The Interocitor

Gay Marriage and Federal Benefits?

There have been lots of arguments about gay marriage and the "full faith and credit clause" and the answer seems to be that states have routinely ignored each other's marriage laws until now, and this would be more of the same.

Yet, as Massachusetts prepares to have at least 2 years of legal same-sex marriages (barring a stay), one has to ask: What is the federal government's position here, at least with respect to income taxes and social security?

Certainly the day after the first state-legal same-sex marriage in MA, someone is going to claim "married" status on their withholding, and intend to file as such next April. Soon thereafter, a recent widow(er) will file for survivor benefits under social security. Et cetera. Federal suits will follow quickly.

Now, there is presumably a federal law (DoMA) that asserts that no such marriages will be honored by the federal government, but if marriage is something that the feds have always left to the states, and if there is no previous example of a state marriage law being treated as invalid by the feds, then I suspect that the federal law is Consitutionally suspect on this point --not on "full faith and credit" grounds, but simple federalism.

Info welcome.

MoDo Rule at the NT Times?

Apparently, the NY Times has published a new rule for columnist corrections. Basically, it says that columnists are required to correct factual errors, which include errors or distortions of quotations along with those of dates, attributions, events or other items not subject to difference of opinion. The actual "policy" as distributed in an internal memo by editorial page editor Gail Collins editor is here (item #22).

And while their opinions are their own, the columnists are obviously required to be factually accurate. If one of them makes an error, he or she is expected to promptly correct it in the column. After some experimentation at different ways of making corrections, we now encourage a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.

A discussion by the paper's "public editor", who recognizes that the new policy is a bit slippery, is here.

But who is to say what is factually accurate? Or whether a quotation is misrepresented? Or whether facts are used or misused in such a fashion as to render a columnist's opinion unfair? Or even whether fairness has anything to do with opinion in the first place? Can you imagine one of the Sunday morning television screamfests instituting a corrections policy?

In the consciously cynical words of a retired Times editor, speaking for all the hard-news types who find most commentary to be frippery, "How can you expect fairness from columnists when they make up all that stuff anyway?"

As he suggests, we should wait and see whether this changes anything.

Kerry to foreign leaders: Reconsider your support

Sen John Kerry announced a plan today to cut US companies' overseas investment by forcing them to pay US income tax on profits of foreign investments. Considering that these companies also pay income taxes in most of these foreign countries on the same earnings, this would be a powerful disincentive for US companies to invest abroad.

Current tax laws allow American companies to defer paying taxes on income earned by their foreign subsidiaries until they bring it back to the United States. If they keep the money abroad, they avoid paying U.S. taxes entirely.

Kerry would require companies to pay taxes on their international income as they earn it rather than being allow to defer it. The new system would apply to profits earned in future years only, not retroactively.

Now maybe foreign politicians are different, and don't care about local jobs, investment, tax receipts, unemployment rates or the general welfare of their people, but this plan of Kerry's will strike into the heart of every 2nd-world politician's hope to move into the 1st world someday. I wonder if those foreign leaders Kerry keeps talking about were faxed this new plan...

What to make of Clarke?

The real mystery is not what Richard Clarke is saying about Bush, or how many versions of the "facts" he's presented over time, but WHY is he so stridently insisting now that "it's all Bush's fault."

Do you suppose that, being responsible for US Counterterrorism during the most glaring failures of same, he's convinced that he's the fall guy and is trying to noisily shift blame?

"Shall Issue" 1986-2004

In 1986, only 8 states had "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws (plus Vermont which didn't regulate the matter). Today, 35 states have "shall issue" laws (plus Vermont and Alaska, which don't regulate the matter). It's beginning to look like what happened to Jim Crow.

Here's the breakdown, courtesy of gun-nuttery.com:

See also this neat graphic showing the year-by-year evolution of concealed carry laws.

Unbundled Windows

Considering all the clamor in the US and Europe about Microsoft bundling applications into Windows and stifling competition, here's a humble suggestion for items that should be removed from "Windows XP Basic":

• Media Player
• Internet Explorer
• Outlook Express
• Address Book
• Hyperterminal
• Fax
• Netmeeting
• Wordpad
• Notepad
• Calculator
• Paint
• Imaging
• Accessibility Software
• Sound Recorder
• Solitaire, Minesweeper, other Games
• Defrag and other disk utilities
• Zip and other file readers
• Telnet and other network applications
• all 3rd party drivers and Plug&Play
• the TCP/IP stack

All of these items were added at one time or other to Windows, no doubt depriving some company of business. Remove them all! Of course, you'd probably have to discount the price a bit....

If this seems extreme, well, maybe so, but what principled test is Microsoft offered to know which applications (costing untold millions of dollars to develop) can be bundled and which can't?

Info on Pledge case

Blogger Amanda Butler was in the courtroom today, and offers this detailed post on the Pledge case. She reports that Newdow did far better than expected.

(via How Appealing)

LA Times letter on Kerry

I usually skim the LA Times letter section, as terms like "president-select" and "Halliburton" warn me of the prevailing drivel. But now and then, there's a gem. Such as this one (scroll down), from one Bruce Kesler of Encinitas:

...Kerry's politically exploitive, ambiguous weakness about constructively finishing the job of rebuilding Iraq invites a Tet-like offensive in the fall to support Kerry's election and expected bug-out from Iraq. Kerry, quickly and unambiguously, needs to stand tall for completing the stabilization of Iraq, without caveats or his famous flip-flops.

Well, Senator Kerry?

Fisk vs Fisk

Apparently, killing a terrorsist is wrong, if the terrorist is in a wheelchair. At least according to Robert Fisk.

It doesn't take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

But wait. Isn't this the same reporter who just 2 weeks ago was eulogizing Abu Abbas, who killed a wheel-chair bound hostage just because he was Jewish. No couldn't be. Even Robert Fisk has a better sense of the ironic than that.

Oooops. And on his fan-boy site, too!

When 55-year-old Mohamed Aboul Abbas died mysteriously in a US prison camp in Iraq on Tuesday, nobody bothered to call his family.

His American captors had given no indication to the International Red Cross that he had been unwell and his wife Reem first heard that he was dead when she watched an Arab television news show.

Yet in his last letter to his family, written just seven weeks ago and shown to The Independent in Baghdad yesterday, the Palestinian militant wrote that, "I am in good form and in good health", adding that he hoped to be freed soon.

(hat tip: Michele)

Drinking License?

Kevin Drum (the blogger formerly known as CalPundit) now has the Political Animal blog at the Washington Monthly website. One of his inaugural posts discusses the idea of adding information to driver's licenses, such as Mark Kleiman's proposed drinking-privilege status indicator. Now, since I proposed such a think many years back on the old CompuServe Political SIG, I tend to agree with Mark here.

Kevin has qualms, as does Jane Galt, having mostly to do with privacy and slippery slopes -- is that (say) arrest 30 years ago for pot posession going to show up every time I get pulled over, or apply for a job or bank loan? Or want to buy a gun, say. This could be a problem.

But currently, the driver's license is used to deal with drunk driving offenses, so altering the way it is used doesn't seem such a big deal. Now, one loses ones license, and gets either a simple ID, or another license with BIG limitations stated on its face. Changing this to a simple checkbox that says (on all IDs) "may not purchase alcohol until [date]" isn't all that horrible as a punishment for a crime. We do it now for pre-adult drivers whoi have committed no crime save youth.

Now, here's the really funny thing: Given a choice of No Booze for a year, or No Car for a year, almost every "unlucky" casual drinker will choose "No Booze", think it a fair punishment, and be happy that they can still drive. And almost every chronic alcoholic will choose "No Car", as they can comprehend "No Car" a LOT better than "No Booze".

Considering this, one might reasonably argue that taking away the drinking privilege is, in all cases, a more reasonable approach that taking away the driving privilege, as it imposes a punishment directly proportional to one's abuse of alcohol, and it avoids the severe economic damage loss of driving can entail.

Discovery Channel Trademarks Iron Cross?

I'm a bit confused by all this legal stuff regarding The Discovery Channel's trademarks and Iron Crosses. Has the Discovery Channel trademarked Nazi memorabilia? Is that what they are trying to protect?

This is so confusing. As I understand it, a blogger noted that some items in the Discovery Channel store looked like Nazi memorabilia, that Simi Valley had banned the articles in their schools, and that Discovery Channel's lawyers had come completely unglued as a result.

Unintentional Irony

This guy, in a picture posted by Drudge, marches under the banner of the greatest mass killers in history while accusing the leader of the world's leading democracy of being a (lesser) mass killer. The fact that no one takes him out and shoots him for this statement is the third side of the irony.

We Warned Them, Really We Did

The NY Times reports that Clinton aides are going to tell the 9/11 Inquiry that they warned the incoming Bush Administration in late 2000 about Osama and al Qaeda, but that the Bushies did nothing to stop their deadly plans.

Nowhere in the Times' article does it mention this NBC report, published only two days ago, that asserts that during the last months of the Clinton administration -- the same folks that are going to blame Bush for not acting and literally dumped this fearful worry on their sucessors -- had Osama bin Laden in their literal sights and did nothing.

Perhaps the Clintonistas didn't read their own memos. Just as the NY Times doesn't use Google or watch NBC.

Update: The CIA does, however.

Fisking the Times

XRLQ takes the LA Times' editorial regarding Ashcroft's "repugnant" request for anonymous statistical data on "one technique used in late-term abortions" and shreds it to little tiny incoherent pieces. Apparently, the Times' editors feel that having facts presented in Supreme Court arguments will just get in the way of politics. Sadly, they may be right.

Meteor Impact Calculation

A number of folks have offered accounts of what might happen if that 30m rock that narrowly missed Earth had, in fact, hit. Clayton Cramer posted the following (via this site):

Fifty thousand years ago a huge boulder crashed into the desert flatlands in what is now Arizona leaving behind a bowl-shaped hole 4,000 feet wide and 570 feet deep. A study published in the journal Science concludes the stone that came in from space that day was a nickel iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and weighing 60,000 tons, traveling at speed of almost 45,000 miles an hour.

He goes on to cite the 30km destruction radius that is represented by the Arizona crater. This is fine as far as it goes, but the current rock was moving substantially slower, and that makes a big difference. Calculations follow:

A 30m (round) nickle-iron asteroid has a volume of (4πr³/3) or 14,000 cubic meters. A cubic meter of water masses a metric ton. Iron is 7 times heavier than water, so such an asteroid would mass something like 100,000 tonnes.

Next, the current object was moving at about 16,000 miles/hour in open space. Once it hit the atmosphere, it would be slowed. Assume in the 30 seconds it spent driving through the atmostphere it is slowed by a factor of 4 (heating itself and the air something terrible, and producing a god-awful burst of light). This gives an impact of about 1800 m/second.

Energy released is mv²/2 or about 1.6x10¹⁴ joules. According to this a kiloton of TNT = 4.2x 10¹² joules. So the impact of this object at that speed would yeild about 40 kilotons of TNT. Pretty bad, but not earth-shattering by any means.

Note: One big uncertainty in this is the degree to which the object slows in the atmostphere. The energy removed by slowing is mostly imparted to the air (the rest producing bright light), in proportion to the square of the velocity change. It is quite possible therefore that the superheated air and other atmospheric effects would produce outward winds larger than the immediate blast effect.

Note that the Arizona impact object was moving almost 3 times faster, with 8 times the original energy, assuming that the cited velocity was in free space, not at impact (which would be far worse).

More on Supreme Court Recusals

Patterico has been having a field day on the Ginsberg/Scalia recusal question. (I've also posted a bit here and there.) Patterico's latest is here, discussing Scalia's refutation of the "duck hunt" controversy. Hidden well inside Friday's LA Times were two other tidbits, however. This one, on the bottom of page 18, about Ginsberg:

Thirteen Republican members of Congress on Thursday asked Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to withdraw from all future cases having to do with abortion because of her affiliation with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The House lawmakers said in a letter to the liberal justice that they were concerned about her loaning her name and presence to the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series, which is co-sponsored by the defense fund, because the fund often files legal briefs in cases before the high court.

Ginsburg, in a speech last week, defended her relationship with the group and said Supreme Court justices are reluctant to recuse themselves in individual cases because it could lead to tie votes in the high court.

Over on the op-ed page, Erwin Chemerinsky suggests that it's all Rehnquist's fault for letting each justice decide such matters themself.

The deeper problem is with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is perpetuating a rule that prevents such errors from ever being corrected. He has committed the Supreme Court to an each-justice-decides-alone position that places individual decisions beyond review.

But it is not too late to address the broader policy problem. Judicial disqualification is a serious matter for the U.S. Supreme Court, which depends on public confidence for its legitimacy. In the future, Rehnquist could demonstrate real leadership by referring disqualification issues to the court itself, to be decided by a vote of all nine justices. If he continues to avoid the question, however, Congress should step in by enacting a statute mandating full consideration every time a justice's impartiality is in dispute. The reputation of the Supreme Court is at stake. Surely that is too important to rest in the hands of any individual justice.

Note that Professor Chemerinsky sees this as an issue solely with Scalia (in several instances), as the names of other possibly conflicted justices never enter the argument.

But I'll let Justice Ginsberg have the last word here, refuting the good professor's brief:

In her comments Friday, Ginsburg said recusals are frowned upon by the justices.

''In the end, it's a decision the individual justice makes, but always with consultation among the rest of us,'' she said.

She said the Supreme Court is unique because the justices cannot be replaced by outsiders.

''On the Supreme Court, if one of us is out, that means there are only eight,'' she said. ``There is a risk we will not be able to decide the case -- that it will be divided evenly. Some of my colleagues think a recusal in the Supreme Court is equivalent to a vote against the petitioner.''

She did not cite an example to illustrate her point. But if Scalia were to recuse himself from the Cheney case and the court were to split 4-4, the vice president would lose, and he would be obliged to turn over documents detailing who advised his energy task force.

''There is no one to replace us,'' she said. ``It makes it quite important that we not lightly recuse ourselves.''

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 08:31 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

He'll Get the Sierra Club Endorsement Anyway

American Spectator reports on Kerry's inventive use of environmental funds to water his Idaho ranch:

After paying for all the landscaping on the Sun Valley property, the Kerrys determined that their water supply was not great enough to keep their vegetation thriving. And so the couple petitioned the state to have a small river redirected so that its waters could be used to keep their garden nice and green. The state complied, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the work done. The state covered the cost ostensibly to ensure that the river's redirection would be environmentally sound.

If Bush did this, there'd be bumper stickers about it. Let's see which news outlet wins the race to report it: NY or LA Times, Washington Post, CNN or Fox. My money's on Fox.
(Hat tip: Blogosferics)

Axis of Weasels Inducts New Member

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, incoming Prime Minister of Spain, was inducted this week into the growing Axis of Weasels.

President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were accompanied by their foreign ministers Dominique de Villepin and Joschka Fischer for three hours of talks at the Elysee palace that focussed on the implications of conservative leader Jose Maria Aznar's dramatic electoral collapse on Sunday.

By promptly stating his desire to restore "magnificent" relations with France and Germany, his replacement - the Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero - signalled a major shift in the EU's balance of power back to what US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to as "old Europe," analysts said.

After establishing his bonafides by calling President Bush a liar, and the rationale for the Iraqi invasion a "pack of lies", Zapatero then proceeded to demolish more of his country's foreign policy positions:

The new socialist-led government in Spain has indicated an immediate softening of Madrid's tough stance on the European Constitution.

Speaking on Monday (15 March) to radio station Cadena Ser, prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that he wants to "speed up" the finishing of talks on the Constitution.

He said he believes that Europe can quickly come to an agreement on a "sensible power balance" for the enlarged EU.

Describing the Europe Union as the natural platform for Spanish foreign policy, Mr Zapatero signalled a dramatic shift in policy from the Aznar administration that was yesterday voted out of power.

"Europe must return to seeing us as an amiable country, a country which is pro-European, a country that does not divide, not between old Europe nor new Europe" he said.

So, the Spanish have not only elected a weasel, but one who wants to cement them irrevocably into the Franco-German hegemony -- before those annoying Eastern Europeans get a say.

You would think Spain would have learned from the last "Franco-German" alliance.....

Drug dog's bark is proof?

According to WTOC in Savannah, GA:

Has school drug enforcement gone too far? A savannah mother thinks so after her 16-year-old son got suspended. Police say their drug dog smelled marijuana and cocaine on his backpack.

No drugs were discovered in a search of Renard Powers backpack and person, and no one had ever suspected him of doing drugs. But when a drug dog barked at his backpack, during a routine school inspection, the student was suspended for the crime of "passive participation."

And I thought ZERO tolerance is bad. Now they're working in imaginary numbers.

(Via Joanne Jacobs)

Shortest Fisking Ever

The LA Times' editorial for Tuesday begins:

The courageous people of Spain voted....

Whatever.

Iraqi reaction to hotel bombing

Today's attack on Iraqi civilians by the Islamofascist resistance fighters murdering scum terrorists offers more than a little irony. In Spain, they are upset that the Americans are interfering in sovereign Iraq. In Iraq, however, they are upset the Americans are not interfering enough:

One of the Iraqis [ouside the bombed hoitel], Zaki Mohammad, 31, said of the people behind the attack: ``They have to hang these people as criminals in front of the people in the city of Baghdad.''

Indeed.

But we don't. We simply arrest and intern them, even when we find them with bombs ready to plant. I think Mr. Mohammad has got a point here. Hopefully, when the Iraqis take over, they won't feel bound by what the NY Times might think.

"Blow to Bush"

The New York Times reports that the Spanish election outcome is to be read as a "Blow to Bush" -- at least that's the headline. But read the article:

The ouster of the center-right party in Spain, only days after a terrorist bombing that may be linked to Al Qaeda, is the first electoral rebuke of one of President Bush's most steadfast allies in the Iraq war.

When France and Germany balked at supporting the war on Iraq, the Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, stood publicly by Mr. Bush at a summit meeting in the Azores a year ago this week, and just days before the war began. Now voters have elected the opposition Socialists, although the center right was leading in the polls until the terrorist attack.

The Bush administration must now fight the perception, accurate or not, that acts of terror against America's allies can sway nations into rethinking the wisdom of standing too closely with Mr. Bush.

One could well have titled this story "Spanish Knuckle Under to Terror Demands", but the myopic Bush haters at the Times see it -- as they see everything -- only on the narrow helps/hurts Bush axis. Somedays I think they'd destroy their own newspaper if they thought it would hurt Bush. Oh, wait...

Dry run?

Power Line agrees that the Spanish election is a win for al Qaeda, but then passes on this chilling thought:

The election that al Qaeda really wants to influence, of course, is our election in November. Indeed, it is possible that the bombings in Spain may have been a dry run to see how Westerners would react to a major terrorist attack on the eve of an election. The only sensible conclusion that al Qaeda can have drawn from its Spanish experience is that it may well be able to deliver our election to John Kerry with a terrorist attack timed for the weekend before the election. I think it is safe to predict that the Islamofascists will make a major attempt at such an attack.

Coupled with this is growing evidence that AQ Khan passed significant nuclear know-how to all comers. Could al Qaeda have the bomb? Even a small one? I've thought not, since they would have used it, but this post from Power Line might explain what they're waiting for.

Al Qaeda wins Spanish election

Spanish voters today tossed out the Anzar government, blaming them for inciting the al Qaeda attacks of Thursday, by supporting the American war on terror. This is not good news.

UPDATE: This from an email to Roger Simon:

“I am ashamed of being a Spaniard. We have just surrendered on behalf of the whole West. This is a real tragedy for all; now they know what works.”

Things you won't read in the Times

The Los Angeles Times wants to be a national newspaper, mentioned in the same breath as the New York Times and Washington Post. While it obviously has a ways to go, one of the casualties of its national focus is its coverage of local issues. For that you really have to turn to the Los Angeles Daily News.

While the Times has run stories about how hard it is for the new Governor to rein in spending, it is left to the Daily News to explain why California spending is so out of control. Today's Daily News feature story lays out the salary explosion in California's state, county and local agency budgets. The short story is that salaries have increased, over the last 5 years, twice as fast as the rate of inflation, and almost twice as fast as per-capita income:

From the city of Los Angeles to California state government, the cost of salaries and benefits for public employees has soared far faster than inflation in the last five years -- three times as fast in the case of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a Daily News analysis has found.

The study showed that spending for public employees' salaries and benefits at the state and local levels increased overall at more than twice the rate of inflation and grew faster than the per capita income of average Californians. The cost of pensions was excluded from the analysis because of the wide disparity between different levels of government.

The spending binge started at a time that tax revenues were soaring, at the peak of the 1990s dot-com boom. Now that the boom has gone bust and the economy remains weak, state and local officials are making deep cuts in public services and looking for ways to raise fees and taxes. The review covered the fiscal years from 1997-98 to 2002-03.

"At all levels of government, the rate of compensation has gone up much more rapidly than it has in the private sector and, most importantly, faster than the personal income of the people who pay for this," said Steven B. Frates, a senior fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College.

"There has been a wealth transfer. It has gone from the citizens to the people in government.

"You often hear people in government cry that there are going to be cuts and we're hurting the poor and the little children. The fact of the matter is the citizens of the state, county and city are making life better, not necessarily for schoolchildren or people in need, but for government employees."

Yet, when the crunch happens, it is The Children™ that are trotted out as the objects to be sacrificed if there is any cutback in the bloated budgets. Never once do you hear that a bureaucrat's job will be lost -- it's always the librarians and teachers that have to go, aid to the blind to be axed, 90-year olds having their walkers reposessed, and kindergartners having to eat cookies without milk.

But the sad truth is that salaries, benefits and pensions are eating an increasing share of budgets, and without reductions in salaries or staffing, there's little hope for maintaining services. So when Granny gets tossed into the snow, don't believe for a minute it's the taxpayer's fault.

Australia to ban barbeque forks

Well, not yet, but maybe soon. After banning guns a few years back, they are now banning swords and may soon also ban other medieval weapons, such as cross-bows. But, given the reasons stated (youth gangs are using swords), there are surely lots of common implements to be added to the list. Might make it tough to put that shrimp on the barbie, though.

(via Volokh Conspriacy)

Which way Spain?

Spain's national elections are this weekend. Assuming that the al Qaeda involvement in the train bombings is accepted by then, will it help or hurt the ruling party? Prime Minister Anzar supported Bush in both Afghanistan and Iraq, against the popular sentiment in Spain and most of Old Europe -- to his political peril.

If indeed al Qaeda has attacked Spanish civilians in retalliation, killing hundreds and maiming another thousand, will the Spanish voters blame Anzar's party for exposing them to danger? Or will they stand with Anzar against the terrorists? In France and Germany they've chosen the coward's path. How will Spain choose? And what will it mean for the future of this war?

Al Qaeda or ETA?

Spanish authorities are trying to decide whether ETA or al Qaeda was responsible for the 3/11 attacks in Madrid. Consider the possibility it was both. ETA had the explosives, native experts and al Qaeda had the will. Given ETA's reported decline over recent years it's not unreasonable that either they sold equipment and advice to al Qaeda or an ETA cell allied with them.

And then there's this from Ken MacLeod, who pays attention to national liberation movements of various sorts:

At the moment the Spanish government is saying 'ETA' and everyone else is asking 'Al-Qaeda?' It makes a practical difference, yes, but ETA has become so nihilistic and pointless it might as well be part of Al-Qaeda already.

Congressional Supremacy Bill

A bill has been introduced in the House to allow Congress to override the US Supreme Court, titled the "Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004." Here is the operative section:

The Congress may, if two thirds of each House agree, reverse a judgment of the United States Supreme Court—

(1) if that judgment is handed down after the date of the enactment of this Act; and

(2) to the extent that judgment concerns the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.

Not only is this a very bad idea, even in reaction to runaway courts, but it doesn't even adress the issue of lower court actions not reviewed by SCOTUS. Luckily, it will die in committee.
(via How Appealing)

CA Supremes Halt Gay Marriages

AP reports that the CA Supreme Court has ordered a halt to same-sex marriages within California. More details at How Appealing

Blogger gets big results

I reported here about Justice Ginsberg getting a pass for the same type of activities that the LA Times clobbered Justice Scalia for engaging in, as did Patterico over at Patterico's Pontifications. Patterico followed up his posts with several emails to the Times' reader's representative, and what happens?

This happens. I'm gobsmacked.

But let Patterico tell the story himself.

John McCain, Part 2

The really interesting question is whether McCain would consider running for vice president on the Republican ticket. If the answer to that is NO, then, again, WTF?

President Bartlet Supports Vouchers

It's always good to see political courage among Democrats, even if they are fictional. Joanne Jacobs (one of the finer edubloggers) reports:

President Jed Bartlet of West Wing backs school vouchers for low-income students, but real-life Democrats lack the courage, writes Clarence Page. On the TV show, as in real life, the mayor of Washington, D.C. and the president of the school board want a voucher experiment to help kids trapped in dreadful schools. Bartlet, a liberal Democrat, produces his young black assistant, a graduate of D.C. public schools. The assistant says he wishes he'd had a voucher to go to Catholic school. The fictional president decides to spend political capital to support vouchers.

The horrid truth here is that the Democratic Party is far more interested in the money and election workers that the education unions can provide, than in the children that they hold hostage, or the true interests of the poor families that they assert they represent. The one single thing keeping African Americans in poverty is the horrid economic disadvange imposed by schools that no family with any real choice would let their child visit, let alone attend. The sordid partnership that the Democrats have with the equally sordid NEA to perpetuate a bloated bureaucracy at the expense of teachers, schools and students is very nearly a crime against humanity.

Consider in West Los Angeles, where few if any local kids attend neighborhood public schools (all the students are bussed in), and local private schools abound. Even middle-class African-American families send their kids to private schools whenever possible. In immigrant communities, like East LA, children are forced into schools so overcrowded that they are running two sessions on year-round schedules. In the poorer areas of South-Central, black kids go to schools that offer as good a chance of serious assault as they do of high-school graduation. The refrain from the bureaucracy: more money. Even though LAUSD already spends $13,000 per child, most of which never gets to the classroom.

Vouchers for poor children would solve most of these ills, reducing overcrowding, allowing others to avoid long bus trips, closing cesspool schools, and forcing LAUSD to stop spending all it's money on featherbedded headquarters staffs and competing for teachers and students in a free market.

Why should this monopoly be so widely supported by people who would be the very first to confront same in the real marketplace? That they do so solely to support their political machine is as tawdry as the Tammany machine of 150 years ago. Where is the shame?

As Paige points out

[T]he larger irony is that polls show most black Americans, statistically the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency, support vouchers...

But the money and legwork comes from the unions, so the kids are SOL. If the Democrats ignore this long enough, they'll find that some generation of African-Americans will forget the 60s just as their grandparents forgot emancipation. That day cannot come too soon.

John McCain, We Hardly Knew Ye

According to AP, Senator John McCain is open to being Kerry's VP.

McCain said he would consider the unorthodox step of running for vice president on the Democratic ticket — in the unlikely event he received such an offer from the presidential candidate.

"John Kerry (news - web sites) is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years," McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. "Obviously I would entertain it."

Up until 30 minutes ago, I had thought that McCain was the obvious 2008 Republican candidate, whether Bush wins or not. Ooops. Bzzzzzt!!! Wrong again.

Once again, I'm reduced to wondering what the !@#% is this man smoking?

Kerry's Tax Advice

Senator Kerry now offers tax advice to his well-heeled supporters: pay more.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday he will ask Americans earning more than $200,000 a year to pay the taxes they paid under President Clinton and pledged to retain the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and even add to them.

It will be interesting to see if Teresa Heinz follows her husband's advice and pays up an additional 3.6% of her 2003 income. Assuming it isn't all hidden in some tax dodge.

While we're at it...

According to AP, State Senator Vasconellos has a way to really make those voting systems gag and choke:

A proposed amendment to California's constitution would give 16-year-olds a half-vote and 14-year-olds a quarter-vote in state elections.

State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, was among four lawmakers to propose the idea on Monday. He said the Internet, cellular phones, multichannel television and a diverse society makes today's teens better informed than their predecessors.

Several people have noted the parallels to the 3/5ths vote of slavery days, but let's take this a bit further:

• 2 votes for high school graduates (1 1/2 for GREs)
• 3 votes for veterans
• 4 votes for college graduates and one more vote each for a masters or doctorate
• 1 extra vote for each $1000 donated to charity
• no votes for welfare recipients
• and of course, 100 votes for Nobel laureates

Then hope like hell you don't have to do a recount. Myself, I'll go for allowing children of any age to vote if they pay income or property taxes.

A Tale of Two Justices

The LA Times today rips Justice Scalia for speaking before a conservative group opposed to gay rights before the Supreme Court had issued its Lawrence vs. Texas ruling. It was however, two months after the oral arguments, and Justice Scalia was perhaps no longer wavering on the subject. But whatever.

"This would raise a concern in the minds of a lot of people. And I would say it is not the right way to act as a judge," said University of Pennsylvania law professor Geoffrey C. Hazard. "He is talking to a group that has a strong view on the kind of issue that will come before the Supreme Court. I think it is preferable for justices to exercise restraint and to back away from groups that are overtly political."

Hofstra University law professor Monroe H. Freedman agreed. "I think he should have passed on this. He can say he went to honor the cardinal, but that is not sufficient. If it is an adversarial organization working on issues in the public eye and before the court, how could he justify going there? What's beginning to emerge here is a sense of hubris — that he is above the rules."

Perhaps this is a fair criticism. Perhaps justices should steer well clear of any comments on any subject that might come before the court, even if the issue discussed is one on which the Justice's philosophy is well known. Given the breadth of Court action these days, I don't think that's practical, but if it is the standard nonetheless, shouldn't the Times and other public watchdogs pay the same attention to other justices?

For example, less than 3 months ago, Justice Ginsberg gave a speech before a group of women's rights lawyers, the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund. Here is the AP report:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday that people concerned about losing freedom to government anti-terrorism efforts should speak out.

The Supreme Court is taking up several terror-related cases this spring, including challenges to the government detention of terror suspects without legal rights.

Ginsburg, speaking to a group of women's rights lawyers, was asked if people's rights were in danger.

``On important issues, like the balance between liberty and security, if the public doesn't care, then the security side is going to overweigh the other,'' she said.

That would change, Ginsburg said, ``if people come forward and say we are proud to live in the USA, a land that has been more free, and we want to keep it that way.''

Ginsburg, who argued women's rights cases at the Supreme Court several decades before former President Clinton named her to the court in 1993, said ``an active public'' made the difference in the victories of feminism.

Ginsburg, now 70 and one of the more liberal justices, won five of the six Supreme Court cases she argued. She was reunited Thursday with some of the clients she represented during an event held in her honor at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

``She was calling to our attention that work in women's rights, civil rights is under threat,'' said Lisalyn Jacobs, who handles government relations for the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, which co-sponsored the event.

If Scalia is wrong, Ginsberg here is doubly and triply wrong, speaking before advocacy groups that she once was a member of, one that routinely intervenes in Supreme Court cases, and speaking on issues that are active at the court, and obviously will continue to be.

Where is the Times when liberals do what conservatives oughtn't?

UPDATE: Patterico beat me to this somehow.

But showing an image of 9/11 in ads is tasteless

Here's a take from the John Kerry for President site about Mrs Kerry's campaign activities:

The East Bay for Kerry/MoveOn House party on December 7th combined the forces of two grass-roots organizations based in San Francisco East Bay Area. We had 200 guests eating, drinking, and watching the MoveOn Documentary “Uncovered” featuring Joseph Wilson and Rand Beers from the Kerry campaign.

When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: “Asses of Evil” with “Bush”, “Cheney”, “Rumsfeld” and “Ashcroft” surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary. Many were curious, others undecided, or belonging to other candidate camps.

Bet you don't see this in 100 newspapers tomorrow.

The wife on Martha

When I mentioned that Martha Stewart had been convicted of lying to the government and could go to prison, my wife asked "And what's the penalty when they lie to us?"

Stupid Disney Tricks

BlogoSFERICS points out what's really wrong with the new Disney Chairman. Lucky for Disney shareholders that Margaret Hamilton is dead.

Microsoft's anti-spam "Caller ID"

Bill Gates announced last week an initiative called "Caller ID for E-mail", which is probably the first effective spam reduction internet protocol that stands a chance of being implemented. The proposal has been batted around for a few years now, under the general title of "DNS Reverse Mailserver [RMX] Record." It hasn't gone anywhere as it required some powerful entity to embrace and implement it, and now Microsoft has, as a critical part of an evolving spam/virus prevention system.

Currently, each Internet domain (e.g. interocitor.com) has a file posted on one of its computers, or at its ISP, identifying the IP address of its servers, so that the internet can tell where to send web requests bound to www.domain.com or email for joe@domain.com. The sum of all these files, along with the master list pointing to all these distributed lists, is called the Internet's Domain Name System.

What Microsoft proposes is to require a new record in each of these files, called an RMX record. This record will state which IP addresses are authorized to send mail FROM that domain. When mail from xxx.com comes to your ISP, bound for your inbox, your ISP would then query the RMX record for xxx.com, and see if the actual sender's IP address matches an authorized xxx.com server. A match failure would cause the message to bounce back instead of going into your mailbox. (Note that, due to the way the computers connect, if the message lies about its IP address, the connection will fail for other reasons.) Messages from domains that have no RMX record, of from domains that don't exist at all, would also be rejected.

This would prevent most address-forging, whether by spammers or by viruses, as a message from joe@smutware.co.uk that claims to be from niceperson@yahoo.com would be rejected because it came from some other source than yahoo.com's sendmail server(s). To be accepted it would have to be at some address at smutware.co.uk, and filtering that out would be a simple task. (Preventing badguy@yahoo.com from pretending to be goodguy@yahoo.com is left to Yahoo! to take care of.)

There are a few issues with this scheme and, up to now, these issues have prevented agreement of this scheme. The two most notable problems are certain comsumer ISPs awful Port 25 blocking scheme, which would have to be abandoned, and accomodating traveling users, most likely through "SMTP authentication" which is supported by all mail programs, but not by all ISPs. Now Microsoft is trying to force the issue.

As of now, Hotmail has posted its own RMX records for hotmail.com on its DNS servers, and somethime this summer Hotmail will reject any mail from any domain that does not also have RMX records published. It is working with Amazon.com and sendmail.com (a major mailserver software provider) to test the system. Whether Hotmail alone can force this change is still to be seen, but if a few other major players (e.g. AOL), join in it will be a done deal. At least Microsoft is trying.

UPDATE: Technical discussions of RMX here and here
ANOTHER UPDATE: It seems that Microsoft's CID is not quite the same as RMX, but it's the same basic idea. On the other hand, it's different enough that there may be problems.

Free Martha!

So, a jury convicted Martha Stewart today of lying to the government, conspiracy to lie to the government, and obstructing the government's investigation into whether she lied to them.

Last week the judge in the trial dropped the more serious charge that, by her insisting on her innocence, she was committing secrurities fraud. All of these charges should all have been dropped long ago, and shame on the judge for letting this waste of taxpayers money continue, and shame on the jury for not nullifying the whole thing.

What a crock of s***!

But this brings up an idea. If the suburban Mom vote was so important to Clinton's re-election, and if Bush might like this group to lean more his way, he has a great opportunity here:

FREE MARTHA!
After all, these are federal charges, Bush has the absolute power of federal pardon, and if questioned, the President can always say that Martha shouldn't be treated any worse than Marc Rich.

Now this is dumb!

Just to prove that both sides of this debate can be politically stupid, Senator Frist weighs in:

In Washington, D.C., lawmakers debated same-sex marriages, with Republican senators such as Majority Leader Bill Frist asking Congress to embrace a constitutional amendment banning them.

"Same sex marriage is likely to spread through all 50 states in the coming years," Frist said. "It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must act."

Dear Senator Frist, if all 50 states are performing gay marriages, they may opt for an amendment, but it won't be yours.

Ted Olson can't google

AP reports:

The Bush administration's top Supreme Court lawyer says he typed the words "free porn" into an Internet search engine on his home computer and got a list of more than 6 million Web sites. That's proof, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, of the need for a law protecting children from a tide of online smut.

Well, Google reports a mere 2.9 million hits to "free porn" (with quotes) and 6.8 million to the two words without quotes. Clearly Olson either opted for the wider search or doesn't understand the difference.

Note: "Free" by itself gives 21 million hits and "porn" gives 12 million or so. I'm a bit surprised, though. I would have thought "free" would get more....

p.s. I wonder if any of the justices asked Olson how many of those sites actually were free.

LAUSD Spam

It seems that the LAUSD has hired a spammer to encourage pepole to vote for Measure R, the $3 billion local school tax bond.

Vote against spammers, VOTE NO on Measure R.

Janice Rogers Brown Stands Alone

The California Supreme Court, in a 6-1 decision, has ruled that Catholic Charities must provide contraceptives as part of medical benefits to their employees. Since the Catholic Church, which operates the charities, does not condone use of contraceptives, this is almost certainly a state interference in the mission of the Church. Certainly it creates a crisis of conscience for Catholic Charities, who must now choose between cancelling all employee prescription benefits, and facilitating what the Church regards as a sin.

The Court's reasoning is fairly simple: State law exempts only narrowly defined "religious employees" for the action of a 1999 law that requires all health plans to offer contraceptives, unless the organization meets all of the following:

1. The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity.
2. The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
3. The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
4. The entity is a nonprofit organization as described in Section 6033(a)(2)(A)i or iii, of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.”

So, in order to be a "religious" charity, the organization must discriminate in employment and charity, and must harrangue recipients with religious dogma. Note that these conditions are, themselves, repugnant to most religious orders. This is probably not by mistake -- the law is designed to appear to be offering charities a religious exception to meet Consitutional tests, but the actuallity is likely anti-religious and certainly anti-Catholic.

And the Court bought it. The lone dissenter was Janice Rogers Brown, a Bush nominee for the Federal bench. A few quotes from her dissent:

The Women’s Contraceptive Equity Act (WCEA) attempts to circumvent this potentially substantial hurdle [the 1st Amendment] by creating a very narrow exemption for churches. But that begs an even more fundamental question: may the government determine what parts of bona fide religious organizations are religious and what parts are secular? And, in particular, may the government make such distinctions in order to infringe the religious freedom of that portion of the organization the government characterizes as secular? ...

Under venerable establishment clause precedent, however, the exemption itself is problematic. To put it bluntly, the government may generally separate the religious from the secular to decide how it will dispense its benefits, but it cannot parse a bona fide religious organization into “secular” and “religious” components solely to impose burdens on the secular portion....

The WCEA defines as religious only those organizations for which the inculcation of religious values is the sole purpose of the entity, that primarily employ only adherents of their own faith tradition, that primarily serve only people who share their religious tenets, and that qualify as nonprofit organizations described in section 6033(a)(2)(A)i or iii of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

This is such a crabbed and constricted view of religion that it would define the ministry of Jesus Christ as a secular activity. The stinginess of the exemption makes the structure of the act all the more baffling. The mandate applies only to employers that provide prescription coverage. Thus, Catholic Charities can avoid the mandate by dropping the coverage. The state wants to make sure that women are not burdened more than others. Where employers cooperate, the WCEA will reduce the inequitable financial burden of healthcare for women. If religiously affiliated employers are serious about their objections, however, women who work for those employers could actually be worse off.

Doesn't Justice Brown know that in "opposing women's healthcare" she is just giving her opponents more ammuntion? Or is this just one of those rare political acts of integrity? I report, you decide.

More on Janice Rogers Brown here, here and here.

A.Q. Khan, al Qaeda, and the Bomb

Recently the US has stepped up its efforts to find Osama, an effort which could now be called frantic. Nearly all the special forces that were in Iraq are now in Pakistan and Afganistan hunting Osama with some vigor. A deal seems to have been made with Pakistan to allow US troops unfettered access to the Waziristan region where Osama is rumored to be.

One obvious explanation would be that Bush wants Osama's head on a pike before the election, as that would go a long way toward beating Kerry. Could be, but maybe there's something else going on.

It's becoming clear that A.Q. Khan, the guy that built Pakistan's fission bombs, spread his designs and engineering knowledge far and wide among the terrorist states. Libya, Iran, North Korea we know about, mainly from Libyan documents and testimony. But, oddly, the US is not publicly calling for Khan's head or for him to be tried as an international criminal. Something strange is going on.

Khan's motives are unclear, but suppose he was frustrated with Pakistan's non-use of these weapons in the "Islamic" cause. Sentiment of that sort is widespread in Pakistan. Suppose there are indications that one of his clients was al Qaeda, and that maybe he gave them a working bomb. If so, the US would be "questioning" Mr Khan (who, BTW, seems to be incomunicado after a reported heart attack), and searching frantically for al Qaeda members who might know about such a device and its wherabouts.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but the thought of a uranium bomb silently moving in a freighter's ballast towards the US is not a particularly calming one. If there is such a thing, I hope we find it, and don't particularly care how we do it.