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January 30, 2006

Creative lawmaking

St. Louis has the right idea.

St. Louis police will be able to seize cars blasting loud music under a bill passed today by the Board of Aldermen. . .

[Alderman Craig] Schmid said he wanted to send a “strong message” to drivers who cruise through residential areas, jarring neighbors and rattling windows.

“I analogize it to auditory graffiti,” Schmid said.

Other aldermen said loud music coming from cars is among their top complaints from constituents. The music gets so loud, Alderman Dionne Flowers, that when “you’re in bed, you fall out.”

The bill prohibits operating car stereo equipment that creates “louder volume than is necessary for convenient, normal hearing,” which is the same language as the city’s current anti-noise ordinance.

Now, all we need is legislation authorizing the seizure of screaming children in restaurants.

Of course, what do we do with them?

Ransom of Red Chief, anyone?

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:50 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2006

Who you gonna believe: Hamas or Jimmah Carter?

Captain Ed comments on the new rulers of the Palestinian Arabs.

As the world pontificated about how the responsibility of governing would prove a moderating influence for Hamas and that the West would wind up having to come to terms with the terrorists as statesmen. The only fly in that ointment is Hamas itself, which had to reaffirm today for the doubters that, once again, it really does hate Israel and wants to see it destroyed:

Militants from Fatah and Hamas capped a tense and emotional day with violent clashes on Friday, while a Hamas leader said the group had no intention of recognizing Israel's right to exist or changing its charter, which calls for Israel's destruction.

"Why are we going to recognize Israel?" said the leader, Mahmoud Zahar. "Is Israel going to recognize the right of return of Palestinian refugees? Is Israel going to recognize Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital?" ...

Until now, Hamas has refused to take part in the Palestinian government because that government emerged from the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel, which Hamas rejected.

Hamas still does not recognize Israel and says it will not change its charter calling for Israel's destruction.

Of course it won't change its charter, and all of the Western aid in the world won't make a difference. Hell, all of the aid the West poured into the PA when Fatah ran the joint didn't get a change to their charter either, so undoubtedly Hamas will not go out of its way to accommodate the Jews. Hamas only has one objective, the one on which its originators founded it: to cause the annihilation of Israel, replaced by an Islamist terror camp that will send its members across the ummah.

Meanwhile, over at the Belmont Club, Wretchard notes that perrenial voluptuary of tyrants and America haters Jimmah Carter has proclaimed that we can -- must! -- work with (read: fund) Hamas.

Whatever happens the "International Community" has to keep on
supplying money to Hamas for whatever purposes Hamas intends to use it. Jimmy
Carter and the Guardian have already made the argument.

Carter, who led an 85-member international observer team from around the world organized by the 'National Democratic Institute' in partnership with 'The Carter Center,' urged the international community to directly or indirectly fund the new Palestinian Government even though it will be led by an internationally-declared foreign terror organization. "The Palestinian Government is destitute, and in desperate financial straits. I hope that support for the new government will be forthcoming," Carter said at a Jerusalem press conference. -- Jerusalem Post 
Any cut-off in EU aid would only be a gift to Israel's hardliners. The EU is the largest international donor to the Palestinian Authority, and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, blundered last month when he told a Gaza press conference that "it would be very difficult for the help and the money that goes to the Palestinian Authority to continue to flow" if Hamas were in government. ... Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the "war on terror". -- Tony Steele in the Guardian

Even Israel is expected to keep the money flowing.

  • Israel could plunge the Palestinian Authority into a financial crisis by withholding its main source of income, following the election victory by the militant group Hamas, Israeli officials warned yesterday ... Speaking in Davos, Mazen Sinokrot, the Palestinian economics minister, urged Israel to maintain its financial ties with the PA. "Israel has always been our major trading partner. I'm sure the Israelis with their wise approach will look at it in a very positive way and will not try to tackle any incorrect issues when it comes to the collection of revenues," he said. --- Scotsman.com News - International
  • The United States, the EU, Israel and the United Nations are expected to keep dishing out the money and "not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the 'war on terror'"

    You see, when Hamas says it reaffirms its committment to the destruction of Israel, Carter and his lackeys would have you believe that those childlike A-rabs don't really mean what they say.

    Perfect.

    We've actually reached a point where we should pay for the bombs and bullets intended for us and our allies.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 09:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

    January 27, 2006

    I've got this feeling Kuato* has moved into my guts

    Given my hypochondriacal nature and fear of doctors with knives, I'm conflicted about this invention.

    NEXT time you go under the knife, it may not be just the surgeon poking about inside you. A radio-controlled robot could be roaming round in there too, providing an extra eye for surgeons performing minimally invasive "keyhole" procedures.

    The robot, developed by Dmitry Oleynikov and colleagues at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, can move around inside the stomach or abdomen to give surgeons a new perspective on the area being operated on. It is also equipped with a retractable needle, allowing it to perform biopsies.

    The device is made up of two rotating aluminium cylinders connected by a thick axle, which carries the camera. The spiral pattern on the surface of the cylinders allows them to grip the walls of the abdominal cavity and move around. "They have been designed not to slip or damage the tissue," Oleynikov says.

    The robot is only 15 millimetres in diameter, allowing it to be inserted through the small incisions in the abdomen used for keyhole surgery (Surgical Endoscopy, vol 20, p 135). It is controlled from a console equipped with a joystick.

    When Oleynikov used the robotic tools to help remove the gall bladder from pigs, he only needed to make two incisions rather than the usual four. This is because the robots can be inserted into incisions already made for cutting and grasping tools, unlike endoscopic cameras, which need separate incisions. And by using several robots it should be possible to view the area from a variety of angles. "We have put up to three of these in at the same time through the same incision," he says.

    Oleynikov has also used the robots to explore the abdominal cavity of a live pig, having got it there via the animal's mouth and an incision in through the stomach wall. This was to test a procedure known as natural orifice surgery, in which the surgeon removing a gall bladder or doing a liver biopsy, for example, inserts the instruments via the mouth and then through small incisions in the stomach lining, thus avoiding the need for an external incision. This is believed to result in less trauma to the abdominal wall, and means the patient is left without a scar. At the end of the operation, the surgeon backtracks, suturing the stomach lining before removing any excised tissue through the patient's mouth.

    If conscious during Robbie the Robot's Abdominal Adventure, I'm afraid the feeling of a sentient burrito roaming about my guts might drive me in-frickin'-sane.

    But it is preferable to some scalpel-happy sawbones going Thanksgiving-Day-turkey-carving crazy on my carcass.

    Hat tip:Engadget.

    *See Total Recall.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:23 AM | Comments (0)

    January 26, 2006

    Festival of the Leuns

    As the two previous posts make clear, Gerard Van Der Leun is a daily must-read for me. An eclectic blend of politics and culture, I'm always impressed by what he posts on his American Digest.

    Check him out (if you haven't yet done so); he's re(book)markable.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

    The way the world ends

    Want to read something that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Van Der Leun wote a chilling piece last year, detailing how terrorists would smuggle a nuke into San Diego (Where's the sequel, Gerard?).

    In an even scarier variation on the theme, Dr. Bob has factored in the lunatic leader of Iran in a look back on the Apocalypse of 2008.

    Historians may well reflect on these times–if there are historians to record them–and wonder how it might have been different. They will look to November ‘79, and recognize the lost opportunity to crush the nascent Iranian Islamic revolution in its earliest days. They will ponder how a series of American leaders–from Carter in ‘79, to Reagan in Beirut, to Bush in Gulf War I, to Clinton in Somalia–squandered the opportunity to establish by strength a bulwark against the rising self-delusional tide of Islamic fundamentalist zealotry.

    They will marvel at the senescence of Europe–once colonial conquerors whose might and resilience survived two global wars, now weakened and whimpering, their grand cathedrals as empty as their souls, their rotting culture paying feckless fealty to impotent diplomacy. And China: mainlining Mideast oil to sustain a leaden economy, buying off their oppressed billions with cell phones and computers, their children chained to factories churning out the worthless goods the West demanded to feed its own addictions. . . .

    There were, it is now believed, six bombs: two produced by Iran herself; two purchased from Kim Jong Il, desperate for cash to keep his movies rolling and his regime afloat; and the greatest prize: two high-yield nukes from the Russian Mafia. These broke the bank–but oil prices were high, their target was priceless–and money would be worthless after their use.

    The Russian nukes arced toward Zion on pillars of holy flame. Patriot missiles took out the Haifa arm, but Tel-Aviv was incinerated, the waters of the Mediterranean boiling as the sacrifice climbed to heaven. The Palestinians would die, of course–but their usefulness to Allah had long since passed, their timid suicide acts pale archetypes of Allah’s true vengeance. Jerusalem would survive, though its inhabitants would die slowly and painfully, befitting of goats and swine inhabiting that most holy of cities. In a massive counter strike, Iran ceased to exist in any recognizable form. Ahmadinejad and his inner circle were long gone, of course–secure deep within their mountain redoubt in northern Pakistan. The hardened production sites in Iran survived largely intact–but the fruit of their bowels had long since dispersed to faraway cells in faraway lands.

    The barge on the Thames was next, eight days later. The Korean nuke was low-yield and dirty, but served its purposes well, killing tens of thousands instantly, many more over the ensuing weeks, decapitating the government, and rendering London uninhabitable for a generation. Paris was next, three weeks later, the Iranian bomb prepositioned in an unused Metro tunnel, it is thought–to destroy a millennium of Western culture while preserving the Muslim suburbs. Russia was next–not Moscow, as expected, where security was airtight–but the oil fields, setting alight enormous blazes which would burn for years, destroying forever in one blow the economy of the butchers of Chechnya.

    And then–the pause. Months passed, terror reigned, as anarchy roiled Europe and the Middle East burned. Global commerce stopped; oil became unavailable at any price. Jews and Muslims alike were slaughtered, torn apart by angry mobs and incensed governments. Angry recriminations flew like missiles between governments and politicians, as the world economy ground to a halt. Riots were everywhere, marshall law ruled, as all personal freedoms were revoked under pain of incarceration–or worse. Religion was outlawed in many places–and suspect everywhere.

    Conspiracy theories abounded–was this calamity fomented by America, as yet untouched in this global conflagration? The truth could not be spoken: the last Korean nuke was discovered, serendipitously, in a freight yard in Atlanta–its ensnarement now top secret lest public panic ensue. The two remaining, quietly resting, somehow avoiding the frantic search of all inbound cargo–one in a tanker truck in the Jersey refineries outside New York City, the other in a warehouse just south of San Francisco, located directly over the San Andreas fault–awaiting their synchronized detonation, that fatal day on August 6, 2008 …

    A cautionary tale, one that seems the most plausible outcome of the West's current infatuation with appeasement.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    The voice of the neuter

    Van Der Leun has an interesting take on LA Times columnist Joel Stein, one that requires listening to his voice (available thanks to Radioblogger and Hugh Hewitt's devastating interview).

    If you focus on [Stein's voice], you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the "service" sector -- be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It's a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.

    It is the voice of the neuter.

    I mean that in the grammatical sense:
    "a. Neither masculine nor feminine in gender.
    "b. Neither active nor passive; intransitive,"

    and in the biological sense:
    "a. Biology Having undeveloped or imperfectly developed sexual organs: the neuter caste in social insects.
    "b. Botany Having no pistils or stamens; asexual.
    "c. Zoology Sexually undeveloped."

    You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it.

    The voice whisps across your ears as if the speaker is in a state of perpetual uncertainty with every utterance. It is as if, male or female, there is no foundation or soul within the speaker on which the voice can rest and rise. As a result, it has a misty quality to it that denies it any unique character at all. It is the Valley Girl variation of the voices that Prufrock hears:

    I know the voices dying with a dying fall
    Beneath the music from a farther room.
    It's parting wistful wish for you is that you "Have a good one."

    . . .

    No, it is only to say that this new voice that we hear throughout the land from so many of the young betokens a weaker and less certain brand of citizen than we have been used to in our history. Neither male nor female, neither gay nor straight, neither ... well, not anything substantive really. A generation finely tuned to irony and nothingness and tone deaf to duty and soul. If you can write in this tone, and Stein can, you can become a third level columnist for the Los Angeles Times. With a little luck, over time, you might even rise to the level of second string columnist for Vanity Fair. Should the country so lose its mind and elect another Clinton, you could even become a White House speech writer.

    Exactly! I've seen Stein on TV, and he has the affect of a teen. Listen to him and tell me Van Der Leun's wrong.

    As I commented on Van Der Leun's site, it's a less in-your-face form of the argument presented by Kim Du Toit in his essay, The Pussification of the Western Male.

    The other place I've noticed it, aside from the local Starbucks, is in what passes for today's movie stars.

    Gable, Cooper, Tracy, Cagney, Bogart, McQueen, Mitchum, Peck; from their first screen appearances, they were men, guys that reminded us of our fathers and their friends.

    Today? Keeanu, Pitt, Cruise. Eternal college-age young adults.

    Tom Cruise is older now than Bogart was in Casablanca. Steve McQueen was only 31 when he took part in the Great Escape.

    Our culture no longer prizes "men." Or is this just another Red State/Blue State divide?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:02 AM | Comments (1)

    January 25, 2006

    Thank you for being honest

    I attended a dinner up at the Reagan Library this past summer; the guest speaker was Dennis Prager, who told us about his belief that it was deeply dishonest of the Left to claim they oppose the war but support the troops.

    Prager offered a rousing stem-winder, one that left me wondering how on Earth anyone could claim to support the troops when saying in essence that they were dying for an immoral cause. He wrote about it, too, and it's well worth revisiting, in light of yesterday's repulsive column in the L.A. Times.

    To those who say that giving voice to their opposition to an "illegal war" is the true hallmark of a patriot, well, I agree with Rusty Shackleford when he says that the time for debate in a democracy is before we vote on whether or not to send our troops into battle. Once they've left our shores to implement the will of the People -- carrying out the orders of the Commander in Chief with the assent of the Congress -- the time for such criticism is long past.

    Let me be clear: I appreciate Stein's honesty, and I wish all those who claim to "support the troops" while condemning the war they fight were as willing to be forthright. All that being said, I also believe we should as a society condemn them for trying to undermine our GI's fighting spirit, and, in the more extreme cases, for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

    When we begin hearing our enemies reciting talking points from the Democratic leadership (or is it the Democratic leadership spouting Al Queda talking points?), I think we've reasonable exceeded the boundaries of acceptable wartime debate.

    Laws for punishing sedition and treason exist because at some point, Americans understood that when a state of war exists, the usual rules do not apply.

    When critics of the war say they support the troops, but they do not want us to "win," listen to what they are saying. If they don't want American GIs to win, who do they want to emerge victorious from this war?

    George Orwell spoke of those pacifists who opposed fighting Hitler as being, in effect, supporters of facism.

    Pacifism. Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.

    In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.

    Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U.

    They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

    The similarities are staggering; only the names have changed in the intervening 66 years.

    Can anyone really say that the opponents of America's battle against Muslim terrorists are anything other than a fifth column for our enemies, a 21st-century updated version of Lenin's "useful idiots"?

    Whether motivated by pacificism, a belief that America is truly the most terrible oppressor in the history of the Earth, or simply by an "anybody-but-Bush" mania, it's time for us to take Orwell's lesson to heart: When confronting evil, one must choose sides. And those who choose poorly must face both the moral implications of that choice, as well as the real-world consequences.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    January 24, 2006

    L.A. Times columnist unloads on America's GIs

    L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein has written a repugnant article, Warriors and wusses, wherein he tells us what he thinks about American troops fighting and dying for freedom:

    I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on. . . .

    But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

    Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. . . .

    After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

    But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

    I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

    But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

    And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

    I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

    I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

    Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

    Where to begin? I think we can, as Glenn Reynolds has, begin to question his patriotism; that is to say, we may now safely say that Stein is as un-American, as un-patriotic as a citizen-in-name-only can be.

    Outside the Beltway has a good roundup of the reaction. Hugh Hewitt conducted a lengthy interview with Stein this afternoon that resulted in the feckless scribbler appearing even less informed, more repugnant, than should be possible.

    Hewitt does his readers another service by posting this vital info:

    To cancel your subscription, call: 1-888-565-2323. (Back-up cancellation number: 310-608-0111.)

    I'm proud to say that Papa Lief cancelled his home delivery years ago; that he still takes the Sunday edition is a disappointment, although after this, I suspect even that will soon end.

    Radio Blogger has a transcript of the interview posted, as well as the audio, if you want to subject yourself to Stein's whines.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

    American justice, Boston style

    So, what does a "kiddie raper" look like?

    Something like this:

    040107gregory_pathiakis2.jpg

    And what happens to a kiddie raper in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

    Not much.

    BROCKTON (AP) -- A former high school teacher avoided prison after pleading guilty to raping one of his students.

    Superior Court Judge Suzanne Delvecchio on Tuesday sentenced former Middleboro High School teacher Gregory Pathiakis, 26, to a suspended 21/2 year prison term, followed by five years probation.

    Prosecutors had asked for a minimum of four years in prison.

    "That is certainly disheartening to see that there is not some sort of incarceration," Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz told The Enterprise of Brockton. "He was in a position of authority over these kids."

    Pathiakis, of Brockton, pleaded guilty to child rape, enticement of a child under 16 and possession of child pornography.

    He was arrested in January 2004 after a 15-year-old boy told police Pathiakis had raped him in December 2003. Pathiakis had just resigned from his job at Middleboro High School after officials there confronted him about online contacts he had with students while on duty.

    The victim urged the judge to give Pathiakis prison time.

    "I feel you deserve jail," he wrote in a statement read by his father. "You are a disgrace to all teachers."

    That's right, not one day of custody time. This is what leads to vigilantism; the lack of faith in the justice system's ability to do justice. So, what would you parents do if the man who raped your child walked out of the courtroom after admitting the deed?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:12 AM | Comments (0)

    January 23, 2006

    Turning terrorists' vomit against them

    The folks over at Strategy Page have a great piece on the latest technology to protect our subs when they're tied up to the pier.

    January 23, 2006: Over the past few years, products began to appear, that were capable of detecting divers approaching ships or waterside facilities. Now there are underwater weapons that can disable the swimmers.

    One of the more recent of the detection systems is the Cerberus360 swimmer detection system. This is a (large) refrigerator size device that is lowered to the ocean floor in the middle of the area you want to guard. Cerberus360 uses sonar to detect anything, large enough to be a threat, up to 800 meters out. Actually, during tests, it was able to detect an approaching underwater scuba swimmer at 900 meters. Cerberus360 works well in shallow water, and can be tweaked by the operator, once emplaced, to be even more accurate.

    Al Qaeda groups are know to have bought scuba gear and trained for attacks like this, but none have been attempted yet. But last year, Raytheon Corporation got a patent for a sonar type device that can disable divers as well. The Raytheon "swimmer denial" uses sound waves that are tuned to cause severe gastric distress in humans. Makes you heave into your scuba mask. This makes further underwater operations difficult, if not impossible.

    When I stood topside watch in foreign ports, we were told to keep an eye out for bubbles near the boat, evidence of either enemy frogmen or lactose-intolerant sea creatures.

    I think this sonar is a much better system.

    As for that vomit-inducing Raytheon equipment, wouldn't it just be cheaper to play the audio from MTV's top 20 countdown?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)

    When political figures sound like a SNL skit

    The Political Teen has saved you the trouble of staying up late for the almost comedy-free ordeal that has become Saturday Night Live.

    andersoncoopersnl.JPG.jpg

    The Teen has provided a link to a laugh-out-loud slam on the stupidity of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Jesse Jackson, and Hillary Clinton's "plantation" speech.

    The funniest part is that what the real politicos said is no less idiotic than what the SNL players are saying for laughs.

    Look for the link on his page to download the clip.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:12 AM | Comments (0)

    What would an evil Spicoli do?

    James Lileks writes about a bonehead stoner who commits a terrible crime in pursuit of a stooopid dream.

    [W]e had a case in a tony burb where a kid plotted to kill his parents, and succeeded in having his accomplice shoot his mother to death. The agony the father must feel is unimaginable. When the motive was finally revealed, it was unutterably banal: the conspirators intended to use the insurance money to move to Amsterdam “and open a café,” as the story put it. That’s all you needed to know. Stupid useless dopers.

    Subsequent stories talked about how the kid used to be a good kid, but had trouble in college, and had been using marijuana – as though the last two items moved in a parallel track, disconnected, occasionally intersecting at finals time. Sounds like a good kid who had the usual problems, smoked some weed in his newly emancipated life, and had it derail everything. Everything. It’ll happen.

    You’re unhappy, you get high, the music’s INCREDIBLE all of a sudden and pizza is AMAZING and your friends are as cool as you are, but Sunday morning lands on your head like a bell tossed off the Notre Dame carillion: this is not who you are, this is not how you meet girls – any girls around last night? No – and these are not the people you want to be like. You’re ashamed, you resolve to be better, and you can’t wait to do it again. Six hours later you’re watching an old Dragnet on TV and telling each other that Jack Webb HAD to be high when he made this.

    I’m not blaming the drug. If the kid’s guilty, he’s guilty, not an herb. But just as not everyone who drinks turns into a sullen dull-eyed violent brute, not everyone who smokes grass becomes a happy mellow tallish shod Hobbit.

    But I will say this: drunks kill people in the heat of the moment. Stoners come up with plots to kill people and escape to Amsterdam, where you can get high without worrying that that guy over at the next table knows your dad or something. I mean, he’s looking at you. Maybe we should like go to Turkey. They have hash and they're totally cool about it unless you smuggle. It's like a custom over there, like wine with meals

    (Note: I am in favor of medicinal marijuana. Someone’s going through chemo, I don’t think society will crumble if you given them a joint, headphones and a CD of Beethoven’s 9th.)

    I think Lileks is right about medicinal pot, too.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 06:46 AM | Comments (1)

    January 21, 2006

    What were they thinking?

    This one has been making the rounds on the web lately; his popularity in Germany explains so much. I first saw this thanks to John Podhoretz of National Review.

    Thanks for nothing, John.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

    January 20, 2006

    Porky J. McGreedy update

    pig.jpg

    I received an e-mail from a reader, asking me if I was talking about retired judges.

    Actually, no, I wasn't. A close look at Porky J. McGreedy reveals that he's not sporting the latest in judicial robes.

    Retired judges are in a different class. First of all, they're employees of the state, not the county. Second, and most important, there's a shortage of judges, which is why Sacramento needs retired judges to come back and keep the courts from grinding to a halt.

    The problem I've described involves local government positions that could be filled by any one of thousands of eligible applicants, many of them eager to begin new careers (at entry-level wages). The litigants and criminal defendants waiting for a courtroom cannot depend on anyone other than the black-robed retirees to hear their cases.

    Someone else asked if it's unfair to ask someone to work for free, to do a job that offers a decent salary.

    Well, I guess that depends. If the person seeking employment hadn't done the job before, then, yeah, they ought to be paid for it. But when it appears that greed has induced someone to game the system to get two dollars for every buck they got for doing the same job before, then I'm afraid I've no sympathy for their "situation."

    See, we're back to the whole concept of "retirement." It's supposed to provide an income so a worker can enjoy his twilight years -- and not have to continue doing the 9-5 that got him the pension. If you don't want to retire, don't; you can continue earning that salary until you're ready to retire.

    Hell, come on out of retirement, like a punch-drunk boxer, go a few more rounds, then hang up your gloves and reenter the ranks of the shuffleboard set.

    Let me be clear. I've never said this practice is illegal (although it's shameful and quite frankly disgusting). I just think it stinks.

    Anyhow, it's my blog, my opinion.

    Your mileage may vary.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:54 AM | Comments (0)

    January 19, 2006

    Auto Erotica

    Business Week has a slide show of the latest sheetmetal rolling out of the design studios and factories, with two automotive mavens assessing the cars.

    Looks like Lexus is going to take more business from Mercedes; its new high-end luxury sedan has finally shed its bland skin, upped the amount of "Wow!" features, and done it for $30 grand less than the Germans.

    Ouch.

    chevy_camaro.jpg

    I also agree that the new Camaro prototype is a winner (and I'm confirmed Mustang lover -- mine was a '68 Fastback). Problem is, it's a Chevy; if only Acura could make it . . . .

    Anyhow, check it out; it'll save you the trouble of dealing with the crowds.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)

    Guns for hire

    John over at The Officer's Club has an entry about the mercs of Blackwater USA, with links to a six minute video of them doing their thing in Najaf.

    Interesting view of a little-seen part of the fight.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

    January 18, 2006

    Money for nothing

    dol·lar-a-year (dŏl'ər-ə-yîr')
    adj.
    Of, relating to, or being an official, employee, or consultant who receives token payment for services rendered: a dollar-a-year senator.

    During World War I and World War II, Americans of independent financial means (i.e., rich guys) served in the U.S. government for a token sum, often just one dollar a year, refusing a salary they didn't need in order to maximize their contribution to the public good.

    The taxpayers got perhaps the best return ever on their money, gaining the expertise of business titans for the war effort, at the cost of a few sawbucks.

    No one could accuse these men of taking the jobs out of greed; government service was simply an opportunity to do their duty. Where are such men now?

    I ask because of a disturbing practice in county government, one that reeks of back-slapping, back-room deals, greed and a willingness to feed out of the public trough because no one is looking.

    pig.jpg

    Here's how it works. A career civil servant retires with a full pension, often close to his take-home pay. He is then re-hired by his former employer to do the same job he did before he retired, earning another paycheck for said employment. So, the retired employee receives his pension check from the county every month, plus his paycheck from the county every two weeks for performing the same job duties.

    Wait, that can't be right, can it? It sounds like stealing, doesn't it? Two checks for the same work? I bet you didn't know how good (read: lucrative) civil service could be. Although it doesn't seem right to call it "service," seeing as how the only one getting serviced is the taxpayers, who are getting it good and hard.

    What possible justification can there be for this fleecing of the public treasury? Some people say that these workers are an immense repository of knowledge and experience. Agreed. But that's what happens when people retire; they take their skills with them.

    This isn't like when someone retires and then begins a second career with another employer; that's hardly anyone's definition of double dipping. It's when the worker does the same job for the same employer that one begins to sniff around for the source of the Tammany stench.

    There are honorable ways for retirees to serve the citizens of Ventura County without forfeiting their honor or betraying the public trust. They could volunteer their time. Don't laugh; the district attorney's office has had volunteer attorneys for years.

    And if volunteering offends their (inflated) egos, they can always come back to work for a dollar a year. At least they can say they're not giving it away for free.

    Or, if they don't want to retire, then don't.

    Finally, what of the agency heads who countenance such sweetheart deals? Don't they have a fiduciary duty to the public, to ensure that the monies they receive are well spent? Does paying a man $160,000 a year to do an $80,000 job sound like the public is getting a good return on its investment?

    Or does it sound like pigs feeding at the trough?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

    Apartment shooting update

    A guy named Beau reminds me that I've failed to update Making Ventura County Safer, given what we now know about the fellow who was shot. Beau says:

    You are a fucking idiot, get your facts right. Hector was not a felon, he was a good guy. He entered the wrong house by mistake after a night of drinking, celebrating our graduation from UTI (which was the next day).

    P.S. I would approve of YOU having a "dirt nap."

    First, Beau's right. The local fish wrap has the lowdown on the late Mr. Soto, who apparently did indeed have the misfortune to pick the wrong window after a bout of celebratory drinking on the night before graduation, although it was an apartment and not a house.

    Interestingly, Soto's family doesn't appear to blame the shooter. His aunt said, "We don't want to make him a saint." When told that the police were unlikely to file charges, his godfather said, "We're sorry that it happened but we don't want to put the blame on the other person. Accidents happen."

    The article says that Soto got into a scuffle with the 65-year-old man who lived in the apartment after he found the stranger in his bedroom, said scuffle ending with the old guy going for his gat.

    As for Beau letting me know he'd be glad if I took a dirt nap, I'll just say that if I break into a neighbor's house while in a drunken stupor, I'd be the first one to say a dirt nap was an appropriate end to such a sad tale.

    But I do have a question for Beau: do you -- like your late friend's family -- lay the blame for Soto's death on his actions, and not on the man he scared when he broke into the man's apartment? Do you acknowledge that your late friend would still be alive if he had not gotten so drunk; had not climbed through the window; and had not struggled with the retiree?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 06:36 PM | Comments (2)

    The eyes don't lie (or do they?)

    This is an extremely interesting optical illusion. Make sure to read the instructions, and give it long enough to kick in. If I was a defense attorney, I'd use it to show that witnesses don't always see what they think they did.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)

    January 17, 2006

    Came the great disillusionment

    When I was I kid, "War of the Worlds" was one of my favorite books. The stage-setting passage by the narrator at the beginning was brilliant.

    No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

    With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.

    It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise.

    Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

    Now, reread it, this time with "terrestrial men" representing the people of the modern Western world, and the alien invaders as the representatives of global jihad.

    Wretchard has done just that over at the Belmont Blog, and it's an interesting take on blindness to the source of a looming threat.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

    January 15, 2006

    A look at tomorrow's history today

    British historian Niall Ferguson has penned a hair-raising piece on The origins of the Great War of 2007 - and how it could have been prevented.

    With every passing year after the turn of the century, the instability of the Gulf region grew. By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict - far bigger in its scale and scope than the wars of 1991 or 2003 - were in place. . . .

    So history repeated itself. As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war. Having first tried appeasement, offering the Iranians economic incentives to desist, the West appealed to international agencies - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Thanks to China's veto, however, the UN produced nothing but empty resolutions and ineffectual sanctions, like the exclusion of Iran from the 2006 World Cup finals. . . .

    As in the 1930s, too, the West fell back on wishful thinking. Perhaps, some said, Ahmadinejad was only sabre-rattling because his domestic position was so weak. Perhaps his political rivals in the Iranian clergy were on the point of getting rid of him. In that case, the last thing the West should do was to take a tough line; that would only bolster Ahmadinejad by inflaming Iranian popular feeling. So in Washington and in London people crossed their fingers, hoping for the deus ex machina of a home-grown regime change in Teheran.

    This gave the Iranians all the time they needed to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium at Natanz. The dream of nuclear non-proliferation, already interrupted by Israel, Pakistan and India, was definitively shattered. Now Teheran had a nuclear missile pointed at Tel-Aviv. And the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu had a missile pointed right back at Teheran. . . .

    The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

    Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

    The whole thing is even scarier.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

    If you can't cry, you may as well laugh

    As the world thunders towards its date with Iran's nuclear ambitions, this is still the funniest thirty seconds around.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:37 PM | Comments (3)

    January 13, 2006

    Times, they are a changin'

    Hugh Hewitt explains why the failure of the Democrats to derail the Alito nomination has the left in a panic.

    The four-square box below is NOT intended to represent accurately or even closely the real views of the justices. Rather, it does represent the left's beliefs about the beliefs of the justices.

    Here's how the left understands the direction of the SCOTUS:


     TheistsSecularists
    Constitutional
    Majoritarians
    Scalia
    Thomas

    Roberts?
    Alito?
    Rehnquist
    O'Connor
    Elitist
    Anti-Majoritarians
    KennedyStevens
    Souter
    Breyer
    Ginsburg

    By "theist" I mean those who hold a belief in a God who is not indifferent to the actions of men and women. "Secularists," by contrast, believe that the existence of such a God is, at best, unknowable.

    "Constitutional majoritarians" are believers in checks and balances and separation of powers and the federal system, but also subscribers to the view that majorities working through representative institutions must ultimately control the direction of the country, bound only by the Constitution's directives.

    "Elitist countermajoritarians," by contrast, believe that no matter what popular opinion expressed through representative institutions may believe, that there are certain policy choices that must be imposed on the country, even if there is no clear constitutional backing for such a choice, and even if that choice has no history of legislative consent. In recent years, elite countermajoritarians have, for example, been committed to the aboliton of the death penalty and for the imposition of same sex marriage, but they have many other policy preferences as well.

    Many of the left's opinion leaders are secular, elite countermajoritarians. Many more, while holding a sincere belief in God, are so committed to the idea of a public square empty of God that their political choices are indistinguishable from those of avowed secularists who reject the very idea of God.

    I think Hewitt's right; there's big changes coming. It's telling that what so many Americans deem desirable -- the Supreme Court deferring to the will of the People expressed through the legislative process -- is simply repellent to a vocal minority. The left is panicked because, unable to enact its agenda through the democratic process, i.e., win elections, its only successes have come through the courts usurping the role of the legislatures.

    Look, I can't stand politicians. But we elect 'em, and if we don't like what they're doing, we throw 'em the hell out. Judges? Who gave them the right to decide policy issues based upon what they think American society should look like? I think most Americans want the Supreme Court to have a far more limited role in imposing change on us.

    Read the rest of Hewitt's essay for a complete explanation of the shifting composition of the Court.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

    January 10, 2006

    I know exactly how he feels

    leahy.jpg

    Sen. Pat Leahy, a politician whose avuncular disingenuousness makes me want to kill myself after a mere 60 seconds of his speechifying, sits next to the founding member of the Chappaquiddick Swim Team as Sen. Joseph Biden blathers in the background today.

    Biden is a real piece of work, a one-man argument for term limits. The senators on the Judiciary Committee had thirty minutes apiece to question Judge Alito; Biden spoke for almost 13 minutes before he asked a question. By the time his 30 minutes were gone, Biden has spoken more than 3,000 words; the judge, a little more than 1,000.

    The best part of this was Biden's ever-so-delightful expression of his distaste for Princeton University, relevant (I guess) because Alito belonged to a Princeton Alumni group that was against pedophile serial killers matriculating, or something like that.

    Biden: This is just by way of ... you know, why some of us are puzzled, because if I was aware of it, and I didn't even like Princeton ... No, I mean I really didn't like Princeton (laughing).

    Yeah, I was an Irish-Catholic kid who thought it hadn't changed like you concluded it had. I mean, I admit. I have little ... you know, one of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my grandfather, Finnegan, will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen.

    But all kidding aside, I wasn't a big Princeton fan.

    All delivered with Biden's weird smirks and inappropriate giggles.

    The inscrutable Alito looked at the senator as if he were receiving the law from Hammurabi himself. I do not want to play cards with this judge; that's an amazing pokerface.

    Anyhow, thanks to the marvels of the internet, within a matter of minutes, someone had dug up evidence that the tenuously-tethered-to-the-truth senator (or should that be the marvelously-malleable pol?) had said the polar opposite in a speech he gave at Princeton last February.

    Lyin' Joe "My son's not gay" Biden: It's an honor to be here. It would have even been a greater honor to have gone here. I have three children who have mercifully have all finally completed undergraduate and graduate school, and I tried to get all three of them to apply here ...

    I committed a serious mistake, Dean. I've learned now, any advice I give ... when you become parents, whatever school you want your child to go to, don't mention it.

    And so I had been pushing Princeton, and this magnificently attractive, intellectually and physically, beautiful young girl, was a sophomore, was showing us around, and I figured we've got a lock now. My son is going to really be interested, and I know Senators aren't supposed to say things like that, but if he hadn't been interested, I would have been worried ....

    Joe Biden: Senatese for Ted Baxter.

    Radioblogger has links to the actual audio, if you can stand it. But why would you listen to Blusterin' Biden if you didn't have to?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

    January 07, 2006

    Das Sooper Boot

    U212A.jpg

    You're looking at the most sophisticated non-nuclear powered submarine in the world, Germany's new U-212A class. She's lauded on the official German website.

    U 212: This cutting-edge propulsion system enables the U212A submarines to move virtually noiselessly underwater, thus making them very difficult to detect.

    In the presence of Defense Minister Dr. Peter Struck, fleet commander Vice Admiral Wolfgang Nolting placed into service the newest generation of German submarines in Eckernförde on October 19.

    "They represent a milestone in the transformation of our armed forces," Struck said, with an eye to the two submarines docked at Kranzfeld port in Eckernförde. The services are jointly planning to better equip the German Armed Forces for the security challenges of the future. The special capability of the submarines to conduct surveillance in coastal waters illustrates this approach.

    The two 212 A submarines are currently the most modern conventional subs in the world. As the only sub type that is not nuclear powered, this class of submarines is driven by air-independent propulsion. The use of fuel cells markedly increases the sub's radius of action. Hydrogen and oxygen combine in the fuel-cell module and are converted into electricity. Water is the only waste product that remains. This cutting-edge propulsion system enables the U212A submarines to move virtually noiselessly underwater, thus making them very difficult to detect.

    I served aboard the last diesel-electric submarine in the U.S. Navy, although when I reported aboard the USS Blueback, she was still one of a sizeable -- though rapidly-dwindling -- number of pigboats. The Blueback and her sister ships, Barbel and Bonefish, were the last diesel subs built by the U.S., commissioned in 1958 and 1959. They were the first operational U.S. subs to feature the Albacore-class teardrop hull; the nuclear-powered Nautilus had a modified version of the WWII fleet boat hull.

    The older subs were designed with hulls that had a sharp keel and pointed bow, much like a surface vessel, designed to maximize their speed while surfaced. Their submerged performance suffered, with much slower maximum speeds as a result of the increased drag offered by the hull form. This wasn't a significant flaw before the advent of nuclear power, as subs often spent a significant amount of time surfaced, and the advantages, savings in fuel and the higher speeds while transiting the Pacific Ocean, were substantial.

    The Navy realized that the Nautilus and its successors were handicapped; although their reactors freed them from the surface -- they could manufacture their own oxygen and water -- their submerged performance was limited by the shape of the hull.

    The three submarines in the Barbel class quickly proved the value of the new design. Its wide-beamed, teardrop shape enabled the subs to attain submerged speeds that were significantly faster than had been seen before. The down side was that the surface performance was significantly worse than in the old fleet boats. They were slower while on the surface (not a huge disadvantage as they spent far more time submerged), and, lacking the more stable V-shaped hull, the round-hulled B-Girls rolled from side-to-side with abandon when surfaced.

    The Blueback and its sisters also enjoyed other benefits of their advanced design. The Nautilus and its predecessors had two screws, one on either side of the rudder. While they gave the boats the ability to turn on a dime and made maneuvering into port easier, they also doubled the amount of noise and significantly increased drag.

    When a screw turns at a certain speed, a vacuum is created along the blades, forming voids -- bubbles. When these bubbles collapse, they make a loud noise. The process, a fast-turning screw creating noisy bubbles is called cavitation. When a screw begins to cavitate depends on both the speed of the blade, the rpms or "turns," and the depth. The deeper the sub, the greater the pressure; the greater the pressure, the faster the screw can turn before it begins to cavitate.

    Bottom line: cavitating is noisy. Noise is bad. Noisy subs get killed.

    The B-Girls had a single screw, aft of the rudder and sternplanes, which resulted in both less noise (less cavitation) and a smoother hull.

    By the time I reported aboard in '81, the nuclear power advocates were firmly entrenched in the Pentagon, and the pigboats were on the way out. Diesel subs were thought to be no threat to the carrier battle groups at the core of U.S. naval theory. After all, the nuclear-powered 688-class hunter/killer subs were protecting the carriers; what could diesel subs do?

    Actually, quite a lot. Although diesel-powered subs are tied to the surface in order to recharge their batteries, there are times when they're actually quieter than a nuke boat. The nuclear reactor is essentially a big heating element for a steam kettle. The heat from the nuclear reaction heats water, which becomes steam, which is then used to drive high-speed turbines, which use reduction gears to turn the screw. All that machinery can put high-frequency noise into the water.

    Enormous effort was put into isolating all noise-producing equipment from the pressure hull, with rubber mounts and bushings helping to dampen vibrations. Don't get me wrong: nukes are quiet. But let me tell you about diesel boats.

    When those three Fairbanks-Morse 38ND 8-1/8, opposing piston locomotive engines shut down, the Blueback began running on its 504 battery cells. They provided 500 volts of DC power to the two massive General Electric motors wound around the propellor shaft. Think about the electric cars you've seen. There's nothing quieter than an electric motor running on batteries.

    And in 1981, there was nothing quieter in the U.S. fleet than the USS Blueback running on batteries. Because so many of our potential enemies fielded conventionally-powered subs, we usually played the bad guys in war games.

    We routinely penetrated the outer screen of destroyers protecting the carriers, avoided the nuclear subs shadowing the battle group, and got our killing shots off at the massive targets.

    As quiet as we were, the Japanese were even quieter. We allowed them access to our Barbel-class boats in a technology transfer; I had an opportunity to visit one of our Japanese doppelgangers when I was in Yokosuka. The Yaeshio-class boat looked identical topside, but when I dropped down the midships hatch and climbed down two decks, I saw that the Japanese had made quite a few changes.

    Not as concerned with creature comforts as we were, the interior was much more spartan than on the American boats. It was also the cleanest damn boat I'd ever seen. We cleaned all the time, but the Japanese sub made our boat look like it deserved to be called a pigboat.

    The biggest surprise lay in the engine room. When we ran our diesels, the noise in the engine room was deafening; you had to yell to make yourself heard over the racket, even standing right next to someone.

    Before my guide opened the hatch from the crews mess into the engineering spaces, he told me that they were in the process of charging their batteries. He swung the hatch open, I ducked through it and looked around, bewildered. It was quiet (and of course weirdly clean); he must have been mistaken.

    My guide walked over to a big, white mass and opened a hatch; the noise of an engine filled the space, albeit a very smooth engine. He closed the door and the noise went away, reduced to a subtle hum.

    "Sound-encapsulated Kawaskais," he said. "F--k me," said I. They'd put their massive engines into egg-shaped cocoons of sound-deadening material. The Japanese had taken our designs and improved significantly on them.

    When we conducted joint operations, we discovered that as quiet as we were, they were like a hole in the ocean. And this was more than 20 years ago.

    So, the significance of this German sub? It removes the only real handicap we had, the noise from the diesel engines, and our need to be at or near the surface to operate them, with our snorkel.

    Our enemies don't need the ocean-crossing capabilities of nuclear submarines; we're coming to them. What they need is the ability to lay in wait, to maneuver silently, creep into position, and sink our carriers.

    Air-independent propulsion systems like the one on the U212A are exactly what they need.

    I'm betting the admirals at the Pentagon are worried. They should be.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 09:40 PM | Comments (11)

    Making Ventura County safer, one ex-felon at a time

    This story in the L.A. Times reminds me there's more than one way for a crook to earn the label "ex-felon."

    An Oxnard man who broke into the bedroom of a Rancho Cucamonga apartment early Friday morning was shot and killed by one of the occupants — a prison counselor for the state Department of Corrections, authorities said.

    The intruder, Hector Soto, 21, of Oxnard, died less than three hours after being shot and undergoing surgery at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, the San Bernardino County coroner said.

    The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department did not release the prison counselor's name. He will not be charged, a spokeswoman said.

    The break-in occurred about 2:50 a.m. Sheriff's homicide investigators said Soto opened a front window to enter the apartment in the 8400 block of Fir Street, and walked to a bedroom. The prison counselor fought with Soto and then pulled a pistol from his nightstand, sheriff's investigators said.

    When Soto advanced, the prison counselor shot Soto one time, investigators said.

    It's nice when criminals leave our county, and it's even better when they get a one-way ticket on the Dirt Nap Express (all sales final; no refunds; no exchanges). Burglars are particularly deserving of opprobrium; we can only presume that someone entering an occupied house in the middle of the night is both unconcerned at the thought of encountering the residents and probably willing to use force on them, too.

    That's why "res-burg" is a strike under California's "Three-Strikes" rule; the risk of someone getting killed during a break-in is quite high.

    Every so often, the right guy ends up dead.

    Hat tip to Wild Bill for the story.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:18 PM | Comments (2)

    January 06, 2006

    Mine tragedy highlights improved safety

    The West Virginia mine disaster has been leading many newscasts over the last few days, especially the grief of the miners’ families after they were told that 12 had survived, only to have their hopes dashed three hours later by the news that 12 had died – just one miner made it.

    As the recriminations are heard and felt – and as the families retain counsel for the sure-to-come lawsuits, we’ve learned of the heartbreaking notes scribbled by the men in their last hours, telling their families that they love them, that they’ll see them again, and that "Daddy’s in no pain, he’s just going to sleep."

    However, as in all stories like this, it’s important to get a little perspective. Mining is a dangerous business, but it’s much less so now than in the past – at least in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial (available online to subscribers) that provides the missing context.

    As recently as the 1950s, the coal mining industry lost 12 miners on average every week. Thanks to huge and steady investments in mine safety and technology, coal mining fatalities now average only about 30 a year – down from 1,000 a year in the first half of the 20th century. Injuries have been cut to 4,000 a year from 60,000.

    By contrast, China – which still uses primitive mining techniques and allows outrageous safety violations – has an estimated 5,000 or more deaths every year from avoidable mining accidents. Just last month, nearly 200 Chinese lost their lives in a coal mining accident in Henan Province – the third fatal Chinese coal mining accident in a week.

    The Journal concludes by noting that we ought to recognize the contributions miners have made to America’s economy, but also recognize and celebrate how the U.S. has made workers more prosperous and safer than ever before, and accidents like these a seldom-seen event.

    I’ll revise and extend that conclusion: the U.S. economy has made American workers members of the most prosperous and safest working class the world has ever known.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

    January 05, 2006

    Why won't the New York Times answer?

    Chris Muir takes on the New York Times and it's unwillingness to answer questions about its NSA leak story. And which member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is slagging the Gray Lady?

    Why, it's the Times' own Ombudsman, Byron Calame who can't get an answer from his own bosses at the times; details in his column, Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)

    January 04, 2006

    Dying so girls may learn

    Although Democrats continue to tell Americans that Pres. Bush is the greatest threat to civil rights -- and especially to the rights of women and minorities, I submit that the following reveals both the true nature of our enemy, and the courage of those who stand in opposition to evil.

    Taliban militants beheaded a teacher in a central Afghan town while his wife and eight children watched, officials said Wednesday, describing the latest in a string of attacks targeting educators at schools where girls study.

    Four men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib eight times late Tuesday before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in Qalat, said Ali Khail, a spokesman for the provincial government of Zabul, where the attack took place.

    The assailants made Habib's wife, four sons and four daughters watch, Khail said. His children were between the ages of 2 and 22. No other family members were hurt.

    The insurgents killed Habib, 45, after he refused to go with them to meet their commander, said the victim's cousin, Esanullah, who goes by only one name.

    . . . Habib was the headmaster of Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, which is attended by 1,300 boys and girls.

    Zabul, a remote and mountainous province populated mainly by Pashtuns and bordering Pakistan, is a hotbed of Taliban militancy. The former Taliban regime prohibited girls from attending school as part of its widely criticized drive to establish what it considered a "pure" Islamic state.
    Zabul province's education director, Nabi Khushal, blamed Taliban rebels for the killing.

    "Only the Taliban are against girls being educated," he said. "The Taliban often attack our teachers and beat them. But this is the first time one has been killed in this province."

    Cleric Sayed Omer Munib, a member of the nation's top Islamic council, said there was no justification in Islam's holy book, the Quran, to prevent girls from studying.

    "Nowhere in the Quran does it say that girls do not have the right to education," he said. "It says that 'people should be educated.' This means girls, too."

    Hundreds of thousands of girls have returned to school since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.

    . . . Habib resumed a more than 20-year teaching career two years ago after the Taliban threatened him while he was working for an aid group helping the disabled. Since then, the Taliban had warned him twice to stop teaching.

    Habib's funeral Wednesday was attended by hundreds of students and teachers.

    In the past year, Taliban insurgents have occasionally put up posters around Qalat demanding girls' schools be closed and threatening to kill teachers, Khushal said.

    There has been a series of attacks on girls' schools and teachers across Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell. In October, gunmen killed a headmaster in front of his students at a boys' school in southern Kandahar province, the former stronghold of the Taliban regime.

    This man, Malim Abdul Habib, a teacher, died a horrible death because he believed girls had a right to learn. There can be no compromise with his killers; they, and those who believe as they do, must be destroyed.

    Remind me again: Who stands for freedom, and who would deny millions of women their rights?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

    January 03, 2006

    PowerPoint and the 10/20/30 Rule

    I used PowerPoint in a closing argument last month; it's a good way to visually summarize both the law and the evidence for the jury, while I . . . summarize the law and the evidence for the jury.

    Wait, I know it sounds redundant, but you don't want to be just some guy yammering at these folks. The rule that is the lynchpin of argument is, "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em; tell 'em; then tell 'em what ya told 'em," and charts or slides help reinforce the argument, adding a fourth clause, "Show 'em what ya told 'em."

    A common flaw amongst all presentations (not just courtroom summations) is the use of tiny fonts, too much text, and w-a-a-y too many slides.

    Guy Kawasaki has started a new blog, and one of his first posts deals with the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint.

    . . . As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning. . . .

    I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

    Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money).

    While he may be right about most presentations, I can't limit closing arguments to ten slides, given the amount of information I'm giving the jurors, but I do try to remember that it's a summation -- a summary of what they've heard -- and not a regurgitation. So, Kawasaki's point is well taken: keep it as short as possible.

    You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

    The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

    The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s you’re optimal font size.

    He's right. I can't tell you how many presentations I've seen where the speaker is just reading the slides, and how -- if I'm sitting close enough -- I read ahead and quickly become bored and antsy.

    A good PowerPoint presentation (some would say that's a contradiction in terms) should serve as an outline, with bullet points and visuals to explain key concepts. Done well, they can help your audience reach the right conclusion.

    If you've got an opportunity, check out the rest of the post, and the rest of Kawasaki's blog.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 10:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

    Unbiased journalism, exhibit 4,382

    MideastConflict on Yahoo! News.jpg

    Yes, that's right, the Associated Press refers to this woman's sons as "martyrs."

    Oh, did I forget to mention her sons blew themselves up, killing innocent civilians? So, the AP was just quoting her, right?

    Actually, no, the caption doesn't quote anyone. It's just the AP, giving us the straight scoop.

    Does anyone know if AP stands for Abbas' Propagandists?

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

    It's the demography, stupid

    Mark Steyn has penned a thought-provoking piece on the inevitable decline of the West in The New Criterion.

    Much of what we loosely call the western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands— probably—just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate.

    Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the west.

    How's that for a grim start to the New Year?

    To what does Steyn attribute this dismal future? His thesis is in the title of the article: "It’s the demography, stupid."

    There's more to it than that, including cultural self-loathing, pacifism and an inability to understand that the first duty of any civilization is to protect itself and its citizens. Take the time to read the whole thing.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

    It takes a teen . . .

    To remind a glib lefty that some things are worth fighting and dying for.

    Michelle Malkin posted a piece of agitprop from the pen of the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Mike Luckovich:

    whyluckovich.jpg

    You can click on the image to see a bigger version.

    Luckovich used the names of the dead GIs to make his point about what he believes to be the folly of Americans dying for nothing. How to respond?

    freedomdanielle.jpg

    Well, in the words of the teenage-artist herself:

    The first time I saw Mike Luckovich’s drawing of the word “WHY?”, made up of the names of 2,000 troops killed in Iraq, was when my mother was putting it up on our refrigerator. It bothered me that no one did a response showing how others feel.

    On Nov. 8, I got an updated list of the names of the war dead and started writing them, spelling out “FREEDOM.” Six days later, it was done. I only worked on it in my free time at school. It took me about 12 hours to get it done, so needless to say I devoted many of my classes to this, and stayed late after school to work on it. I didn’t take it home and show it to my mother until I had prints made.

    She and I have different views of things. She said that, as a mother, she didn’t like it that so many people have been killed. She was not happy when I placed my work next to Luckovich’s “WHY?” on the fridge, but it hasn't been taken down. I may seem as if I am too young to have an opinion on matters like these. I am not saying that my opinion is right, for an opinion is just that — someone’s views on something. But, like a child’s voice, an opinion is often not heard.

    To his credit, Luckovich posted her cartoon on his blog, along with the letter she wrote, both of which also appeared in the newspaper at the end of December.

    The responses to the cartoon are interesting, with a large number of readers springing to the defense of the teen, greatly outnumbering the moonbats who default to the "no war for oil" meme.

    Not bad for a kid.

    James Lileks, the columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, penned a sharp rebuke to Luckovich, too, albeit in a less artistic fashion, shortly after the "Why?" cartoon ran.

    Because we've been told by all the root-causers that the lack of freedom in Arab nations breeds desperate terrorists. Because it's better to leave a country with a democracy and a constitution than nuke it clean and walk away whistling. Because the United States has been at odds with Iraq since 1990, and the alternative was more oil-for-food corruption and porous sanctions until Saddam was free to romp about untrammeled.

    Because upsetting the precious "stability" of the Middle East gave Libya a case of the yips, helped mobilize the occupied Lebanese and even made Egypt pretend to hold a good election. Because it gave the United States bases right next door to Iran, the leader of which has announced that Israel and the U.S. should be destroyed. With nukes.

    Because after 9/11, leaving rogue states to their own devices and hoping Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac would talk down our enemies seemed a rather weak definition of defense.

    He goes on to target those critics of the war who refuse to connect the dots, who persist in believing that Halliburton, caprice and venality are the true reasons for our attack. I think Lileks is right; read the whole thing and see for yourself.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)

    January 02, 2006

    Report from the front lines

    The Telegraph has an interesting article on the U.S. military's top sniper.

    Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.

    His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high.

    A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 metres, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.

    "I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.

    "He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again."

    Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.

    The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. One of his men, Specialist Aaron Arnold, 22, of Medway, Ohio, has chalked up a similar tally.

    "It was elating, but only afterwards," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, recalling the September 27 shot. "At the time, there was no high-fiving. You've got troops under fire, taking casualties and you're not thinking about anything other than finding a target and putting it down. Every shot is for the betterment of our cause."

    All told, the 10-strong Shadow sniper team, attached to Task Force 2/69, has killed just under 200 in the same period and emerged as the US Army's secret weapon in Ramadi against the threat of the hidden Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or roadside bomb - the insurgency's deadliest tactic.
    . . .

    "You've got to live with it. It's on your conscience. It's something you've got to carry away with you. And if you shoot somebody just walking down the street, then that's probably going to haunt you."

    Although killing with a single shot carries an enormous cachet within the sniper world, their most successful engagements have involved the shooting a up to 10 members of a single IED team.

    "The one-shot-one-kill thing is one of beauty but killing all the bad dudes is even more attractive," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, whose motto is "Move fast, shoot straight and leave the rest to the counsellors in 10 years" and signs off his e-mails with "silent souls make.308 holes".

    Sniping is perhaps the second toughest -- or second most intimate -- way to kill a man, given that most soldiers never have the opportunity to dispassionately observe the enemy, see his face, study it and recognize him as an individual, before taking a breath, exhaling halfway, holding it and squeezing the trigger ever-so-gently.

    The military historian S.L.A. Marshall wrote in his study of Americans in WWII that the majority never fired their weapons in anger, and even fewer saw the men they killed, given the chaos of battle. No one can claim that these snipers are unaware of the results of their lethal efforts.

    Given the mantra of the anti-war Left about the U.S. targetting innocent civilians, Staff Sgt. Gilliland and his fellow snipers must be providing the kind of surgical precision desired by U.S. critics, carefully excising diseased tissue from the flesh of the Iraqi body politic.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:40 AM | Comments (2)

    Creepy toys as teaching opportunities

    Lileks manages to give his young daughter a little insight into parenthood.

    Santa brought Gnat an “Amazing Amanda” doll, a creepy little robot with elemental voice-recognition software. It asks a question – what shall we play now, Mommy? Patty Cake? Make a Face? Disconnect the carbon dioxide monitor and start the car in the garage? Plunge a Knife Into Daddy’s Eye socket? – and it understands your reply. It does not shut up unless you tell it to sleep, whereupon it obligingly switches off.

    It knows what time of day it is, too. Knows the date. Why? Because Daddy set it. It’s like setting any sort of electronic device, except that it answers back in a baby voice. This is all very cute until it says, in the same voice, “Do you want me to observe Daylight Savings Time?” Yes, I said. “Okay! I’ll observe Daylight Savings Time!” Damn thing knows more than it’s letting on, I’ll tell you that.

    Christmas morning I brought it to Gnat as she was sleeping, and woke it up. “Good morning Mommy!” it said.

    “Go to sleep, Amanda,” Gnat groaned.

    Hah!

    “Now I know what it’s like to be a parent,” she said later.

    Oh, you have no idea, kid; wait until you’re walking around a busy park calling out Amanda’s name, and she doesn’t answer, and you feel that familiar dank wet snake curl around your heart for just a second, maybe two. Then you’ll start to begin to have an inkling of the emanation of the penumbra of knowing.

    Posted by Mike Lief at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)