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May 30, 2009

Pravda: The American descent into Marxism

For those of you who are old enough to recall the Cold War in some detail, you'll remember that Pravda was the official propaganda outlet of the Soviet Union. Ostensibly a legitimate newspaper with correspondents accredited 'round the world, in reality it was the most obvious of government-controlled purveyors of press releases -- penned by Communist Party functionaries -- with as tenuous a grasp on journalistic ethics and standards as, well, The New York Times (especially since January 20th).

Pravda spent decades singing the praises of Communism and the Soviet Workers' Paradise, while gleefully pointing out the supposed failures of capitalism and the West.

So, when the current iteration of Pravda gives prominent play to an op/ed columnist who notices a certain fundamental change in the U.S., well, let's just say that they know of what they speak.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

[...]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

[...]

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Who would've thought we'd read an article in Pravda, even an opinion piece, warning Russian investors to divest themselves of their American holdings, in order to escape the economic meltdown made worse by the apparent slide into Socialism?

Strange days, filled with hope 'n change.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Sotomayor: Clearly wiser than any juez masculino blanco

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh is troubled by Judge Sonia Sotomayor's claim that Latinas make for better judges than white men, concluding that taking the statement in context -- as her defenders demand -- does nothing to ameliorate the wrongheadedness of the belief, or the underlying logic.

[T]he statement – read in context – appears to be that Latina womanhood gives people something of an edge when it comes to wisdom, richness of experience, and decisionmaking over white men.

That strikes me as factually implausible; white men strike me as no less likely to have wisdom or rich experience as Latino women, even if on balance they may on average have slightly different kinds of experience.

And it strikes me as very much the wrong attitude for a judge to take, and to publicly express.

Perhaps this was just inartful wording, and Judge Sotomayor meant to say something else; and of course this is just one sentence out of a long legal and judicial career.

Still, I think the sentiments that the statement on its face expresses are not the sorts of sentiments that we would like our Supreme Court Justices to have, whether those sentiments would refer to the allegedly greater wisdom of Latino women or white men.

I think Volokh gives Sotomayor too much credit with his "just inartful wording" line; she was speaking from a prepared text, and repeated the claim in an article, too. Given that information, Occam's razor demands we ask, "Is it likely that the opinion expressed -- more than once, in written and spoken form -- is either: (a) An inadvertent slip of the tongue (and pen); or (b) The speaker merely expressing what she truly thinks?"

Assuming that an experienced federal judge who speaks from a prepared text she presumably wrote herself, far enough in advance to read through at least once to check for "inartful wording" and other things a judge ought not to say, nonetheless proceeds to laud the superiority of Latinas over juez masculino blanco, there logically follows another question: Could such a judge even qualify for jury service?

National Review's Andy McCarthy reminds us:

In every trial — every single trial — judges solemnly instruct American citizens who are compelled to perform jury duty that they will have a sworn obligation to decide cases objectively — without fear or favor. If a person is unwilling or unable to do that, if the person believes he or she has a bias or prejudice, especially one based on a belief that people are inferior or superior due to such factors as race, ethnicity, or sex, the person is not qualified to be a juror.

Indeed, prospective jurors are told that they are not qualified if they harbor even the slightest doubt about their ability to put such considerations aside and render an impartial verdict. If the judge or the lawyer for either side senses bias, the juror is excused "for cause" — the parties are not even required to use their discretionary (or "peremptory") jury challenges to strike such a juror; rather the judge makes a finding that the juror is not fit to serve.

[...]

Would Judge Sotomayor be qualified to serve as a juror? Let's say she forthrightly explained to the court during the voir dire (the jury-selection phase of a case) that she believed a wise Latina makes better judgments than a white male; that she doubts it is actually possible to "transcend [one's] personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law"; and that there are "basic differences" in the way people "of color" exercise "logic and reasoning."

If, upon hearing that, would it not be reasonable for a lawyer for one (or both) of the parties to ask the court to excuse her for cause? Would it not be incumbent on the court to grant that request?

Should we have on the Supreme Court, where jury verdicts are reviewed, a justice who would have difficulty qualifying for jury service?

Well, should we?

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 28, 2009

Michael Ramirez

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

Gangster Government

How quickly is the United States devolving to banana republic status? If Mark Tapscott has the details right about a growing scandal in today's Washington Examiner, the day is fast approaching. In the meantime, Michael Barone's "Gangster Nation" seems appropos, favors and cash flowing to the Capo's lackeys, veiled threats and economic ruin to his enemies.

Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.

The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?

[...]

Also fueling the controversy is the fact the RLJ-McCarty-Landers chain of Arkansas and Missouri dealerships aren't being closed, but many of their local competitors are being eliminated. Go here for a detailed look at this situation. McClarty is the former Clinton senior aide. The "J" is Robert Johnson, founder of the Black Entertainment Television, a heavy Democratic contributor.

A lawyer representing a group of Chrysler dealers who are on the hit list deposed senior Chrysler executives and later told Reuters that he believes the closings have been forced on the company by the White House.

[...]

RedState.com's Josh Painter has a useful roundup of what has been found so far by a growing number of bloggers digging into what could be a very big story indeed. Also, see my column on this issue and how it fits into the larger context dubbed by the Examiner's Michael Barone as "gangster government."

As part of Chrysler's bankruptcy agreement with the White House, the company plans to close roughly a quarter of its 3,200 dealerships. Lists of the dealerships being cut and those retaining their Chrysler franchises can be found here in pdf format. Many dealers contend the criteria being used to determine which dealerships survive is not clear and that many of those that are being closed in fact are profitable businesses, despite the current recession.

I suppose it's possible that there's an innocent explanation for the horse's head left on the showroom floor of dealerships owned and operated by businessmen who haven't drunk the Obama KoolAid, but I prefer the accuracy of Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is often the most accurate.

This is not the way things are done in free nations. This is not the way things are done in a nation dedicated to the rule of law.

It is, however, apparently, how things are done in the Banana Republic of America.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 27, 2009

It's hard to be Goode

Mike Judge -- the creator of King of the Hill, Beavis & Butthead, and director of the best movie ever made about the modern workplace, Office Space, has a new animated series premiering tonight on ABC: The Goode Family.

How can you not love a show that pokes fun at the impossibility of always asking "WWAGD?" That is, of course, the acronym for "What Would Al Gore Do".

Check your local listings.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 26, 2009

Martin Luther King vs. Sonia Sotomayor

A great question, courtesy of National Review's Jim Geraghty:

When, Precisely, Are a Judge's 'Sympathies and Prejudices' Appropriate?

From Latin/a Rights and Justice in the United States: Perspectives and Approaches, by Jose Luis Morin, p. 104:

As a Latina member of the judiciary, Judge Sotomayor maintains that Latino and Latina judges must retain their identity and be able to use their experience and background, not to curry favor for their own, but to make the system fair for all: "[W]e who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience or heritage but attempt ... continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies, and prejudices are appropriate."

Perhaps Judge Sotomayor could explain when it is appropriate for a judge to approach a case with sympathies and predjudices?

Don't federal judges specifically take an oath to avoid sympathies and prejudices?

"I, __________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and
perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (name of position) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

I guess the dream of a colorblind society, a society where justice is blind, too, is passe.

Folks, we are in big trouble.

Do you think Dr. King would approve?

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Supreme Court follies

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 24, 2009

Remembering those who gave their all

Charles Durning is an actor you've seen in countless movies over the last 50 years, including The Sting, The Front Page, Dog Day Afternoon, Tootsie and The Muppet Movie; I especially enjoyed his performance as Gov. Pappy Daniels in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. But you've never seen him like this, speaking at the 2007 Memorial Day Concert. Durning is a decorated war veteran who fought his way across Europe, receiving numerous wounds in the fight against the Third Reich. Until recently, he remained silent about his wartime experiences, but, as the number of WWII vets dwindles, Durning decided to speak out, to bear witness to the heroism of those who never came home.

His portion of the video begins with a picture of him as a young GI at the 1:10 mark. Listen to his memories of D-Day, the raw emotion in his voice as he recalls the terror of those hours spent on the beaches of Normandy, and then think of how he and his fellow soldiers fought their way off the sand and continued on, mile after mile, month after month, through France and Belgium, the bitter cold of Bastogne, over the Rhine, until the enemy -- bled dry by the constant slaughter -- was defeated.

Durning came home and recovered from his wounds. Taking to the theater, the lean combat veteran soon disappearing into the role of corpulent character actor, often snagging comedic roles -- with a glimmer of barely-controlled rage occasionally peeking through, the twinkling eyes going cold and flat.

I'm grateful he's decided to end the decades-long silence about the war, and the heroes with whom be fought.

On this memorial day weekend, be sure to thank a veteran for his service, and make sure to tell him you remember his buddies, too, the ones who never made it home.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 22, 2009

Solving Obama's Gitmo dilemma

Scott Ott reveals Pres. Obama's solution to the vexing problem of what to do with the Gitmo prisoners.

In an effort to shut down the U.S. Naval Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thereby restoring America's moral standing in the world, President Barack Obama today declared some 240 enemy combatants held at Gitmo to be 'human fetuses'.

In an executive order, the president said, "Since I ordered Gitmo shut down, and people don't want us to bring the inmates here, the only way to extract them from the facility is to change their legal status to one that offers us more choices."

While accused terrorists have access to attorneys, and nearly-limitless legal appeals, a fetus has no legal standing, cannot speak for itself, and is subject to the death penalty without regard to guilt or innocence.

Civil rights advocates have pressured Obama to follow through on campaign promises to shutter Gitmo, but even Democrats in Congress have resisted bringing the inmates to U.S. soil for trials and incarceration.

"We can debate whether enemy combatants have access to protections under the U.S. Constitution," said Obama. "However, no serious person would grant such protection to an embryo or fetus. The loss of 240 fetuses wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a nation where more than 3,000 of them hit the Dumpster daily."

The president noted that America's global reputation has been devastated by U.S. treatment of terror suspects, but that "our treatment of a million fetuses each year earns us nothing but admiration, and requests for clinic-funding from those who aspire to be like us."

Sources acknowledged continuing White House debate about whether a terrorist who escapes from Gitmo alive can still be treated as a fetus.

Brilliant.

It's interesting how the answer changes, depending on the question.

Death penalty for convicted murderers? It's a human rights violation.

Aggressive interrogation of terrorists? It's a human rights violation.

Detaining captured jihadis? It's a human rights violation.

Outlawing partial-birth abortion? It's a human rights violation.

Aborting late-term pregnancies? It's a privacy issue.

Now, I know some people will take offense to this, but the inconsistencies really are pretty remarkable, don't you think?

As a prosecutor, the categorical opposition to the death penalty from people who support unfettered access to abortion has always left me nonplussed. That's why Ott's savage Swiftian satire seems so on-point.

Check out Scott Ott's other essays at ScrappleFace.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:01 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Imagine

A remarkably well done video, with a low key way of getting its message across. The GOP should have such talent working to explain what it's all about.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 21, 2009

Running on empty

Dennis Kneale, CNBC's Media & Technology Editor, speaks truth to power about Pres. Obama's plans for the automotive industry: They stink.

[L]et me point out some fatal flaws in this green decree:

It will result in Americans driving more not less. When we get better mileage, we drive more than usual, negating much of the savings, says Penn State’s Andrew N. Kleit, who has written widely on the topic.

The key to better mileage is lighter-weight cars — in which people die more often in traffic accidents. Since CAFE passed in 1975, smaller cars have killed almost 50,000 more people than otherwise would have died on the roads, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2002. CAFE kills up to 3,900 extra people each year, a study by Harvard and the Brookings Institition states. It finds that for every 100 pounds less that an auto weighs, up to 780 more people die in traffic accidents in a year.

It will add $600 to the price of a car, further worsening the Big 3’s already sizable cost disadvantage. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai already pretty much meet the stricter standards.

It will force Detroit to build wimpy li’l cars most consumers don’t want to buy. CAFE rules long have distorted industry production. Automakers churn out loss-leader subcompacts purely to lower the average mileage for their entire fleet, freeing them to make higher-profit SUVs. At Ford, the F-150 truck provided 120% of profits, back when it had profits.

I know, guys: We gotta fix this fuel problem sooner rather than later, we have to end our reliance on foreign oil. Blah blah blah. Sure we do — but not by Presidential fiat, not by way of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. We need a free-market solution: Make better, cheaper, safer lower-fuel cars that we want to buy, and we’re happy to start driving them.

Not because Bam said we should, but because we choose to do so.

Kneale makes some good points about the heavy-handed interference in the free market -- letting consumers (that's you and me) determine what we do and don't want to drive.

But what grabs me is something I mentioned in the previous post: the death toll associated with this government-mandated drive to make cars more fuel efficient, by also making them less safe. Allow me to repeat Kneale's recitation of the bloody statistics:

The key to better mileage is lighter-weight cars — in which people die more often in traffic accidents. Since CAFE passed in 1975, smaller cars have killed almost 50,000 more people than otherwise would have died on the roads, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2002. CAFE kills up to 3,900 extra people each year, a study by Harvard and the Brookings Institition states. It finds that for every 100 pounds less that an auto weighs, up to 780 more people die in traffic accidents in a year.

That's a helluva death toll, a lot of Americans -- many presumably children -- sacrificed on the alter of eco-extremism and hatred of free markets and individual choice.

We live in a risk-averse society where helmets are mandated for cyclists; warning labels are printed on everything; trans-fats are banned from foods; and we are constantly reminded that sacrifices must be made "for the children."

Yet, irony of ironies, Pres. Obama and the moonbat environmental movement demand -- insist -- with all the power of the federal government to coerce compliance with their diktat that we shoehorn ourselves into cars that are by design less safe than the ones we want to drive.

All the while, they cruise around in their bulletproof limos and SUVs, posh luxury cars and high-end gas-guzzlers, too good to put their own families into the rolling coffins they foist on the plebs.

Almost 50,000 people have died as a result of the CAFE standards, nearly as many died in the Vietnam War, more than ten times as have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Where are the howls of protest? Where are the sign-waving demonstrators, the Code Pink screeching harpies demanding that we do something -- anything! -- to halt the carnage on the highways?

Programs like this expose the truth about all the so-called government-mandated safety standards and consumer protection agencies: They don't give a damn about us or our safety.

They exist to find new ways to restrict our freedom, allow greater governmental intrusion into our lives -- and ever increasing control by bureaucrats and pettifogging politicians.

Happy trails.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The ultimate in small cars

Pres. Obama proudly proclaimed this week that he will mandate the production of Earth-friendly autos, with CAFE standards requiring across-the-board increases in fuel economy -- at the cost of decreased vehicle weight, reduced amenities and increased fatalities (the laws of physics are immutable and unforgiving, especially the relationships between mass and speed). So, who better to demonstrate both the future of the automobile, as well as proof that there's nothing new under the sun, than Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, showing off the ultimate in small cars.

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May 19, 2009

Coming soon: Sherlock Holmes

Hot off his success as Ironman, Robert Downey, Jr., is ready to take on one of the classic film roles: Sherlock Holmes.

This looks like it could be fun -- light years from Basil Rathbone's rather grim portrayal or Nicol Williamson's sweaty, drug addict-cum-crime-solving genius. It could also mark director Guy Ritchie's first big hit since his split from Madonna, as well as Snatch.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Honda's new Insight: Dreadful

Jeremy Clarkson, the enfant terrible of automobile reviews in the U.K., has taken a look at the Honda Insight hybrid, designed to steal the smug crown from Toyota's Pious Prius.

He is, to put it mildly, less than impressed. To be blunt, he hates it.

It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

[...]

The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.

Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on petrol and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota’s Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.

"A dog sitting on a ham slicer"? Ouch.

Clarkson soon heads off in another direction, his bilious gaze fixed on the questionable eco-weenie bona fides of the very hybrid genre itself, as he asks an uncomfortable question:

[W]hat about the eco-cost of building the car in the first place?

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

Why doesn’t he just buy a Range Rover, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really — weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

At this point you will probably dismiss what I’m saying as the rantings of a petrolhead, and think that I have my head in the sand.

That’s not true. While I have yet to be convinced that man’s 3% contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gases affects the climate, I do recognise that oil is a finite resource and that as it becomes more scarce, the political ramifications could well be dire. I therefore absolutely accept the urgent need for alternative fuels.

But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don’t work at all because they are just too inconvenient.

I've long thought that the costs associated with producing hybrids, especially the enormous battery packs, exact a much higher price on the environment than their moonbat fans can even begin to imagine. It seems I've got some company in my poison-quill-wielding friend.

The final insult is that the mileage achieved in these hybrids is not much different than that attainable in the latest generation of clean-running diesels, providing much sportier rides and more luxurious accommodations than the Prius or the Insight.

But you don't feel nearly as superior behind the wheel of a diesel; the hybrids are much more attitude inducing.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Michael Ramirez

More from the pen of the best Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist ever let go by The Los Angeles Times (shhhhhhh -- he's a conservative, don't you know?).

Although Ramirez targets the financial meltdown in Washington, D.C., this cartoon is just as applicable to California's fiscal decrepitude.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Election Day: Just say "No!"

As Californians head to the polls today, reportedly in small numbers, allow me to humbly suggest the following votes:

No. No. No. No. No. No.

Propositions 1A through 1F are a nightmare of fiscal irresponsibility, continued excessive spending, confiscatory taxes, and mendacious, deceptive falsity in advertising.

Prop. 1A would change the state's budgeting practices and extend for two years the so-called temporary tax increases, $16 billion from sales taxes, use taxes, income taxes and vehicle "licensing fees" (weaselwords for taxes). No!

Prop. 1B would provide for increased funding for education -- because clearly what ails the public education system is a lack of adequate funding. It would mandate -- require -- an extra $9.3 billion for schools and community colleges, fiscal responsibility be damned. Not. No!

Prop. 1C is the co-called "lottery modernization," which would enable the state to borrow against future lottery revenue -- gambling-based deficit spending. Sound responsible to you? No!

Prop. 1D would shift $268 million in tobacco tax revenue away from "First Five" child development programs and allow the state to spend it on other, similar programs. Opponents say it would result in "First Five" essentially being gutted in the short term, with no appreciable savings, other than to salvage other programs that probably serve the same general base of needy kids. I don't think most of these programs are worth a tinker's damn, but resent the attempt to play Three Card Monte with money already designated for kids. No!

Prop. 1E would shift about $230 million in annual income tax revenue from mental health programs for two years, to be used instead for a federally mandated Medicaid program for people under the age of 21. It's another example of rearranging the deckchairs on our fiscal Titanic, doing nothing to plug the holes in our sinking ship of state. Furthermore, do we really want to cut funds that provide treatment for the mentally ill, leaving them on our streets, untreated? Sound responsible? Sound safe? No!

Prop. 1F would prohibit pay raises for California politicians -- the highest paid in the nation! -- if the state General Fund is expected to end the year in a deficit. Sounds reasonable, right? The problem is it creates a perverse incentive for legislators to pass massive tax hikes in order to close the budget gap -- so they can have their damn raises! More money for them, more tax-increase screwjobs for us. No!

Any questions?

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:07 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 18, 2009

Craptastic Chrysler

As Chrysler thunders towards insolvency, shedding dealerships like a dying rat does fleas, there comes talk that the automaker might be saved by a marriage with Fiat, the Italian automaker.

This is a perfect match, as Chrysler, the domestic brand with the worst reliability rating for its vehicles, would be paired up with a craptastic European company renowned for its shoddy workmanship.

Now there's a recipe for success.

Joe Sherlock commented the other day on the self-induced woes that have plagued Chrysler -- and it's domestic brethren.

[M]y good friend's 2003 Chrysler Town & Country broke down last week and his repair guy can't get the Chrysler parts to fix it. The van is falling apart at 65,000 miles.

The part is question has had a known high failure rate. Chrysler had been aware of the problem for a long time (12 years or more) and never bothered to improve the component in question, because it lasted just long enough to skate through the factory warranty period.

Ford and GM are guilty of similar sins. For example, Ford had ignition and cruise control problems since 1984 but it took 14 years before they properly addressed it - because the parts typically failed after the warranty was expired. "So ... hey ... it's not our problem." This is another reason that the Big Three have lost market share to the Japanese over the years.

My car buddy wrote, "I am disgusted that Chrysler has been allowed to get away with this bullshit since back in the '90s. If I had only known, I never would have bought (their products). I ... will never buy Chrysler again ... I will dump both vans and go Asian."

My Dad decided to dip his toe into the domestic market a few years back, tempted by talk of improved build quality, and the alluring scream of the supercharger under the hood of the Pontiac he bought for a song.

Within a matter of months the car began rattling and squeaking, suffering a myriad of minor-but-annoying defects.

When it was time to replace it, the American automakers weren't even a possibility. Japanese for Dad, German for his wife. It's a regular Axis Alliance in their driveway.

I took a chance on my GMC truck last year. While it's got a lot of nice features and is great at hauling our Airstream, it too is suffering from the kind of Q&A issues that will make me think long and hard about spending that much money on another GM product.

Presuming there is a GM.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Obama abortion fallacy

Pres. Obama's recent speech to graduating seniors at Notre Dame -- the used-to-be Catholic University -- featured this passage on abortion:

[W]hen we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

[...]

[N]o matter how much we may want to fudge it -- indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory -- the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

The rhetorical gambit by the president -- that those on opposite sides of the abortion debate can agree to disagree -- is weak, and insulting to those who believe passionately about the issue, no matter which side they take.

What "common ground" can there be between those who believe that abortion is murder, and those who liken it to removing an unwanted clump of undifferentiated cells?

Allahpundit calls it a "heaping scoopful of pap about tolerance and dialogue" and an attempt at removing abortion as an issue from Obama's 2012 reelection campaign:

Realistically, this was the only rhetorical move he could have made, but it’s rich to find him urging both sides to continue trying to persuade each other when he didn’t have the stones to use this as an opportunity to make the case for choice.

I admit, this isn’t my issue — I’d accept legal abortion in the very, very early stages of pregnancy, before the embryo can feel pain — but I sympathize enough with true-believing pro-lifers to see how insulting the “agree to disagree” approach must be to the depth of their conviction.

Huckabee, provocatively, has framed the enormity of abortion as similar to that of slavery; just as slavery had to be expunged nationally via constitutional amendment, so does abortion in his opinion. Once you’ve come to see it that way, how “open-minded” can you really be in disagreement? To borrow The One’s phrase, what “fair-minded words” would be regarded as fair in defense of slavery?

Allahpundit then posted the video above -- featuring a sermon by theologian John Piper paired with some truly dynamic animation and graphic design -- to make the point that the deeply-held pro-life viewpoint cannot amicably coexist with its pro-abortion counterpart.

Agree or disagree with the content of the video, you cannot deny the the depth of feeling on the part of the speaker, and if we take the president at his word that we ought to respect those with whom we disagree, then pro-abortion advocates must realize that there is no common ground to be found with the pro-life movement, rendering the president's speech hollow, an empty exercise in meaningless rhetoric.

That the president chose not to make the case for his position at Notre Dame reveals an unseemly unwillingness to be forthright, to actually have the debate he claims to want, because, I suspect, he knows what the latest Gallup Poll revealed: Americans are turning against the idea that abortion is merely an elective procedure with no deeper meaning.

And that's not a debate the president thinks will be advantageous to him, or his reelection plans. It's in his interest, therefore, to table the discussion; "open minds" and "agreeing to disagree" is nothing more than thinly disguised code for "can we talk about something else? Anything else? Please?"

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Get Lost

If you enjoyed last Wednesday's season finale of Lost, then make sure to check out Ben Shapiro's guess at what it all means, and where the series may be going. I think he may be right about a number of things -- but we'll have to wait until 2010 (Oy vey!) to find out.

Stay tuned.

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

May 17, 2009

Man-made sunspot

These photographs of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, silhouetted against the Sun moments before it latched onto the Hubble Space Telescope for repairs, were taken by engineer and amateur astro-photographer, Thierry Legault, best known for the photos taken from the yard of his Paris home.

These photos were taken on a beach in Florida, with Legault operating out of the back of a rental car.

Check out this shot of the International Space Station and the Shuttle passing in front of the Sun, and then head over to his homepage, featuring a stunning variety of his best work.

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What ails rail?

Slate has an interesting article about the plight of passenger rail in 21st Century America, wherein the author asks, "Can you think of a technology that has regressed since the early 20th century?"

The answer is, obviously, passenger rail, not just in terms of the sheer number of trains available, or the precipitous decline in the luxury or level of service, but in the most basic measurable metric: how long it takes to get to your destination.

And what of those timetables?

I have recently been poring over a number of prewar train timetables—not surprisingly, available on eBay. They are fascinating, filled with evocations of that fabled "golden era" of train travel.

"You travel with friends on The Milwaukee Road," reads an ad in one, showing an avuncular conductor genially conversing with a jaunty, smartly dressed couple, the man on the verge of lighting a pipe. The brochure for the Montreal Limited, from an era when "de luxe" was still two words, assures travelers that "modern air-conditioning scientifically controls temperature, humidity and purity of air at all seasons."

But the most striking aspect of these antiquated documents is found in the tiny agate columns of arrivals and destinations. It is here that one sees the wheels of progress actually running backward.

The aforementioned Montreal Limited, for example, circa 1942, would pull out of New York's Grand Central Station at 11:15 p.m., arriving at Montreal's (now defunct) Windsor Station at 8:25 a.m., a little more than nine hours later. To make that journey today, from New York's Penn Station on the Adirondack, requires a nearly 12-hour ride.

The trip from Chicago to Minneapolis via the Olympian Hiawatha in the 1950s took about four and a half hours; today, via Amtrak's Empire Builder, the journey is more than eight hours.

Going from Brattleboro, Vt., to New York City on the Boston and Maine Railroad's Washingtonian took less than five hours in 1938; today, Amtrak's Vermonter (the only option) takes six hours—if it's on time, which it isn't, nearly 75 percent of the time.

When it comes to the actual experience of riding the rails, the author notes, "Where the Twentieth Century Limited had once touted its trains as having a 'barber, fresh and salt water baths, valet, ladies' maid, manicurist, stock and market reports, telephone at terminal [and] stenographer,' Amtrak is now scrambling to simply equip itself with Wi-Fi—a technology already available on the bare-bones Bolt bus."

There are a myriad of reasons for the wholesale abandonment of rail for roads, many detailed in the article, but the biggest problem is that passenger trains have to share the rails with freight trains, which results in numerous delays as Amtrak has to pull into sidings to allow the heavily-laden freight trains by, as well as a rough ride on rail beds battered by the sheer tonnage of the miles-long freight trains.

It's also the reason why Obama's plans for high-speed passenger rail is doomed to failure: without dedicated passenger lines -- guaranteeing safe, smooth travel and reliable schedules -- there's no compelling reason to take the train.

It seems that when it comes to riding the rails, things really were better back in the day.

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Church of England's self loathing hits new high

Anxious to curry favor with atheists, celebrities and the terminally snarky (but then I repeat myself), the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool played John Lennon's Imagine on its bells.

According to the Daily Mail (U.K.):

It's the last place you’d expect to hear John Lennon’s anti-religion anthem Imagine, but the tune rang out yesterday from the bells of an Anglican cathedral.

Churchmen in Liverpool say they carefully considered ‘sensitivities’ surrounding the lyrical content of the former Beatle’s 1971 hit – which begins ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven’ – before allowing the performance at the city’s cathedral, which boasts the highest and heaviest ringing peal bells in the world.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the cathedral to hear the tune, which Lennon, who was murdered in New York in 1980, described as ‘anti-religious, anti-conventional and anti-capitalistic’.

A cathedral spokesman said: ‘We feel this performance has inspired many people to think about their relationship with God in their lives. From what we have heard, it’s been received really well. It sounded absolutely fantastic.’

The idea to ring out Imagine on church bells came from artist Cleo Evans, who was commissioned by arts and music festival Futuresonic to develop a ‘concept’ with the cathedral in the city where Lennon was born.

Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, said on her Facebook page that the idea was ‘so beautiful, it made me choke up’.

Well, it may have made Ono choke up, but it made me gag. Let's take a look at the lyrics, shall we?

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Lennon's song is a monumentally idiotic piece of drivel, whose lyrics describe an awful world, a drab, transnational monocultural workers' paradise, where everyone is equal -- equally miserable, I should say. No religion, no heaven or hell, with people living an explicitly hedonistic existence, "Living for today," a recipe for civilizational disaster.

That a Christian cathedral would allow a paean to atheism and Marxism -- one that unambiguously denigrates religion's role in the world -- to peal from its bells is stupidity on steroids. It's also a graphic demonstration of what ails the Anglican church and other weak-kneed Western denominations, afraid to defend their beliefs against the sneers of the too-hip unbelievers and multiculti relativists.

Pathetic.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 16, 2009

Hummingbird Tales: Time Warp

Posted by Mike Lief at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It ain't "art", but it is kinda cool

I don't like rap or its related "musical" variants, but as I watched this video I found myself impressed with the teen's ability to create multiple layered sounds. If anything, she's a fitting heir to the vocal genius of Mel Blanc, who, in addition to creating Bugs Bunny and a host of other Warner Bros. cartoon characters, also provided innumerable sound effects for radio and film, using only his remarkable ability to imitate darn near anything with his voice.

Takeaway thought from her performance: Did she just declare war in the African "click language" of the Xhosa Tribe?

This guy's good, too, even thought I can't abide his musical choices. Eye of the Tiger? Really?

Takeaway thought from his performance: These guys conquered Asia? Tojo must be spinning in his grave.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Coming attractions for the worst movie ever?

If this is, in fact, a real film and not a spoof, it will go down in history as the worst movie ever, surpassing even the Gone With the Wind remake starring Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher -- or anything Sean Penn has done since Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

On the other hand, it could be the best coming attraction ever slapped together by masters of the craptastic arts.

Lorenzo Lamas! Debbie Gibson! Gigantic Shark! Humongous Octopus!

Sweet jeebus!

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

And the parrot shall lie down with the kitten

Cat and parrot

Ann Althouse said "Aw, this is so damned sweet," and she was right.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Coming soon: The Road

The folks at Pajiba say the coming film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road is quite a bit different from the novel upon which it's based. Perhaps. But I'm a sucker for bleak, post-apocalyptic tales set in a recognizable version of the present.

Besides, with a cast including Viggo Mortensen, Aussie Guy Pearce (Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential) and the always great Robert Duvall, it's got starpower to spare.

I'd see in at the local cinema, but I can't abide the constant talking, texting and assorted loutish behavior from the audience, so it goes on my See-If-It's-In-The-$1-Video-Kiosk-At-The-Market list.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 13, 2009

Mark Steyn: Live Free or Die

Columnist to the World (as Hugh Hewitt likes to call him) Mark Steyn recently delivered an address at Hillsdale College, which neatly encapsulates his precis on what ails -- hell, dooms -- the West, and the U.S.

Steyn adapted his speech for publication; I've posted a lengthy excerpt because it's so good. I strongly urge you to read the whole thing.

Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble with the so-called "human rights" commissions up in Canada, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance profess to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as the cheap bus 'n' truck road-tour version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But in fact what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious incompatibilities: Both the secular Big Government progressives and political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.

In most of the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood—health care, child care, care of the elderly—to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct.

[...]

And now the last holdout, the United States, is embarking on the same grim path: After the President unveiled his budget, I heard Americans complain, oh, it's another Jimmy Carter, or LBJ's Great Society, or the new New Deal. You should be so lucky. Those nickel-and-dime comparisons barely begin to encompass the wholesale Europeanization that's underway. The 44th president's multi-trillion-dollar budget, the first of many, adds more to the national debt than all the previous 43 presidents combined, from George Washington to George Dubya. The President wants Europeanized health care, Europeanized daycare, Europeanized education, and, as the Europeans have discovered, even with Europeanized tax rates you can't make that math add up...

But forget the money, the deficit, the debt, the big numbers with the 12 zeroes on the end of them. So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn't the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They're wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal. That's the stage where Europe is.

[...]

That's Stage Two of societal enervation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life. When President Bush talked about promoting democracy in the Middle East, there was a phrase he liked to use: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart." Really? It's unclear whether that's really the case in Gaza and the Pakistani tribal lands. But it's absolutely certain that it's not the case in Berlin and Paris, Stockholm and London, New Orleans and Buffalo. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world's wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.

And don't be too sure you'll get to choose your record collection in the end. That's Stage Three: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it's a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts ... In the interests of "cultural protection," the Canadian state keeps foreign newspaper owners, foreign TV operators, and foreign bookstore owners out of Canada. Why shouldn't it, in return, assume the right to police the ideas disseminated through those newspapers, bookstores and TV networks it graciously agrees to permit?

[...]

And then comes Stage Four, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as "hatred." In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control. Despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked: In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard's Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator is invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but is banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.

America, Britain, and even Canada are not peripheral nations: They're the three anglophone members of the G7. They're three of a handful of countries that were on the right side of all the great conflicts of the last century. But individual liberty flickers dimmer in each of them. The massive expansion of government under the laughable euphemism of "stimulus" (Stage One) comes with a quid pro quo down the line (Stage Two): Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do? And then—Stage Three—what to think? And—Stage Four—what you're forbidden to think . . . .

[...]

"Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor," wrote Charles Murray in In Our Hands. "When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome."

The key word here is "give." When the state "gives" you plenty—when it takes care of your health, takes cares of your kids, takes care of your elderly parents, takes care of every primary responsibility of adulthood—it's not surprising that the citizenry cease to function as adults: Life becomes a kind of extended adolescence—literally so for those Germans who've mastered the knack of staying in education till they're 34 and taking early retirement at 42. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912. He understood that the long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.

[...]

Every Democrat running for election tells you they want to do this or that "for the children." If America really wanted to do something "for the children," it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That's the real "war on children" (to use another Democrat catchphrase)—and every time you bulk up the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.

Conservatives often talk about "small government," which, in a sense, is framing the issue in leftist terms: they're for big government. But small government gives you big freedoms—and big government leaves you with very little freedom. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Rooting for the zombies

Zombie fire ants may be the cure to Texas scourge:

It sounds like something out of science fiction: zombie fire ants. But it's all too real.

Fire ants wander aimlessly away from the mound.

Eventually their heads fall off, and they die.

The strange part is that researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service say making "zombies" out of fire ants is a good thing.

"It's a tool — they're not going to completely wipe out the fire ant, but it's a way to control their population," said Scott Ludwig , an integrated pest management specialist with the AgriLife Extension Service in Overton , in East Texas .

The tool is the tiny phorid fly, native to a region of South America where the fire ants in Texas originated. Researchers have learned that there are as many as 23 phorid species along with pathogens that attack fire ants to keep their population and movements under control.

So far, four phorid species have been introduced in Texas .

The flies "dive-bomb" the fire ants and lay eggs. The maggot that hatches inside the ant eats away at the brain, and the ant starts exhibiting what some might say is zombie-like behavior.

"At some point, the ant gets up and starts wandering," said Rob Plowes, a research associate at UT.

The maggot eventually migrates into the ant's head, but Plowes said he "wouldn't use the word 'control' to describe what is happening. There is no brain left in the ant, and the ant just starts wandering aimlessly. This wandering stage goes on for about two weeks."

About a month after the egg is laid, the ant's head falls off and the fly emerges ready to attack any foraging ants away from the mound and lay eggs.

Cool. Yet horrifying, too. "Hool," perhaps.

I'm sure there's no chance of the fly mutating and going after tasty human brains.

No chance at all.

Where's the insect repellent?

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 12, 2009

Austria's shame

The headline in The Daily Mail (U.K.) is staggering:

Neo-Nazis screaming 'Heil Hitler'

attack concentration camp survivors

during memorial service for 345,000 dead

I sat for a few moments, considering that headline, the depravity of the people who could deliberately target elderly concentration camp survivors for further abuse. It's hard to fathom, but such is the lot of Hitler's victims, forever in the crosshairs of oppressors.

Survivors of a Nazi death camp were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation.

Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed 'Heil Hitler!' and 'This way for the gas!' at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the striped pyjama-style uniforms they wore as inmates. One suffered a head wound while another was injured by a shot in the neck. The four thugs managed to escape.

Jewish leaders in Austria were appalled by the weekend scenes that marred events marking the 64th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by American troops.

More than 320,000 inmates were killed or worked to death at the camp during the war, where they were used as slave laborers, building Messerschmitt fighter aircraft in subterranean tunnels.

It's hard to believe there could be someone worse than the Germans and Austrians who kept the camps running, but their grandchildren exceed their predecessors' capacity for cruelty. Attacking concentration camp survivors? At the very camps in which they suffered?

Welcome to enlightened Europe.

Unbelievable.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 11, 2009

Obama bad news for Israel

The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick lays out in great detail the Obama Administration's plans for Middle East peace:Throw Israel under the bus.

Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.

Using the annual AIPAC conference as a backdrop, this week the Obama administration launched its harshest onslaught against Israel to date. It began with media reports that National Security Adviser James Jones told a European foreign minister that the US is planning to build an anti-Israel coalition with the Arabs and Europe to compel Israel to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

According to Haaretz, Jones was quoted in a classified foreign ministry cable as having told his European interlocutor, "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question. We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush."

He then explained that the US, the EU and the moderate Arab states must determine together what "a satisfactory endgame solution," will be.

As far as Jones is concerned, Israel should be left out of those discussions and simply presented with a fait accompli that it will be compelled to accept.

Events this week showed that Jones's statement was an accurate depiction of the administration's policy. First, quartet mediator Tony Blair announced that within six weeks the US, EU, UN and Russia will unveil a new framework for establishing a Palestinian state. Speaking with Palestinian reporters on Wednesday, Blair said that this new framework will be a serious initiative because it "is being worked on at the highest level in the American administration."

Moreover, this week we learned that the administration is trying to get the Arabs themselves to write the Quartet's new plan. The London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi pan-Arab newspaper reported Tuesday that acting on behalf of Obama, Jordanian King Abdullah urged the Arab League to update the so-called Arab peace plan from 2002. That plan, which calls for Israel to withdraw from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights and accept millions of foreign Arabs as citizens as part of the so-called "right of return" in exchange for "natural" relations with the Arab world, has been rejected by successive Israeli governments as a diplomatic subterfuge whose goal is Israel's destruction.

By accepting millions of so-called "Palestinian refugees," Israel would effectively cease to be a Jewish state. By shrinking into the 1949 armistice lines, Israel would be unable to defend itself against foreign invasion. And since "natural relations" is a meaningless term both in international legal discourse and in diplomatic discourse, Israel would have committed national suicide for nothing.

To make the plan less objectionable to Israel, Abdullah reportedly called on his Arab brethren to strike references to the so-called "Arab refugees" from the plan and to agree to "normal" rather than "natural" relations with the Jewish state. According to the report, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was expected to present Obama with the changes to the plan during their meeting in Washington later this month. The revised plan was supposed to form the basis for the new Quartet plan that Blair referred to.

But the Arabs would have none of it. On Wednesday, both Arab League General Secretary Amr Moussa and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas announced that they oppose the initiative. On Thursday, Syria rejected making any changes in the document.

The administration couldn't care less. The Palestinians and Arabs are no more than bit players in its Middle East policy. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, Israel is the only obstacle to peace.

To make certain that Israel understands this central point, Vice President Joseph Biden used his appearance at the AIPAC conference to drive it home. As Biden made clear, the US doesn't respect or support Israel's right as a sovereign state to determine its own policies for securing its national interests. In Biden's words, "Israel has to work toward a two-state solution. You're not going to like my saying this, but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement."

FOR ISRAEL, the main event of the week was supposed to be President Shimon Peres's meeting with Obama on Tuesday. Peres was tasked with calming the waters ahead of Netanyahu's visit. It was hoped that he could introduce a more collegial tone to US-Israel relations.

What Israel didn't count on was the humiliating reception Peres received from Obama. By barring all media from covering the event, Obama transformed what was supposed to be a friendly visit with a respected and friendly head of state into a back-door encounter with an unwanted guest, who was shooed in and shooed out of the White House without a sound.

The Obama White House's bald attempt to force Israel to take full blame for the Arab world's hostility toward it is not the only way that it is casting Israel as the scapegoat for the region's ills. In their bid to open direct diplomatic ties with Iran, Obama and his advisers are also blaming Israel for Iran's nuclear program. They are doing this both indirectly and directly.

As Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel made clear in his closed-door briefing to senior AIPAC officials this week, the administration is holding Israel indirectly responsible for Iran's nuclear program. It does this by claiming that Israel's refusal to cede its land to the Palestinians is making it impossible for the Arab world to support preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Somewhat inconveniently for the administration, the Arabs themselves are rejecting this premise. This week US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Persian Gulf and Egypt to soothe Arab fears that the administration's desperate attempts to appease the mullahs will harm their security interests. He also sought to gain their support for the administration's plan to unveil a new peace plan aimed at isolating and pressuring Israel.

Even Ethan Bronner of the The New York Times pointed out this week that Obama's Middle East policy is not based on facts. If it were, the so-called "two state solution," which has failed repeatedly since 1993, would not be its centerpiece. Obama's Middle East policy is based on ideology, not reality. Consequently, it is immune to rational argument.

The fact that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, all chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Arab world will disappear, is of no interest to Obama and his advisers. They do not care that the day after Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashaal told The New York Times that Hamas was suspending its attacks against Israel from Gaza, the Iranian-controlled terror regime took credit for several volleys of rockets shot against Israeli civilian targets from Gaza. The administration stills intends to give Gaza $900 million in US taxpayer funds, and it still demands that Israel give its land to a joint Fatah-Hamas government.

REGARDLESS OF the weight of Netanyahu's arguments, and irrespective of the reasonableness of whatever diplomatic initiative he presents to Obama, he can expect no sympathy or support from the White House.

As a consequence, the operational significance of the administration's anti-Israel positions is that Israel will not be well served by adopting a more accommodating posture toward the Palestinians and Iran. Indeed, perversely, what the Obama administration's treatment of Israel should be making clear to the Netanyahu government is that Israel should no longer take Washington's views into account as it makes its decisions about how to advance Israel's national security interests. This is particularly true with regard to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Rationally speaking, the only way the Obama administration could reasonably expect to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear installations would be if it could make the cost for Israel of attacking higher than the cost for Israel of not attacking. But what the behavior of the Obama administration is demonstrating is that there is no significant difference in the costs of the two options.

By blaming Israel for the absence of peace in the Middle East while ignoring the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist; by seeking to build an international coalition with Europe and the Arabs against Israel while glossing over the fact that at least the Arabs share Israel's concerns about Iran; by exposing Israel's nuclear arsenal and pressuring Israel to disarm while in the meantime courting the ayatollahs like an overeager bridegroom, the Obama administration is telling Israel that regardless of what it does, and what objective reality is, as far as the White House is concerned, Israel is to blame.

This, of course, doesn't mean that Netanyahu shouldn't make his case to Obama when they meet and to the American people during his US visit. What it does mean is that Netanyahu should have no expectation that Israeli goodwill can divert Obama from the course he has chosen. And again, this tells us two things: Israel's relations with the US during Obama's tenure in office will be unpleasant and difficult, and the damage that Israel will cause to that relationship by preventing Iran from acquiring the means to destroy it will be negligible.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 10, 2009

The state of the music business

I was in the mood for some new music -- at least, new to me -- this weekend, so I headed down to the local music store/head shop, the family-owned Salzer's. To say that I'm not into rap, hip-hop or most recently-recorded rock is the height of understatement; I gravitate to country, rock from the '60s through the '80s, classical and jazz.

Salzer's has a good selection of used CDs, new discs added daily as people cull through their collections, trading in the little-listened-to impulse purchases.

Although I found a dozen or so CDs that had songs I liked, none of them featured more than two or three songs that I wanted to hear, with the average price of the discs ranging from $6 to $9. That meant I'd end up paying somewhere around $3 a song, which doesn't make much sense when I can go online and buy a song from Apple's iTunes store for a buck, without getting the rest of the album -- and therefore paying for the tunes I don't want.

So, I ended up leaving the store empty handed.

But that got me thinking about the general state of the music business. The labels lament the poor sales they've been experiencing, but I can't help but think it has something (read: everything!) to do with the crap being recorded lately.

Whether it's Sinatra or Count Basie, Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington, I can buy a CD and know that I'll probably enjoy every track. Not so with new groups, even if they have one catchy tune.

Take, for instance, Chumbawumba. I came to the album Tubthumper about a decade late, but my delayed hip-factor aside, I really like the first track, Tubthumping, a catchy little ditty, perhaps in part because Rolling Stone considers it one of the most annoying songs ever recorded. I like it enough to buy the single -- if I can find it -- for 99 cents, but not enough to drop a ten spot for the whole CD, and certainly not the full price for a new copy, given that the band is comprised of a bunch of capitalism-hating anarchists.

Now, if the prospect of spending $10 for a used CD strikes me as a poor use of my entertainment dollars, imagine how dropping $18 for a new disc strikes a younger, less affluent consumer, who also may only be interested in a song or two.

At $9 each for the two tunes on that $18 CD that Sammy Saggy Pants actually wants, the savvy listener can buy two songs he wants for $2, or get the whole album online and download it ... for $9, not $18.

There was a time when I'd have left Salzer's with a half dozen CDs, containing the seven or eight songs I really liked, but those days are long gone. It just makes more sense to buy online, picking and choosing the tunes I want, and not the ones I don't.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Why didn't I think of that?

Popular Mechanics is covering the 2009 National Hardware Show, and the editors have posted their favorite picks from the thousands of new products making their debut.

This one, the Hanson Precision Ball Level, is such an obvious improvement over traditional levels that I'm amazed no one thought of it before. What makes it especially galling to me is that the inventor's inspiration was a flight simulator (I've been a fan of flight sims since the first primitive programs debuted in the '80s).

According to PopMech:

The first tool of its kind, this level uses a precision aviation ball instead of bubbles in liquid-filled vials. The inventor took inspiration from watching his son play a flight-simulation video game, and modeled his device after the horizon indicator in a plane's cockpit. The resulting tool measures plumb and level, and also calculates angles and compound angles when determining pitch.

Brilliant.

The artificial horizon gauge, familiar to pilots and flight simmers the world over, instantly shows if the plane is level. It is much easier to read than a bubble level, which was the earliest form of an artificial horizon used in the first aircraft.

Aircraft designers abandoned the spirit level right around the end of World War I, but it took tool makers another 90 years to get a clue.

What a terrific example of thinking outside the box -- or the cockpit.

Check out the rest of the tools here.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Can Israel survive?

Michael Oren, a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, lays out seven existential threats to Israel's continued existence in Commentary.

The demographic threat is one that should be obvious, but some of the others are far more troubling, if less well known. Oren points out a series of internal problems with the Jewish state, self-inflicted wounds that don't require the participation of terrorists, hostile Muslim nations, or anti-Semitic Western activists to make Israel's future look bleak.

Very, very bleak.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Humanity's closest companions

I don't know about you, but I'd have been perfectly okay with Noah leaving these critters off the Ark.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:23 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 08, 2009

Second Amendment news: The lawsuits come fast and furious

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision holding that the Second Amendment applies to the States is beginning to bear a bumper crop of litigation, as detailed by Reason.com, in Life After Heller:

In a peculiar but not unprecedented turn of events, an anti-gun control plaintiff lost his case, last month's Nordyke v. King, but nonetheless managed to elicit a groundbreaking pro-gun rights declaration from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In deciding that it was OK for California’s Alameda County to bar the possession of guns on county property—a law that quashed a gun show that had long been held on county fairgrounds—the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the Second Amendment does control state and local actions as well as federal ones. That was a step farther than last year's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, when Supreme Court declared authoritatively for the first time that the Second Amendment did indeed protect an individual right to bear arms. That decision concerned only federal actions.

It’s not unusual for an important gun rights principle to be embedded in a decision upholding a gun law. In fact, that outcome has a positive historical pedigree. The same thing happened in the groundbreaking 2001 Fifth Circuit case, U.S. v. Emerson, where the court declared that the individual right to possess weapons existed in principle (as distinct from some collective right connected with militia membership). But the opinion also said that the particular statute at issue, which barred individuals currently under restraining orders from owning weapons, did not violate the right.

What mattered for the future of gun rights was not whether the plaintiff won his challenge (he didn’t). What mattered was that Emerson created a split in judgment over what the Second Amendment meant among the federal judicial circuits. That laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court to take up the question in Heller. Similarly, what’s most important for the future of gun rights jurisprudence with Nordyke is not whether Alameda County will once again see gun shows on its property (it won’t) but that the decision creates a clear circuit split on whether or not the Second Amendment applies, through what’s called “incorporation” via the 14th Amendment, to state and local actions.

Thus, even though the particular gun show operators who fought Nordyke lost, they won a great victory for the gun rights cause and almost certainly laid the ground for a future Supreme Court case. This year has already seen another federal circuit case, the Second Circuit’s Maloney v. Cuomo, which involves a New York ban on nunchuk possession, declare that the Second Amendment does not apply to states or localities. This has been the standard position on Second Amendment incorporation in the federal courts. The plaintiff in Maloney intends to petition for certiorari from the Supreme Court. The Nordyke plaintiffs can’t, since the particular issue on which they lost, a government’s ability to ban or restrict guns on government property, is not an issue on which there is a circuit split the Supremes need to resolve.

Nordyke’s stroll through the court system was long and twisted and the plaintiffs used a variety of legal arguments to try to overthrow the county’s ban. The line of reasoning by Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain in Nordyke has proved particularly interesting as it has attempted to follow the 14th Amendment’s call that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Elements of the federal Bill of Rights might be said to apply to states and localities in at least two ways, and most of the Bill of Rights has already been thus applied. But until Nordyke, the Second Amendment had been glaringly left out. For non-lawyers, the way the 14th Amendment ended up being parsed in Nordyke, and most other cases, might seem peculiar, but here’s how it went.

O’Scannlain declared that the Second Amendment is not one of the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” precisely because the right is one of “those general civil rights independent of the Republic’s existence,” and not a peculiar possession of Americans as Americans. Peculiarly, it is too important to be imposed on the states via the 14th Amendment by the "privileges or immunities" clause.

Luckily, there is another way. Though you might think “due process” refers merely to the ways or procedures by which government deals with our rights, courts have come to believe in something called “substantive due process.” The Due Process Clause “guarantees more than fair process, and the ‘liberty’ it protects includes more than the absence of physical restraint,” as explained in 1997’s Washington v. Glucksberg.

Thus, as O’Scannlain wrote in Nordyke, if the Second Amendment right is “fundamental, meaning ‘necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty’…then the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates it.” And using reasoning analogous to how trial by jury was incorporated on states and localities in the 1968 Duncan decision, he held that the Second Amendment also must be incorporated.

The decision in Nordyke, much like Heller, laid out in convincing detail that the right of self-defense through weapons protected in the Second Amendment is indeed “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition....The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty."

Still, since Heller’s outline of that right kept it rooted in self-defense in the home, O’Scannlain nonetheless decided that Alameda County could keep its ordinance banning weapons on county property since that restriction did not unduly restrict the core element of the gun possession right as Heller interpreted it.

While the New York Times would have you believe Heller has had few meaningful after-effects, gun rights scholar David Kopel sums up well how significant the decision has been already:

On the day that Heller was decided, the citizens of five Chicago suburbs, and of Chicago itself, were prohibited from owning guns. Residents of apartments provided by the San Francisco Housing Authority were prohibited from owning any gun. Within 24 hours of the Heller decision, gun rights organizations—including the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF)—filed lawsuits against the gun bans.

Today, the residents of San Francisco public housing can own guns in their homes. In four of the five Chicago suburbs (Morton Grove, Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka), the handgun bans have been repealed.

Moving forward, a series of interesting and potentially game-changing new legal challenges have been launched in Heller’s wake. A sampling of a few:

• With the help of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Heller plaintiff Dick Heller is challenging the way D.C. has redesigned its gun control laws post-Heller. As the NRA explained in a press release, “Under the current D.C. law, prospective gun owners are required to pass a written test graded at the sole discretion of the Metropolitan Police Department. They must also have vision better or equal to that required to get a driver’s license (even for those who just want to possess a collector’s item), submit employment history for the past five years and surrender all handguns for ballistics testing, among other restrictions.” Heller and the NRA think those limitations on a recognized constitutional right should not stand.

• The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing in late May a set of legal challenges to various Chicago area gun restrictions that amount to a total restriction on handgun possession and use in the home. Both victorious Heller lawyer Alan Gura and the NRA are involved, with various earlier cases having been combined on appeal on the court’s order.

• Tracey Hanson, one of the original six plaintiffs in what ended up as the Heller case, has reunited with Gura in March to sue D.C. over the fact that the city's narrow roster of approved guns barred her from registering her own handgun because of its color.

• The Second Amendment Foundation and other plaintiffs filed in late April a suit in California challenging that state’s arbitrary list of “approved” guns—a list manufacturers have to pay a fee to appear on. As the press release announcing the suit stated, quoting attorney Alan Gura, “A handgun protected by the Second Amendment does not need to appear on any government-approved list and cannot be banned because a manufacturer does not pay a special annual fee.”

• The Second Amendment Foundation also in late March sued Attorney General Eric Holder, as their press release announcing the suit summed up, “seeking an injunction against enforcement of a federal law that makes it impossible for American citizens who reside outside the United States to purchase firearms while they are in this country.”

With the precedents of Heller and Nordyke, and with various unreasonable gun rights restrictions under skilled legal fire, the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence is brighter than it has been in living memory. Justice Souter’s retirement doesn’t change the gun rights balance of power at the Supreme Court—he was a Heller dissenter, and undoubtedly whoever replaces him would have been as well.

But because Heller very explicitly set limits on how far the Court's gun rights thinking would go (and indeed the Nordyke court relied on that limiting language to uphold Alameda’s gun possession restrictions), some believed it was going to be a complete dud. It is possible that gun jurisprudence will stay stuck in a very narrow groove, with courts deciding across the board that if a law doesn’t clearly and directly and entirely prevent someone from defending themselves in their home with a common weapon then the Second Amendment has been properly honored. But it seems far more probable that Heller will end up reshaping the landscape of American liberty.

Ninth Circuit Judge Ronald Gould nicely laid out the ambiguity facing the courts in his Nordyke concurrence: “The problem for our courts will be to define, in the context of particular regulation by the states and municipalities, what is reasonable and permissible and what is unreasonable and offensive to the Second Amendment.” That’s a vague mandate, and different courts will make different decisions under different circumstances. But after Heller and Nordyke, even if they lack a magic bullet to shoot down unnecessarily restrictive gun laws, courts have the proper core principles laid out. That’s far more than the gun rights community could have said even a year ago.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision holding that the Second Amendment applies to the States is beginning to bear a bumper crop of litigation, as detailed by Reason.com, in Life After Heller:

In a peculiar but not unprecedented turn of events, an anti-gun control plaintiff lost his case, last month's Nordyke v. King, but nonetheless managed to elicit a groundbreaking pro-gun rights declaration from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In deciding that it was OK for California’s Alameda County to bar the possession of guns on county property—a law that quashed a gun show that had long been held on county fairgrounds—the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the Second Amendment does control state and local actions as well as federal ones. That was a step farther than last year's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, when Supreme Court declared authoritatively for the first time that the Second Amendment did indeed protect an individual right to bear arms. That decision concerned only federal actions.

It’s not unusual for an important gun rights principle to be embedded in a decision upholding a gun law. In fact, that outcome has a positive historical pedigree. The same thing happened in the groundbreaking 2001 Fifth Circuit case, U.S. v. Emerson, where the court declared that the individual right to possess weapons existed in principle (as distinct from some collective right connected with militia membership). But the opinion also said that the particular statute at issue, which barred individuals currently under restraining orders from owning weapons, did not violate the right.

What mattered for the future of gun rights was not whether the plaintiff won his challenge (he didn’t). What mattered was that Emerson created a split in judgment over what the Second Amendment meant among the federal judicial circuits. That laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court to take up the question in Heller. Similarly, what’s most important for the future of gun rights jurisprudence with Nordyke is not whether Alameda County will once again see gun shows on its property (it won’t) but that the decision creates a clear circuit split on whether or not the Second Amendment applies, through what’s called “incorporation” via the 14th Amendment, to state and local actions.

Thus, even though the particular gun show operators who fought Nordyke lost, they won a great victory for the gun rights cause and almost certainly laid the ground for a future Supreme Court case. This year has already seen another federal circuit case, the Second Circuit’s Maloney v. Cuomo, which involves a New York ban on nunchuk possession, declare that the Second Amendment does not apply to states or localities. This has been the standard position on Second Amendment incorporation in the federal courts. The plaintiff in Maloney intends to petition for certiorari from the Supreme Court. The Nordyke plaintiffs can’t, since the particular issue on which they lost, a government’s ability to ban or restrict guns on government property, is not an issue on which there is a circuit split the Supremes need to resolve.

Nordyke’s stroll through the court system was long and twisted and the plaintiffs used a variety of legal arguments to try to overthrow the county’s ban. The line of reasoning by Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain in Nordyke has proved particularly interesting as it has attempted to follow the 14th Amendment’s call that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Elements of the federal Bill of Rights might be said to apply to states and localities in at least two ways, and most of the Bill of Rights has already been thus applied. But until Nordyke, the Second Amendment had been glaringly left out. For non-lawyers, the way the 14th Amendment ended up being parsed in Nordyke, and most other cases, might seem peculiar, but here’s how it went.

O’Scannlain declared that the Second Amendment is not one of the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” precisely because the right is one of “those general civil rights independent of the Republic’s existence,” and not a peculiar possession of Americans as Americans. Peculiarly, it is too important to be imposed on the states via the 14th Amendment by the "privileges or immunities" clause.

Luckily, there is another way. Though you might think “due process” refers merely to the ways or procedures by which government deals with our rights, courts have come to believe in something called “substantive due process.” The Due Process Clause “guarantees more than fair process, and the ‘liberty’ it protects includes more than the absence of physical restraint,” as explained in 1997’s Washington v. Glucksberg.

Thus, as O’Scannlain wrote in Nordyke, if the Second Amendment right is “fundamental, meaning ‘necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty’…then the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates it.” And using reasoning analogous to how trial by jury was incorporated on states and localities in the 1968 Duncan decision, he held that the Second Amendment also must be incorporated.

The decision in Nordyke, much like Heller, laid out in convincing detail that the right of self-defense through weapons protected in the Second Amendment is indeed “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition....The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty."

Still, since Heller’s outline of that right kept it rooted in self-defense in the home, O’Scannlain nonetheless decided that Alameda County could keep its ordinance banning weapons on county property since that restriction did not unduly restrict the core element of the gun possession right as Heller interpreted it.

While the New York Times would have you believe Heller has had few meaningful after-effects, gun rights scholar David Kopel sums up well how significant the decision has been already:

On the day that Heller was decided, the citizens of five Chicago suburbs, and of Chicago itself, were prohibited from owning guns. Residents of apartments provided by the San Francisco Housing Authority were prohibited from owning any gun. Within 24 hours of the Heller decision, gun rights organizations—including the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF)—filed lawsuits against the gun bans.

Today, the residents of San Francisco public housing can own guns in their homes. In four of the five Chicago suburbs (Morton Grove, Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka), the handgun bans have been repealed.

Moving forward, a series of interesting and potentially game-changing new legal challenges have been launched in Heller’s wake. A sampling of a few:

• With the help of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Heller plaintiff Dick Heller is challenging the way D.C. has redesigned its gun control laws post-Heller. As the NRA explained in a press release, “Under the current D.C. law, prospective gun owners are required to pass a written test graded at the sole discretion of the Metropolitan Police Department. They must also have vision better or equal to that required to get a driver’s license (even for those who just want to possess a collector’s item), submit employment history for the past five years and surrender all handguns for ballistics testing, among other restrictions.” Heller and the NRA think those limitations on a recognized constitutional right should not stand.

• The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing in late May a set of legal challenges to various Chicago area gun restrictions that amount to a total restriction on handgun possession and use in the home. Both victorious Heller lawyer Alan Gura and the NRA are involved, with various earlier cases having been combined on appeal on the court’s order.

• Tracey Hanson, one of the original six plaintiffs in what ended up as the Heller case, has reunited with Gura in March to sue D.C. over the fact that the city's narrow roster of approved guns barred her from registering her own handgun because of its color.

• The Second Amendment Foundation and other plaintiffs filed in late April a suit in California challenging that state’s arbitrary list of “approved” guns—a list manufacturers have to pay a fee to appear on. As the press release announcing the suit stated, quoting attorney Alan Gura, “A handgun protected by the Second Amendment does not need to appear on any government-approved list and cannot be banned because a manufacturer does not pay a special annual fee.”

• The Second Amendment Foundation also in late March sued Attorney General Eric Holder, as their press release announcing the suit summed up, “seeking an injunction against enforcement of a federal law that makes it impossible for American citizens who reside outside the United States to purchase firearms while they are in this country.”

With the precedents of Heller and Nordyke, and with various unreasonable gun rights restrictions under skilled legal fire, the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence is brighter than it has been in living memory. Justice Souter’s retirement doesn’t change the gun rights balance of power at the Supreme Court—he was a Heller dissenter, and undoubtedly whoever replaces him would have been as well.

But because Heller very explicitly set limits on how far the Court's gun rights thinking would go (and indeed the Nordyke court relied on that limiting language to uphold Alameda’s gun possession restrictions), some believed it was going to be a complete dud. It is possible that gun jurisprudence will stay stuck in a very narrow groove, with courts deciding across the board that if a law doesn’t clearly and directly and entirely prevent someone from defending themselves in their home with a common weapon then the Second Amendment has been properly honored. But it seems far more probable that Heller will end up reshaping the landscape of American liberty.

Ninth Circuit Judge Ronald Gould nicely laid out the ambiguity facing the courts in his Nordyke concurrence: “The problem for our courts will be to define, in the context of particular regulation by the states and municipalities, what is reasonable and permissible and what is unreasonable and offensive to the Second Amendment.” That’s a vague mandate, and different courts will make different decisions under different circumstances. But after Heller and Nordyke, even if they lack a magic bullet to shoot down unnecessarily restrictive gun laws, courts have the proper core principles laid out. That’s far more than the gun rights community could have said even a year ago.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 07, 2009

Time to get up off the couch and -- oh, never mind

As it turns out, hitting the gym may not be necessary -- or even all that helpful -- when it comes time to lose that gut. Seems like the most effective exercise is putting down the fork and pushing back from the table.

Susan Roberts, a professor of Nutrition and Psychiatry at Tufts University, says that exercise is not the key ingredient in an effective weight loss regimen. Roberts, who wrote the book, The Instinct Diet, posted recently at The Daily Beast.

The notion of going to the gym—burning, say, 500 calories a session, six days a week, and thereby eliminating 3,000 calories (or about a pound of body fat) in a single week—is very appealing. Just think: Lose 50 pounds plus get great abs over the course of a single year, all without dieting!

But a hard look at the evidence just doesn’t support the hype. The inconvenient truth is that we now eat about 500 more calories per day than we did 30 years ago. That's enough to explain our growing waistline without any need to factor in exercise.

Combine this fact with national surveys showing that people who do manual occupations—jobs like construction, farming, and domestic work—are heavier than people who sit in front of a computer screen all day. Indeed, these physically strenuous jobs carry a 30% increased risk of obesity when compared to office jobs. Of course, comparisons like this don’t factor in social class, or whether you eat brownies, or take a run after work, but that’s the whole point—compared to factors like what we eat and what our education level is, hard manual labor just doesn’t make as much of a difference. Even if your day is spent shoveling gravel, you’re still going to find yourself with a pot belly if you’re always lunching on pizza and soda.

The evidence isn’t just anecdotal. My lab at Tufts University summarized 36 years of published studies on exercise and weight, conducted between 1969 and 2005. What we found would frustrate anyone spending upward of $800 a year on a gym membership to lose weight. The averaged results of the studies showed that an hour of exercise per day results in an average fat loss of just six pounds over the course of several months—hardly the benefit one would expect from all that work.

Perhaps more importantly, most of the studies only managed to get people to exercise 30 minutes a day, which is the maximum most people have the time and inclination for, at which point the average weight loss goes down to a meager three pounds. It is true that some of the studies showed greater fat losses than the average, but just as many showed less.

[...]

Research doesn’t have good answers to the question of why exercise doesn’t work for the average person as well as it seems it should, but I suspect the reasons are increased hunger (you eat almost as many extra calories as you burn) and reduced energy expenditure at other times (exercise may make you more relaxed and less fidgety). So, you end up fit, healthy, and less stressed out, but wondering why you still have pounds to lose.

On the other hand, 85 percent of people entering a no-exercise weight-loss program at my lab lost 10 to 50 pounds, giving us the clear message that exercise isn’t the key to getting slim. Which doesn’t mean you should tear up your gym membership—being fit remains good for your general health. It is also clear from research studies that one hour of exercise a day is helpful in keeping weight off after you have lost it with a diet program.

[...]

The important thing to know is that you have a choice. Exercise is great medicine for general health and a great add-on to dieting, so feel free to kill yourself in the gym if it makes you feel good. But it isn't essential, and by itself doesn't do much. All the evidence suggests that exercise is less important than what goes in your mouth, and when.

It doesn't really require a PhD to understand that weight gain isn't calculus, or even algebra; it's simple arithmetic. Calories consumed - calories burned = either a positive number, no net change, or a negative number.

I saw the comic Kip Adotta perform a standup routine twenty years ago about the latest weight loss fads. He told the audience, "Let me sum up every diet book ever written." Turning sideways to the crowd, he thrust his butt out and bent over a little bit.

"You can pack it in faster through this hole," he said, pointing at his mouth, "than you can get rid of it through this hole," pointing at his ass.

I don't know why it is we're constantly surprised to find that out.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:45 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 06, 2009

Dom DeLuise: The curtain falls

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Arlen Specter, the insufferable windbag from Pennsylvania who also happens to represent the state in the U.S. Senate, recently defected from the GOP to the Democratic Party, claiming that the Republican Party had moved to the right, a place he could no longer dwell.

That's hilarious, for a couple of reasons, amongst them being that the GOP of today is decidedly less conservative then it was in years past, having become nearly indistinguishable from the Dems when it comes to Big Government and profligate spending and pork.

It's also hilarious, given that Specter was never a conservative, switching from Donk to Repub back in the '60s because there was a GOP slot he calculated (correctly) that he could win. And thus began a 40-plus year career predicated upon Specter being loyal only to Specter.

Conservatives -- including party-less folks like your humble author -- have long called Specter a RINO (Republican in Name Only), because of his seeming lack of core principles. Last month, after realizing that Pat Toomey, a conservative Republican was likely to not only defeat him in the primary, but do so by a huge margin, Specter decided that winning another term at the age of 79 was more important than letting Pennsylvania Republicans decide if they wanted to send him back to Washington, D.C.

And so, in a craven move to retain power, the borderline octogenarian entered into secret negotiations with the Democrats, maneuvering to retain his seniority in the Senate, which comes with plum positions on committees -- and power and influence.

The Democratic leadership promised Specter that he could transfer his GOP seniority across the aisle, assuring himself a continued role as a powerbroker, and giving him the ability to tell Pennsylvanians that their interests would be taken care of, with Uncle Arlen making sure they got their more-than-fair share of the pork.

Rank and file Dems weren't happy about this backroom deal, delivering a sweet piece of Karmic comeuppance to the feckless crapweasel.

Roll Call reports:

Despite promises from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) would retain his seniority after switching parties, Specter will be put at the end of the seniority line on all his committees but one under a resolution approved on the floor late Tuesday.

Under the modified organizing resolution, Specter will not keep his committee seniority on any of the five committees that he serves on and will be the junior Democrat on all but one — the chamber’s Special Committee on Aging. On that committee, he will be next to last in seniority.

As a result, Specter — who as a Republican was ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, as well as ranking member of the panel’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education — will now rank behind all the other Democrats, at least until the end of this Congress.

According to a senior Democratic aide, it remains unclear whether Specter — who will still retain his seniority in the Senate outside of the committees — will see a boost in his committee seniority should he be re-elected for the next session. The status of his seniority for the next Congress will be determined once the 112th Congress convenes in 2011, the aide said.

Democrats said that while unrelated, Specter’s comments to the New York Times Magazine this weekend indicating he would support former Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) disputed re-election bid against Al Franken have angered many Democrats.

“Sen. Specter better watch comments like these. They won’t help him in the caucus,” a Democratic leadership aide said, adding that the comments have “caused a lot of heartburn in the caucus.”

This move also makes it less than certain that Specter can win the Democratic nomination; there's talk of a primary challenge from a retired Navy admiral, an up and coming star in Pennsylvania politics. If Specter is last in line at the trough, why would voters count on him to bring home buckets brimming with swag?

Poor little piggie.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 05, 2009

Celebutard of the week: Shia LaBeouf

I hated this guy in the eminently hatable George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Rape Indiana Jones With The Crystal Skull, or whatever the hell they called the fourth execrable flick in the Indiana Jones series, but now I have yet another reason to say that the actor and his films are to be avoided at all costs.

Forget his “Transformers” co-star Megan Fox, actor Shia LaBeouf apparently thinks his mother is the “sexiest” woman he knows.

In a new interview with Playboy magazine, the actor reveals some unusual thoughts about the woman who gave him life, reports Star magazine .

"Probably the sexiest woman I know is my mother," he says. "She's an ethereal angel. Nobody looks like that woman. If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren't my mother, as sick as that sounds."

According to the interview, which Star magazine says it obtained, while the “Transformers” star was growing up, his mother often liked to walk around the house naked, even when young LaBeouf’s young friends were over.

"All of them would just be naked around the house,” LaBeouf tells Playboy of his mom and her friends in the June issue. “That was strange for me, and it was really bizarre when my friends were there. You've got your little buds over, and Mom's, like, playing naked connect the dots or whatever. She's in the middle of goddess-group time, where it's literally a bunch of naked women tracing auras around one another's bodies with incense and then sitting together and humming for prolonged periods of time."

Paging Dr. Freud!

Gross.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 02, 2009

Remembering Doug Daily

Doug Daily passed away last night after a brief-but-agonizing battle with cancer. Doug was many things: passionate and skillful career public defender; patient and thoughtful judge; proud father and grandfather; loving husband; and an incredibly talented musician.

I don't have any photos of the times I spent with him in court, first as opposing counsel, later as an advocate appearing before Judge Daily, but I do have this slideshow, from one of Doug's gigs with his band, Dynamo Jump.

Doug was playing at the Sidecar Cafe in Ventura three years ago when I took these photos; the song is from his CD, which I've played many times while writing or driving.

His loss is tragic, for his family, as well as the local legal community.

Lawyers are often a vile, petty, backstabbing bunch of conniving, carping, pettyfogging poltroons, but Doug was the exception to the rule. In a profession where everyone has something bad to say about their colleagues, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone criticize Doug.

I think Doug Daily managed to spend a lifetime in the practice of the law without making any enemies -- an unheard of accomplishment.

Doug and I had a brief conversation about music -- he'd loaned me a guitar to try and learn on ("try" is the operative word), encouraging me to keep at it, and I'd recently purchased a guitar of my own and wanted to tell him about it -- a day or two before he left the courthouse, never to return.

It was the last time we spoke.

This video is how I want to remember him, jamming on his guitar, having a ball, laughing and singing as he entertained himself -- and us, too.

Resquiat in pace.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:25 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 01, 2009

California's handgun list under fire

Although the mainstream media has paid scant attention to the recent appellate decision out of the U.S. 9th Circuit holding that the Second Amendment was incorporated and applicable to the States, lawyer Allan Gura was listening; he's filed an interesting lawsuit, challenging California's list of guns authorized for sale in the state.

For those of you who have the good fortune to not live in the legislative nuthouse that is the Golden State, here's the issue.

For a handgun to be legally sold in California, the manufacturer must submit a sample of the gun for testing and pay a fee. If, after rigorous and scientific testing (ahem) , the gun passes, it is placed on "The List."

All variants of a firearm must be individually tested; if a gun is available in a variety of calibers, or with purely cosmetic differences (i.e., different color slides), the manufacturer is required to submit a sample of each variant, even if they are functionally identical.

This can represent a substantial cost to be borne by the manufacturer -- some might call it harassment, with no beneficial impact on public safety.

The lawsuit, spearheaded by Gura, the lawyer who convinced the Supreme Court in Heller that the Second Amendment is an individual right, seeks to put an end to this legislative stupidity.

Gura ... noted that California “tells Ivan Peña that his rights have an expiration date based on payment of a government fee. Americans are not limited to a government list of approved books, or approved religions,” he said. “A handgun protected by the Second Amendment does not need to appear on any government-approved list and cannot be banned because a manufacturer does not pay a special annual fee.”

“The Para Ordnance P-13 was once approved for sale in California,” Peña noted, “but now that a manufacturer didn’t pay a yearly fee, California claims the gun I want to own has somehow become ‘unsafe’.”

“The Glock-21 is the handgun I would choose for home defense, but California has decided the version I need is unacceptable. I was born without a right arm below my elbow and therefore the new ambidextrous version of the Glock-21 is the safest one for me. The identical model designed for right hand use is available in California, but I can’t use it,” said plaintiff Roy Vargas.

Added SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “The Supreme Court’s decision is crystal clear: Handguns that are used by people for self-defense and other lawful purposes cannot be banned, whether the State likes it or not. California needs to accept the Second Amendment reality.”

[...]

Joining plaintiffs Peña and Vargas are Doña Croston and Brett Thomas. Doña Croston’s handgun would be allowed if it were black, green, or brown, but her bi-tone version is supposedly ‘unsafe’ merely based on color. “I didn’t realize that my constitutional rights depended on color. What is it about two colors that makes the gun I want to purchase ‘unsafe’?”

Brett Thomas seeks to own the same model of handgun that the Supreme Court ordered District of Columbia officials to register for Dick Heller. However, that particular model is no longer manufactured, and its maker is no longer available to process the handgun’s certification through the bureaucracy.

“There is only one model of handgun that the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled is protected by the Second Amendment and yet California will not allow me to purchase that gun,” said Mr. Thomas.

“The so-called ‘safe’ gun list is just another gun-grabbing gimmick,” said co-counsel Donald Kilmer. “California can’t get around the Second Amendment, as incorporated, by declaring most normal guns ‘unsafe,’ and gradually shrinking the number of so-called ‘safe’ guns to zero.”

There's also an interesting Equal Protection argument waiting to be made about the list, as well as the California ban on high capacity magazines: Neither regulation applies to sworn peace officers.

That means a cop can buy a handgun that is "off list," not offered for sale to the public, solely because of his status as a peace officer. The inference to be drawn, therefore, is that a weapon's presence on the list has nothing to do with whether or not it is or has been deemed "safe"; risk-averse police departments and city attorneys would never authorize their cops to carry unsafe weapons.

The rationale for allowing cops to purchase hi-cap magazines (they shouldn't be outgunned by the crooks) but not law-abiding citizens, who presumably follow the law -- and therefore are at risk of being outgunned by the same crooks who ignore the law, also seems ripe for an Equal Protection challenge.

You can read the complaint here.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:13 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition (except the Obama Administration)

PoweLine's John Hinderaker notes

Spanish courts assert world-wide jurisdiction over certain categories of "crimes," and Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon has launched an inquisition into America's treatment of terrorist detainees. Now Attorney General Eric Holder says the Obama administration may choose to cooperate with such kangaroo investigations. Dafydd ab Hugh ponders the implications: does the Obama administration plan to outsource its retribution against Bush administration officials, establishing deniability by letting foreign "courts" do the dirty work?

If the Attorney General of the United States once accepts the absurdity that a Spanish court and Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, sitting in Spain and operating under Spanish law, actually have jurisdiction over American officials making official policy decisions inside the United States about how American military and intelligence agents can interrogate detainees at an American Marine Corps base inside Cuba... then how can Holder later limit such jurisdiction to "evidentiary requests?"

If Garzón has legal authority to demand we hand over evidence, he also has legal authority to demand we hand over "war criminals," from American military personnel, to John Yoo, to Jay Bybee, to William Haynes, to Douglas Feith, to Alberto Gonzales, to Richard Myers, to Dick Cheney -- even to former President George W. Bush himself. ...

If we ever once accept that a European court -- and not even a recognized "international" one! -- has jurisdiction over actions committed by American officials here in the United States, and can prosecute them for "crimes" that are not even recognized here, then we have crossed a line from which we can never retreat: The United States will cease to be a sovereign power.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:02 AM

Peter Hitchens: On Being a Gun Nut

link

On being a gun nut

Well, I said I would be misrepresented when I voiced doubts about 'gun control', and I duly was, by a contributor who seems keen to legalise a drug that destroys the brains of the young, but regards it as unthinkable to allow individuals to own guns. He says I am a 'gun nut'. Does that make him a 'dope nut'? Perhaps, though I doubt he will see it that way. Well, I don't see it his way either. Here's why.

Presumably he imagines that my house is crammed with firearms and ammunition, and that I salivate over gun porn in my bullet-proof bunker. I'm sorry to disappoint him but I neither own any guns nor wish to do so. I find proper firearms as alarming as I find powerful motorcycles. In both cases you need to know what you're doing before you use them. In both cases they give you more power than you might want to possess. In both cases, they are too easily capable of inflicting pain and injury. Having nearly killed myself (and someone else) on a motorbike when I was 17, I would be reluctant to ride one again. I can, without any effort at all, recall in vivid detail the screaming of metal on Tarmac as my machine tipped over, sparks flying, and the first sight of my very badly broken ankle after I had hopped to the roadside. I can also remember that, after a dreamlike interlude when I was unaware of how badly I was hurt, it was very painful but (fortunately) have no actual memory of the pain itself, which was just short of the level needed to pass out. I hope this helps to explain why I am also not anxious to keep a firearm.

I don't even like being near motorbikes any more. I am more aware than most people of what severe physical injury looks and feels like. And I suspect I should be just as cautious with a loaded gun of any kind. Handling unloaded ones, as I did for some posed pictures in Moscow, Idaho last October, is of course another matter.

The only firearms I ever possessed were a couple of childhood airguns, once common but now - I suspect - more or less banned. The righteous frenzy against toy guns (including those which are unmistakably and obviously toys) is now so great that toyshops often don't stock them any more. All I desire is my lawful freedom, as guaranteed by the 1689 Bill of Rights and lawlessly whittled away by the civil service and dim politicians, to own a gun if I choose to do so. I suppose it's possible that, as our anarchy deepens, I might reluctantly want to take advantage of this. But that's the point. The choice should be mine, not that of some boot-faced politically-correct police officer anxious to maintain his monopoly of force - and anxious to ensure that his idea of the law should be the only one available.

As I argue in my book 'A Brief History of Crime', it's the great gulf between police and public over how the law should be enforced that lies behind two important features of modern Britain. The frequent arrests of people for defending themselves or their property are not accidents or quirks. They are the consequence of the Criminal Justice system's abandonment of old-fashioned ideas of punishment; also of that system's social democratic belief that crime has 'social' causes and the ownership of property isn't absolute. Most law-abiding people don't really accept this. They think criminals do bad things because they lack conscience or restraint, not because they were abused as children or their dole payments are too small. And they don't see why they have to barricade their houses or hide their worldly goods from view on the assumption that some unrestrained low-life is otherwise bound to steal them. So they regard it as legitimate to hurt and punish those who rob them or otherwise attack them. If they were allowed to enforce the law as they see it, they would quickly show the police and courts up as useless and mistaken. One of the most important jobs of the police is to stop us looking after ourselves, in case we do a better job than PC Plod.

Guns simply take this to a higher level. Since we foolishly abolished the formal death penalty, imposed after a careful trial, we have transferred the power of capital punishment to an increasingly armed police force (though no legislation has ever actually been passed to arm them, and the pretence is still maintained that they are unarmed). That police force is now the arm of the liberal state - rather than enforcers of conservative law (which is why it is nowadays called a 'service') - and so has a much wider licence to use (liberal) violence than ordinary conservative citizens. Contrast the police force's zealous efforts to stamp out private gun ownership with its own rather poor efforts at responsible gun use, as a result of which quite a few people (one stark naked in a well-lit room) have been shot by mistake or as a result of over-reaction by armed officers. As it happens, I find these mistakes and over-reactions quite easy to pardon. Which of us, in such situations, could be sure he would do the right thing? I've never joined in the frenzy of criticism over the de Menezes case, for instance. It is terribly easy to see how such an error could have been made under the circumstances. But if we didn't have an armed police force, and left executions to the hangman, then these things would be a lot less likely.

But what concerns me is that members of the public in the same situation are judged so much more harshly if they make such mistakes. And, perhaps more important, how police shootings are widely accepted, though they are summary, often erroneous and inadequately investigated. Whereas a society which finds this summary execution acceptable gets into a pseudo-moral lather about the idea of lawful execution after due process, jury trial, the possibility of appeal and reprieve.

This brings me back to the USA. Americans are not so infantilised as we are. For many reasons, mainly the fact that it is still possible to live genuinely rural lives in large parts of the country, Americans are less likely to rely on others to protect them or their homes from danger.

This used to be true of us too (again I must urge those who are interested to read the relevant chapter in 'Brief History'). It's evident from a lot of English fiction, written not for propaganda but by people who simply recorded life as they understood it, that until quite recently we had a more American view of things. In fact until 1920 English Gun Law made Texas look effeminate. Read, as nobody now does, Captain Marryat's 'Children of the New Forest' set in the days of Cromwell, and observe the wholly different attitudes towards self-defence against crime that are casually described there.

Read, as fewer and fewer people now do, alas, the 'Sherlock Holmes' stories, and see how often Holmes and Dr Watson venture out carrying firearms. This was perfectly legal, and unsurprising, in the late Victorian and Edwardian era in which the stories are set. And pre-1914 attempts to control guns were resisted by MPs much as the US Congress resists them now.

My suspicion is that the guts were knocked out of us British by the First World War, in which the best people of all classes died by their thousands in the great volunteer armies which marched off to Loos, Passchendaele and the Somme. Those who survived lacked something of the spirit that a free country needs, and we never fully recovered, just as Russia has yet to recover from the fourfold blow of the First World War, Civil War, Great Purge and Second World War, each of which destroyed the best and brightest of their generations. The USA - a society, for the most part, of volunteers and pioneers, has never had a comparable experience. Let us hope it never does.

May I endorse the kind things said about Canada by some correspondents? British people are often given to making lofty and scornful remarks about various countries which they decry as 'boring' - Canada, Belgium and Switzerland usually being the chief victims. Canada is anything but boring. On the contrary it is a fascinating and intensely civilised society, made all the more so by the survival of a French-speaking province (and I admit to having been too diffident about the monarchism of the Quebecois, who were sensibly allowed by Protestant Hanoverian Britain to maintain their Roman Catholic faith without restriction - though I was sorry, on my last visit to Quebec City, to find the handsome Anglican Cathedral there closed and locked. Still, I was pleased to see that - like the Anglican church in Sark - it offered services in French as well as English. How I wish the 1662 Prayer Book could be translated, and I mean properly translated, with all the poetry, into every major language of the world).

Belgophobes also need to travel a bit more. Among the many delights of that country are a comprehensive railway system that puts ours to shame, several treasure houses of some of the best paintings in the world and a rather better record in resisting German invasion than they are generally given credit for. As for Switzerland, the determination of its people to remain free is very far from boring, and continues to this day.

One contributor asks why I don't go to live in the USA, since I like it so much. Why should I? This is my country, where my ancestors are buried and where I hope and intend to be buried myself, where I grew up, whose landscape, climate, music, poetry and architecture are in my bones, whose battle-honours are my battle-honours and whose history is my history. Nowhere else is like it. It is precisely because I know and like so many other countries that I know and love my own best of all. Given the way things are going, I don't completely rule out the possibility of becoming an exile, but that will not be because I want to be. It never is.

Oh, and by the way, those who object to being called 'dimwitted' by me have a simple remedy. Don't say dimwitted things, and especially spare me any repetitions of the 'what about alcohol and tobacco, then, eh?' attempted defence of cannabis. If I urged the unrestricted sale of alcohol and tobacco, they might just have a small point. Since I support legal restrictions on both (both for reasons repeatedly given on this site - I do not believe that legally banning their possession would work, whereas it would with cannabis), they have no point at all. This argument annoys me especially because it is so dishonest, given that those who use it have no actual interest in curbing the use of any poison, merely in preventing serious action against the poison they favour. It also annoys me because its proponents did not even think of it themselves, but bought it retail, ready made in easy-to-swallow capsules.

I suspect (because it is so common) that this non-argument is being widely taught it in school in 'PSHE' indoctrination sessions, and that those who advance it have never thought about it all, because it suited their own interests to swallow it whole. I think it is good for such people to realise that others regard them as dimwitted - for parroting weak and wicked arguments foisted on them by irresponsible teachers. They and these teachers ought to be forced to do weekend shifts in the cannabis wards in our mental hospitals. Meanwhile, the jibe that they are 'dimwitted', a mild one under the circumstances, might make them think about the subject, perhaps for the first time in their sheltered lives.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:01 AM