November 2005 Archives

Despite recently admitting that he accepted bribes and resigning from Congress in disgrace, it's worth remembering that more than 30 years ago Randy Cunningham was an ace fighter pilot who put his life repeatedly on the line for his country. Wretchard's commentary is poignant:

They were two different days, separated by 32 years. The grandfather paradox argues that the past exists independently of the present, that it remains graven in the mind of God, beyond our power to alter -- or to besmirch. Whatever Randy Cunningham did in later life, it remains true that on the tenth of May, 1972 ShowTime 100 would shoot down two MIGs, then a third. ...

A man can redeem himself from past disgraceful acts by doing good later in life, but disgraceful acts later in life are rarely excused on account of good done earlier. It's sad to see a hero fall, even when he's brought down by his own hubris.

So I like mixing my metaphors, so what? Today is the 12th anniversary of the singing of the Brady Bill by President Clinton and David Kopel has posted a sobering history lesson full of reasons why we shouldn't trust the left and their crusade to disarm us.

Much of the support for the "Brady Bill" came from the claim--which was demonstrably false--that the bill would have prevented John Hinckley from buying the guns he used to shoot President Reagan and Press Secretary Jim Brady.

Most significant is Mr. Kopel's reminder of the hoped-for Brady II law.

Almost immediately after passage of the "assault weapon" ban, Handgun Control, Inc. (which later renamed itself "the Brady Campaign"), announced "Brady II." Brady II would make permanent the handgun purchase waiting period which was set to expire in 1998, and would limits handgun purchases to one per month. The bill would also require all states to set up handgun licensing systems, with possession of a handgun permitted only to persons who pass federally-mandated safety training. All handgun transfers would be registered with the government.

Brady II would require every owner of a "large" ammunition clip to be licensed the same way that the federal government licenses machine gun owners. Simply to retain the magazines currently owned, a person would have to be fingerprinted, and pay heavy federal taxes. Brady II would also lower the ten-round limit to six rounds. As a result, the owner of a Colt .45 pistol and the standard seven-round magazine for the gun would need to go through the federal machinegun licensing system.

Under Brady II, anyone who owned at least twenty guns or 1,000 rounds of ammunition would be required to obtain a federal "arsenal" license. Licensees would be subjected to three unannounced police inspections per year. Persons who were required to have a license but did not obtain one would of course be subject to whatever enforcement action the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms deemed appropriate.

For purposes of defining an "arsenal," firearms, firearms parts, and ammunition clips would all count as a "firearm." In other words, if a person owned three rifles, three handguns, two ammunition clips for each gun, and set of disassembled spare parts for the rifles and the handguns, he would have an "arsenal" consisting of at least 20 "guns." A thousand rounds of ammunition also count as a so-called "arsenal." So the hundreds of thousands of target shooters who pick up a pair of bricks of rimfire ammunition for $15 every few months would also become the owners of "arsenals."

One of the main reasons to oppose all gun restrictions is that it is the stated intent of those who propose such laws is to eventually ban all private gun ownership.

Once again science confirms what everyone already knows: caffeine makes you smarter.

The caffeine found in coffee, tea, soft drinks and chocolate stimulates areas of the brain governing short-term memory and attention, Austrian researchers said on Wednesday.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans performed on the brains of 15 subjects who had just consumed caffeine equal to that found in two cups of coffee showed increased activity in the frontal lobe where the working memory is located and in the anterior cingulum that controls attention.

"We are able to see that caffeine exerts increases in neuronal activity in distinct parts of the brain going along with changes in behavior," said Austrian researcher Dr. Florian Koppelstatter of the Medical University Innsbruck.

Plus, if you stop taking it you get headaches and mood swings.

This is the kind of brilliant idea that should make its inventor a millionaire: a high-frequency buzzing device that drives away teenagers but is inaudible to most adults.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away. ...

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."

I must be getting old to love this idea so much.

(HT: Slashdot.)

Full Disclosure just posted a video blog featuring yours truly (and a couple other people you might recognize) about the Valerie Plame controversy. Snazzy. I actually look pretty good in the video.

I seem to be writing about abortion a lot recently... go figure. Roger Pilon has an excellent explanation of why Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the issue of abortion returned to the states. It's really pretty simple:

And so the basic substantive question was clear: When does the right to life begin?

On that question, the Constitution is indeed silent--mostly. Here's why. We would all agree, I hope, that if a doctor took the life of a baby one day after birth, it would be infanticide--murder. Thus, states that protected older babies but not younger ones would doubtless be subject to equal protection challenges, at least, and would probably lose. But if taking the life of a baby one day after birth is murder, what is the difference if the act is performed one day before birth? It strains credulity to suppose there is any real difference. Well, what of two days before birth--and so on down the line? It's impossible to draw a principled line at which to say, precisely, that this is where the right to life begins. The court's trimester taxonomy in Roe was its own invention, entitled to no more constitutional support than anyone else's opinion on the matter.

And so we come to the jurisdictional question: Who decides? And on that the Constitution is not silent. Whether we believe that the right to life begins at conception or at some point over the next 270 days, we all believe, I hope, that it begins at some point along that line. We all agree, that is, that there is some point at which abortion amounts to murder. We just can't agree about where that point is. And so we're faced with a classic line-drawing problem, not unknown in other areas of the law, but here involving the criminal law and, therefore, the general police power--the power that belongs, under the Constitution, to states.

Legislatures and Congress should be drawing lines, not the courts.

My wife, who knows quite a bit about Arab culture since her dad's side of the family is from Iraq, has a post about the significance of al-Zarqawi being cast out from his tribe and family.

This. is. huge.

al-Zarqawi has been disowned by the Bani Hassan.

Let me repeat: This. is. huge.

I was astounded when I read this. For one to be disowned by their own tribe means they have shamed their ancestors and have committed the gravest of unpardonable sins. For an Arab to be disowned by his own clan and tribe means that he is only worthy of taking his own life outside of tribal boundaries, left to face Allah on his own without the help of his ancestors. (I do not believe in that mysticism, just to clear up any misconceptions).

Basically, the Bani Hassan are saying that al-Zarqawi is only worthy of a shameful death, alone in the wilderness. Back in ancient times, the only way of survival was to stay within one's tribe/clan. Socio-economic and socio-political landscapes were all determined by tribal ties and ancestry. The Arab culture truly believes the saying that "there is strength in numbers." To be alone in the desert meant a lonely death; to be within a tribe meant an honorable existence. ...

What's even more shocking is that they list al-Zarqawi by his given name, thereby stripping him of his "warrior" status. That in itself is a severe insult and public humiliation. When an Arab warrior would prove himself in battle, he would frequently receive a new name to denote honor and command respect. In this case, Al-Qaeda has taken that tradition and twisted it, using names traditionally reserved for battle feats to pander to their own pride at being terrorists. The fact that the Bani Hassan listed Zarqawi by his given name is uber embarrassing and tells society that Zarqawi is worthless and not deserving of any respect. Honor and family are everything in the Arab world (the non-terrorist part) and to be stripped of both of those publicly is a sentence worse than death.

Islamofascism can't help but eventually implode as it turns on itself, and I think it goes without saying that President Bush's flypaper strategy in Iraq has helped hasten its demise.

Mark Kleiman and Cathy Young both have thoughtful defenses of the idea that criminal justice needs to take into account not just deterrence and incapacitation (to prevent future crimes) but also retribution. Says Mr. Kleiman:

I share the glee that I assume most of my Blue friends will feel at the prospect of Augusto Pinochet finishing out his life behind prison bars. ...

Note, however, that if putting Pinochet away is justified, it must be on some basis other than deterrence or incapacitation. Perhaps it's time to rethink the place of retribution as a legitimate goal of criminal justice policy. Making what remains of Pinochet's life as miserable as possible is something owed to his victims. It proclaims that what he did was wrong, that the victims did not deserve their victimization, and that they were important enough to be worth revenging.

Why should it be so hard to see that, and to apply it to more ordinary cases?

I've long held a similar view that the purpose of the criminal justice system should be to punish wrongdoers and that any peripheral effects (such as bringing "closure" or reformation) are just icing on the cake.

(HT: Eugene Volokh.)

My brother sent me this Fortune article about the growing popularity of anime in the United States and what it might mean for the American and Japanese economies.

From Pokemon to Full Metal Panic, the anime industry is doing everything the rest of show biz isn't: embracing technology, coddling fans—and making a killing. ...

None of this means that Western culture is going all-anime. Ledford acknowledges that interest seems to bubble up, then fall back a bit before growing again. Certainly the aging of the Pokemon generation—the first to have widespread exposure to anime at a young age—should help.

Some in the world are in a panic over American "cultural hegemonization", but this article illustrates that Americans are rabid consumers of culture as well as producers. As my brother pointed out, little could be better for Japan's economy that greater openness and connection to America.

What could be more horrible than reading the pathetic justifications offered by "mothers" for their abortions?

An 18-year-old with braces on her teeth is on the operating table, her head on a plaid pillow, her feet up in stirrups, her arms strapped down at her sides. A pink blanket is draped over her stomach. She's 13 weeks pregnant, at the very end of the first trimester. She hasn't told her parents. ...

"It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," she says. "I thought it would be horrible, but it wasn't. The procedure, that is."

She is not yet sure, she says, how she is doing emotionally. She feels guilty, sad and relieved, all in a jumble.

"There's things wrong with abortion," she says. "But I want to have a good life. And provide a good life for my child." To keep this baby now, she says, when she's single, broke and about to start college, "would be unfair." ...

A high school volleyball player says she doesn't want to give up her body for nine months. "I realize just from the first three months how it changes everything," she says.

Kim, a single mother of three, says she couldn't bear to give away a child and have to wonder every day if he were loved. Ending the pregnancy seemed easier, she says — as long as she doesn't let herself think about "what could have been." ...

Amanda, a 20-year-old administrative assistant, says it's not the obstacles that surprise her — it's how normal and unashamed she feels as she prepares to end her first pregnancy.

"It's an everyday occurrence," she says as she waits for her 2:30 p.m. abortion. "It's not like this is a rare thing."

Amanda hasn't told her ex-boyfriend that she's 15 weeks pregnant with his child. She hasn't told her parents, either, though she lives with them.

"I figured it was my responsibility," she says.

She regrets having to pay $750 for the abortion, but Amanda says she does not doubt her decision. "It's not like it's illegal. It's not like I'm doing anything wrong," she says.

"I've been praying a lot and that's been a real source of strength for me. I really believe God has a plan for us all. I have a choice, and that's part of my plan." ...

His first patient of the day, Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. "I don't think my dress would have fit with a baby in there," she says.

The last patient of the day, a 32-year-old college student named Stephanie, has had four abortions in the last 12 years. She keeps forgetting to take her birth control pills. Abortion "is a bummer," she says, "but no big stress."

The perceptions of these women were formed in our modern environment of quick and easy abortions of convenience. The self-styled "abortionist" featured in this article claims to have killed more than 20,000 babies during his career, and takes pride in his lack of frustration with repeat customers like Stephanie -- but then why should he get frustrated when he's making $750 a head?

Three abortions before lunch and three more after: The appointment book is always full.

Never forget that abortion is an industry.

I'm sure I'm not the first Republican to say so, but I'm glad that former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham has resigned for taking bribes, and I hope he goes to jail. There are few greater betrayals of the public trust than accepting bribes, and Cunningham directly endangered national security by taking bribes from defense contractors. Good riddance.

After months of insisting he had done nothing wrong, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham tearfully acknowledged taking $2.4 million in bribes, saying: "The truth is I broke the law."

The eight-term Republican and former Vietnam fighting ace pleaded guilty to graft Monday and resigned, admitting he took money mostly from defense contractors in exchange for government business and other favors.

"In my life, I have had great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame," a tearful Cunningham said after the plea. "I can't undo what I have done but I can atone."

But Cunningham, who could get up to 10 years in prison at sentencing Feb. 27 on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud, and tax evasion, may not be the only person ensnared in the case. Prosecutors have indicated they have more than him in mind.

He should be ashamed, because his behavior was disgraceful.

It strikes me that since many criminals turn to crime out of laziness, and many lazy people spend all their time watching television, there may be a correlation between crime-time and Prime Time. Is there less crime when high-rated shows that cater to young males are playing new episodes? Is crime generally lower when television ratings are higher? If so, then perhaps it would be a good use of public funds to discover and subsidize the kinds of shows that criminals tend to like.

I can't think of anything more grisly than babies who survive an abortion only to be murdered upon delivery. From Britain:

A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.

The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation.

Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.

In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London, a number do survive.

“They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.”

As far as I'm concerned, it's murder. As I've said before, improving medical technology will eventually make the evil of abortion undeniable.

The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. Prenatal diagnosis for conditions such as Down’s syndrome is increasing and foetuses with the condition are routinely aborted, even though many might be capable of leading fulfilling lives. In the past decade, doctors’ skill in saving the lives of premature babies has improved radically: at least 70%-80% of babies in their 23rd or 24th week of gestation now survive long-term. ...

Doctors are increasingly uneasy about aborting babies who could be born alive. “If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell, who last year published a book showing images of foetuses’ facial expressions and “walking” movements taken with a form of 3-D ultrasound.

Read the article, it even has some statements from "fetuses" who survived abortion and magically transformed into adult humans.

Thanks to my lovely wife for passing along this picture of Cindy Sheehan waiting for someone, anyone, to show up for her book signing.

Now that she's been divorced by her husband and dumped by the left, maybe she should start dating others in similar circumstances, like Michael Moore.

Idempotent: An operation with no side-effects. Mostly used in math for things like identity matrixes, and used in C programming to describe functions that don't modify anything in the caller's scope other than by-reference parameters.

My brother sent me this video from Japan in which a dozen 5-year-old girls strap meat to their heads and get chased around by some sort of giant lizard. Thanks Google!

Along with the left's lament that there are more people in jail now than ever, even though crime is dropping (gee, think there's a connection?), it's amazing how simple logic rarely comes into play in the politics of law enforcement. In Britain, officials are encouraging more women to report rape but are also concerned that their conviction rate is falling.

RAPE attacks are increasing rapidly in England and Wales, but the number of cases that end in a successful prosecution has fallen to a record low.

According to government figures published yesterday,only one in eighteen rapes reported to police ends with the suspect being punished, although government ministers have pledged to increase the number of convictions. ...

It is the fall in the conviction rate to 5.6 per cent which will cause most disappointment to the Government, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and police. They have succeeded in encouraging more and more women to come forward to report rape but still too many cases never get into court.

The women who are least likely to come forward are the women who know that their case will be the toughest to prosecute. Encouraging more rape victims to report is, of course, a good idea, but it will also tend to push the conviction rate down. However, putting more rapists in jail is good, even if the process results in a lower conviction rate overall. I suppose there's some conviction rate that would be so low that it would be wasteful, but I don't know what it would be.

From an article about apportioning blame for rape:

Although the number of rapes reported to the police has gone up in recent years, the number of convictions has stayed constant, producing a dramatic drop in the conviction rate from 33 per cent in 1977 to just over 5 per cent today.

If the number of convictions has really stayed constant despite far more reportings, that's a strong indication that many of the additional reportings are false claims... but this possiblity isn't even discussed due to the twisted logic of law enforcement politics.

Just about everyone has seen this already, but I feel like I have to mention that ex Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer says UFOs are real and warns that America might be trying to start an intergalactic war. Yes, for real.

A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.”

By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth.

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

So, be warned. Bush = Space Hitler.

My brother pointed me to a fascinating and lengthy list of human archetypes on a page hosted by some sort of nonsensical spiritual healer. So, ignore the source of the information but peruse the dozens of detailed descriptions she gives for different kinds of people. The first use for the list that comes to mind is as a primer for creating characters for a book or movie.

I believe that many rape accusations are completely spurious and that women who falsely accuse men of rape should be thrown in jail, but I'm not sure what to make of the idea that "drunken consent is still consent".

WOMEN who are raped while drunk face losing the chance to bring their attackers to justice after a legal ruling on the eve of new licensing laws.

A High Court judge yesterday threw out the case of a student who claimed that she was raped while drunk and unconscious on the basis that “drunken consent is still consent”. ...

The prosecution in the rape case had said it could not go on after the woman admitted that she could not remember whether she gave consent or not or whether sex had taken place. The jury at Swansea Crown Court was told: “Drunken consent is still consent.” ...

She told the jury that she had no recollection of events but insisted that she would not have agreed to sex with the man.

If you have no recollection, and there are no other witnesses, merely insisting that you wouldn't have wanted to have sex with they guy shouldn't be enough to support a rape prosecution. However, it seems like there's a world of difference between being drunk and being unconscious. If a woman is drunk and gives consent, then that's consent and there's no rape, even if she regrets it the next morning. But an unconscious person can't consent to anything, and if it can be proven that the woman was unconscious at the time of sex then that should be considered rape (unless she gave consent beforehand or there are other unusual circumstances).

Those on the left's fringe (though they tend to overshadow the rest of the left) enjoy comparing President Bush to Hitler and so forth, so let's hope they devote some attention to examples of real fascism.

Russia moved Wednesday to impose greater government control over charities and other nongovernmental organizations, including some of the world's most prominent, in what critics described as the Kremlin's latest effort to stifle civil society and democracy. The lower house of Parliament gave preliminary approval to legislation that would require tens of thousands of Russian organizations to register with the Ministry of Justice, impose restrictions on their ability to accept donations or hire foreigners and prohibit foreign organizations from opening branches in Russia. The legislation could yet be significantly revised, but if it is approved as now written it would force organizations like the Ford Foundation, Greenpeace and Amnesty International to close their offices in Russia and re-register instead as purely Russian organizations - something the legislation, in an apparent contradiction, appears to disallow.

The government in Moscow must be getting pretty shaky if they're afraid of actual unrest.

Some of the bill's supporters defended it as an effort to bring order to the registration of 450,000 nongovernmental organizations. But others said it was aimed at preventing foreign efforts to support political opposition movements, like the one that swept to power in Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" last fall.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Russians do move to sweep their government clean of the ex-Communists and other strongmen who have taken it over. I just hope they don't end up ceding their East to China.

Unlike the "cool mom" who got sentenced to 30 years in jail for having sex with a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, a "cool teacher" received no jail time after having sex with her 14-year-old student. See? I told you the 30-year sentence was excessive.

A female teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday to having sex with a 14-year-old student, avoiding prison as part of a plea agreement.

Debra Lafave, 25, whose sensational case made tabloid headlines, will serve three years of house arrest and seven years' probation. She pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery. ...

The boy told investigators the two had sex in a classroom at the school, located in Temple Terrace near Tampa, in her Riverview town house and once in a vehicle while his 15-year-old cousin drove them around Marion County.

The best part? Prosecutors apparently bought the defense's argument that Mrs. Lafave was simply too attractive to be sent to jail.

After Tuesday's hearing, Lafave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons, said the plea was "a fair resolution of this case." Asked how she felt afterward, Lafave said "tired."

Fitzgibbons said in July that plea negotiations had broken off because prosecutors insisted on prison time, which he said would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as Lafave.

It doesn't really sound fair, but at least I won't have to worry about ever being sent to prison.

(HT: James Taranto, again!)

In response to the earlier story about Chris Matthews excusing evil as a "different perspective", Mr. Matthews sent an email to RedState.org.

I told the students that my way to deal with terrorists was to do what Golda Meir did after the killing of Israeli athletes at the Olympics: track them down and kill them one by one and be rough about it.

I don't know why the reporter chose to ignore my clear statement was the appropriate response to terorism, why he chose to skip to my strong belief that we need to get behind this massive hatred we're facing in the Muslim world.

Check with the University for confirmation. I was invited by the political science students. I'm pretty sure they taped it because that had an audi-visual person there putting on my microphone.

Anyway there were many witnesses who can recall what I said if somebody asks.

Chris Matthews

So it appears that his earlier quotes were taken out of context.

(HT: James Taranto.)