive and gross over-inclusive.

I've also written:

"Low-level scrutiny" is not, or ought not be, "no scrutiny at all." "Great deference to the legislature" is not, or ought not be, "absolute deference to the legislature."

The judge, citing authority:

"However, while rational basis analysis of a statute is admittedly deferential to legislative judgment, it is not a toothless one."

Strange, I don't see my name anywhere in the citations. Maybe that's because my analysis of the New York and Washington State decisions was not exactly pathbreaking; it was standard legal reasoning learned by every law student and hopefully applied by every judge when trying to answer such questions. Which makes one wonder how the wizened, experienced judges in the gay marriage defeats could have strayed so far off the reservation.

--One last quote:

Ironically, one of the principal legal authorities cited by [the government] has justified the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage by reasoning that, because same-sex couples can only have children by means of adoption or assisted reproduction — processes which require a great deal of foresight and planning and which, therefore, require the prospective parents to be heavily invested, financially and emotionally, in those processes which, in turn, means that they are very likely to be able to provide stable environments in which to raise children — they do not need the encouragement to form a stable environment to form a stable environment within which to procreate and raise children and, therefore, allowing same-sex marriages would not advance the state's interest in responsible procreation by heterosexual couples. While [gays] may appreciate this back-handed compliment, the Court believes [their] parenting abilities are not so good that they couldn't use the benefits attaching to marriage to improve their children's lots in life, to say nothing of their own. (Emphasis added.)

The "principal legal authority" the judge refers to was an Indiana case, not Hernandez v. Robles. But the New York Court, also citing to that Indiana case, made the exact same argument and invoked the same obnoxious asteism — that gays don't need equal marriage rights because "we're just so much better than straights." Good grief.

Still, one wonders: Who back in the days of Cardozo would ever have imagined that an Iowa trial court judge would have standing to mock the preposterously backward reasoning of what was once the most influential state court in America?

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I was surprised that the judge did not immediately stay his own order pending an appeal. It was unintentionally and unfortunately cruel of him to lead so many same-sex couples to think that they could rush to the courthouse and get married (only one succeeded).

As for how the ruling will fare on appeal, I make no prediction. The legal reasoning is of course sound but not airtight. The key, as it so often is, will be to preserve heightened scrutiny. If the appellate courts reject both the judge's finding that "marriage qua fundamental right" has been intruded upon and his finding that a gay marriage ban is gender-based discrimination, and if those courts then deem rational basis review to mean "absolute deference" (as New York and Washington State did), then it all will have been for nothing but more heartbreak. A lot of "if's," but we've been down this road before. Stay tuned.

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The case is Varnum v. Brien, No. CV5965 (Polk Cty., 30 August 2007) (PDF - 63 pages).

I've been asked by two separate readers now whether I saw the Wired story suggesting that a new shooter game for the Xbox 360, Bioshock, is inspired by Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged and whether I have played the game or intend to.

The answers are "yes," "no" and "yes," respectively.

This trailer does not strike me as particularly Randian:


But this review does:


The fictional creator of the Bioshock city ("Rapture") is named Andrew Ryan — a little anagrammatic fun there? The main character's helper, who guides him by radio, is named "Atlas."

But if the underwater "Galt's Gulch" was a failure (which it clearly was), then how pro-Rand can it be?

More:

He's a man of bottomless ambition who built a city under the sea, obsessed with the idea of what makes a man, what differentiates a man from a slave. He's the Randian hero, a man who holds his own creative vision above all else, and he's [Crime and Punishment's] Rodion Raskolnikov's exceptional person, someone who can be excused for committing crimes to achieve a noble goal, or at least with noble intentions — and he knows it. His vision, Rapture, is clearly a colossal failure. The driving force behind the game is your quest to discover why this man's alluring vision of an artistic utopia failed so completely and why you've stumbled upon it.

Sound's more like Krugmanesque socialized medicine than Galt's Gulch.

I will buy the game after my upcoming vacation, not out of any Randian obsession but simply because first-person shooters are the only Xbox game I ever play, and new releases are few and far between.

So I will report back once I figure out just how Randian this game really is.

Anyone who has already played the game, feel free to weigh in.

Time to clean out the aggregator:

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ITEM: The New York Times documents anecdotes of employers abandoning rigid vacation and leave allotments in favor of simply allowing employees to do the work on whatever schedule is mutually agreeable. If an employee can do a year's worth of work in ten months, then the employee can simply take two month's vacation instead of crafting convoluted combinations of vacation time, personal time, sick time, family care time, etc. No warm-fuzzy-feeling regulations required. Previous post here. (Via Out of Control.)

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ITEM: San Francisco's municipal wi-fi plans have succombed to the very market forces that its politicians claimed were inadequate (i.e., there's already so much wi-fi in the city that there was no way to make the city's plan viable). Most recent post here.

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ITEM: The Army's special signing bonus program appears to be working to alleviate its chronic recruitment shortage. Which merely demonstrates that a draft is not only a human rights violation but also wholly unnecessary. The government should simply pay enough to recruit the soldiers it needs. (The question of how such soldiers are deployed is another question altogether.) Most recent post here.

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ITEM: Zimbabwe's bloodthirsty dictator, Robert Mugabe, and his henchmen have relaxed -- slightly -- some of the crippling wage and price controls that have paralyzed that country's economy and plunged its people to the brink of anarchy. The laws of economics are not subject to repeal by any legislature or dictator. Most recent post here.

I still feel bad for Zak George, who appears to have been treated badly, and perhaps unconstitutionally, by a law enforcement bubba officer who did not appreciate being videotaped from a distance.

I also had not realized that Zak is a big-shot dog stunt trainer (or is it "stunt dog trainer"?).

In any case, I thought it would be nice to designate Zak as this week's Sunday Cute YouTuber.

But only if he includes his show dog, Venus:


Diamond, by way of reference, does an almost mediocre "Play dead." Well, actually it's more like, "Rub my belly, damnit!" Go figure.

For Discussion: Who would win in a Rapture Rumble — lean mean Mormon lads or no-nonsense heavy-set Jamaican Jehovah's Witness ladies?

You can tell it's a holiday weekend when this appears in your aggregator:


(Click to enlarge.)

No comment so far from members of other Gay families.


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Meanwhile.

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A similar phenomenon that annoys me and tends only to happen on weekends is when mundane sports scores are posted to "Top Stories" or "Main Page" feeds. A ball game is simply not true news.

George Will, on Mitt "Null Set" Romney's soulless "et tu" abandonment of Larry Craig:

If Romney fails to translate his intelligence and accomplishments into the Republican nomination, one reason will be the suspicion that there is something synthetic and excessively calculating about every move in his increasingly embarrassing courtship of those who are called "values voters."

That is exactly right. It would also be exactly right to say much the same about Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has been running for president since December 2000, and every step of the way she too has been "synthetic and excessively calculating." From carpetbagging her way into New York State to preposterously being assigned to the Armed Services Committee and beyond — her every move has been determined by a singular goal: to be elected president.

Romney and Clinton: The "politician similarities" swamp the "policy differences."* They are the same poison, just differently administered.

What will it say about our politics, our parties and our electorate if these two unashamed moral defectives wind up being the nominees in 2008?

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Romney thread here; Clinton thread here.

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*And just what are those "policy differences" anyway? Not socialized medicine — they're both for it while laughably insisting they're not. And need we bring up their respective woo-then-betray manipulation of gays?

A comment I left at another blog regarding a proposal to ban prepayment penalties on mortgages:

It takes a special kind of arrogant, "central planner wannabe" mentality to insist that restricting the ability of competent consenting adults to enter into strictly private contracts with one another actually makes them better off.

It's cute when such malcontents lament having "too many toothpastes," but when they set their sights on the financial markets, it's time to get very, very nervous.

As I've blogged previously:

If there are anecdotal cases of institutions engaging in false advertising, deceptive accounting, manipulating the legally incompetent, then fine — pursue them with the full force of the law. But the mere fact that many otherwise competent people, including financial professionals, happened to make very bad decisions is no claim check on the Fed, Congress, or taxpayers' wallets.

Neither is it a license for regulators to "save from themselves" those who are in no way caught up in the current subprime turbulence.

For kink and country:

In a brief public statement in Boise, Craig apologized to supporters, family members and Idaho residents "for what I have caused." He did not refer to any specific actions or admit wrongdoing.
...
The guilty plea, in which Craig admitted engaging in physical conduct that "tended to arouse alarm or resentment in others," exposed the socially conservative lawmaker to charges of hypocrisy. A champion of family values, he had supported amendments to the U.S. and Idaho constitutions banning same-sex marriage.

Again, he was not "arrested for foot-tapping." It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

And speaking of disingenuousness, many have asked, "Why Larry Craig and not David Vitter?"

There are three possible explanations:

1. Craig actually pleaded guilty to a crime; Vitter merely acknowledged having engaged in illegal conduct.



2. Craig's misconduct was connected to gay sex; Vitter's was connected to straight sex.



3. Craig's replacement will be named by a Republican; Vitter's would be named by a Democrat.

Draw your own conclusions about which factors are at work.

A self-standing comment I left at another blog:

I get caught up in this problem [of people forgetting that all tastes and preferences are subjective] when people learn that I enjoy casino gambling.

"But it's rigged!"

--"Yes it is."

"So why would you do it?"

--"Because I enjoy it."

"But you're going to lose money!"

--"No, I'm going to spend money on leisure and entertainment."

"How can you enjoy that?"

--"If I go to a Broadway show for $100 or more, then what do I get out of it? I get entertainment out of it. If I go to an amusement park or professional sports game, then what do I get out of it? I get excitement out of it."

Saying it is per se irrational to enjoy gambling is no different (i.e., just as invalid) as saying that it is per se irrational to enjoy going to the theater, an amusement park or a sporting event.

What is per se irrational is thinking that you can game the system (i.e., overcome the house advantage). This is the single greatest difference between the median casino gambler and the median horse-racing gambler: the latter is far more likely than the former to think that he's actually "smart enough" to make money wagering.

A self-standing comment I left at another blog:

Almost every major airport in the world (not just the U.S.) has VIP lounges (often with, inter alia, showers) that, contrary to popular belief, are "pay-for-play" and can be accessed by anyone (not just First & Business class travelers) for a nominal (IMHO) fee.

American and Continental, for example, sell unrestricted day passes to their clubs, and there is a company, "PriorityPass," that sells a card that allows access to over 500 VIP lounges in almost every major hub airport in the world for $99/year + $24 per visit.

I know at least one airport — Las Vegas McCarran — has a gym.

Bottom line: Demand creates its own supply, if the (non-market-based) airport authorities will just get out of the way and allow (market-based) airlines and service franchises to function.

To the extent that the airport experience (not the flying experience, not the TSA experience, but the airport experience) sucks, it is precisely because basic market-driven forces are suppressed by some form of government-created block or bottleneck, not because of any "market failure."

Discuss.

Apparently some people need to be reminded that Mitt Romney is a civilian. One might even dare say that he is unemployed. He has no claim, none whatsoever, on government resources in connection with his presidential campaign.

So why is this being tolerated?

The motorcade of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney exceeded speed limits and went through stop lights Friday as local law officers escorted him, blue lights flashing, to campaign events in two South Carolina counties.

Traffic pulled over for Romney's caravan as Saluda County Sheriff Jason Booth, a Romney supporter, led the candidate's motor home and staff cars with his blue lights running from the Aiken County line through Saluda County to the Newberry city limits, according to an Associated Press reporter following the candidate.

The caravan traveled between 10 mph and 15 mph over posted speed limits. The posted speed limits were 45 mph and 55 mph.

Whatever the procedure may be for removing a sheriff from office in South Carolina, it must immediately commence in the case of this insolent lawbreaker. At the very least, the South Carolina Attorney General should launch an investigation as soon as is practicable.

"Sheriff" is, or ought be, a strictly non-partisan position. It is a taxpayer-funded position, and taxpayer money (not to mention motorist safety) should not be squandered in the name of a partisan law enforcement officer abusing his authority to further his partisanship. It boggles the mind.

Indeed, if Romney were even slightly ethical, he'd be the first one demanding Booth's ouster -- right after his "heartfelt" apologies to the people of South Carolina for his unconscionable conduct.

Big "if," I know.

All politicians are, by definition, moral defectives. Apparently so are some sheriffs.