A Stitch in Haste

Referring my readers to Supreme Court cases, law review articles or Congressional Research Service reports may be a futile attempt at "tough love." But referring them to economics articles? That's just plain blogospheric masochism.

Having said that:

It is easy to learn the average income of a resident of El Salvador or Albania. But there is no systematic source of information on the average income of a Salvadoran or Albanian. In this new working paper, research fellow Michael Clemens and non-resident fellow Lant Pritchett create a new statistic: income per natural — the mean annual income of persons born in a given country, regardless of where that person now resides.

If income per capita has any interpretation as a welfare measure, exclusive focus on the nationally resident population can lead to substantial errors of the income of the natural population for countries where emigration is an important path to greater welfare.
...
The bottom line: migration is one of the most important sources of poverty reduction for a large portion of the developing world.

That is from the abstract of an exciting new paper from the Center for Global Development. The authors are attempting to craft a new metric, "income per natural," that would adjust traditional measures of income and welfare, most notable GDP per capita, to reflect migration trends.

For purposes of U.S. economic policy, such a statistic would be most useful. For critics of U.S. economic policy, especially the Paul Krugman - Robert Frank - Frank Pasquale wing of the radical malcontent left, it would be most damning.

The latest leftist fashion is not to criticize American economic conditions generally (since they can't — recessions and bubbles notwithstanding, the American economy is still a strong cornerstone of the global economic engine and America is still the foremost land of opportunity in the world). They instead now prefer to obsess about some vague gobbledygook "problem" usually referred to as "rising income inequality."

Haters of American capitalism cannot legitimately say, for example, that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer." It's simply not true. They cannot say that federal income taxes aren't obscenely progressive — they are. They cannot say that recent tax cuts mostly benefited the rich — they did not. They cannot say that working-class Americans are facing stagnant wages — when benefits are included, blue collar workers are making more than ever. Every absolute metric of American economic conditions, over any substantial period of time, shows that, overall and on average, American capitalism works for workers.

So the new tactic of those who are running out of ways to complain about American capitalism is to lament, not the fiction of falling welfare, but the semi-fiction of "rising inequality." The poor may be getting richer, they admit, but not as fast as the rich. The gains from economic growth are "disproportionately" going to the best off among us.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Just about any measure of income inequality must be based on percentiles — "top 1%, "top 20%, "bottom 20%," etc. But the problem with time series analyses of income percentiles is that those percentiles are not static. The people in the "top 1%" today were not, as a rule, the "top 1%" in the past and will not be the "top 1%" in the future — the demographic is fleeting and comprised at any one moment largely of people enjoying one-time windfalls: celebrities, athletes, lottery winners, people who retire and sell their businesses, farms or property. The longer the time horizon, the greater the "churn" among the hyper-rich. Consider: how many truly enduring (i.e., multi-generational) "mega-rich families" are there in America? Extreme wealth dissipates amazingly quickly here — far faster than in, e.g., Europe or Latin America.

Far more important than the churn at the top is the churn at the bottom. A significant — perhaps the largest — component of the "bottom 20%" of American households are immigrant households. Tired-poor-huddled, etc. But today's immigrant households are not tomorrow's immigrant households: even in post-Ellis-Island America, immigrants move up the economic ladder with an astonishing and magnificent alacrity. Immigrant poverty almost never passes from one generation to the next. Today's immigrant poor are tomorrow's working class and next week's middle class.

In conclusion, since we do not have a caste system in America, what is the use of comparing the "top x%" with the "bottom x%" over time when those percentiles are simply not the same people from one period to the next? Using time series percentiles as indicia of "growing income inequality" is a willful deceit by academics who know exactly what kind of analytical fraud they are peddling. To them, lying in defense of progressivism is no vice.

Meanwhile, this new "income per natural" metric — if it can be adequately measured — would go a long way to debunking the "poor stay poor" myth proffered by the leftist pseudo-intelligentsia, by carving out the immigration component of the "bottom x%" and making time series data more reflective of reality. Bottom line: The fact that the world's poorest people are still desperate to come here skewers the limousine-hating antipathy of limousine liberals. The more and better data we have to show this, the better.

(Via Will Wilkinson.)

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Meanwhile, to the extent that there actually is a "permanent underclass" in America — particularly inner city, minority, single-parent households — one should ask whose policies brought into being the conditions that make such an underclass possible. Hint: Not any libertarian's or laissez-faire capitalist's. More on that in a future podcast — if I ever get around to editing and posting it (it's already recorded).

Time to clean out the aggregator —

ITEM: The Social Security and Medicare Trustees have issued their annual report on the financial condition of the two entitlement schemes. The key forecast dates are unchanged: The Medicare hospital benefits program is already in deficit and its (fictitious) "trust fund" will be depleted in 2019. Social Security funding will begin running deficits beginning in 2017 — at which time its "trust fund" will also be finally and unarguably exposed as meaningless. Most recent post here.

ITEM: Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe, imposed price ceilings just days before national elections that had already been expected to be hopelessly rigged. Any stores that failed to reduce prices faced nationalization. Latest on the elections here. Most recent post here.

ITEM: An intermediate appellate court in New York State vacated a now-moot lower court ruling holding that a school district need not extend retirement benefits to the same-sex spouse of an employee. Recall that, while New York's highest court ruled that there is no right to receive a same-sex marriage license in New York, state law has historically required that otherwise valid out-of-state marriages be recognized in the state, even if the marriage could not be entered into within the state itself. Every other New York court case on this subject has ended in favor of gay couples. (Funderburke v. New York Dept. of Civil Service.)

ITEM: In California, meanwhile, the state appeals court that issued the infamous "no right to homeschool" decision has announced that it will reconsider the case and has invited "written arguments from state and local education officials and teachers' unions" on the matter. Most recent post here.

In a follow-up piece to the horrific student-on-student violence in Oxnard, California, that left a gay 15-year old dead at the hands of a fellow student whom he had hoped to ask to be his valentine, a professional bigot tries to whitewash exactly how and why such nightmares occur:

"The vast majority of parents believe it's their role and their responsibility to teach their kids about sexuality," said Bill Maier, vice president and resident psychologist for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization. "The way you handle the problem is that you crack down on any sort of bullying or aggression on any child. You don't single out sexual orientation as this somehow special status."

Actually, it would a huge leap of anti-bigotry progress if schools (not to mention, e.g., the Boy Scouts) would cease to "single out" homosexuality as "this somehow special status." That's basically the whole point.

The latest "if you could only hear yourself talking" counterexample:

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey in a letter sent today called on the Newark Public Schools to rescind last week's decision to censor hundreds of East Side High School yearbooks that included a photo of a male student kissing his boyfriend.
...
At the direction of Newark Public Schools Superintendent Marion Bolden, school personnel used markers to block out the image of student Andre Jackson and his boyfriend, while allowing photos of heterosexual students kissing to remain. The photo was on a tribute page paid for by Jackson; tribute pages make up about 20 percent of the yearbook, and several others showed heterosexual couples kissing.
...
"Treating same-sex couples differently from heterosexual couples not only disregards the fundamental guarantees of the Constitution and the laws of the State of New Jersey but also sends a dangerous message to the student body," Barocas said in the letter. "The message that LGBT students are unacceptable and undeserving serves to justify peer harassment, one of the most serious concerns schools face today."

Focus on the Family and the ACLU actually agree on a major issue -- that gay students shouldn't be "singled out"?

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I had planned to run this recent Dilbert panel as a Sidebar Sidetrack, but never got around to it:


(Click to see full strip.)
One of my favorite YouTubers can commiserate:


I would have tried to cheer up disneykid1 and tell him that he is indeed desirable, datable, happy and cool. But then I remembered that I'm probably one of the "less than 20% of 23,336,016" people whom he outranks, so what's the point?

Sunday CuteTuber™ FAQ

A Stitch in Haste recommends the following report from the Congressional Research Service:

The Law of Church and State:
General Principles and Current Interpretations
From the summary:

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from establishing a religion and guarantees citizens the right to freely exercise their religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has clarified the scope of these broad guarantees. This report provides an overview of the governing principles of the law of church and state. It explains the legal requirements for challenges under the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause and the standards used to evaluate such challenges.

The six-page report includes, inter alia, a review of the standing requirement, the "excessive entanglement" test of Lemon v. Kurtzman*, prayer in public schools, Decalogue displays on public property (cf., my recent post), and the statutory provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. An excellent primer for non-lawyers.

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*403 U.S. 602 (1971)

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Previous CRS Recommendations:
Constitutional Limits on Hate Crime Legislation
Same-Sex Marriage — Legal Issues
Saudi Arabia
The National Debt
Restricting Video Game Sales to Minors
Warrantless Wiretapping
Foreign Holdings of Public Debt
China's Internet Censorship
Summary of Rumsfeld v. FAIR

Ask a stupid question:

The gynecologist I've seen for seven years has begun requiring patients to waive their right to a day in court and to accept binding arbitration to settle any potential disputes, or she will not treat them. I sought care elsewhere but discovered that nearly all ob-gyn practices in the area make the same demand. Is this policy ethical?

Get a stupid answer:

It is not.
...
Your doctor has instituted a dismal policy that compels patients to surrender a basic legal right in order to receive medical care.
...
There are some rights we can be pressed into waiving. Confidentiality agreements limit our ability to express ourselves; noncompete agreements limit our employment choices. Other rights are sacrosanct. We may not sell a kidney or work for less than the minimum wage or hire a guy to shoot us in the kidney for $2 an hour. The right to our day in court should be among the inviolable.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

First, someone who is so ethically illiterate as to be unclear on the difference between a right and its infringement is beyond all hope of redemption: My "right to be blocked from selling my own kidney"? Is he serious?

I can forgive someone, so long after the slaughter of economic substantive due process by the activist judges of the New Deal, for having been so brainwashed as to think that there can be a "right to busybody" in the form of telling two competent consenting adults that one cannot work for the other for $2 an hour or sell each other their body parts. That is how anti-autonomy our "free society" has become; libertarians are accustomed to it. But are we now actually at the point where we are calling such violations of personal autonomy, not "abuse of government power" but "protection of an individual right"? The mind reels.

Meanwhile, put aside the pesky fact that arbitration is in every way the functional equivalent of a judge-and-gavel lawsuit. The same principles of contract and tort law apply, the same rules of evidence are in place, the parties still are entitled to retain counsel, the same damages are available, appeals can be sought if the arbitrator materially errs. If no remedy has been abridged (and none has), then no real "right" has been violated. The indignation of Mr. Ethics is based entirely on a factual vacuum wholly detached from reality-based arbitration clauses.

Also put aside the concurrent pesky fact that arbitration is both cheaper and faster than full-blown litigation. (Not cheaper in the sense of "the defendants get better outcomes" but rather in the sense of lower litigation costs — filing fees, etc.) Lower costs for doctors means lower costs for patients. This is an ethical abomination — how?

Beyond these consequentialist counterarguments is a far more important principle: The "right to sue" for breach of contract presupposes a right to enter into a contract; a "right to sue" for negligent care presupposes a right to care. There are no such precedent rights. The "right to our day in court" does not trump the right to avoid people who might take us to court in the first place. Your "right to sue me" is negated in toto by my higher "right not to do business with you — go find yourself another ob-gyn" (good luck with that, incidentally).

Until we reach the day — which I believe is coming — when we flat-out enslave physicians, they still have the most "inviolable" right of all, the right that everyone should have in nearly every context: the simple, sacred right to tell someone, "No thanks."

(Title explanation here.)

Charles Krauthammer, with his typical chest-thumping indignation, accuses critics of John McCain, apparently including me, of "a rank falsehood" for pressing McCain's now infamous "maybe 100" remark:

"We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so." Lest anyone think he was talking about prolonged war-fighting rather than maintaining a presence in postwar Iraq, he explained: "That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." And lest anyone persist in thinking he was talking about war-fighting, he told his questioner: "It's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world."

There would be a grain of truth — more like truthiness — in Krauthammer's screed but for a few pesky contrasts (i.e., "truthhoods") between Iraq on the one hand and Germany, Japan, Korea and even Kuwait on the other:

--In all the previous occupations there was a clearly delineated switch from "war" to "occupation" — V-E Day, V-J Day, etc. Such a demarcation has not occurred — and cannot occur — in Iraq. Roadside bombs were not exploding in Germany in the 1950s; suicide bombers were not self-detonating along the DMZ in the 1960s, etc. This is exactly the conundrum that McCain cannot bring himself to admit: One cannot "win" an occupation; one can only commence it, prolong it or end it.

--Whether friendly toward U.S. occupation forces or not, the Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Kuwaitis were and are unified peoples. Unlike post-Saddam Iraqis, their agendas never included blowing each other up (especially via women, children and incompetents).

If, for example, post-Hitler Catholic Bavarians had been perpetually obsessed with killing Lutheran Hessians and vice versa (in God's name, of course) — and with U.S. troops perpetually dying as recurring collateral damage — then I sincerely doubt that we would have stayed in Germany as long as we have.

The Iraq that McCain and Krauthammer expect us to be nonplussed to occupy for a century is a geopolitical impossibility. The fact that McCain cannot grasp, or is unwillingness to acknowledge, this self-evident reality makes him all the more untenable as a post-Bush commander-in-chief.

--Two words: Cold War. Only rabid warmongers and "national greatness" fetishists like McCain and Krauthammer could pretend that "Iraq isn't different." We stayed in Germany, Japan and Korea because we had to. As McCain's own recent episode of foreign policy illiteracy demonstrates, the "al Qaeda will take over" bogeyman is a laughable canard. When al Qaeda acquires ICBMs, nuclear submarines and a fleet of tanks along the Elbe, then let's talk about where we need to set up shop for "maybe 100" years.

Unlike our previous great conflicts and their subsequent great occupations — which were fundamentally strategic in nature — the War on al Qaeda requires tactical strikes on a tactical organization — bombing a training compound, assassinating a leader, infiltrating a terror cell, etc. It's a war best fought not by GI Joe but by Tom Quinn.

The only basis for wanting to occupy the world is the geopolitical equivalent of excess testosterone — of which we have had more than enough these past five years. That is hardly, to borrow Krauthammer's insolent term, a "rank falsehood."

Similar deceitful apologia from The Washington Post.

--Who called on the Secretary of Defense to give a speech every year on the state of our schools?

--Special Guest Question #1: Do you suffer from Internet Addiction Disorder?

--Special Guest Question #2: When the government makes a college education more affordable, should it regulate who may study finance, and which branches of finance, since its eventual practice carries the risk of unleashing more evil on workers?

--Special Guest Question #3: Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?

--What name did Utah legislators finally choose for Salt Lake City's couples registry? (Hint: Not "marriage," "civil union" or "domestic partnership.") (Via Box Turtle Bulletin.)

WindyPundit weighs in:

Unless you are truly devoid of moral reasoning, there must be some level of unjustness at which you will abandon the law to avoid complicity in unconscionable evil.

One of the things I wanted to add to my podcast on jury nullification, but didn't have time for, was to note that if, through no subterfuge of my own (i.e., I did not lie my way onto the jury), I suddenly found myself serving as a juror and witnessing a manifestly unjust prosecution (which would more likely involve wrongful conduct by the prosecutor or judge than a "bad law"), then I might very well vote to nullify the trial. But that is an altogether different question from traditional jury nullification of a law.

But I found myself unable to devise a fact pattern where I could end up on a jury, after voir dire by competent lawyers and judges, in which a law I oppose to the point of wanting to nullify it was at issue. They would find me out before the trial started -- as is their prerogative, indeed their solemn duty.

Then again, if I could devise such a "reluctant juror" fact pattern, I'd be John Grisham or Reginald Rose.

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Meanwhile, no third solution has a comprehensive post in response to my nullification podcast. While he makes some perfectly reasonable points, I don't think he adequately addresses (or, if you prefer, he underweights) two key issues:

1. That libertarians do not have a monopoly on nullification, and therefore the maneuver is not intrinsically libertarian. Just as a gun can be used either for libertarian or anti-libertarian purposes, so too can nullification. It is therefore invalid for libertarians to claim a unique moral proprietorship of the act, as they so often do.

2. The simple truth remains that lying your way onto a jury is not the moral high ground. "The ends justify the means" was, last time I checked, simply not a core libertarian premise -- quite the opposite, in fact.

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Whether lying your way onto a jury can also constitute perjury is an utterly ancillary, jurisdiction-specific question that I feel no need to address. As for the question of whether advocating jury nullification can be a criminal act: of course not -- See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

The first "stimulus package" (remember, you can't call it a tax rebate, since non-taxpayers are receiving it too) hasn't even commenced yet -- and Barack Obama is already calling for a second one?

To fix the economy, Obama proposed relief for homeowners and an additional $30 billion stimulus package to address the nation's economic woes. "If we can extend a hand to banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to Americans who are struggling," he said.

Of course, most of those "Americans who are struggling" are doing so, from a budgetary perspective, not because of oppressive federal income taxes -- that's reserved for the non-strugglers -- but by obscene FICA taxes that seize one-eighth of blue-collar workers' paychecks. Somehow I expect no "extended hands" from a (no-gridlock) Obama Administration on that front.

As I blogged previously: The cure for Republican fiscal recklessness from 2001 through 2006 will not be Democratic fiscal recklessness from 2009 through 2012.

More:

As I said at NASDAQ last September: the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned.

Somebody please tell that to Big Labor (or, for that matter, John Edwards or Paul Krugman).

This is not to deny that the Commandments have had influence on civil or secular law; a major text of a majority religion is bound to be felt. The point is simply that the original text viewed in its entirety is an unmistakably religious statement dealing with religious obligations and with morality subject to religious sanction. When the government initiates an effort to place this statement alone in public view, a religious object is unmistakable.
--McCreary County v. ACLU, 545 U.S. 844 (2005)

The sole function of the monument ... is to display the full text of one version of the Ten Commandments. The monument is not a work of art and does not refer to any event in the history of the State. It is significant because, and only because, it communicates the following message: ... This State endorses the divine code of the "Judeo-Christian" God.
--Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005) (Stevens, J., dissenting)

A bizarre (i.e., dead wrong) Decalogue case in the Ninth Circuit:

The monument at the heart of this dispute was donated to the City of Everett [Washington] in 1959 by the local aerie (chapter) of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic organization. It sits adjacent to Old City Hall on public land under the City's control. The Old City Hall building itself now houses only the police department. The monument, which is located along a sidewalk about forty feet north of the entrance to the building, is constructed of granite and stands about six feet tall. Its main feature is an inscription of a non-sectarian version of the Ten Commandments[.]

Since this is essentially an identical Eagles-donated monument to the one upheld in Van Orden v. Perry, the Ninth Circuit chooses that Supreme Court precedent over its companion case, McCreary County v. ACLU, and upholds this Decalogue's continued presence on government property.

What I always took away from the "McCreary - Van Orden" Decalogue bifurcation was not that a Ten Commandments display on government property would be permissible if it "reflects a primarily secular purpose" (since, of course, it is beyond delusional to suggest that there can ever be a truly secular purpose to a Decalogue -- it is a purely religious symbol with a purely religious message; any suggestion to the contrary is the most insolent sophistry).

Instead, the only workable "McCreary - Van Orden test" is:

• Decalogue as "one among equals" in a series of historical or legal displays: permitted under the First Amendment


• Decalogue standing alone: Establishment Clause violation

Simple, easily applied, and at least somewhat rationally anchored.

This is why I say that the Everett case is "bizarre" -- it falls not on the Van Orden side of the line at all but obviously on the McCreary side! The fact that "it's the same FOE monument" completely omits the "collection of items" context of Van Orden, especially relative to the "stands alone" counterexample of McCreary.

"Eagles Decalogues are okay" simply was not the holding of Van Orden, and "stand-alone Decalogues are not okay" simply was the holding of McCreary. The Everett Decalogue was irrefutably a "McCreary Decalogue," not a "Van Orden Decalogue," and the Ninth Circuit was irrefutably wrong to invoke the latter case rather than the former.

That's my ruling. Any dissents?

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Meanwhile, is this case a victory for the theocrats who can't seem to tell the difference between a courthouse and a church?

The City's intent is the key here, and nothing apart from the monument's text suggests a religious motive on the City's part. We reject Card's assertion that the presence of clergy at the dedication ceremony distinguishes this situation from Van Orden. All indications in the record are that the Eagles arranged and funded the dedication. While the Mayor was present to accept the monument, as noted above, the City had many plausible secular reasons for accepting the gift, and we will not infer a non-secular purpose. We agree with the City that there is also some contemporary historic relevance to the monument -- as a testament to the Eagles' lengthy relationship with, and contributions to, the City.

So the reason stand-alone Decalogues on government property are not necessarily problematic under the First Amendment is because the Ten Commandments are no big deal? There are "many plausible secular reasons" to brandish a Decalogue in public? Decalogues can, indeed should, be viewed merely as the civic organization equivalent of a greeting card?

If I were a theocrat -- indeed if I were simply a non-theocratic Jew or Christian -- I would not be pleased to see a Decalogue disrespected in this manner.

Also:

The district court judge visited Old City Hall, and observed that there was "an air of neglect or disregard," in the display of the monument. Discussing the 1988 relocation, the court noted that "[n]ot only was it moved off of its corner perch ... but the City opted to relocate it to a spot behind one of the three War Memorial monoliths and almost surrounded by trees and shrubs that significantly impair most views of the monument."

Again: If I were a theocrat -- indeed if I were simply a non-theocratic Jew or Christian -- I would not be pleased to see a Decalogue disrespected in this manner.

Win the battle, but lose the culture war?

The case is Card v. City of Everett, No. 05-35996 (9th Cir., March 26, 2008) (PDF - 26 pages)

More thoughts from Wall of Separation.

Mr. Gravel's advocacy of universal health care, paid for with a national retail sales tax, could turn off some Libertarians.

Gee, you think?

Of course, the easy retort regarding Mike Gravel's announcement that he is seeking the Big-L Libertarian Party presidential nomination is, "Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good." But that assumes that there's a cognizable quantum of "good" ex ante. This was the sleight-of-hand that Ron Paul's apologists tried to pull: "Sure he's a raging anti-gay and anti-Hispanic bigot who thinks that the Bill of Rights does not apply to states and that the Fourteenth Amendment is fictional. But other than that he's a libertarian's dream candidate!" (It was also the embarrassing maneuver Jamie Kirchick tried in his recent nauseating semi-endorsement of John McCain.)

As for whether Gravel is even a small-l libertarian, let alone a viable Big-L Libertarian presidential nominee, I think nationalizing unbridled majoritarianism, imposing socialized medicine and mandating universal pre-K pretty much point to "Um, no." But if other libertarians want to assign a higher weight to his consistent opposition to the War in Iraq, the War on Drugs and the War on Gays, then that is their (hardly absurd) prerogative. Gravel is undeniably light-years beyond Ron Paul in terms of his libertarian bona fides. But that's not saying much.

As for me, I still need a bit more "good" before I'll betray the "perfect."

Now available — the Stitch in Haste Podcast, Episode #003.

This week: Reflections on my recent flight to Las Vegas —

• A good old-fashioned overbooking!


• Is anyone old enough to remember the Civil Aeronautics Board?


• In defense of fee-based banking.


• How another gay podcasting New Yorker caused my midair seizure.

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About the Podcast:

The idea will be to record a quick commentary, no more than weekly (and typically less than weekly) and never longer than 20 minutes, either about something I don't feel like covering in a full-blown blogpost, or something that I have already covered in the blog and don't feel like revisiting. Eventually I might include responses to comments, interviews, roundtable discussions, etc.

...do you want a president answering who tends to be sleep-deprived?

[W]when asked about her Bosnian whopper where she claimed she, Chelsea, Sinbad and others landed under sniper fire and had to dash to their cars without a welcoming ceremony (all claims shown to be a total fabrication by video of the event): "I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke."

More:

I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

Of course, "millions of words a day" is itself a pretty obvious "misstatement."

But the real point is that — as my favorite jurist repeatedly notes — if you just tell the truth all the time, then you don't have to worry about keeping track of what you say, because you will not make any "misstatements."

But Hillary Clinton is not now, nor has she ever been, concerned about the truth. To her (not to mention her pervert husband), lying is an art form. Especially campaign lying. They do it for its own sake — to relish the skill, creativity and expertise required to do it well, and to appreciate the resulting beauty (and power) upon its completion. This has always been the raison d'être of Clintonian politics — to see just how many lies, and how big, you can get away with.

Even on a Bosnia tarmac. Even at 3 A.M. when the phone rings.

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Sinbad:

When commenting on Clinton's version of events, he said, "What kind of president would say, 'Hey man, I can't go because I might get shot ... but I'm gonna send my wife and daughter. Oh and take a guitar player and a comedian with you'?"

Can we elect him to something? Maybe Larry Craig's Senate seat?

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Meanwhile:

Senator Clinton also dwelled on what she called "a crisis of confidence in our country," and portrayed herself as the candidate best able to address the economic problems of middle-income and economically struggling families.

"We need a president who can restore our confidence," she said. "We need a president who is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief of our economy."

Unfortunately, I doubt that Clinton will retract that (sleep-depriving) comment as a "misstatement." Just like that great Clintonian non-misstatement a while back:

I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all.

Truer words were never uttered. (Via Cato@Liberty.)

If you've been tracking the table in the left sidebar, then you are hardly surprised:


The other relevant number in this context is, of course, "100" -- well, maybe.


It's quite simple really. Roadside bombs do not detonate in Germany. Terrorists are not blowing themselves up alongside the Korea DMZ.

Staying in Iraq for 50 years -- "maybe 100" -- is simply not the same as staying in Korea or Germany for 50 years -- "maybe 100." And anyone who, among innumerable other faults, simply cannot grasp this most rudimentary distinction between events current and historical must be kept as far away from the White House as electorally possible.

Time to clean out the aggregator —

ITEM: A government bureaucrat was caught falsifying inspection records for the site of Manhattan's recent deadly crane collapse. Remind me again how it's the private sector that can't be trusted in matters of safety, purity, etc.?

ITEM: China's Communist authoritarians are shutting down more websites. Because their belief in "free" (ahem) markets is so "un-Communist."

ITEM: Yet another defeat for nanny-staters seeking to unconstitutionally restrict the sale of "violent" video games to minors: The Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision striking down a Minnesota law forbidding minors from buying or renting games rated "adult only" or "mature." Every court to address the issue has ruled against such bans — which doesn't stop activist legislators from continuing to enact them. Most recent post here.

ITEM: This might not technically qualify as an "update," but on the topic of "nanny-staters and kids," note how this MSM list is titled "The 10 Safest States for Kids" and not "The 10 Most Heavily Regulated States for Child Safety." Money quote from one nanny-stater:

"Having a law is essential. Not only does a law educate parents who might not be as safety-conscious as you, but it also makes it easier for you to handle protests from your kids. When my 7-year-old says he's too big for a bike helmet, I just remind him that it's the law. Argument over."

Apparently nothing is more hazardous than letting your child think like a libertarian. (Via Fark.) (If you need a "previous post," try this one or the second item of this one).

What better way to acknowledge the solemnity of Easter Sunday than with junk food?



More cooking and Easter videos at martinflevill's YouTube page.

For Discussion: Would you use Rice Krispies in the mix or Corn Flakes?

Sunday CuteTuber™ FAQ

Diamond got a new chew toy recently:



Only slightly less messy than real ribs...



Doing her impression of Knut...



The infinite bite versus the impervious bone...



This may take a while...

Carnivalized at Modulator's Friday Ark.

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I'm traveling this weekend — little or no blogging through around Tuesday.

Happy Easter!

"There is no honor or happiness in just being strong enough to be left alone."
--John McCain, Liberty University commencement address, 2006

Jamie Kirchick, the gay journalist who did almost as much as I to bring down Ron Paul's presidential campaign, now seeks to raise up John McCain instead, in a piece titled "Why John McCain Isn't So Bad" —

But while McCain has racked up an unimpressive voting record in Congress — he supports "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act and opposes adding sexual orientation to the federal hate-crimes bill and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — what distinguishes him from many of his Republican colleagues is that he has also taken some courageous stands.

I guess one gay's "bigoted" is another gay's "unimpressive." I'll be sure to update my gay thesaurus. (Speaking of thesauruses, I'll also save the word "courageous" for people other than politicians.)

McCain was one of the very few outspoken Republican opponents of the Federal Marriage Amendment in the Senate, calling the proposed ban "un-Republican."

Kirchick then takes another three paragraphs before he concedes that McCain actively embraced the Arizona bigot amendment in 2006. So to McCain, being "Republican" merely means embracing anti-gay bigotry at the state level rather than at the federal level (and confirms, yet again, the axiom that all gay Republicans are, by definition, self-loathing).

Sure, McCain spoke at Falwell's Liberty University in 2006, but he didn't pander.

Utter nonsense. The mere act of speaking at Liberty University in the first place was itself, by definition, "pandering." Legitimizing an institution whose raison d'être is to bring about a War on Gays specifically, and fundamentalist theocracy in America generally, serves no function except to catalyze those processes.

To be sure, McCain will not win over single-issue gay voters. But if you're concerned about Obama's foreign policy naivete or his proclivity for raising taxes, give McCain a serious look.

So gays are allowed to be concerned about Obama's foreign policy naivete but not McCain's economic naivete? (Or, if you prefer, "gays are allowed to be concerned about Obama's foreign policy naivete but not McCain's lack of foreign policy naivete"? (Let's recall also that this purported "lack of naivete" is quite rebuttable.)

Or how about the precedent concern: that McCain is, by all indicia, just plain mentally unstable?

Back in 2004, some very silly people asserted, baselessly, that "a million gays voted for George W. Bush." There are two unarguable reasons why there will not be a million gays voting for John McCain: (1) his miserable record on gay rights, (2) his miserable record on everything else.

Given that there is nothing on the nominating agenda for the next month except Pennsylvania, and given that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton profess, loudly and frequently, to be committed to equal rights for gays, one wonders who lead the other in racing to denounce that state's proposed bigot amendment:

A sharply divided Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday in favor of amending the state constitution to ban gay and lesbian marriage in Pennsylvania.
...
The gay marriage ban has a long way to go. The bill must be approved not only by the current General Assembly, but also by the 2009-10 Legislature, whose members will be elected in November. If both sessions of the Legislature approve it, the amendment would go to a statewide referendum in November 2009.

Some hasty stitches:

--This is not merely a marriage ban, but rather a cruel, spiteful "no nothing never" amendment that also forbids "the functional equivalent" of marriage (i.e., civil unions and likely even domestic partnerships). When they say "it's only about defending marriage," they lie.

--On the one hand, it's almost refreshing to see a bigot amendment not timed to take place during a presidential election year (cf., Florida); the Pennsylvania popular vote on the amendment would occur in 2009. On the other hand, the ban can still be used as a wedge issue in this election, as candidates for the state legislature can run on a platform of "I promise to vote for/against this amendment..."

But most important of all: Will Clinton and Obama, during this lengthy period of "all Pennsylvania all the time," take a public position against the measure? Will gay Democrats, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, demand that the two candidates take such a public stance? Or will they do what gay Democrats almost always do: let themselves (and their votes) be taken for granted, only to subsequently be thrown under the bus?

How many times will gay Democrats allow themselves to be betrayed by a Clinton? When will gay Democrats remind Obama that "Yes they can!"?

"Keystone State" indeed.

(Via Good As You.)

If you could condense everything I've ever written on this blog into one succinct passage, it would come out something like this:

First, democracy requires judicial supervision to thwart the excesses of elected officials. Second, governments closest to the people are — never mind what sentimentalists say — often the worst.

Whether that says more about me or about the person who actually wrote that succinct passage is unclear.

Meanwhile, if you could condense everything I've ever written on this blog into one succinct passage, plus one footnote, that footnote would come out something like this:

P.S. Ron Paul is not a libertarian —

[Dale] Bell, 58, who served in the Reagan administration, calls himself "a Ron Paul guy."

Under Ron Paul's theory of unbridled anti-federalist majoritarianism, the "fiefdom" (Will's term) of Pinal County, Arizona*, would be perfectly within its "states' rights" authority to ban dancing in Bell's restaurant, the controversy at issue in Will's column.

For those curious about the fact pattern:

The question concerns statutory interpretation. The statute includes "dance hall" — along with bowling alleys, penny arcades, skating rinks and other things — among the "amusement or recreational" enterprises that must be "within a completely enclosed structure." Does Bell's restaurant, which makes 99.75 percent of its revenue from food and drink (the rest comes from pool tables and trinkets) become an illegal (because not completely enclosed) dance hall when someone rises to "sway, shuffle or even dance"?
...
The 14th Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process of law should mean that government may interfere with a citizen's economic liberty only to promote important government interests that cannot be advanced through less restrictive means. Under today's weak "rational basis" standard, courts validate virtually any abridgement of economic liberty, no matter how tenuous the connection to even a minor public purpose. Conservatives, note well: Restoring economic liberty requires a kind of judicial activism — judges judging rather than merely ratifying government's caprices.

Or as I have put it:

I will never — never — be more afraid of judges than of politicians. And I will always — always — be afraid of those who are.

Incidentally, can you guess which other fiefdom has declared a very similar "War on Dancing"?

I would refine Will's analysis only to note that the Fourteenth Amendment is meant to restrict, not "government" writ large but states specifically — as well as their subordinate units (cities and towns, counties, school districts, etc.) — and to emphasize that there is no fundamental difference between having one's rights violated by Congress, a state legislature, a town council or a school board. A local majority can be just as tyrannical — perhaps more so — than a national majority. That was the whole idea behind Will's second point at the beginning of this post.

That was also supposed to be the great charge of the Fourteenth Amendment — the "new birth of freedom" that has mostly proven to be stillborn.

More thoughts at Hit & Run.

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*When did Arizona stop being "Goldwater country"? Can it be traced to Sandra Day O'Connor ("the only former legislator on the Supreme Court"), to John McCain ("loyal foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution"), both or neither? (But cf., Jeff Flake.)

The Dalai Lama calls China's bluff:

The Dalai Lama on Tuesday invited international observers, including Chinese officials, to scour his offices here and investigate whether he had any role in inciting the latest anti-Chinese violence in Tibet. He also threatened to resign as leader of Tibet's government-in-exile in the event of spiraling bloodshed in his homeland.

To review:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the recent days of demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. Mr Wen said the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader's claim of "cultural genocide" was "nothing but lies".
...
"There is ample fact and plenty of evidence proving this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," he said.

If there is "ample fact and plenty of evidence," then China's Communist authoritarians should have no problem finding it. And if they can't, then surely they will be able to manufacture. Thus ever with tyrants.

---

Of course, with oppressive regimes like China manufacturing false evidence often goes hand-in-hand with concealing truthful evidence:

Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

The blocking added to the communist government's efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.
...
Beijing tightened controls on online video with rules that took effect Jan. 30 and limited video-sharing to state-owned companies.

Acts like this (not to mention acts like this or this) ought lay to rest the preposterous notion that "Market Communism" is viable notion or that political freedom can be divorced from economic freedom. No matter how many shiny new skyscrapers (in special economic zones accessible only to loyal elites) China's Communist brutal thugs may build, it will not change the fact that they are brutal thugs.

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As for the free world's myopic, disgraceful legitimization of China's jackboot regime via the 2008 Olympics, I merely reiterate my long-held position: Shame on anyone who competes in, sponsors, attends or even watches this totalitarian travesty.

Please tell me he didn't:

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

It's almost as if they brought forth upon this continent a new nation. Or something.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Long endure? Meh -- new birth of freedom. Etc.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

Of-by-for, QED. P.S. "Yes we can..."

This is the candidate hailed as the great political orator of our time?

"Just words" indeed.

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As for the rest of Obama's speech, I fail to understand why people are so orgasmic over it:

--I agree with Jeremiah Wright, except when I disagree with him.

--I look up to him, except when I condemn him.

--I'm proud of my membership in his church, except when I'm ashamed of it.

--I transcend race-based politics, except when race matters.

--Oh, and more government is always the answer to every problem, especially the problems created by government in the first place.

Did I miss anything?

That seems to be the core reasoning in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, No. 06-713 (March 18, 2008) (PDF - 33 pages):

At bottom, respondents' objection to I–872 is that voters will be confused by candidates' party-preference designations. Respondents' arguments are largely variations on this theme. Thus, they argue that even if voters do not assume that candidates on the general election ballot are the nominees of their parties, they will at least assume that the parties associate with, and approve of, them. This, they say, compels them to associate with candidates they do not endorse, alters the messages they wish to convey, and forces them to engage in counterspeech to disassociate themselves from the candidates and their positions on the issues.

The backstory, in brief, is that Washington State adopted a "top two" primary system, with the candidates having the option of indicating a "party preference" that need not coincide with their actual party membership and need not reflect the wishes of party leaders or members.

So, for example, a small-l libertarian who does not belong to any political party could run for office in Washington and indicate her "party preference" as "Libertarian" -- or "Republican" or "Democrat" or "Socialist" -- on the ballot.

No, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

So a group of political parties -- including the Big-L Libertarian Party -- sued, essentially claiming the political equivalent of trademark infringement (indeed, the Big-L Libertarian Party made exactly this point -- see Footnote 11 -- but the Court refused to take up that question). Parties possess, they asserted, a fundamental right to have only legitimate members use their names on a ballot.

The Court's reply: "Meh" --

We reject each of these contentions for the same reason: They all depend, not on any facial requirement of I–872, but on the possibility that voters will be confused as to the meaning of the party-preference designation. But respondents' assertion that voters will misinterpret the party-preference designation is sheer speculation. It "depends upon the belief that voters can be 'misled' by party labels. But '[o]ur cases reflect a greater faith in the ability of individual voters to inform themselves about campaign issues.'"

I would love to believe, as Justice Thomas seems to, that voters are not morons. But it is hardly "sheer speculation" to think otherwise. There is a mountain of evidence to suggest that voters, to put it euphemistically, need help at the ballot box. Sad, perhaps even existentialist, but undeniably true.

The good news is that the Court only sided with Washington State as against a facial challenge (i.e., that the law is always unconstitutional under all circumstances). The law can still be challenged "as applied" to a particular circumstance. Stay tuned.

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Incidentally, be sure to review Chief Justice Roberts' hilarious intellectual gymnastics in his concurrence, trying to explain why Boy Scouts v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000) and Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557 (1995), are inapplicable. Apparently it's more important that Scouts and Hibernians be able to exclude gays from their functions than for Republicans to be able to exclude Democrats from their ballots. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either. Neither does it make sense to Justice Scalia, who in his dissent (and in typical Scalia style) is less than kind to Roberts:

In Dale, for example, we did not require the Boy Scouts to prove that forced acceptance of the openly homosexual scoutmaster would distort their message. Nor in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston did we require the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade to demonstrate that including a gay contingent in the parade would distort their message.

Translation: One can simply assume that gays are abhorrent, but not Republicans. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

--A Special Guest Question: Is Bear Stearns the Next Enron?

--Is it a proper function of government to mandate one-week paid "love vacations" for all coupled workers?

During the seven days, couples could devote themselves to each other "both at an erotic and emotional level" and "find their way back to the path of love in order to find the wellspring of love again."

What about single or widowed workers? More importantly, don't Finnish MPs read my blog?

--Speaking of government-imposed employment policy, should "fit notes" replace "sick notes"?

--Does wearing body spray generate positive externalities or negative externalities?

--Speaking of commercialized post-pubescent sexuality, should a children's hospital return a $10 million donation from Abercrombie & Fitch if keeping it would mean having to rename the hospital after the company? (Via Kevin, M.D.)

...then only outlaws will have potatoes?

A sainsbury's executive is being investigated over claims he received £3million in bribes from a potato supplier. ... The inquiry surrounds payments allegedly made by staff at the potato producer, Greenvale, to Mr Maylam over many years.
...
The allegations raise questions about the murky world of contract negotiations between the all-powerful buyers at the big four supermarkets and their suppliers. The fact that Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons control 70 per cent of grocery spending in the UK means suppliers are desperate to keep the buyers happy.

In the past this has routinely included wining and dining buyers, offering presents and occasional all-expenses paid trips abroad. However, there have also long been suspicions of under the table payments.

I find both the subject and the tenor of the story very befuddling. First, I'm not sure how one can "bribe" a private party. Only agents of the government can accept bribes, in the same way that only agents of the government can censor. Side payments such as those discovered may constitute breach of contract between Mr. Maylem and Sainsbury's, but how does that leapfrog to "corruption"? Why should this be a criminal matter?

Second, I'm not sure why private contracts between retailers and suppliers should be deemed "murky." A private contract is, um, private -- whether it happened to be openly disclosed, strictly confidential or "murky" is irrelevant. How Sainsbury's gets its potatoes and who got paid what along the way is none of my business -- only the price at which it is selling them is of any legitimate concern to me.

Third, and related, is the leftist presumption of "control" -- that four large "all-powerful" chains "control" 70% of grocery spending in the U.K. I prefer to think that (in the absence of government intrusion) 100% of grocery spending is "controlled" by consumers -- who can manipulate the potato market (i.e., by not buying potatoes) far more easily than a fiercely competitive oligopoly can. It takes very few competitors to bring about the benefits of competition -- especially for a homogeneous, commoditized service such as "grocery retailing."

When a M.P. or a cabinet minister in the U.K. is found to have been accepting potato-related bribes, let me know. Otherwise this is a waste of newsprint.

There's not much to say, and I said it here:

There is a difference between "bailing out" and "underwriting the orderly liquidation of." The Fed, via JPM, is doing the latter, not the former.

A perfectly reasonable libertarian case can be made that neither undertaking is a legitimate function of government (just as it is not a legitimate function of government to use the tax code or monetary tools to foster home ownership in the first place). But there is nevertheless a substantive difference between the two forms of intervention.

For who require analogies: Rescuing the FSLIC (a government program, incidentally) was "bailing out"; the Resolution Trust Corporation was "underwriting the orderly liquidation of." Saying "this is just like the S&L crisis" achieves nothing (other than to