Once again The Left demonstrates its rank hypocrisy when it comes to free speech:
(H/T: Jonah.)
Jamie posted this at 4:41 PM HKT on Monday, February 15th, 2010 as Politics
February 15th, 2010
Free Speech is Only Free When Its Ours
Quote of the Day
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,”
John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
Jamie posted this at 11:30 AM HKT on Monday, February 15th, 2010 as Convenient Truth
February 14th, 2010
The Most Perverse Legal Interpretation I’m Aware Of
Read this and be galled.
I generally don’t pay attention to state supreme courts from states not named Texas, but it seems like this is the fourth or fifth preposterous ruling from Kansas that I’ve heard of in recent years, and I’ve read at least three Kansas cases in law school as examples of how not to analyze the law. California, New York, and Hawaii are the judicial activism centers of the country; the Kansas cases that I see aren’t so much activist, though, as they are just plain bad.
Apollo posted this at 6:40 PM HKT on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 as The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
Disbelieving Man-Made Climate Change is Unpatriotic
Thus sayeth Bill Nye, the Patriotism Guy.
I had no idea he was a nut like that. Of course, I’ve watched about 15 minutes of MSNBC in the last decade, most of which resulted from accidental channel changes, so if he says things there, it’s likely to escape my notice.
Apollo posted this at 5:57 PM HKT on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 as Science!
Rivkin and Casey Want the Dog to be Wagged
This column by David Rivkin and Lee Casey on the demise of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) is immensely wrong-headed as a matter of constitutional law – or, at least, it should be (one never knows what the Supreme Court will do until it does it).
Their argument is that because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense have said that there is no need for DADT, therefore a court would have to find that there is no rational basis for the law and strike down the law as unconstitutional.
Let me rephrase that argument: Because two high-ranking presidential appointees don’t think there’s need for a duly-enacted law (i.e. an act of the legislature), the judicial branch should strike it down. This is a complete separation of powers clusterf**k.
Obviously the opinions of the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are pretty important here. Congress would be foolish not to ask them their opinion when it is performing its Constitutional duty of “regulat[ing] the land and naval forces.” But it is clear that, Constitutionally speaking, presidential appointees are irrelevant here. The Secretary of Defense’s view on DADT is no more binding than is his view on the Voting Rights Act, the national gas tax, or the existence of Martians, and Congress, seeing as it is independent from the executive, should be under no obligation to follow his suggestions.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about DADT – if I were to draw a picture of my opinions regarding DADT, I would draw a vast, featureless ocean of apathy extending to the horizon in all directions. What I do care about is judicial activism. It is, to my mind, preposterous to suggest that the judiciary should strike down an act of the legislature because of the opinion of some executive appointees. The executive and judicial branches should not try to use each other as sticks to beat down the legislative.
Of course, what would make this approach particularly galling is that there is absolutely no need for it. We have a president who won a large electoral victory campaigning, at least in part, on repealing DADT. The president’s party, even after Scott Brown’s win, has the largest Congressional majorities in 30 years. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Republican appointees both – have said there is no need for DADT. Don’t look to the courts to end DADT, just pass an effing law!
Apollo posted this at 3:16 AM HKT on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 as I, For One, Welcome Our Judicial Overlords!, Running with the antelope, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution
February 10th, 2010
So, Are You A Terrorist, Or Are You Just Happy To…
London, Feb 6 (IANS) Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan isn’t intimidated by the full body-scan machines that have been recently installed at London’s airports – in fact, he’s been signing off printouts of his X-rays.
Khan, appearing on ‘Friday Night With Jonathan Ross’ – one of British television’s most popular weekend shows – revealed he’s been turning the controversial security machines into a public relations opportunity at London’s Heathrow airport.
‘I’m always stopped by the security, because of the name. And I think its okay: the western world is a little bit worried, paranoid and touchy, I guess – and feely when they’re frisking you,’ Khan told his celebrity chat show host moments after explaining how his new film is about a Muslim named Khan on a mission to tell the US president he is not a terrorist.
‘I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed – if you’re not well endowed.
‘You walk into the machine and everything – the whole outline of your body – comes out.’
Khan said he did not know that the body-scans – installed in the wake of last year’s abortive Christmas Day bombing of a transatlantic flight over Detroit – showed up every little detail of one’s body.
‘I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out.
‘Then I saw these girls – they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said ‘give them to me’ – and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.’
In a few months, grocery aisle magazines will feature hi-resolution renderings of Jennifer Anniston’s naked body as she returns from a romantic romp in the Firth of Forth with Gerrard Butler (while secretly pining for Brad Pitt). Not too long after that, we’ll learn about Angelina Jolie’s next pregnancy from airport scans. All while feeling so much safer.
Tom posted this at 9:51 AM HKT on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 as Brave New Worlds, Liberty and/or Security
February 9th, 2010
I Don’t Think Leon Wieseltier Likes Andrew Sullivan
That’s a pretty strong piece, and a pretty strong charge, from someone I generally respect. I don’t have a fully formed opinion on the matter, so I won’t say whether I agree with it or not.
What I will say is that I stopped reading Sullivan when he took up residence in Sarahpalin’s nether regions. I’ve visited his site maybe a half dozen times since then, and each time I saw some unflattering comment about Jews. I didn’t say anything, here or elsewhere, because I had no way of knowing whether what I read was at all representative of his current incarnation. That is, I gave Sullivan an undeserved benefit of the doubt.
Whether Wieseltier is right about Sullivan’s Jewish problem I won’t say, but Wieseltier is certainly correct that Sullivan has an unhealthy tendency to see conspiracies and evil motives wherever he looks. Once people start conspiracy rambling, it’s usually the case that at least some anti-Semitism will creep in. If it’s crept into Sullivan, I wouldn’t be surprised. At least, not as surprised as I am to see TNR run such a lenthy and personal takedown of one of its former editors.
Apollo posted this at 2:36 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 as Journalism, What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
The Administration’s Sense of Itself
I thought the House Republicans had a rather artful response to the president’s phony baloney health care “summit.” As proof of this artfulness, Roberts Gibbs responded today with, more or less, nothing.
Though in that nothing, there’s a sentence that shows exactly why this president can’t bring himself to work with Republicans or relatively centrist Democrats: “The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation.”
Can anyone tell me why on earth this moment is historic? I guess it would be historic if the Democrat bill passed, but since it didn’t I can’t think of anything that makes this moment particularly historic.
But, of course, this administration started off behaving as though great achievements were inevitable. The president’s underpants gnome mindset is on display here. He was elected, therefore he is a great and historic president. I think only three presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, achieved genuinely historic feats through their mere election. Every other historic president has had to work at it. And that’s what Obama won’t do.
And how do we know he won’t do it? Back to Gibbs: “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process . . .” Translation: “I look forward to using you to achieve my ends.” I understand this is how a lot of very successful businessmen approach negotiations, but they would never say it so bluntly. Beginning a negotiation in such a manner strikes me as an admission that you’re not really going to be negotiating.
If the president would back down from his grandiose plans and simply look for measures that improve the current system, rather than completely overhaul it, he could find a lot of Republican votes on a lot of issues, and the end result would have a chance of being good for the country. But he won’t consider half-measures, because this is an “historic moment,” because he is an historic president, which means that he will only attempt historically large changes.
Apollo posted this at 11:48 AM HKT on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!
February 7th, 2010
A Crib Note Counterfactual
Back in high school speech tournaments, I would sometimes write one or two words on my hand. They weren’t extended thoughts, just reminders to focus on particular thoughts that I might otherwise stray from. I’d like to think I was more discrete in reading from my hand than was Sarahpalin, but I didn’t think it was weak for me to write those notes, nor do I think it was weak of Sarahpalin to write hers. To illustrate, let’s jump in the wayback machine.
It’s July 22, last year. The president is still more popular than not, and he’s beginning the push for a health care reform package that will fulfill nearly 80 years of Democrat attempts to make government the primary player in the American health care system. The president goes off teleprompter to give a live, prime-time press conference meant to boost the effort.
At the very end of a fairly competent performance by the president, a journalist asks a question about a complete non-sequitur. There’d been an unusual arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, involving one of the president’s acquaintances. Not many facts of the case are known publicly, but it’s obvious that the issue has some racial elements.
Scenario 1: The president is so confident in his speaking abilities that he’s gone into the q&a part of the press conference without notes. He’s tired, and he’s got some feelings about the few facts he knows about the affair, and these feelings get the better of him. He spouts some ignorant crap, shows himself to be a guy who’ll form opinions before finding out the facts, and for a crucial week and a half before Congress’s August recess diverts the nation’s attention onto the minutiae of Skip Gates’s travel habits, the specific wording of a 911 call for a non-crime, and the racial sensitivity training of a low-level police officer in a Massachusetts college town. Due in no small part to president’s distracting answer, Congress does nothing before its August recess, during which, at tea parties and town halls across America, all hell breaks lose, spelling the beginning of the end of the president’s health care proposal.
Scenario 2: The president realizes that this press conference needs to be about three things: healthcare, healthcare, and healthcare. So he writes “1. Healthcare. 2. Healthcare. 3. Healthcare” on his hand, or on an index card. When asked a question about a nationally insignificant arrest in Massachusetts, the president wants to spout off some of his uninformed opinions on the matter, but he catches a glimpse of his notes and remembers what the press conference is supposed to be about. “I really don’t know much about that,” he says in response to the question. “Look at this moron, he can’t even remember his own agenda at his own press conference, and he doesn’t know about the events of the day,” some conservative bloggers furiously type.
I’m not saying that Obama would have had his health care program by now if only he’d written more on his hand. I’m merely pointing out that speakers need to be aware of their own weaknesses – such as being drawn off topic by questions – and compensate for them. Yes it’s inglorious to look at crib notes on your hand, but it’s disastrous to forget what a speech is about and make off-topic comments that undermine your aims. If Sarahpalin’s to be ridiculed, it’s the ridicule that the prudent always get for their caution.
Update: Campaigning in Texas for my governor, Sarahpalin shows a sense of humor.
Apollo posted this at 9:15 PM HKT on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, The Passion of St. Sarah of Wasilla
Those whom the Gods would Destroy. . .
Hubbard posted this at 10:03 AM HKT on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, We're all DOOMED
February 5th, 2010
Whaaaaaa!!!!
My freshman year of college, there were two roomates, Nick and Ian, who lived on my floor and liked to play minor pranks on each other. One of my favorites was when Ian left the room, Nick would get on Ian’s computer and change the wallpaper to some sort of gay porn. When Ian would come back, everyone on the floor could hear him shout, “Whaaaaaa!!!!!”
What made this so funny is that Ian had the exact same reaction every time this happened. No matter how many times Nick did this – and he did it a lot – Ian would never see it coming.
I think of Ian when I read economic stories these days, because it seems that in every single one of them, the news is “unexpected.” No matter whether the news is good or bad (and it’s not at all clear that a month where 200,000 people dropped out of the work force is good news as that story says it is), “experts” and “analysts” never see it coming.
Hayek might point out that we should use this as a lesson: all the stimulus and central planning elements espoused by “experts” are little more than guesses, whose consequences we can’t accurately predict, even in the short term. I don’t think our current leaders are much open to learning this lesson.
Apollo posted this at 1:37 PM HKT on Friday, February 5th, 2010 as It's Economics - Stupid!, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!
February 4th, 2010
Randian Wrath
Years ago, Florence King warned thus:
DO NOT review any book about Ayn Rand. Even if you rave it, her gremlins will find something to go bananas about and write you a letter: “Dear Social Metaphysician! Examine your anti-Objectivist premises and you will see that your epistemology stinks!!!”
Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) has written a thoughtful take down, and her gremlins are now hounding The New Criterion. Given that most of their articles get no comments, getting 135 (as of this writing) is moderately astounding—only moderately, since this is Ayn Rand. A sample from Daniels:
Rand’s virtues were as follows: she was highly intelligent; she was brave and uncompromising in defense of her ideas; she had a kind of iron integrity; and, though a fierce defender of capitalism, she was by no means avid for money herself. The propagation of truth as she saw it was far more important to her than her own material ease. Her vices, of course, were the mirror-image of her virtues, but, in my opinion, the mirror was a magnifying one. Her intelligence was narrow rather than broad. Though in theory a defender of freedom of thought and action, she was dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant, not only in opinion but in behavior, and it led her to personal cruelty. In the name of her ideas, she was prepared to be deeply unpleasant. She hardened her ideas into ideology. Her integrity led to a lack of self-criticism; she frequently wrote twenty thousand words where one would do.
As always, read the whole thing.
Hubbard posted this at 3:11 PM HKT on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 as Uncategorized
So Funny, I Threw Up a Little
Reading Andrew’s latest “look at me” post on why he didn’t hold John Edwards feet to the fire the same way he did Sarah Palin’s I came across this gem:
So why did I let it go? My first reason is my leeriness of investigating people’s sex lives.
This of course ignores the massive amounts of time the Gynecologist in Chief spent rooting around in Palin’s hooha.
Jamie posted this at 12:42 PM HKT on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 as What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
The Myths of History
Michael C. Moynihan does a pretty good job of dismantling the praise heaped upon recently deceased, alleged historian, Howard Zinn.
Jamie posted this at 11:28 AM HKT on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 as The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
I want me some Demon Sheep
Perhaps the greatest attack ad ever.
Hubbard posted this at 8:07 AM HKT on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 as Humor