Reuters makes its mistakes vanish

Abe Greenwald at Commentary magazine is frustrated by Reuters' Orwellian approach to changing history:

Reuters, the news agency with a policy forbidding the word “terrorist” from their stories and a penchant for printing doctored photos as evidence of Israeli aggression, has done it again.

Yesterday, Reuters posted a story entitled “Sadr Expected to End Truce”, implying it was likely that Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr would end his Mahdi Army’s six-month ceasefire in Iraq. I can’t offer the URL of that story because once their cynical prediction was proved immediately wrong (today, Sadr announced that he’d be extending the ceasefire another six months) the link started bringing me to a new Reuters story entitled (surprise, surprise) “Iraqi Cleric Sadr Extends Militia Ceasefire.” Soon after that, the original headline disappeared from internet searches altogether.

Stephen Burt at Done With Mirrors defends the news media:

This is not a conspiracy. This is the way journalism operates. It is
intent on presenting the most up-to-date versions of a story, and if
earlier versions of the stories are outdated or wrong, it no longer
keeps them before the public. In many cases they are wrong because the
journalists unconsciously let their biases shade their reporting. But
that's not why you can't find the old version of the story anymore.

That is partly reasonable but it is also a facile and convenient excuse. It is hard to imagine any other institution as important to democracy as the press that would be allowed to cover up its mistakes and hide its responsibility for errors with the simple excuse that it is their custom to destroy all records.

How to buy a judge

An investigation by Mark Tapscott of the Examiner into the finances of superstar lawyers William Lerach and Melvyn Weiss shows how to buy your own justice. It is, of course, illegal to pay the judge directly. So, first, you need to create a non-profit foundation; Lerach and Weiss called their's the Institute for Law and Economic Policy. The foundation then sets up conferences in expensive resort hotels. Lerach and Weiss, for example, chose Los Cabos in Mexico, Lake Los Vegas in Nevada, and San Diego in California. Then, you invite judges who might preside over your cases to the (invitation-only) conferences. Finally, you reimburse the judges for their expenses. Mission accomplished: you have given the judges money and it is legal! According to Tapscott:

At least 14 federal judges were reimbursed by the foundation for attending its events, including two on the Southern District of New York (SDNY) bench who presided over dozens of cases brought by the two firms. Neither of the judges responded to Examiner questions delivered to them by the SDNY clerk.

If the judges did attend any lectures at your conference, it is even better since you chose only lectures that support your side.

Not everything that Lerach and Weiss did was legal, however. Tapscott writes:

Lerach and two former Milberg Weiss colleagues have pleaded guilty to felonies in connection with more than $11 million in kickbacks to plaintiffs they recruited to bring more than 150 lawsuits that netted the firm at least $200 million in tainted legal fees, according to federal prosecutors.

More here.

Liberal spending at a low-end deli

The New York Post describes the state of Sen. Clinton's campaign finances:

February 22, 2008 -- AUSTIN, Texas - Hillary Rodham Clinton's free-spending campaign blew a whopping $95,000 at a low-end supermarket-deli chain last month in Iowa - a telling sign of why she can no longer cut the mustard financially against Barack Obama in critical states.

Clinton's latest campaign filings reveal how a sprawling, top-heavy campaign organization splurged on posh hotels and pricey consultants but still struggles to define its message against Obama, a charismatic opponent whom Clinton's camp now calls the front-runner. ....

The heavy spending helps explain why Clinton's camp ended the year $7.6 million in debt, not including her $5 million loan to her campaign.

The campaign team has plowed through $116 million so far.

If she were given a chance, she would run your health care the same way.

Video: Satellite hit claimed a success

It will be a while before all the data is evaluated but the initial report is that the hit was a success.
The satellite was traveling in orbit at a speed in the neighborhood of 17,000 miles per hour. The missile was traveling at a similar speed. It was only a few years ago, that liberals were proclaiming that such intercepts were impossible ("You can't hit a bullet with a bullet," they said). Now, research has made such feats feasible and, in a more few years of development, they will likely be routine.

It's all about appearances

A producer at CNN, Chez Pazienza, was fired for having a blog in which he expressed his liberal views. Mr. Pazienza writes:

I'm dead sure though that my superiors never concerned themselves with my ability or inability to remain objective at work, given my strong opinions; they worried only about an appearance of bias (specifically, a liberal bias),...

I noted a recent news story that, when it comes to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, it is the appearance that liberals find more important than the reality. It is the same here where it is the appearance, not the reality, that matters to CNN. Similarly, CBS, the New York Times, and many other news organization forbid journalists from (openly) making campaign contributions. They can't stop their journalists from having opinions, but they want to maintain the appearance of it being otherwise.

I would prefer that journalists be free to express their views. I find news sources to be more trustworthy if they are honest sources. But then, unlike CNN, I am more concerned about reality than about pretenses or appearances.

It is more complicated than that

Ann Coulter and some other conservatives say they would vote for Clinton over McCain. In response, Eric at Classical Values suggests that the reasoning must be:

The idea which drives the vote-for-the-enemy theory is that Americans must be made to "bottom out," and that when the voters have finally suffered enough under socialism, they will see the light, and elect a "real" conservative.

He cites Clayton Cramer who writes:

Do you want someone [who] is wrong half the time, or someone who is wrong all the time?

I say that that is only a part of the story. To implement his (her) wrong decisions, a president generally need congress's approval. It is easy to imagine 40 Republican senators uniting in strong opposition to liberal moves by President Hillary. By contrast, for a variety of practical reasons such as help with fundraising, it is rare for senators to filibuster their own president's bad ideas. Continuing with Mr. Cramer's hypothetical, it is easy to imagine Pres. Hillary being wrong 100% of the time but only getting a mere 10% of that passed by congress. By contrast, a Pres. McCain might be wrong ( liberal) only 50% of the time but he might get the majority of that passed by congress. If so, then following Mr. Cramer's hypothetical to its logical conclusion, the country would, in a conservative's view, be better off under a Democrat president than under a Pres. McCain.

In fairness to Ann Coulter, both Clayton and Eric misrepresent her argument. She doesn't advocate either a 100% wrong president or a "bottoming out." Her claim, for what its worth, is that, based on the record, Sen. McCain is actually more liberal than Sen. Clinton.

Eclipses and their lessons for managers

In 1504, Christopher Columbus used fore-knowledge of a lunar eclipse to strike fear in the native Jamaicans in order to convince them to provide food for Columbus' crew.

By contrast, in 430 B.C., Pericles (pictured below) had a different problem. Plutarch writes that Athens was then at war with Sparta, the Athenians were suffering, and Pericles needed to take action:

Desiring to heal these evils, and at the same time to inflict some annoyance upon the enemy, he manned a hundred and fifty ships of war, and, after embarking many brave hoplites and horsemen, was on the point of putting out to sea, affording great hope to the citizens, and no less fear to the enemy in consequence of so great a force.

It was then, at least as Plutarch tells the story, that a solar eclipse caused panic in Pericles' fleet:

But when the ships were already manned, and Pericles had gone aboard his own trireme, it chanced that the sun was eclipsed and darkness came on, and all were thoroughly frightened, looking upon it as a great portent. Accordingly, seeing that his steersman was timorous and utterly perplexed, held up his cloak before the man's eyes, and, thus covering them, asked him if he thought it anything dreadful, or portentous of anything dreadful. "No," said the steersman. "How then," said Pericles, "is yonder event different from this, except that it is something rather larger than my cloak which has caused the obscurity?"

With his men calm, Pericles was able to continue his campaign.

In both stories, natural events strike fear into the populace and leaders were there to manage the fear.

In the modern world, the public can still be frightened, even if not by eclipses. For better or worse, it is cell phone radiation, nuclear power, or global warming that now play that role.

The banality of evil

Not every Canadian is willing to accept Canada's abolition of freedom of speech. The Western Standard magazine published the infamous Mohammad cartoons two years ago. Consequently, the Orwellian-named Alberta Human Rights Commission is prosecuting its publisher, Ezra Levant. They held their hearing on his case last January 11. For some reason, they allowed Mr. Levant to video-record the hearing. He did and it is now on youtube. In the sample below,
the inquisitor, Shirlene McGovern, asks him for his "intent" in publishing the cartoons. Her dry bureaucratic approach in asking about thought crime, reminds us of Hannah Arendt's comment about the banality of evil:

Ms. McGovern has since resigned from the case, reportedly because she was surprised by the strength of the public reaction against such interrogations over alleged thought crimes.

Canada's Human Rights Code forbids, for example, any publication that "is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to ... contempt." Contempt is a quite vague concept. (Under Canada's interpretation, as expressed by Ms. McGovern, the issue of contempt is somehow tied into someone's subjective concept of the publisher's "intent.") Nearly any expression of a political opinion can be interpreted by those on the other side as 'exposing them to contempt.' Consequently, to the extent that Canada is willing to enforce the code, it really is the end of free speech.

For instance, the Hadith reads "The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: `The time [of judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!' Sahih Muslim book 41, no. 6985." It seems that any discussion of that passage at all would offend ("expose to contempt") one side or the other and thus be illegal in Canada.

PREVIOUSLY, Canada's liberal party rejected a proposal to restore freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

UPDATE: Deborah Gyapong has much more on abuses by Canada's Human Rights Commission.

Cell phones cause cancer?

The BBC writes in bold type about an Israeli study by Dr. Siegal Sadetzki:

Heavy mobile phone use may be linked to an increased risk of cancer of the salivary gland, a study suggests.

That sounds frightening but, buried deep in the story, the BBC writes that a bigger study contradicts it:

Despite these latest findings, the largest and longest-running investigation ever to be carried out into mobile phone usage found no increased risk of any sort of cancer.

It followed 420,000 people in Denmark, some of whom had been using a mobile phone for as long as ten years.

There was in fact a lower incidence of cancer than expected in a group of that size, suggesting mobile phones had no impact on the development of tumours.

One important point about all such studies that scientists know, but the news media doesn't explain, is that the results of statistical studies are statistical, that is, somewhat random. The usual scientific standard is to report results at the 95% confidence level. Now, suppose, for the moment, that there is absolutely no connection between cell phones and cancer. Then, perform tests for the correlations between 20 different types of cancer and cell phone usage. At the 95% confidence level, odds are that one of those twenty test results will be wrong. (This is because 1 out of 20 is 5% and 5% is the expected error rate on tests done to 95% confidence.) To be clear, that one wrong result does not mean that the scientist did anything wrong: As scientists well know, it is simply the nature of statistical studies. What happens next, of course, is that the news media will write a headline based on that one result.

Next, that scientific group or another does another, say, 20 tests for correlation. Still assuming that there really is no connection, only (about) one of those tests will be positive for a connection. It will likely, by random chance, show a connection, though, to a different cancer. That new (wrong) result will get another headline in the news media.

So how do you tell the difference between valid and incorrect results in such studies? It is simple: if several studies show a link to the same cancer, the result is likely valid. If successive studies show links to different cancers, then each of those results is likely to be merely a statistical fluke. Since, so far, successive studies give different results on cell phone and cancer, as in the two studies mentioned by the BBC above, the reasonable conclusion is that we are looking at statistical flukes.

The second key issue with these studies is that they find only correlations but not causality. The Israeli study, for example, found that the increased cancer risk was associated with heavy cell phone users who live in rural areas. It could be, if the statistical result is true, that the salivary gland tumors have nothing to do with cell phone usage and are instead caused by exposure to, say, cow manure or other chemicals common in rural areas where, maybe, landlines are absent so cell phone use is more common. Issues like that could be sorted out by future statistical studies. (It is likely that, as good scientists, Dr. Sadetzki or her colleagues are already working on such kinds of issues.)

So, for the time being, there is no reason to think that tinfoil hats are necessary.

PREVIOUSLY, I have discussed cell phone radiation issues here and here.

UPDATE: This Israeli study is now featured at Slashdot, Information Week, and the (London) Telegraph. Information Week does a good job of putting perspective on the alleged risk level

Ask what your country can do for you?

It has often been noted that Democrats see the US president as their parent. Michelle Obama takes this a step beyond in a fascinating speech that she gave and that Ed Morrissey has transcribed:

We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

Who would have thought that a mere politician would have such power? Instead of mere mortal parent, she sees the president's role as closer to that of a heavenly father.

In her speech, Mrs. Obama also summarizes the state of the US economy:

And things have gotten progressively worse throughout my lifetime, through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn't gotten better for regular folks. ....

Such a view is counter-factual but is an understandable side-effect of the depression that polling shows that Democrats suffer.

Loyalty and treason

Code Pink and its allies protested against the presence of a US Marine recruiting station in Berkeley, California last Tuesday. Among many other fascinating and informative photos, Zombietime captured this protester:

Do not question his patriotism. More commentary on this protest is at PowerLine.

Go ahead build a nuke; just don't tell us about it

James Taranto discusses a statement from Russia's foreign minister:

"Russia Warns Iran on Missiles, Uranium Enrichment" reads a Reuters headline. The actual quotes, though, show why efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation are so dangerously ineffective:

Russia warned Iran on Wednesday that its development of rockets and continued uranium enrichment was creating the impression Tehran was intentionally ignoring the concerns of the international community.

"We do not approve of Iran's actions in constantly demonstrating its intentions to develop its rocket sector and continue enriching uranium," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies.

"From the point of view of international law these actions are not forbidden, but you can also not ignore that in previous years a whole host of problems were uncovered in Iran's nuclear program," Lavrov said, Interfax news agency reported.

"Until these problems can be removed I think it is advisable to refrain from steps, and especially from statements, that merely heat up the atmosphere and create the impression that Iran really has made up its mind to ignore the international community, the United Nations Security Council and the IAEA," he said.

So Lavrov is worried about the "impression" that Iran is "creating" and the "intentions" it is "demonstrating," and he wants Tehran to "refrain from steps, and especially from statements," that have that effect. Whether Iran actually acquires nuclear weapons would seem to be a secondary concern to the appearance of it all.

With reasoning like that, Lavrov would obviously be right at home in the US Democratic party.

"He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

Racism, such as the above statement from Rev. Poindexter, and ugly anti-semitism, such as shown below, are both being openly expressed in the Democrat's upcoming primary race in the 9th district of Tennessee for for the nomination which pits Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) against Democratic challenger Nikki Tinker.

Hat tip Capt. Qtrs.

NY Times attacks the chromatically-challenged

All women are created equal except blondes, or so says NY Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley while discussing the limitations of MSNBC:

Even Fox News has many more female anchors [than MSNBC], though so many are cookie-cutter blondes that viewers cannot be blamed for thinking it’s one anchor working multiple shifts.

Hat tip: BotW.

How the education system works

A former Oceanside CA high school teacher explains how the school system has worked for the past half century:

OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell.

Corcoran's life of secrecy started at a young age. He said his teachers moved him up from grade to grade. Often placed in what he calls the "dumb row," the images of his tribulations in the classroom are still vividly clear. ....

Corcoran later attended Palo Verde High School in Blythe, Calif. He cheated his way through high school, receiving his diploma in June 1956. ....

Corcoran earned an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College.... In 1961, Corcoran graduated with a bachelor's degree in education, while still illiterate he contends. He then went on to become a teacher during a teacher shortage.

"When I graduated from the university, the school district in El Paso, where I went to school, gave almost all the college education graduates a job," said Corcoran. ....

For 17 years Corcoran taught high school for the Oceanside School District. Relying on teacher's assistants for help and oral lesson plans, he said he did a great job at teaching his students.

A recent study finds that education colleges often have far more courses on "multiculturalism" than on math which might help explain (a) how an illiterate could get an education degree, and (b) how it is that his fellow teachers didn't notice.

UPDATE: This page has been blessed with an Instapundit link and a South Dakota Politics link. Visitors, please feel free to wander over to the main page.

RELATED (2008-Dec): Education Trust has found that many public school math teachers know little about math. (Hat tip: NoGirleMen)

The pure joy of apologizing

I have noted that US liberals believe in apologies. Tim Blair analyzes Australian Prime Minister Rudd's apology for some of Australia's claimed wrongs against aborigines. Blair is concerned about the unintended consequences of the apology but also notes an interesting aspect of the apology phenomenon:

Sadly, the effect of the apology on those it’s aimed at is a secondary concern. This is more about smug white folks feeling nice about themselves. That’s why, despite it being an apology for allegedly terrible events, everybody is smiling.

The idea that apologies raise a liberal's self-esteem may seem peculiar but it appears consistent with the emphasis that liberals place on that emotion

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Racism

Gov. Rendell has declared that Pennsylvania's Democrats are racist. (Of course, he doesn't say of this of the good Democrats. No, he says it is true of the "conservative white" wing of his party.) Susan Estrich, formerly Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign manager, sees the same problem:

We who are Democrats would like to believe that race is not a factor in the polling of our party members, but maybe we’re wrong.

No one doubts, or at least no one who is honest does, that both racism and sexism come into play as people decide between Clinton and Obama....

Bob Krumm has much more on the racism and sexism that Democrats believe is currently dividing their party.

VAGUELY RELATED: It is claimed that Democrats make accusations of racial vote suppression not because they are true but because they raise the turnout of their voters. Vote suppression allegedly was done by both the Clinton and Obama camps in the recent primaries. So, when Democrats accuse Republicans of vote suppression, there may be an element in it of psychological projection.

Tribal cohesion under test

A prominent feminist, Kate Michelman, is now backing Sen. Obama over gender-mate Hillary. Consequently, she is struggling with the meaning of identity politics:

If women who vote for men are traitors, then are men who vote for women also traitors? What about African-Americans who vote for whites? Or whites who vote for African-Americans?

Laying this guilt trip, this hypocrisy, on women -- saying that those women who don't vote for other women are turncoats -- is tantamount to saying that women who exercise independent thought haven't the right to do that either.

Her thoughts on why she supports Obama are also interesting for their similar lack of insight:

When a presidential candidate's core values are unity, equality, opportunity and creating an atmosphere of respect and harmony, both nationally and internationally, then that candidate's vision aligns with the best hopes and dreams of the women's movement. And that is precisely Barack Obama's vision.

First, note that she does not say that Obama's vision aligns with her vision. She says instead that it aligns with the "women's movement." So, after only a brief instance of advocating independent thought, she is back to advocating identity politics.

Note also the strange list of "core values." What kind of "core value" is "unity"? This sounds like some childhood fantasy about the ideal family. She also wants a foreign policy based on "an atmosphere of respect and harmony." Does she believe that if we are nice to bin Laden or Hitler or Genghis Khan that each will be nice back? What did P. M. Chamberlain leave undone in his quest to achieve "harmony" with Hitller? Obama may touch the soul of his followers but it doesn't seem to be a rational part of the soul.

A mass religious revival frightens some

At TPMcafe, one Obama supporter raises concerns about her compatriots:

I'm getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters.

On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack, raving about his "game-changing" politics, about his "power to inspire," about how they wept while viewing the now-famous Dipdive video, and on and on.

Then there's this unsettling article from a few weeks back about Obama's volunteer operation. One volunteer speaks of her encounter with the man himself:

But the clincher came on March 17, when she met the Democratic contender face to face. She describes how he lit up the room with his wide smile, shook her hand and thanked her for volunteering.

" He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words," said Mack, now a regional field organizer. Obama hugged her and whispered something in her ear – she was so thrilled she doesn't remember what it was.

Here's more:

Mack wanted to drill home one of the campaign's key strategies: telling potential voters personal stories of political conversion.

She urged volunteers to hone their own stories of how they came to Obama – something they could compress into 30 seconds on the phone.

"Work on that, refine that, say it in the mirror," she said. "Get it down."

She told the volunteers that potential voters would no doubt confront them with policy questions. Mack's direction: Don't go there. Refer them to Obama's Web site, which includes enough material to sate any wonk.

Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of "coming to Obama" in the same way born-again Christians talk about "coming to Jesus."

Academic studies show that partisanship is good when done by a Democrat

Prof. Susan Dunn of Williams College writes in praise of partisianship:

"[Conservatives] are united in their hatred for me," [FDR] jubilantly exclaimed to a roaring crowd at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1936, "and I welcome their hatred!" FDR was willing to ignite and exploit conflict -- and fight for meaningful change. ....

It may be comforting to believe that consensus and unity are somehow healthier, more noble, less disruptive and destructive than sharp partisan battles. But it is the rough-and-tumble game of adversarial politics that preserves our freedom. Three cheers for disunity!

Her view of partisianship is a bit different when her discussion moves from FDR to Bush:

It is one thing to balance toward the party center, as FDR and JFK did. It is quite different for a staunch conservative like Bush to tilt the ticket toward an even more right-wing Republican. That creates acute imbalance, narrowing the party's electoral appeal and weakening its capacity to win support in Congress.

The Bush-Cheney presidency — shaped and led by ideologues who have rejected the creative, collective leadership that might be supplied by a vibrant, diverse Cabinet — has immobilized itself in its own narrowness and extremism.

Her view, and it is the kind of view that only a liberal can believe, is that FDR was a partisan extremist in a "vibrant" "diverse" way while George Bush is a partisan in a "narrow" way.

The family analogy that is so common to liberal arguments makes an appearance in Prof. Dunn's writings:

[T]here is something almost regressive in longing for more unity than that, for it suggests a dreamy nostalgia for an imaginary golden age of well-being and security in the bosom of a harmonious, loving family.

The desire for the "well-being and security" of a family, usually with the president as parent seems to be a central feature of liberal thought.

Should it be a crime to disagree?

Canada's National Post reports:

David Suzuki has called for political leaders to be thrown in jail for ignoring the science behind climate change.

At a Montreal conference last Thursday, the prominent scientist, broadcaster and Order of Canada recipient exhorted a packed house of 600 to hold politicians legally accountable for what he called an intergenerational crime.

The vague phrase "prominent scientist" is a clue and, if you follow up, you find that he is not an atmospheric scientists nor is a scientist in any related field. His Ph.D. is in zoology. The reason that he is "prominent" is that he is a TV personality on Canada's public broadcasting.

Global warming gets a new beat

According to the Gannett News Service:

Last year was one of the 10 warmest on record. It was marked by deadly and costly wildfires that led to the largest evacuation in California history, spring storms that unleashed 600 tornadoes across the Great Plains and South, severe flooding in Texas and Oklahoma and extreme drought across much of the Southeast, according to a preliminary report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate center.

"It certainly seems like something ominous is going on when you experience these extremes," says Gregory Berg, an assistant professor of music at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis.

When not commenting on global warming, Prof. Berg co-directs opera at the Racine Symphony.

The idea of weather as an omen did not originate with Prof. Berg. Two thousand years, "extreme" weather was also observed, as described by Plutarch in his history of Roman General Crassus' expedition to Arabia:

Here, too, he met with the first ill-omen....As Crassus was taking the army over the river at Zeugma, he encountered preternaturally violent thunder, and the lightning flashed in the faces of the troops, and during the storm a hurricane broke upon the bridge, and carried part of it away; two thunderbolts fell upon the very place where the army was going to encamp; and one of the general's horses, magnificently caparisoned, dragged away the groom into the river and was drowned. It is said, too, that when they went to take up the first standard, the eagle of itself turned its head backward; ....

The two points here are:

1. "Extreme" weather has always been with us. It is not, as claimed by Al Goreans, new. Temperatures have always and will always fluctuate
2. There is a strong human instinct to interpret unusual weather, as Prof. Berg does, as an "omen"; The existence of this instinct means that we humans must be careful not to believe too easily in such omens.

Canada may restore free speech

At the moment, speech is not legal in Canada if politically correct groups find it "offensive." A liberal MP has proposed a motion to change that.

UPDATE: Canada's Liberal party opposes this motion

Once I have my opinion, I'll tell you what the facts are

Jonathan Adler catches former Democratic Presidential hopeful Geo. McGovern trying to chang history:

George McGovern joins the ranks of those calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Setting aside the arguments for and against impeaching President Bush, McGovern is seriously misrepresenting his position on the Nixon impeachment proceedings. According to these news stories, for example, McGovern called for impeaching President Nixon in a speech in Richmond, VA in October 1974 1973 in order "to make America safe for Democracy." A Westlaw search also identifies abstracts to New York Times stories suggesting McGovern urged Nixon's impeachment on other occasions as well. For instance, the abstract to a NYT story from January 21, 1974 reports that McGovern believed there were "ample grounds" for impeaching President Nixon and that he was urging the Democratic Party to take this position.

Much of today's follows this pattern also. Before the Afghan war began in earnest, Democrats declared that Afghanistan was a "quagmire." After our quick victory, the same declared that they "knew all along it would be a cakewalk." Likewise, the Iraq surge, before it began, was declared a mistake. Now that the evidence of its success has become hard to deny, the spin is mixed between still calling it a failure while taking credit for its success while declaring that they knew it was going to be a success all along ("all you have to do is put enough American soldiers in one place and...."). Listening to Democrats express these arguments, it appears that their purpose is primarily self-deception among their like-minded listeners.

Political ethics

Bill Clinton never ceases to amaze. James Taranto summarizes a development:

The New York Times uncovers a scandal involving a former president

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader's bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton's public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Less than 48 hours later, Giustra's company signed a deal giving it the rights to buy into three Kazakh uranium projects. Months later, Giustra secretly donated $31.3 million to Mr. Clinton's charitable foundations.

Shared sacrifices make us feel good about ourselves

To ensure a better future, people in ancient times made sacrifices to their various gods. The instinct that shared sacrifice makes things better must be part of the wiring of the human mind. The idea continues to have adherents. For example, in Denver yesterday, Bill Clinton said:

"We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."

It is possible that such a statement could represent the result of a thoughtful policy analysis. However, that does not appear to be the case here, though, because in the same speech, Clinton made an apparently contradictory suggestion that a good energy plan would increase jobs and wages.

A Teacher's view of government schools

Vin Suprynowicz discusses the views on government-schools of a winner of New York's Teacher of the Year award:

In July 1991, John Taylor Gatto, New York's Teacher of the Year, quit, saying he was tired of working for an institution that crippled the ability of children to learn. He explained why in an essay published that month in The Wall Street Journal.

Let's look at that essay...:

"Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history," Mr. Gatto begins. "It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

"Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be 're-formed.' It has political allies to guard its marches, that's why reforms come and go without changing much. ...

"David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can't tell which one learned first -- the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel 'learning disabled' and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won't outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, 'special education' fodder. She'll be locked in her place forever.

"In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths. ..."

I found his point about David vs. Rachel interesting because I had had similar observations that: (a) kids learn when they are ready, (b) forcing them to learn before they are ready is a waste, and (c) the age when they first ready to learn something, such as reading or arithmetic, as long as they learn it, very often has little or no influence on their success in adult life. As an example, for the past several decades, algebra has been taught to younger and younger students: Algebra, for example, was taught to 10th graders 40 years ago, then 8th graders, then 7th graders. Yet, when these younger students reach college, there is no evidence that they are any further ahead than the prior generation. If anything, the evidence is the opposite. This observation contrasts strongly with the modern educational system which focuses quite obsessively on achieving learning at the earliest age.

Hat tip: Phi Beta Cons and Ed Driscoll.

The wages of socialism

California farmers get their water at subsidized rates. Now, they figure that they can make a profit by reselling it to California's cities.

Democrats vote their race

Bill Clinton said yesterday: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here." Depressingly, the facts seem to support Clinton's racist spin as the AP reports: "About half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out of five of them supported Obama." Similarly, 3 out of 4 So. Carolina's white Democrats voted for white candidates.

PREVIOUSLY, "Democrats urged to 'vote their race'"

Be careful what you say

Bill Clinton told Sen. Obama: "I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago." Once a sleazy person has been identified, it is natural that in not too long a Clinton connection would surface: Drudge found a photo of Bill and Hillary posing with "slum landlord" Rezko.


(This is all probably unfair to Mr. Rezko: I have no reason to doubt that his ethical standards are higher than those of the Clintons.)

Legal battle: tree hugger v. global warmist

The law in California says that homeowners are not allowed to let their trees grow if the trees block more than 10% of their neighbor's solar cells. In Sunnyvale, CA, Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett, an environmentally conscious couple who drive a prius, planted redwood trees in their backyard. After the trees were planted, neighbor Mark Vargas put solar cells on his roof which charge his electric car. Everything was fine until the trees did what redwood trees do: they grew. Vargas complained and the San Jose Mercury News reports that the county DA is now demanding that the trees be cut. Treanor and Bissett say they have incurred $25,000 in legal fees defending the right of redwoods to grow.

Kurt Newick, a solar cell salesman who also happens to be chairman of the local Sierra Club global warming committee, sides with solar cells which he says reduce global warming more than trees. On the other hand, supposing someone started cutting down, say, national forests, in order to use the land for solar cells, don't you think that the Sierra Club would change its mind.

The law in question was written by Assemblyman Chuck Imbrecht, a Ventura Republican, and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1978, the height of Pres. Carter's energy crisis.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

CNN makes peace with Obama

At Sen. Obama's urging, CNN has discovered the need to be "unbiased." They have decided not to have Clinton partisans comment on Sen. Obama. Thus, CNN commentators James Carville, Paul Begala, and Robert Zimmerman will be off the network until the Democratic primary has reached its conclusion. CNN political director, Sam Feist, explained: "As we got closer to the voting, we made a decision to make sure that all the analysts that are on are non-aligned," That, of course, is not a concept that anyone would expect them to apply when a Democrat is running against a Republican.

Despite being increasingly unpopular, it is unpopular

The Washington Post (via the Palm Beach Post) reports:

Despite the steady drop in abortions across the United States since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure 35 years ago today in the case of Roe vs. Wade, a new generation of activists is taking up the cause with conviction and sophistication.

Despite?

Hat tip: BotW.

Democrats urged to "vote their race"

CNN reports:

Recent polls show black women are expected to make up more than a third of all Democratic voters in South Carolina's primary in five days.

For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?

No other voting bloc in the country faces this choice.

Democratic analyst Jehmu Greene says, "We've all wanted the day to come where there was a black person in the White House, where there was going to be a woman in the White House. I don't think we imagined it would be having to decide one or the other."

Greene says women, including herself, face pressure to vote their race. In the African-American community, there is a perception that race trumps gender, she says.

Hat tip: BotW.

Wisdom delayed

Regarding Pres. Clinton's scathing attacks on political rivals, ex-Sen. Daschle comments "I think it's not presidential...." That realization is about 16-years too late.

Academics for facism

The Columbia faculty are expressing their support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is not just CO2

A volcano may explain some glacier melting, as reported by the International Herald Tribune:

In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.

"This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said.

Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island glacier, which passes nearby, but Vaughan said he doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in western Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years.

Return to perfect nature

In normal environmentalist thought, protected species are good and humans are bad. But, what happens if one protected species (sea lions) is eating another protected species (salmon)? The US government plans to take sides and start shooting.

Honesty in the news business

The New York Times is now admitting that its datelines are mere "anachronism" and "affectation" and do not indicate where the reporter was when the story was filed.

Cell phone wrecks sleep, maybe

The Independent (UK) has a story running under the title "Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep." They write:

A massive study, following 1,656 Belgian teenagers for a year, found most of them used their phones after going to bed. It concluded that those who did this once a week were more than three times – and those who used them more often more than five times – as likely to be "very tired".

If we accept the Independent's description of the study at face value, this only says that frequently carrying on conversations after going to bed leads to being "very tired." To identify the cause as cell phone usage, the researchers needed to compare those who talk too much by wired phone to those who talk too much by wireless (cell) phone.

Projecting hate

Prof. Arthur C. Brooks writes in today's Wall Street Journal on academic research into politics and hatred. Before explaining the research, he starts with some illustrations of lack of self-awareness:

A politically progressive friend of mine always seemed to root against baseball teams from the South. The Braves, the Rangers, the Astros -- he hated them all. I asked him why, to which he replied, "Southerners are prejudiced."

The same logic is evident in the complaint the American political left has with conservative voters. According to the political analysis of filmmaker Michael Moore, whose perception of irony apparently does not extend to his own words, "The right wing, that is not where America's at . . . It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate . . . They are hate-triots."

The University of Michigan's American National Election Studies survey asks American adults to rate their warmth toward people or groups on a thermometer scale from 0 to 100.

• 28% of people who called themselves "extremely conservative" gave Clinton a zero in 1998
• 10% of the "extremely conservatives" rated Gore with a zero in 1998
• 60% of people who called themselves "extremely liberal" gave Bush a zero score in 2004
• 60% of people who called themselves "extremely liberal" gave Cheney a zero score in 2004

On this, Prof. Brooks writes:

To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

So, the U of Michigan surveys are consistent with the idea that, when liberals talk about others being intolerant or filled with hate, it is projection.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Rule of Law?

The lead sentence of an AP report reads:

In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

The AP claims that the ACLU picked its side of a legal argument "in an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig." Regardless of the ACLU's true motivation in this case, the reporter's sentence pretty well summarizes the liberal view of law: it exists for only the purpose of pursuing temporary personal or political agendas. Contrast this with a conservative viewpoint, as propounded by the Constitution Center:

The Framers considered the rule of law essential to the safekeeping of social order and civil liberties. The rule of law holds that if our relationships with each other and with the state are governed by a set of rules, rather than by a group of individuals, we are less likely to fall victim to authoritarian rule. The rule of law calls for both individuals and the government to submit to the law's supremacy. By precluding both the individual and the state from transcending the supreme law of the land, the Framers constructed another protective layer over individual rights and liberties

Hat tip: BotW.

Changing history to suit the moment

Christopher Hitchens discusses Democrats and irresponsibility:

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses.

Pelosi: let them eat cake

Speaker Pelosi decided to take the House cafeteria gourmet and, according to Josephine Hearn at Politico, the prices are now to the point where the staff can't afford it:

“It’s a big jump from high school cafeteria to fancy-pants gourmet. I just wish my pay improved,” said Caryn Schenewerk, a staffer for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

A fruit and cheese side dish with two small wedges of brie and cheddar, six grapes, two saltines and one strawberry cost $4.95, for example.

Ten years ago in history

January 17 is the tenth anniversary of Matt Drudge's breaking of the scandal that led to Clinton's impeachment. The MSM had known about the story for some time but had not printed it. Drudge's website forced their hand, marking the beginning of the internet era of news.


Bob Bittman, the deputy prosecutor who questioned Clinton, "was astonished by what he learnt from the tapes and interviews. For
the President to carry on with a 21-year-old intern while facing a sexual
harassment case was 'crazy'." Irresponsible behavior, however, characterized his presidency whether the topic was nukes for N. Korea or social security reform.

The case also marked, I think, a decline in the feminist movement. After listening to self-proclaimed feminists defend a-boss'-right-to-lie in sexual harassment cases ("everyone lies about sex"), it is hard to take them seriously as the civil rights leaders that they had once claimed to be.

Full Faith and Credit in the Government

Jonathan Rees, of The Writing on the Wall, is upset that people like RediClinic for minor ailments:

Wal-Mart (or to be more exact, their sub-contractor) hasn’t solved the healthcare crisis. All they’ve done is given reluctant politicians less incentive to tackle the real problem: fixing the entire healthcare system for everyone....

If you believe in miracles, you believe that our politicians are brilliant and have the wisdom to fix the "entire healthcare system for everyone." (Some liberals envision government as the 'ideal parent' that they never had but who can solve all problems miraculously.) In the real world, government-run health-care systems at their best just substitute one set of problems, such as expense, with another, such as death by queue. People who are honestly concerned about affordable health-care should welcome the option of RediClinics and their competitors for fast, convenient, and inexpensive treatment of minor issues. Instead, Democrats such as Mayor Menino want to use force of law to ban them.

Finding the real racists

On a normal day, Democrats accuse Republicans of racism. So it is a man-bites-dog story to hear Democrats vigorously accuse each other of racism. The Financial Times, for example, writes:

Take congressman Jesse Jackson Jr’s comments following Mrs Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire last week.

“Those tears have to be analysed,” said Mr Jackson, who, like his father, has endorsed Mr Obama. “They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of hurricane Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina.” Few of South Carolina’s black voters will have missed the implication. Since most of Katrina’s victims were black, Mrs Clinton is therefore presumably unfeeling towards the black community.

Crowned as “America’s first black president” by author Toni Morrison, Bill Clinton was still accused last week of using racial undertones when he dismissed as a “fairy tale” Mr Obama’s claim to have spoken out consistently against the Iraq war. Mrs Clinton was also accused of insensitivity after she pointed out that Martin Luther King needed LBJ in order to get civil rights legislation enacted.

There is also the racism controversy inspired by Andrew Cuomo's "Shuck and Jive" comment. And, on MSNBC, Chris Matthews decided that New Hampshire Democrats had to be racist for failing to follow the polling numbers.

MORE: Donna Brazile finds racism in Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairy tale." Still more at Jules Crittenden.

When do deaths count?

A survey by the World Health Organization says that 151,000 Iraqis died in the three years after the US invasion. It is not yet clear how that number breaks down among deaths of terrorists in battle, deaths of victims of terror attacks, and deaths caused by the US. Liberals blame Bush for the deaths. For a contrasting view, consider UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's reaction when questioned on Sixty Minutes about an estimate (also likely wildly inflated) of Iraqi deaths during the Clinton years:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

Note that the claimed number was 500,000 deaths from sanctions and contrast that with the 151,000 estimated for the full invasion and liberation.

Inside her mind

Camille Paglia has an interesting summary of what is known about Sen. Clinton psyche:

A swarm of biographers in miners' gear has tried to plumb the inky depths of Hillary Rodham Clinton's warren-riddled psyche. My metaphor is drawn (as Oscar Wilde's prim Miss Prism would say) from the Scranton coalfields, to which came the Welsh family that produced Hillary's harsh, domineering father.

Hillary's feckless, loutish brothers (who are kept at arm's length by her operation) took the brunt of Hugh Rodham's abuse in their genteel but claustrophobic home. Hillary is the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense. Flashes of that ruthless old family drama have come out repeatedly in this campaign, as when Hillary could barely conceal her sneers at her fellow debaters onstage -- the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table.

Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

Unpleasant childhoods do seem to be common to the biographies of great liberals.

MORE analysis of Sen. Clinton's anger at DrSanity.

UN is reading the portents

As part of a Reuters article entitled "World warming despite cool Pacifica and Badhdad snow," Mr. Amir Delju, senior scientific coordinator for the UN's World Meteorological Organization, explains the "signs of [global] warming":

Delju said climate change ... would bring bigger swings in the weather alongside a warming trend that will mean more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising seas.

"The more frequent occurrence of extreme events all over the world -- floods in Australia, heavy snowfall in the Middle East -- can also be signs of warming," he said

The world has always had "extreme [weather] events" and always will. This guarantees that Delju will see more "signs of warming" and this will assure job security for many UN bureaucrats, such as Mr. Delju. Looking for signs in the wrong places is not new. Tacitus lists the "signs" of worse times to come as observed in 54 AD:

In the year of the consulship of Marcus Asinius and Manius Acilius it was seen to be portended by a succession of prodigies that there were to be political changes for the worse. The soldiers' standards and tents were set in a blaze by lightning. A swarm of bees settled on the summit of the Capitol; births of monsters, half man, half beast, and of a pig with a hawk's talons, were reported.

In modern times, there have been attempts to attribute "swarm[s] of bees," or the lack thereof, to global warming but this has so far not stood the test of science.

To share pain, you must first create it

According to the International Herald Tribune, the California Energy Commission wants to control all household thermostats in the state:

The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers' preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities' suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers' wishes.

Final approval is expected next month.

"You realize there are times - very rarely, once every few years - when you would be subject to a rotating outage and everything would crash including your computer and traffic lights, and you don't want to do that," said Arthur Rosenfeld, a member of the energy commission.

Reducing individual customers' electrical use - if necessary, involuntarily - could avoid that, Rosenfeld said. "If you can control rotating outages by letting everyone in the state share the pain," he said, "there's a lot less pain to go around." [emphasis added]

In previous decades, the obvious solution to the problem would have been to build more plants to provide peak power. Alternatively, one could create a voluntary program that would give discounts to PG&E customers who agree to reduce power usage during emergencies. There are probably some energy-intensive businesses as well as individual households that would find this quite advantageous. However, from a liberal's view that would miss the point which is to "share the pain" and thereby achieve togetherness.

Health care crisis faces threat. Democrats respond

Wal Mart and other stores are opening convenient care clinics that allow quick, easy, and inexpensive access to nurse practitioners. Some people like the service. This has scared Democrats such as Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino who, presumably because of the threat such clinics pose to the "health care crisis" rhetoric, wants to ban the clinics. Some physicians are concerned also:

They apparently are going to do everything I do, and for a cheaper cost, because NPs cost less than MDs. .... Peeved!? Yes, I am. They're infringing on my territory, .... [T]he American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has signed an official agreement with the RediClinic for adhering with its "desired attributes of retail health clinics." Et tu, Brutus?

Change can be painful.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Rules are for other people

In 1939, World War II had broken out in Europe (but not yet in America) and France and England had mobilized to fight for their lives. What was President Roosevelt thinking about at this time? He was thinking of rules for other people to follow, as Algis Valunus explains:

As war was just breaking out in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a plea that all combatant nations do the decent thing and refrain from bombing civilians.

The other side had already decided differently: Both Mussolini and Hitler were followers of Guilio Douhet who had proclaimed as early as 1921 that air power made the distinction between civilian and military targets obsolete. Soon after the US entered the war in Europe, FDR dropped his rule-making instincts and US policies were adapted to the realities of the war.

The above is strikingly similar to modern times when liberals are busy proposing rules for how to fight the war on terror of the kind that only make sense to those who don't have responsibility.

A Pro-Crime Liberal

In a column for Advertising Age entitled "Why Even Hardened Racists Will Vote for Barack Obama," NPR personality Bob Garfield explains his view of race in America:

1) Even hardened racists feel the impulse to believe they are no such thing.

2) Hence, they are always in the market for someone "acceptably black."

Yes, the market. And, yes, acceptably black. We used that term the other day on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" to talk about Sen. Barack Obama and watched the interviewer visibly flinch. "I'm gonna take some of the edge off of what you just said," he said.

What edge? Acceptably black means being nonthreatening to white people inclined to feeling threatened by black people. It means standard English, clean-cut appearance (or, as Joe Biden fumbled, "clean") and the most Caucasian features possible. These obviously are not objective measures of character or worth; just as obviously, they are measures of what sells to the vast, white audience. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington are acceptably black. Your local news anchors are acceptably black. Tupac was not.

So, according to Mr. Garfield, anyone who finds Tupac Shakur "unacceptable" is a "hardened racist." Mr. Shakur (1971-1996) had been convicted of multiple violent crimes including sexual assault and wrongful death before his own death in a gang-related drive-by shooting.

LBJ vs. the Civil Rights Act of 1957

James Taranto digs up some history:

As Bruce Bartlett explains in "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past" (available from the OpinionJournal bookstore):

In his January 10, 1957, State of the Union Address, Eisenhower renewed his request for civil rights legislation, which had passed the House but died in the Senate in the previous Congress due to Southern Democratic delaying tactics. . . .

Everyone knew that the critical fight on the civil rights bill would be in the Senate. . . . In that body, the key figure was Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who represented the [former] Confederate state of Texas and had been installed in his position by Southern Democrats precisely in order to block civil rights legislation. Until the 1950s, Johnson's record of opposition to all civil rights legislation was spotless. But he was ambitious and wanted to be president. . . .

After dragging his feet on the civil rights bill throughout much of 1957, Johnson finally came to the conclusion that the tide had turned in favor of civil rights and he needed to be on the right side of the issue if he hoped to become president. . . .

At the same time, the Senate's master tactician and principal opponent of the civil rights bill, Democrat Richard B. Russell of Georgia, saw the same handwriting on the wall but came to a different conclusion. He realized that the support was no longer there for an old-fashioned Democrat filibuster. . . . So Russell adopted a different strategy this time of trying to amend the civil rights bill so as to minimize its impact. Behind the scenes, Johnson went along with Russell's strategy of not killing the civil rights bill, but trying to neuter it as much as possible. . . .

Eisenhower was disappointed at not being able to produce a better piece of legislation. "I wanted a much stronger civil rights bill in '57 than I could get," he later lamented. "But the Democrats . . . wouldn't let me have it."

Liberals criticized Eisenhower for getting such a modest bill at the end of the day. But Johnson argued that it was historically important because it was the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since 1875. "Once you break virginity," he said, "it'll be easier next time."

To put it mildly, LBJ was not a consistent advocate of racial equality. Bartlett (both in his book and in this article) quotes LBJ's explanation of why he backed the Civil Rights Act of 1957:

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

WELCOME to readers of TheBlackSphere.

Seeing only what you want to see

Dick Meyer, the editorial director of CBSNews.com, explains Sen. Obama's appeal:

Sen. Obama is a Rorschach test. I see hope! I see brains! I see a whole new kind of politician! I see an amazing life story! I see an orator! I see a natural! I see a hero!

Well, real people aren't Rorschach tests. They aren't blank slates. And by January 2008, Senator Blank Slate, D-Ill., will be a messy chalkboard.

Seeing what you want to see ("a Rorschach test") is common in politics.

A news story that appears to me to be as much a Rorschach test as Sen. Obama is the disappearance of some colonies of bees, dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder." Some reporters claim the cause is "global warming." Some blame "cell phone radiation." Others blame genetically modified crops. What all these explanations have in common is only that they represent currently popular liberal anxieties. More plausible explanations, such as a new virus (plagues are as old as history), do not appeal to liberal imaginations.

Continuing on the subject of presidential candidates, but touching on a separate theme, Dick Meyer also writes

So tell me how you're feeling about Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. Because I think you are in denial about some very important issues your fellow citizens have in their relationships with these two potential parent figures. [emph. added]

Here we see yet another appearance of the bizarre president-as-parent analogy which is just one member of a larger group of childhood analogies.

Hat tip: Dr. Helen.

Huckabee on the left

David Sanders analyzes Gov. Huckabee's policies and finds them more left than right:

With increasing frequency, Mr. Huckabee invokes his faith when advocating greater government involvement in just about every aspect of American life. In doing so, Mr. Huckabee has actually answered the prayers of the religious left.....

As governor, he championed the ARKids First, which extended free health insurance not only to children of the working poor but to some lower middle-class families. He pleased teachers unions with his consistent opposition to school choice and voucher programs. He satisfied labor by signing into law a minimum-wage hike of 21%. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"--Mr. Huckabee's oft-cited scriptural justification for growing government--proved costly for Arkansans, who saw government spending double and their taxes rise about a half-billion dollars during his tenure.

What have you changed your mind about in 2007?

The Edge asks the question. Among the respondents is anti-Christian author Sam Harris who writes:

Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. .... Might we be better off just leaving things to the wisdom of Nature? I once believed this. But we know that Nature has no concern for individuals or for species.

Liberals, like Sam Harris, often claim to be guided by science and rational thought. But what that usually means is that they do not know what guides their thoughts. Often they hold a religious belief in which nature is anthropomorphised and they trust in the "wisdom of nature." Environmentalist often imagine nature to be "perfect" and any human-caused deviations from the natural state to be sinful. Give Sam Harris credit for discovering, after writing several anti-religion books, that he himself had been religious.

Monopoly power

Did anything important happen to you 10+ years ago for which you might need records? Legal settlement? IRS dispute? House purchase? Legislation or business meeting minutes? Employment contract? If the documents were kept in Microsoft Word format, you might be in for trouble. Microsoft is reportedly disabling Office support for old file formats, including Word and Excel.

Economic reasoning by childhood analogy

The RIAA has been suing people who download copyrighted music to their PCs. Information Week columnist Alexander Wolfe has a solution:

Now that times are tough, though, the record companies have shown they're clueless. Rather than forge a new business model to make money in the age of the Internet, they're fighting a losing battle to hold on to an era that's already passed. OK, if they're unable to handle the copyright benefits they've been like generously awarded, we should do what we do when a child shows they can't handle a privilege they've been granted. We should take it away.

How about we cut the copyright terms down to five years. Retroactively. So now "Stairway to Heaven" is in the public domain. Hey, the ongoing RIAA lawsuit problem is gone in one fell swoop. [emphasis added]

This blogger is fascinated by what politicians try to pass off as thought and logic. Here is a case of a computer columnist making the same reasoning-by-inappropriate-analogy-to-childhood, possibly inspired by childhood trauma, that seems to characterize much of liberal thought (and Gov. Huckabee's).

"Angry youths"

"Angry youths," whose religion must not be mentioned, torched 372 cars in France over new year's. This is less than last year. The improvement is possibly because "the sale of petrol in cans was banned in some places." That is one way to stop burning.

Hat tip: LGF

WashPost bitter that Pres. Bush is insufficiently pro-crime

The editors at the Washington Post complain that "one of the stingiest presidents in American history when it comes to pardons." They say that crack cocaine laws are "absurd" and that Pres. Bush would show "courage" and "compassion" if only he would return more crack dealers to the streets.

Discrimination against undocumented day visitors

From Calexico, California, the AP reports:

Every day along the 1,952-mile border, children from Mexico cross into the United States and attend public schools. No one keeps statistics on how many.

Citizenship isn't the issue for school officials; district residency is.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled illegal immigrants have a right to an education, so schools don't ask about immigration status. But citizens and illegal immigrants alike can't falsely claim residency in a school district.

Calexico is a small town (pop. 38,000) across the border from the large Mexican city of Mexicali (pop. 750,000). Naturally some of the Mexicali residents choose to send their children each morning across the border to schools in Calexico, inconveniencing Calexico residents such as former mayor Torres:

Fernando Torres, a former mayor, was upset when the district said his grandchildren would have to transfer because there was no room in their neighborhood school. "It's not right" for U.S. taxpayers to build classrooms for Mexican residents, he said. The district eventually relented.