William Sulik has a link to this Salon article on the modern holiday of Halloween.

One Pilgrim's Walk. I think this is a blog out of Fresno also.

Update: Mr. Muncey advises that he is blogging out of Merced, but he is in the Diocese of Fresno. So I keep the title of the "most respected blog in north-central Fresno county. Go check out his site.

More on the Freemason threat

Mark Byron has another post on the Freemasons and points out that the Southern Baptists, the Assemblies of God and Missouri Synod Lutherans have edicts against membership in the Freemasons just like the more toney and respectable high church orthodox types [just a gratuitous swipe to see if you're paying attention.] Just exactly who are the members the Freemasons? Episcopalians?

Keep your eye on Kathryn Lively. It looks like she has some strongly heretical Quaker tendencies.

On the other hand check out these results from the Beliefnet test:

1. Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2. Roman Catholic (100%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (86%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (82%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (80%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (72%)
7. Orthodox Judaism (69%)
8. Sikhism (60%)
9. Islam (59%)
10. Bahá'í Faith (57%)
11. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (52%)
12. Hinduism (51%)
13. Reform Judaism (49%)
14. Liberal Quakers (47%)
15. Jehovah's Witness (46%)
16. Unitarian Universalism (37%)
17. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (32%)
18. Jainism (26%)
19. New Thought (22%)
20. Scientology (22%)
21. Mahayana Buddhism (20%)
22. Neo-Pagan (20%)
23. Theravada Buddhism (19%)
24. New Age (18%)
25. Nontheist (17%)
26. Secular Humanism (14%)
27. Taoism (12%)

Truly Great Moments in Sports and Life

Instapundit.com posts on virtue, and wouldn't it be great if this kind of thing happened in elementary and secondary schools.

That was one odd "memorial service."

Fox News carried the Wellstone "memorial" service. I watched the part with Wellstone's son ruing that he wouldn't be able to horn in for a moment at the victory celebration next Tuesday, a victory celebration that he would certainly be at this Tuesday, and then he was thanking everyone for putting on such a great event.

Now, we all demonstrate grief differently, but it took me well into this guy's speech to realize this was the guy who had just lost his mother, father and a sister. I thought he was a local celebrity warming up the crowd or the media manager for the Wellstone campaign.

Rand Simberg agrees. Jesse Ventura found the whole event tacky. And Jonah Goldberg nicely deconstructs the meaning of this tasteless event:

That is what was so offensive about that rally: It shamelessly used Wellstone's death for partisan advantage while its organizers cynically accused their opponents of doing precisely that. Blaming others for something awful you've done is perhaps the defining attribute of Bill Clinton and his legacy on the Democratic party.

There may be no deep meaning here. Actually, Simberg is right. It was macabre.

Is it important to have good teeth for your job?

The Raven has a link to a "counterscript" you can use to turn the table on telemarketers. Here is the link to the script. You can print it out and have it ready by your telephone. I like the idea of working your way through the script and finding out what kind of toothpaste the telemarketer prefers.

Go forth and prosper.

VodkaPundit is absolutely right. The period between 1968 and 1983 were scary and awful. As my ode to Jimmy Carter notes, my cohort of the baby boomer generation came pretty close to reaping the whirlwind that the older cohort had sown.

Why we don't trust the media

[Via Ombudsgod] Harry Stein, who at one time wrote the ethics column for Esquire, describes how he was smeared by the media.

Further Reflections: On further thought, Stein was smeared by the "media." He was smeared by a particular newspaper, manned by unrepetant leftists with a political agenda to "bork" a possible appointee to the Federal Reserve Board. However, these tactics are all too common. But don't call what happened to Stein "McCarthyism;" the left has the trademard on that.

This will make Larry, the Serbian Orthodox Cowboy, famous.

The View from the Core - Guest Column 10/28/02

Preliminary observations on Freemasons and other scary things

The principle problem with being part of a secret conspiratorial group dedicated to world domination is that everyone takes you too serious and your power is never anywhere near what it is advertised to be. [The only exception to this rule are the Stonecutters: famous for the mantra:

Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!Stonecutters .]

Take the Freemasons, for example. For a super-secret organization controlling the business and financial sinews of early America (quick look at your money), they had the unenviable record of being taken down by rural rubes during the 1820's. The Anti-Masonic movement was kicked off by the belief that the Masons had fixed a murder trial [See this pro-Mason site for details of the murder], fueled the Anti-Masonic political parties which formed one tributary leading to the Whigs, and eventually led to the election of the illustrious12th President Of The U.S., Millard Fillmore, who started his political career as a delegate to an Anti-Masonic party conference.

Which pretty well establishes that one way to attract attention is to be a secretive conspiratorial group.

Joshua Claybourn' wrote a post on the subject of Masonry, asking why Masonry is such a concern. I frankly don't know. I provided a comment that suggested that the principle concern was that Freemasonry was syncretic. By promoting a view of the Brotherhood of Man, Freemasonry implicitly or explicitly viewed Christianity as being a sect or cult, no different than any other cult or sect. Joshua's response was that view was incorrect and that Masonry demanded only an adherence to a belief in God, but that all other views were acceptable.

Maybe so. Let's be clear here. I don't have a brief against Masonry, but the Masonry has historically had a touch-and-go relationship with the rest of society. The uneasy relationship between Masonry and everyone else has traditionally rested on two concerns: (a) Freemasonry traditionally presented itself as secretive and conspiratorial and (b) it purported to offer a religious view which its adherents contended was superior to revealed religion. Perhaps, the Masons of today are nothing more than Rotary with funny hats and strange rituals which no one takes seriously anymore, but there is evidence that, once upon a time, people did take it all very seriously. The odd history of the pre-Whig parties is one example.

Likewise, other traditional religions, such as the Greek Orthodox, have adopted a position similar to that of Catholicism.

This post offers a Catholic position on the problems of Masonry, which are viewed as (a) conspiracy and (b) the promotion of a "rational" or "natural" religion.

And here is another post with a long excerpt from Cardinal Law about Catholic perceptions concerning Masonry:

Perhaps a religious naturalism is better than no religious belief at all, but for the professing Christian it represents a retreat from the Gospel. ...Not only does Freemasonry see itself as a religion, but it sees itself as the universal religion, while Christianity is simply another of the dozens of sects whose particular opinions have divided mankind over the ages. ...Its religion is that general one of nature and primitive revelation—handed down to us from some ancient and patriarchal priesthood — in which all men may agree and in which no men can differ. It inculcates the practice of virtue, but supplies no scheme of redemption for sin...

Are these perceptions correct? I would be suprised if they were not correct at one point in the history of Freemasonry. Freemasonry clearly developed during the Enlightenment and sought to promote the philosophies of the Enlightenment. The ideas of "natural" religion and Chirstianity being a sect on a par with other sects was entirely consistent with Enlightenment ideas. Has it moved away from those founding ideas? I'm sure it has. Do we have better things to worry about than that the Masons were about to overthrow established relitions? I wish we had nothing better to do; it would beat talking about terrorism.

Finally, it is true that an organization that demands simply a belief in God is not necessarily syncretic. I belong to Rotary, and while religious belief is not a requirement, Rotary meetings do start with invocations that are typically quite vanilla in mentioning "God" or "Lord" and do not get into specifics. [Interestingly, the strong fundamentalist/protestants, i.e. "Christians," in the group usually take exception to this practice as watering down true religious belief. In other words, they are concerned with a tendency to syncretism in Rotary. Me, personally, I tend to ignore the invocation since it's not a part of my faith. So we all work out the issue of syncretism in our own ways.] But Rotary doesn't come equipped with a philosophy that may have the effect of displacing subsidiary religious tenets. That is probably where the problem with Masonry is perceived, and that may frankly remain a serious concern. For example, if Rotary began to require its membership to believe in a Supreme Being and wrapped itself up in religious rituals and blood-oaths and made no distinctions between Islam, Budhism or Christianity, I would be out of there in a flash. That may not seem enlightened in this day and age, but to me the First Commandment means that a person shouldn't put himself in a position where he may have a religious "conflict of loyalty." I may respect, admire and love my fellow Rotarians, but not all of them are taking the same path to salvation as that which has been laid out for me and I can't pretend that they are.

Again, I suspect that the rituals and funny hats aspect of Masonry aren't taken seriously anymore. My point, though, has been to look at the issue of why Masonry has provoked the widespread reaction it actually has provoked.

Thank Goodness for NRO because I couldn't find this story at the Fresno Bee Online site

Court unseals documents naming Davis in fund-raising case.

Going to the story, it sounds thin. No details are provided about Davis' involvement in Nathanson's bribery claim. Purportedly Davis "approached" Nathanson to "assist" friends and supporters with matters before the California Coastal Commision. The article doesn't mention pay-offs or bribery. "Approaching" beauracrats to "assist" friends and supporters is called "politics." On the other hand, it is interesting that Davis has been fighting the release of these documents for two years. But it doesn't sound like any fireworks are going to emerge until after next Tuesday.

I would normally suspect the Bee of suppressing news that would inconvenience Democrats, and they certainly have a track record for doing that, but the instigator of the release appears to be the Sacramento Bee, which is a sister publication of the Fresno Bee (and of some Minneapolis newspaper. The StarTrib???) So, it doesn't seem a matter of policy so much as a tardy internet maintenance system.

Ipse Dixit is getting Durer's woodcut "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" tattooed on his back. OK. Interesting subject. Why not something from Hieronymus Bosch?

Or Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Penner would want "Night Hawks."

Just thinking out loud here.

This is worth another decade of penance

As long as I'm in a Michael Moore loathing state of mind, let me direct you to Rachel Lucas's post aptly entitled "Michael Moore, you are such an idiot." Reading it inspires such a good feeling of loathing for that pompous vermin that it must be sinful. [I mean the good feelings the post inspires, not the post.] Though, I can't precisely identify what sin it might be. Calumny perhaps. [Good sin, calumny, and not carcinogenic.]

Remember Michael Moore, who only wanted to know on September 11 why a state that had voted for Gore had been unfairly targeted. Well, according to this review, Michael Moore's latest movie bites. Just thought you should know. Pass it on.

I just found another Fresno blogger at phemy's Xanga Site. Now that there is someone else out here, I may have to relinquish the title.

The coming Ice Age.

Increasingly salty Mediterranean favors ice sheet growth. As they say, developing....

Credit where credit is due department

According to Andrew Sullivan, Michelle Malkin deserves credit for questioning the assumption that the sniper serial killer was white.

Today is the Feast Day of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Go to this link to learn about the individuals in this group who lost their lives to the side that conventionally is depicted as being on the side of tolerance and liberty.

Here is Jonah Goldberg's thoughts on the interesting phenomenon of the media constant loud proclaimation that the sniper had to be an "angry white male" compared to the muted commentary on his actual profile as a convert to Islam.

Mon Dieu

California falls to France. See: this site.

Killer Zombie alert

The OmbudsGod is doing his part to combat the Killer Zombie of "factoids" that become a part of urban legend. In this case, dealing with domestic violence, rape and the percentage of men who molest. Let's be ever vigilant against those Killer Zombies who refuse to die.

Western Civilization sans Western Europe

Brothers Judd Blog, the Hegel of Blogville, has an astute essay on why Europe will not overtake America as an economic or cultural hegemon. Judd writes:

Ultimately, what is most wrong about this essay is that it is premised on a Wilsonian belief that nations are a function of race. Mr. Kupchan seems to think that Europe got where it is and will stay there or rise higher because of Europeans. In fact, it was Western Civilization as a whole that elevated Europe and that made it and its bastard children, from America to Australia, into "The West". It was ideas, not people. That is why the epicenter of the West is located today in the United States, a society more diverse than any other on Earth, which turns Latinos, Africans and Asians, and Jews, Hindus, and Moslems, as well as European Christians, into genuine Westerners. And just as the ideas that make up Western Civilization--freedom chief among them--have proven eminently salable to people of other cultures here in America, so these ideas have caught on in several significant non-European countries and are straining to break through in several others.

Read the full essay.

As Robert Heinlein said "It doesn't pay for a prophet to be too precise."

I hope you all remember when the media was profiling the sniper as a white male between 20 and 40 with conservative political leanings who it was that said it would turn out to be an African-American male convert to Islam.

Nah, it wasn't me.

But it wasn't the professionals either.

Big Media Looking Stupid

Editors, J-School and a professional esprit de corps and according to Amish Tech Support, they still can't find Alabama with "both hands and a map."

Perpetual Virginity of Mary explained, and, yes, I'm talking to you, Penner.

Excuse the internecine office squabble going on with my Mennonite partner. Penner has been smirking at me for a while about the concept the St. Joseph would have put up with a PV wife. I suggested that judging the mores of a First Century Jew by 21st century standards was fairly parochial, and that St. Joseph was no more likely to have "relations" with the Mother of God than he was to have "relations" in the Holy of Holies. He accused me of being condescending. I logically counterpointed by threatening to call the INS.

Anyhow, Mark Shea makes the point better than I can. [Which is why he makes the big money with his blog.]

Come to think of it, it was Shea's post on the discovery of the ossuary of "James" that kicked off this latest round of the Thirty Years War.

One of the fun things about having a blog site is to see where people are coming from. I have run across some good, eclectic sites that way. This one is interesting - Forums - Vatican rejects plan to deal with child molestors. Apparently, this is a bulletin board for afficionados of "Shadow Run," which I assume is some Dungeons and Dragons-like game premised upon Science and Magic in the far future, or I could be wrong. Anyhow, there is a rip-roaring discussion going on over there about whether there is a Constitutional basis for the priest-penitent privilege. The answer is "no, but there ought to be." It's amazing, though, the interests groups that are organized out there on the web, and what catches their interest. [Although someone who runs a Catholic/law/history/science-fiction oriented blog can't afford to be too judgmental.]

More WW II History

I really am not that interested in WW II history. It's too recent to be really interesting; which, oddly, is why it should be interesting. For example, the guy who taught me to fence sabre was a Polish POW during the war and I remember talking to him about his experiences during the first days of the war. He was fortunate to be assigned to the German front, or he would have been murdered like his fellow officers.

Anyhow, I got into an argument with the other partner last night about - of all things - the significance of American supply to the Soviets. That partner is stealth leftist and got very emotional when I asserted that American supplies were substantial and material to Soviet success. I was hooted at for among other things suggesting that the allies could even get supplies to Russia. I pointed out - accurately that supply went through Archangel, and had to explain where Archangel was, only to be told that it was frozen 6 months of the year. I suggested supplies over the Himalayas, but if memory serves that's how the Chinese Nationalists were supplied. I completely forgot the importance of the Persian corridor.

Anyhow, feeling like I had dropped into an alternate universe, I did some web research. Here's, what I turned up:

Lecture 14: The Origins of the Cold War:

This was obviously a major shift in policy for under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, the United States had shipped enormous quantities of war materiel to the Soviets, including almost 15,000 planes, 7000 tanks, 52,000 jeeps and almost 400,000 trucks

Which shows substantial raw numbers, without showing how significant this was to the Russian war effort. So, let's go to....

STALIN'S YANKS: Lend-Lease Vehicles on the Eastern Front:

During the early days of Operation Barbarossa, when the Red Army was losing a hundred or more of its obsolete battle tanks and inadequately armed and armored "tankettes" each day to the advancing Germans, Stalin approached the Allies with urgent requests for all manner of military and humanitarian aid. At the time, only Britain was able to respond (and it had its own problems in the Western Desert) and deliveries of aircraft, vehicles, and strategic materials were underway by September, 1941. By June 30, 1942, the expiry date of the first Aid Protocol hammered out between the new Allies, over 3,000 aircraft, 2,000 tanks, 30,000 other vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, oil, and other necessities had made their way to Russia.
By the end of the war, the Allies had sent over 14,000 aircraft and 12,000 battle tanks. This represented about 10% of the total Russian production during the war in either category. The Allies also sent at least 425,000 trucks, halftracks, and other assorted motor vehicles - more than the Germans produced during the war and far more than the Soviets were able to produce for themselves. Certainly one of the most important ingredients in the eventual Soviet victory was the 6x6 Studebaker truck.

That's better. Also, the importance of the transport vehicles - jeeps and Studebakers - can't be minimized. My recollection is that a majority of Soviet transportation was American by the end of the war. Here's another interesting source...

Soviet Union Factbook - Lend-Lease:

The role of Lend/Lease AFVs in the Soviet war effort has been the source of bitter controversy, as some Western statements tell how decisive they were, while Soviet statements generally denigrating it as inconsequential. However, it should not be forgotten that Great Britain sent 14 percent of her's total tank production to the Soviet Union, even though they outproduced Great Britain threefold in tanks, and this in a period when the British Army had a serious shortage of tanks in North Africa. The vast quantities of American trucks with USA serials provided, were so common in Eastern Europe in 1944/45, that common folk-lore interpreted the stenciled letters as Ubiyat Sukinsyna Adolfa - Kill that Son-of-a-bitch Adolf.

Obviously, Stalin didn't view American supply efforts as unimportant. And it really wasn't in light of the fact that it amounted to $11 Billion by war's end. Here is aComplete List of Lend Lease to Russia including atomic materials. If you go through, it you will see that mountains of foodstuff, chemicals and parts were shipped to the Soviet Union - apparently despite the fact that it was impossible to get to them. The significance of parts and chemicals cannot be discounted. War efforts stop when the ball bearings run out.

I just find it amazing that people generally of the left are so emotional about denying the fact that American supply of the Soviet Union occurred, and that that supply played a material role in winning the war.

Burial Box of St. James Found?

The joint Evangelical/Catholic statement can be found at First Things.

Mark Shea links to an article on a recent archeological find of an ossuary from Jesus' time bearing the inscription "James, Brother of Jesus, son of Joseph." [Cue spooky music.] The best part are the comments to the post, where conceptions and misconceptions are ventilated. I particularly like Shea's comment that in the "relic crazed early church," no one claimed any relics of the BVM. It's like everyone made the "assumption" that she made the Assumption.

Neat site with legal resources.LLRX.com Front Page

Neat site with blogging-related articles atLLRX.com Book Store

Testimony

[Via William Sulik] Peggy Noonan writes about the mysteries of the Rosary. I won't pretend to be someone who prays the Rosary, but Noonan makes the attraction of the Rosary real to me.

No Peace Keeps itself.

In On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, the Historian Donald Kagan looks at five conflicts - the Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic War, World War I, World War II and the Cuban Missile Conflict - through the lens of a lifetime of study to distill the causes of war. His conclusion was that no peace maintains itself and that war results from strategic miscalculations where one party fails to act with sufficient strength to win, but not weak enough to avoid conflict. Kagan notes the initial Athenian decision to support Corcyra as a classic of strategic miscalculation. Corcyra was a major maritime power which was threatened by Athen's nemesis, Corinth. Athens couldn't allow Corcyra's triremes to fall into Corintian hands since that would tip the balance of naval power away from Athens.

But Athens didn't want to provoke Sparta by showing strong support for a colony that nominally fell with Spara's sphere of influence. [Corcyra was a colony of Corinth, and Corinth was an ally of Sparta.]

The question facing Athens was whether it should take a hands-off policy to Corcyra, and allow Corinth to become the predominant naval power in the region, or back Corcyra and accept war with Sparta as inevitable.

The answer it chose was to try to take a mid-course, which provoked Sparta and failed to ensure that Corcyra's fleet would be a factor supporting Athens. Athens sent 10 triremes to support Corcyra, which initially took a defensive position in favor of Corcyra, but intervened only when Corcyra's fleet was being destroyed. This lackluster start provoked Corinth and failed to deter Sparta. The Twenty plus years of the Peleponnesian War commenced and ended with Athen's ruin.

Read the rest of Kagan's book for his repeated point for slow learners that charting out a middle point where one power fails to prepare for war or to credibly demonstrate its determination to protect its honor leads to war.

Which brings me to a person who mastered the Athenian policy of too weak to capitulate but not strong enough to win - Jimmy Carter. In The Meaning of Jimmy Carter, Eleanor Clift writes:

When Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, Carter couldn’t believe the Soviet foreign minister would sit across from him in the Oval Office and lie about his country’s intentions. Carter declined to intervene militarily while various news commentators ridiculed him for his naiveté in trusting the Russians. He pulled American athletes out of the Olympic games scheduled the following year in Moscow, and he angered farmers by barring American grain sales to the Soviet Union. But he didn’t do anything that didn’t come under the broad heading of diplomacy. A decade later, the Soviets left Afghanistan, their army decimated and defeated, and the cold war ended without a missile being fired.

We all know that Ms. Clift has managed to ignore the fact that Ronald Reagan was President during this critical period, and he understood that peace could be maintained by a democracy only if its determination to protect itself was credible. But let me tell you what I was doing during this period when President Carter was bravely facing the uncertainties of the world through nuanced and calculated diplomacy.

I was learning to speak Russian. Like other people my age who emerged into political maturity post-Vietnam, I heard nothing but that the winds of historical change were sweeping away democracy, capitalism and American interests. American military power was a paper tiger. Carter was elected on the promise that he would repudiate the old cold-war mindset. Andrew Young was giving speeches condemning America and Britain as racists in the U.N. Then several years into his presidency, Carter suddenly realized that he really was dealing with lying dictators set on world domination, but because he had communicated to the Kremlin that he was the "prison bitch" of the diplomatic world, Carter had no choice but to up the ante in a fit of overreaction. I remember being 20 at U.C. Davis when the first Afghanistan crisis was emerging amid talk of reinstituting the draft. So I took Russian. It galled me no end to think that I was going to get drafted by this clown who had spent years talking down the military and American patriotism, but was now going to insist that my tail cover his botched view of the world. If I got drafted, I was going into intelligence. Congress went out of session in the summer of 1980, I turned 21 in August - too old for the draft registration that went into effect in October of that year [yes, children, there was no draft registration between 1975 and 1980, and registration was reinstituted under Jimmy Carter], I went to law school that summer, I voted for Reagan with the rest of the post-Vietnam cohort of the baby boom, and, to make a long story short, Reagan won the Cold War. But don't tell me that Jimmy Carter did anything to preserve the peace. Four more years of Carter, and there would have been war because Carter could never have communicated a credible intent to protect American honor and interests to those that he had to concede at the end of his administration were enemies of American democracy.

David Heddle has a Reformed take on a joint unofficial Evangelical/Catholic document on the differences "that are thought" to divide the two groups. It does sound like they went for studied ambiguity at best. At worst [or best, depending on which team you're rooting for], it sounds like the RC's are ahead on points.

In L.A. Times poll, 15% of priest respondents Identify themselves as Gay or 'on Homosexual Side.'

More deep thoughts from American celebrities

In case you missed this, my Canadian partner Penner put me on to this Woody Harrelson essay in the Guardian entitled “I’m an American tired of American lies.” The essay had the singular effect of provoking Penner about attacks on “our” country. Here’s the essay with my observations:

The man who drives me to and from work is named Woody too. A relief to me, as it minimises the chance of my forgetting his name. I call him Woodman and he calls me Wood. He has become my best friend here, even though he's upset that I have quit drinking beer. He's smart, funny, and there's nothing he hasn't seen in 33 years behind the wheel of his black cab. He drove me for a while before I felt confident he liked me; he doesn't like people easily, especially if they have a rap for busting up black cabs.

I like this introduction. It sets up Woody as a regular guy. I mean he actually talks to the guy who drives him to and from his work. Woody apparently doesn’t know the word “chauffeur” since he uses the circumlocution “drives me to and from work.” Let’s not dwell on why Woody doesn’t want to use the word “chauffeur” since we have all seen Gosford Park and we know what kind of dissipated, useless people have “chauffeurs.”

Anyhow, Woody’s not like the typical plutocratic parasite who doesn’t even notice that his chauffeur exists. Woody’s cool, as can be seen by the fact that Woody has reached a level of sympatico with this guy who is older than him, employed by him, doesn’t go to the same parties as he does, and doesn’t have his political views. But obviously if you’re on the left you had better have some actual member of the working class to vouch for you, and Woodman will have to do.

Woodman and I agree about a lot of things, but one thing we can never agree about is Iraq. He thinks the only language Saddam understands is brute force. I don't believe we should be bombing cities in our quest for one man. We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid. Let's stop now. Thankfully, most of the Brits I talk to about the war are closer to me than to Woodman. Only your prime minister doesn't seem to have noticed.

Most of the Brits he’s talked to???? Woodman is obviously not an authentic member of the working class. Probably, Woodman hobnobs with Labor politicos, attends all the best SoHo parties and gets to write long screeds in the Guardian, while “Wood” goes to the local pub.

I have been here three months doing a play in the West End. I am having the time of my life. I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre. The play is great and the audiences have been a dream. Probably I should just relax, be happy and talk about the weather, but this war is under my skin - it affects my sleep.

Great profile in courage moment. Suck up to the readership, why don’t you.

I remember playing basketball with an Iraqi in the late 80s while Iran and Iraq were at war. I didn't know at the time that the US and Britain were supplying weapons to both sides. I asked why they were always at war with each other and he said something that stayed with me: "If it were up to the people, there would be peace. It's the governments that create war." And now my government is creating its second war in less than a year. No; war requires two combatants, so I should say "its second bombing campaign".

This is a real attempt at profundity. But it lacks any kind of real thought. I mean, there was no war between Iraq and Iran when the evil Shah [see later] was in power. The corrupt American foreign policy that propped up the Shah thwarted the will of the people who gave the corrupt American foreign policy the old what-for, and the next thing you know millions are dying as (a) the Iranian government attempts to unseat the godless Baathist regime and expand the revolution and (b) the corrupt Baathist regime attempts to capitalize on the shambles the revolution has made of the Iranian military and expand its hegemony. Odd, though, it seems that the answer might be to realize that sometimes the old corrupt government that recognized the virtue of regional stability but thwarted the will of the people might have some virtue, and this might be a reason to favor policies that may lead to changes in current noxious governments, but wouldn’t that be considered “imperialistic” by “Wood.”

The claim that America supplied both sides of the war is true only to the extent of Iran-Contra and American desires - however misguided - to obtain the release of political prisoners held by terrorists. [Check out this site.]

I went to the White House when Harvey Weinstein was showing Clinton the movie Welcome to Sarejevo, which I was in. I got a few moments alone with Clinton. Saddam throwing out the weapons inspectors was all over the news and I asked what he was going to do. His answer was very revealing. He said: "Everybody is telling me to bomb him. All the military are saying, 'You gotta bomb him.' But if even one innocent person died, I couldn't bear it." And I looked in his eyes and I believed him. Little did I know he was blocking humanitarian aid at the time, allowing the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

Argh, and that man was our president. Why couldn’t Clinton have looked at this pampered poseur and told him to mind his own damned business? Anyhow, it looks like Woody had some effect on American foreign policy since America didn’t bomb Iraq.

I am a father, and no amount of propaganda can convince me that half a million dead children is acceptable "collateral damage". The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn "agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war.

Jeez, Louise. Make up your mind. Either we blocked foreign aid, or we didn’t. It is a sad fact of life that money is fungible. If we provide Saddam with agricultural subsidies, that frees up money he can use to fund his secret police and nuclear arms development program. And why do the Iraqis and Saddam get a free pass in this. If it wasn’t for a secret policy apparatus of Soviet proportions, the Iraqis could have thrown out the person responsible for the continuation of the sanctions, or alternatively Saddam could have decided to de-militarize and allow free inspections of everything and ended the inspections. Or he could have liquidated his artwork, bank holdings and palaces and built hospitals and bought food. So, where is the locus of responsibility here?

A decade later, Shrub follows the same line: "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people." I'm sure half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their heads over that. I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies.

The money graf. So good of Wood to provide aid and comfort to opponents of America in the foreign press. By the way, the half-million number is an extrapolation of declining death rates in the 80's compared to actual death rates in the 90's. The numbers are obviously cooked and undependable. Nonetheless, a fair question is, would a dictatorship committed to military adventurism have simply killed off a larger number of children in some other way? Who knows? After all, in the Iran-Iraq War (1980 -1988) which was started by Iraq because of Iran’s instability, the Iraqis suffered an estimated 375,000 casualties, the equivalent of 5.6 million for a population the size of the United States. Then, came Kuwait. What would have been next? A nuclear attack on Tel Aviv, followed by an overwhelming Israeli nuclear response? A preemptive Israeli nuclear attack, perhaps? History is all contingency, and statecraft is often simply ad hoc efforts to prevent even worse foreseeable outcomes.

Again, though, one might think that Iraqi parents would scratch their head and say, well, maybe their suffering has something to do with the fact that Saddam invaded Kuwait, got Iraq’s butt kicked after being told to withdraw, engaged in eco-terrorism by torching Kuwait’s oil fields for no rational or military reason, has a secret police that tortures opponents, and is hoarding Iraq’s wealth instead of spending it on food and medicine. But, perhaps, that would expect too much from the spear carriers in Woody’s script.

The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold. As the natives were showering him with gifts and kindness, he wrote in his diary, "They do not bear arms ... They have no iron ... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Columbus is the perfect symbol of US foreign policy to this day.

Woody apparently harbors a virulent bigotry against the Italians. Or against Hispanics. What is it about “darker” Southern Europeans that Woody fears. By the way, what does this have to do with Woody’s thesis about American perfidy in Iraq. It isn’t American government that “lied” about Columbus. The depiction of Columbus as a hero who set sail into the unknown despite skepticism - all of which is true incidentally - is a product of American culture.

This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them "hawks", but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist.

Woody is counseling war against France? Cool. Let’s go. But seriously, folks, I hadn’t heard that Belgium was a major supplier of Islamo-fascist terrorism, or controlled by a megalomaniac with a police state apparatus [look up just 6 paragraphs ago] attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. I like to think that if Croatia ever looks like Iraq, we will treat it like Germany in 1945.

To the men in Washington, the world is just a giant Monopoly board. Oddly enough, Americans generally know how the government works. The politicians do everything they can for the people - the people who put them in power. The giant industries that are polluting our planet as well as violating human rights worldwide are the ones nearest and dearest to the hearts of American politicians.

Hence, the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and policies regarding the National Forests and Parks.

But in wartime people lose their senses. There are flags and yellow ribbons and posters and every media outlet is beating the war drum and even sensible people can hear nothing else. In the US, God forbid you should suggest the war is unjust or that dropping cluster bombs from 30,000ft on a city is a cowardly act. When TV satirist Bill Maher made some dissenting remarks about the bombing of Afghanistan, Disney pulled the plug on him. In a country that lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job.

The horrors. A dull poseur who liked to pride himself on being “politically incorrect” by uttering politically correct nonsense irks the public, and the people who own the program respond to public demand. Normally, that kind of responsiveness is considered a good thing by the people Woody likes to hang with when he’s not bonding with his chauffeur and other servants, such as when the gays went after Dr. Laura and the left went after Coors beer or table grape growers for their politics. But, hey, it’s America. If Woody want to take the money he spends on chauffeurs and subsidize a show for Bill Maher on late-night, he can do it. No one will watch, but he can do it.

I read in a paper here about a woman who held out the part of her taxes that would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that idea, though in the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider money as a form of energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US government's energy focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over the past 30 years, this amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine that money going to preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable economy (as opposed to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of sucking dry).

This is a great idea. I personally am withholding money for (a) Clinton’s legal fees, (b) the substantial reserve liability that I as a taxpayer have for future sexual harassment claims that may arise because the “CEO” of my “corporation”couldn’t understand that you are not allowed to sexually gratify yourself with employees at the workplace and then hand out governmental jobs as a perk, (c) anything having to do with public improvements in West Virginia, (d) any subsidy having to do with abortion, and (e) anything else I can think of.

What, we don’t get to pick and choose that way?

I give in to Woodman, and we stop for a few beers. He asks me what I'd do in Bush's shoes. Easy: I'd honour Kyoto. Join the world court. I'd stop subsidising earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon. I'd shut down the nuclear power plants. So I already have $200bn saved from corporate welfare. I'd save another $100bn by stopping the war on non-corporate drugs. And I'd cut the defence budget in half so they'd have to get by on a measly $200bn a year. I've already saved half a trillion bucks by saying no to polluters and warmongers.

Then I'd give $300bn back to the taxpayers. I'd take the rest and pay the people teaching our children what they deserve. I'd put $100bn into alternative fuels and renewable energy. I'd revive the Chemurgy movement, which made the farmer the root of the economy, and make paper and fuel from wheat straw, rice straw and hemp. Not only would I attend, I'd sponsor the next Earth Summit. And, of course, I'd give myself a fat raise.

And this would solve the problem of Woody’s child being vaporized by a long range Korean nuke, or being killed as collateral damage by an Islamo-fascist, exactly how? Just by good vibes?

Woodman drops me at home and I ask if he likes my ideas. He offers a reluctant "yes". As he pulls away he yells out, "But I'd never vote for a man who can't handle a few pints at the end of the day!"

Great, Woody. Your chauffeur agrees with you. Or, maybe he is too polite to say directly what he really thinks. If you remember Gosford Park, you might have remembered how people “in service” could talk past their dim-witted “betters.”

Your chauffeur thinks you are a lightweight.

But, then, because you had the fortune to have a minor role playing a dim-wit on an already successful situation comedy, you now get ink to spread natterings that any intelligent person outgrew by the second year of college. You get to plant notions, that get spread as gospel truth, and you get to undermine your country’s foreign policy, making war more likely since dictators love to believe that dissent in a democracy means weakness.

As my friend Larry, the Serbian Orthodox cowboy, likes to say, "nice piece of ranchwork."

Cool Site of the day

Philosophy & Literature - arts, ideas, debate

Hitler wasn't Hitler in 1938

Jonah Goldberg's essay on the fatuity of using the comparison between Hitler and Saddam as the litmus test for military action ties into the point I tried to make earlier. If the appeasement argument is weak with respect to Iraq, why is it weak? Is the answer that Saddam is not Hitler and Iraq is not the Germany of 1938? So what. In 1938, Hitler wasn't Hitler either. Every argument that is now being advanced against war against Iraq could have been made - and in fact was made - in 1938. Goldberg's point that Hitler establishes a maximum point of evil, not a minimum, seems cogent.

Likewise, the riff that Iraq is not "imminently" capable of producing nuclear weaponse seems odd also. This argument seems to favor a scenario that until Iraq is minutes away from deployment, no action is morally or prudentially permissible. The point of the argument seems to envision a world where James Bond defeats the villian with 30 seconds left on the timer, rather than one where North Korea may have hoodwinked weapons inspectors and is now a nuclear power.

PatrickRuffini deconstructs political polling and issues a warning about Zogby in particular.

Via Mark Shea. Clive James realizes that the Bali bombing has done to the Australian gauchistas what 9/11 did to American leftists.

Pope John Paul II adds Luminous Mysteries to Rosary. See Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae

Rich Galen is right about the sniper and so much more:

Civilization, as we know it - or hope for it to be - is nothing more than a thin veneer. It takes good people, acting in concert, to keep that veneer in good repair.

I don't see how we can argue against Sulik in light of the guiding princniples of fairness and the sportsmanship in the context of an evolving standard of decency.

History

For no real reason except that I've wanted to for some time, I am reading Eusebius of Caesarea's The History of the Church. Eusebius has a passage in Book 2, chapters 13 - 15, where he discusses Peter's ministry in Rome. Eusebius who was writing in approximately the 330's accepted the tradition and the sources that put Peter in Rome. Although he was writing from a distance of nearly two centuries, there was certainly no political reason for him to accept Rome's Petrine claim if it wasn't established to the satisfaction of Christians of an earlier era.

Interestingly, according to Eusebius, Peter's arrival in Rome was preceded by that of Simon the Magus who was described in Acts 8 as follows:

"But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Sama'ria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, "'This man is that power of God which is called Great'. And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic."
"Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, 'Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.' But Peter said to him, 'Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! '" [ Acts 8:9-11, 18-20]

Hence, the etymology of "simony."

From Samaria, Simon made his way to Rome, only to be followed by Peter. Eusebius writes:

The evil power, who hates all that is good and plots against the salvation of men, constituted Simon at that time the father and author of such wickedness, as if to make him a mighty antagonist of the great, inspired apostles of our Saviour. For that divine and celestial grace which co-operates with its ministers, by their appearance and presence, quickly extinguished the kindled flame of evil, and humbled and cast down through them "every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God." Wherefore neither the conspiracy of Simon nor that of any of the others who arose at that period could accomplish anything in those apostolic times. For everything was conquered and subdued by the splendors of the truth and by the divine word itself which had but lately begun to shine from heaven upon men, and which was then flourishing upon earth, and dwelling in the apostles themselves. Immediately the above-mentioned impostor was smitten in the eyes of his mind by a divine and miraculous flash, and after the evil deeds done by him had been first detected by the apostle Peter in Judea, he fled and made a great journey across the sea from the East to the West, thinking that only thus could he live according to his mind. And coming to the city of Rome, by the mighty co-operation of that power which was lying in wait there, he was in a short time so successful in his undertaking that those who dwelt there honored him as a god by the erection of a statue. But this did not last long. For immediately, during the reign of Claudius, the all-good and gracious Providence, which watches over all things, led Peter, that strongest and greatest of the apostles, and the one who on account of his virtue was the speaker for all the others, to Rome s against this great corrupter of life. He like a noble commander of God, clad in divine armor, carried the costly merchandise of the light of the understanding from the East to those who dwelt in the West, proclaiming the light itself, and the word which brings salvation to souls, and preaching the kingdom of heaven.

This passage is noteworthy for several reasons. First, is the casual acceptance that Peter did make his way to Rome. Second, note the description of Peter as "that strongest and greatest of the apostles, and the one who on account of his virtue was the speaker for all the others." Third, the threat of Simon, who advocated a form of Gnosticism, clearly left its mark in the traditions and texts of the Church. There is probably a pretty interesting essay in Simon as the first and perhaps greatest challenge to orthodox Christianity.

Add this to the list of really cool reasons to be a red-head.

As I like to say, with me its not a matter of getting a tan, it's trying to neutralize the blue. Anyhow this Reuters article highlights yet another not very cool genetic trait:

"Red hair is the first visible human trait, or phenotype, that is linked to anesthetic requirement," Dr. Edwin Liem of the University of Louisville in Kentucky said in a statement.
"In a nutshell, redheads are likely to experience more pain from a given stimulus and therefore require more anesthesia to alleviate that pain," he added.

Great. Next science will prove that blondes score better on standardized intelligence tests.

Adding to the noise volume of the echo chamber, please note this Instapundit post offering this theory on why "lefty journalists" dislike fisking:

Herbert points to a recent effort of Tim Blair's as an example of Fisking done right. I also like this one, where Blair unpacks a lot of dumb hidden assumptions and exposes some rather creative use of quotations, which perhaps explains why so many lefty journalists dislike the very idea of a Fisking. Er, and of Tim Blair, it sometimes seems.

"Intellectually dishonest Righties."

With a perch on the History News Network, I am certainly going to pay attention to what Thomas A. Spencer, Assistant Professor of History at Northwest Missouri State Universtity, has to offer. I like history, and there's nothing like a finely crafted historical analogy to offer a fresh perspective on current events. I, of course, discussed his shot at Condi Rice's knowledge of military history, and I appreciate his observation that my post was "thoughtful." [We are long on thoughtful here at Lex Communis.] On that post, let me point out that I don't think a drive by Patton on Moscow would have been easy or even succesful. I leave that kind of thinking to my buddies who used to war-game with Victor Davis Hansen on the weekends. My point, though, was that there is a morality supporting the practice of preemption and that the easy and casual dismissal - with a sneer - of Ms. Rice's offhand statement that perhaps a preemptive strike against the Soviets to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power has more to do with a priori assumptions about America than it had to do with the facts.

Mr. Spencer also discounts the "appeasement" analogy as "weak" in relation to Iraq. It may well be, but I would be interested in hearing why. It is a central fact of human sociology that governments prepare for the last crisis. For the West, the paradigm in foreign policy is Hitler. Hitler was not confronted when he lacked the weapons of vast destruction because of a dominant group that feared the cost of war. That group talked about the complexities of peace and assured themselves that international systems would contain the Fascists. Everyone knew or should have known that Hitler would stop at nothing to acquire the weapons he wanted, and that he would use them. Postponing military action increased the death toll over the next decade by an unfathomable amount.

There is nothing immoral, corrupt or stupid from using the lessons of that history to analyze the Iraq case. It may be wrong, as it apparently was in 1956 when the Hitler of the moment was Nasser. But I have yet to read Mr. Spencer's argument to the contrary. A counter-argument informed by a historical perspective could be ingenious, informative and useful. Why isn't Saddam the modern equivalent of Hitler? Is it that his country is not militarily powerful enough? That his country occupies an unimportant region of the world? Perhaps American interests are not directly threatened? Is it that America should only utilize military power after evil, psychotic dicators build up their military power, create alliances, and hegemonize vast regions? [Sort of the old schoolyard notion that it is unfair to hit someone with glasses.] Some historical example should provide some notion or principle to criticize Bush's, and now with a flip from the retoric of their leaders, the Democrats', apparent march to war.

Instead what I read are frankly sneering and bitter attacks on "righties" and an elitist contempt for the blogosphere. Mr. Spencer doesn't have permalinks as near as I can tell, so if you have the desire, go to the post entitled "THE BASIC INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY OF THE RIGHTIES IN THE BLOGOSPHERE 10-11-02." Mr. Spencer's opening paragraph observes:

The more I read righty blogs and examine their thought processes, the more I am struck by the intellectual dishonesty of righties in the blogosphere. I understand that some folks process information differently and that's fine. Some folks can disagree with me and have very good reasons for doing so. However, many righties are not analyzing things to learn more about it or for the sake of informed argument, these folks are actually involving themselves in what is an attempt to simply discredit the viewpoint of anyone they disagree with.
It's a sort of intellectual dishonesty at best and perhaps intellectual McCarthyism at worst. In fact, it's generally quite anti-intellectual and the opinions they ultimately offer are seldom any more informed than the most bloviating pundit on television...."

Interestingly, Mr. Spencer also doesn't like Fox News (the "Faux News Network") because he feels that it offers only one sided opinions which "righties" feel at home with. Well, I guess that answers the eternal question of whether Alan Colmes is a potted plant. He is, and so is Greta Van Susteren and Gerardo.

I am certain that the right-wing blogosphere adheres to Sturgeon's law, but I will posit a theory here. I spent some time in academic circles as a student. UC Davis and UCLA, and one thing I found was the herd mentality of the liberal academic. I remember at both campuses, I experienced grade drops in two different classes after I ventured a moderate free-market position. Liberal academics are not used to hearing the other side of issues, and when they do on Fox or the blogosphere, they have very little tolerance for it. They do things like dropping their comment boxes and hurling accusations of McCarthyism. And why shouldn't they. It has always worked for them in the past.

They also don't like Fisking. I may generally agree. Fisking can have the effect of losing the forest in dismembering individual trees. On the other hand, feedback is important, and loose connections and spurious assumptions are best challenged immediately lest they enter the well established liberal folklore like "ten percent of the population is homosexual" or "domestic violence increases on Superbowl Sunday." It is odd, but true that the left offers a "target rich environment" for Fisking because of all its buried assumption. Michael Moore alone is good for a lifetime of fisking based upon specious analogies and bizarre logical leaps.

But why is there this current theme of criticising fisking. The left has always fisked. The shot at Condi Rice was nothing but fisking on the order of Calpundit's faux-fisk of the Gettysburg address. Dr. Rice was making an offhand comment for goodness sake. When the opportunity furnished itself, it was seized. So, let us not pretend that "fisking" is exclusively a practice of intellectually dishonest "righties."

Notes from Northern Ozplogistan

Ken Parrish is blogging - or "plogging" - from Darwin, Australia over at The Parish Pump... The sound of the transport aircraft airlifting victims from the Bali attack causes him to reflect that the Australian military presence needs to be beefed up in the north. After all, the threat to Australia is not from killer fairy shrimp invading from Antarctica. Australia's front door faces a dangerous neighborhood.

With the "third Monday in October" approaching, you may want to come up on all of the zany Supreme Court Hijinks over at Supreme Court Blog. Or, for a change of pace, see what a liberal's perspective is on the upcoming Supreme Court decisions over at Ignatz.

The Emperor has no clothes

A leftist says Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee. He's leaving the left because of its inherent, reflexive tradition of blaming America for everything, and because of its "no enemy to the left" tradition of excusing every leftist thug. This article is an interesting counterpoint to Alan Colmes' cross-examination tonight on Hannity & Colmes of Dinesh D'Souza's assertion that anti-Americanism has found a home on the Left. Colmes plays rhetorical games to deny the obvious. While there are scattered conservatives who have uttered statements that might be anti-American, the proud and overwhelming tradition of reflexive distrust of America is on the left. If it's a good thing, embrace the tradition. If it's not, change it. Don't pretend, though, that what everyone knows - even members of the left who can no longer stomach it - isn't true.

The Paris Underground is not a revolutionary movement, Otto.

law.com - Article [link requires registration] reports:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to uphold a decision preventing the California Department of Transportation from tearing down signs of protest from freeway overpasses while simultaneously allowing the American flag to fly.

Apparently, placing the American flags on freeway overpasses, while tearing down ad hoc messy and ugly signs protesting America, violates the First Amendment. The Law.com article indicates that a clincher argument was formed from the question about whether it would be constitutionally permissible to tear down all signs but those lauding the mayor. The question was met by mirth-filled chuckles.

Thus does the social contract fray from silly analogies.

Like it or not, we all live in this delightful paradise of diversity called America. Things which unite us are generally good; things which divide us are generally bad. The flag is the one symbol which Americans ought to be able to hold in common. The symbolism of the flag, denoting unity as it does, contributes to social peace which is a social good. Consequently, the flag should be given some recognition for the function it serves.

The alternative to an America committed to social peace is not attractive. A purpose of social peace is the perpetuation of that peace.

Like it or not, a mayor - or the President - is not America. The good of the President is not necessarily the good of society. Despite what they may think, politicians are not indispensible, they are not symbols and they are not the office they serve. [Although social order and peace requires a respect for the office, even if the person occupying the office is a second-rate Machievelli with the morals of a gopher in heat. Something by the way that conservatives seem to understand, while liberals continuously conflate the man with the office.]

So, the analogy is quite specious.

But rest assured, it won't be long when American flags and other symbols of American pride and values will be banished from the public square. Then, let us ask the heirs of a weakened and ennervated patriotism to sacrifice themselves in a battle of survival like World War II. I wonder what the response will be, and where the Ninth Circuit will be when we realize that the social capital of patriotism was emasculated by specious analogies.

Notes on the California Death Penalty as Stayner takes up what looks to be a long term residence on Death Row.

The Cary Stayner death penalty verdict caused me to question when the last California execution occurred. Penner says it was several years ago. A quick Google search turned up this note from our friends at Talkleft from late 2000:

Nearly 580 men and women are on California's death row, but only eight have been executed since state voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978. They're three times more likely to die of old age or illness than lethal injection, and more than 100 have been on death row in San Quentin for 15 years or longer.

It appears that these statistics haven't changed, and this despite a conservative judiciary.

Talkleft also had this prescient observation:

On Nov. 30, Stayner is expected to be sentenced in federal court to life without parole for the separate killing of Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong. Mariposa County District Attorney Christine A. Johnson said she won't decide whether to seek death for Stayner until after his federal sentencing.

''If Stayner were sentenced to death today, it's unlikely his execution, if it happens, would happen before 2015,'' said Peter Keane, dean of Golden Gate Law School.

Stayner is now 42. In 2017, he will be 59. Mrs. Sund would have been 61, her daughter would have been thirty-three, any grandchildren would have been a blessing.

It is odd, but it appears that the de facto abolition of capital punishment in California has gone unnoticed by the public.

Good parsing of the distinction between catecheis and apologetics, and why the distinction matters, over at Guard the Deposit.

Minute Particulars asks the very important question - one which each of us should ask ourselves every day - "Am I an idiot." Actually, the question is in reference to the Richard Dawkins paen to atheism which amounts to rationalism which leads to the revelation that when you die that is all there is so that life is precious so that it is important to leave behind a better world.

I stand united with Minute Particulars and say "Huh?" If you die dead, why should you care? Carpe diem. When you die, the world ends. I guess you can reach Dawkins' conclusion, but you can reach the other position just as - if not more - readily. Accordingly, it doesn't appear that his preferred position is rational. It actually appears quite sentimental, if not downright superstitious.

Stayner gets death penalty

The Fresno Bee reports:

Jim Oppliger, Fresno County assistant district attorney, has put two murderers on death row. He said the verdict was unusually swift, adding that "I thought the tactics of the defense were wrong in playing the psychological part." Fresno defense lawyer Ernest Kinney said three factors led to the decision: the three victims, a clear confession and the enormity of the case.
"You can't think of a bigger case in the last 20 years," he said.
Many people left the courthouse with tight faces. All of the jurors were escorted to their cars by sheriff's deputies; only one juror left through the front door of the courthouse.
"I don't think anybody won today," the juror contacted Wednesday night said. "I don't ever want to have to do something like that again." The juror admitted that counseling may be needed: "I used to be pretty happy-go-lucky. ... Now, well, I just don't know. I never shook so bad in my life."

Stayner is obviously evil. In Catholic theology, evil is a defect or an omission from the good. The psychological testimony illustrated the things that were missing from Stayner's character, things like prudence, fortitude, compassion and empathy. The causal explanation for why those characteristics were missing doesn't change the fact that they were missing. Stayner is a monster. He may have been made that way, and we may have compassion for his history, but he remains a monster. Any person who would brutally kill other innocent, defenseless people for a momentary sexual thrill is a monster.

But Stayner is a monster with a soul. He is not outside the of the possibility of redemption. We can therefore pray that he will cooperate with God's freely offered grace in repenting and making penance. Perhaps, through such a process he can recover his humanity. We can also pray for the souls of the four innocent women slaughtered by this monster.

Neat Astronomical discovery; silly name for a planet

ScienceDaily Magazine reports the discovery of the largest planetary/planetismal body orbiting outside Pluto in the Oort belt:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the largest object in the solar system ever seen since the discovery of Pluto 72 years ago.
Approximately half the size of Pluto, the icy world 2002 LM60, dubbed "Quaoar" (pronounced kwa-whar) by its discoverers, is the farthest object in the solar system ever to be resolved by a telescope. It was initially detected by a ground-based telescope, as simply a dot of light, until astronomers aimed the powerful Hubble telescope at it.
Quaoar is about 4 billion miles away from Earth, well over a billion miles farther away than Pluto. Unlike Pluto, its orbit around the Sun is very circular, even more so than most of the planetary-class bodies in the solar system.

Historical Reflections on the Prudence of Procrastination


Mark Byron is engaging in an academic discussion with Thomas M. Spencer who blogs on the History News Network. Read the Byron/Spencer debate, but what caught my eye was an essay which Mr. Spencer, who is assistant professor of history at Northwest Missouri State University, posted that criticizes Condi Rice's knowledge of history under the provocative title "THE PROFOUND HISTORICAL IGNORANCE OF CONDI RICE, NOTED SOVIET EXPERT 10-02-02." The essay seems to be chock-a-block full of buried assumptions that go unchallenged in the academic world. The following is Mr. Spencer's essay points, together with my observations.


"You've got to read this from an article on CNN:

The Bush team was also busy making its case in private, because it is only behind closed doors that lawmakers and Bush aides feel it is safe to debate the implications of waging war against a country that has not first attacked the U.S. or its interests. As Rice briefed a group of House members last week, a Democrat challenged her argument for a pre-emptive strike. By that reasoning, he said, we should have invaded the Soviet Union in 1948 to keep them from getting nuclear weapons. "In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe," Rice replied, "that was probably a reasonable thing to do.""

This is an interesting what-if question which seems fraught with significant questions. What was the American expectation of the speed with which the Soviets would develope nuclear weapons? Although the left likes to posture that concerns about Soviet espionage was a McCarthyite fiction, nuclear espionage did occur and certainly saved the Soviets time in their development of nuclear weapons. If America knew that they would be facing a world of Mutually Assured Destruction within a decade, would it have been unreasonable for America and its democratic allies to extirpate that threat? If that possibility was contemplated, wouldn't it have been as immorally negligent to ignore the nascent threat of a Stalinist nuclear power as it was to ignore threat of Hitler in 1938? These are all interesting questions, and all things being equal, I would argue for the morality of a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union before it acquired nuclear weapons, as I would argue for the morality of a time traveller assasinating Hitler in 1920. Both seem morally easy solutions to the question, notwithstanding the technically difficult dimensions of the problem.

Mr. Spencer is not interested in this questions though. His point is to lampoon Ms. Rice's knowledge of the relevant history by reiterating his version of common sense.

"I'm guessing that Rice didn't take many military history courses on her PhD? Does she realize what an astonishingly ignorant and ridiculous thing that is to say? World War III would've been preferable to the Cold War? Rice is supposed to be a Soviet expert, right? It certainly doesn't appear so after that statement. An invasion of the Soviet Union in 1948 would've been damn near suicidal. The Soviets' army at that point was probably unrivaled in the world."

Maybe Mr. Spencer's point is so obviously true that it doesn't require an examination of the relevant data, but I remember my revered and conventionally liberal twelfth grade history professor making the same point in 1977. I recall him saying - and this was post-Vietnam - "you kids have to realize that the United States can't do just anything it wants." The next day, several of the Avalon-Hill war-gaming wonks had lists of orders of battle and forces that pretty well established that the U.S. army could have rolled through the Russians in 1945. I don't know if they were right, but I know the question is not obviously settled.

This tenuous conclusion seems supported by the historical fact that the Soviets throughout WWII were kept afloat by American imports. Under Lend-Lease during the war, the United States had shipped enormous quantities of war materiel to the Soviets, including almost 15,000 planes, 7000 tanks, 52,000 jeeps and almost 400,000 trucks. The elimination of the American material pipeline would have had dramatic effect on Soviet military capabilities. This factor is frequently overlooked by the conventional left which seems to systematically minimize American contribution to the Soviet campaign against Hitler.

So, it may have been "darn near suicidal" to "invade" Russia, or maybe it wouldn't have been. Perhaps without Allied supplies, with its supply lines stretched thin, with a sullen and rebellious population throughout its internal borders, conceding control of the air to the Allies, and facing an extremely powerful, well-trained, well-supplied and well-led Allied army, Russia in 1945 would have collapsed. These are interesting questions which probably deserve analysis rather than a reliance on an emotional a priori assumption of American impotence in the face of opposition.

America did not then have the interest in fighting Russia in 1945, in part because Stalin had been depicted as "Uncle Joe" since 1942, but that begs Ms. Rice's point about the morality of such an intervention.

Mr. Spencer goes for the kill in his final paragraph.

"This statement by Rice also begs a rather obvious question: do Condi, W, Dick and the boys even understand that people DIE in wars? Do they even care? It doesn't appear so. Foreign policy isn't all about geopolitical gamesmanship -- thousands can live and die from strategic "missteps" like wars. This isn't a game of Risk. She clearly doesn't grasp that at all. Boy, what a crack team Bush has behind his foreign policy, eh?"

Odd, this. Do "the boys" understand or care that people die in wars? The answer is undoubtedly "yes." This seems to be a variation of the riff that the Democrats are playing that military action could "force" Saddam to unleash his weapons of mass destruction. This seems to be either a craven or foolish trope. Either Saddam has such weapons now or he doesn't. If he doesn't have them now, this currently popular argument seems to concede that he will use them once he has them. This would seem to mandate immediate military action since the course which reduces risk is prompt intervention before such weapons can be acquired by Saddam.

Another question is whether Mr. Spencer understands or cares that more people can die by putting off military action until such action is an absolute necessity? The example of Britain's failure to curb early German efforts at rearmement and militarism can't be entirely forgotten by anyone with even a slight interest in history. Another example, quite frankly, is 1945. The failure of the American government to solve the problem of the Soviet Union was irresponsible, and would have been viewed as criminally irresponsible by a population devastated by a nuclear exchange, which Soviet policy held was survivable. In such an alternate history - from which we were spared only because the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction actually worked, notwithstanding the left's best efforts to undermine this policy, which they viewed as "irrational" - the surviving population might well have been able to make the case for a preemptionist foreign policy. In our history, in a world which was "three minutes from midnight" for nearly two decades, it is not that difficult to make a similar case.

Even so with Saddam. If saving lives today means ten times the deaths tomorrow, the hard foreign policy choice, and the moral choice, may be to avoid emulating Neville Chamberlain. Good leaders make hard choices among difficult options. Procrastination may be an option, but let's not pretend that it is always risk-free.

Let's throw out all the election rules, and just let the judges pick the winner

From Discriminations at its spiffy new site comes this post on Cynthia McKinney's latest effort to throw out the election results that retired her for the usual idiotic reason.

This is rather frightening

Bill Cork excerpts some correspondence from Robert Sungenis. Sungenis's letter observes:

About Mr. Cork: He is a liberal Catholic who denies some of the most basic doctrines of the Catholic faith. I know this from previous correspondence with him. Moreover, his family has Jewish roots, and thus any critique we make of Zionist plans in Palestine, Mr. Cork automatically associates with anti-semitism, which is ludicrous. Our critique of Mr. Cork will expose him for the liberal agenda he is plotting, but masquerading as a concerned Catholic

Notice the buried assumption that since Cork's family has "Jewish roots," his charges of anti-Semitism are a priori without merit? Similarly, Cork in The Case of Robert Sungenis cites the following Sungenis' passage:

President Roosevelt had a part in this himself. Being of Jewish ancestry, he was sympathetic to their cause.

Anyone with an ounce of historical knowledge remembers that the Nazis circulated a similar story for what they perceived to be political advantage. I first heard the story when I was in 10th grade, and although it wasn't perceived as being embarassing to Roosevelt, it was an example of the Nazis misjudging American society. So, why would Sungenis recount the story?

More alarming is Sungenis's apparent habit of equating racial background with political attitudes. I can think of only one group in the last fifty years who engaged in that kind of analysis. [OK, there are two, and the other one are American liberals.] As Americans and Catholics we certainly do not need a revival of this dangerous weltenschauing.

UMC Pastor leaves denomination

From the Abilene, Texas Reporter-News Online: Local News - Pastor's departure brings national church struggle to local level:

In a letter to the Wylie UMC congregation, Ray listed numerous grievances against the national church, particularly his belief that church leaders will not discipline clergy who defy church law concerning homosexual ordinations and the blessing of same-sex unions.
"I think if the average United Methodist Church member knew what was happening across the nation, they would be furious," Ray said.
Ray's former bishop, Max Whitfield, disagreed with Ray's contention that people will be leaving the United Methodist Church in droves.

Pastor Ray didn't just leave the UMC, he took most of the congregation with him.

Here's some News for Bishop Whitfield. In Fresno, one entire congregation - out of approximately seven in town - has pulled out of the UMC because of the UMC hierarchy's refusal to enforce the Book of Discipline's prohibition against same-sex marriages while enforcing disciplinary rules against pastors who want the Book of Discipline enforced. And the local Bishop's refusal to affirm that Christ was resurrected didn't help any. There are nice old ladies who had been Methodists there entire life who think that staying Methodist is a kind of sin. The Methodist hiearchy wants to deny the fact that their denomination has been hemorraging members, but samizdat Methodist publications indicate that Methodism has dropped from approximately 20 million members in 1970 to less than 7 million today. The average person who might be willing to commit himself to a demanding faith in Jesus Christ doesn't feel that he needs to share the building with people who want to get together and chant hyms to Isis or Sophia, or respect a hiearchy which permits that kind of silliness.

Keep you head in the sand, Bishop, and remember "Open doors, open hearts, open minds, empty minds, empty churches."

Ah, Nostalgia

Take James Lileks tour of Time Squares evolution through post cards and photos.

You know, I don't remember Republican celebrities talking this way about the Clinton Administration

From the Media Research Center CyberAlert comes this excerpt from Jessica Lange's comments at a Spanish film festival where she was getting an award:

“I hate Bush,” actress Jessica Lange spewed last week when receiving an award at a film festival in Spain. She added: “I despise him and his entire administration” and that “what Bush intends to do with Iraq is unconstitutional, immoral and illegal.”
The actress best-known for roles in films ten-plus years ago, such as King Kong, Tootsie and Cape Fear, also said she was “ashamed to come from the United States” and, since the “atmosphere in my country is poisonous, intolerable for those of us who are not right-wing,” she thanked the festival organizers for “allowing me to get out” of the U.S. for “a few days.”

I am going to hazard the assertion that conservative celebrities never went to foreign countries to criticize the President's foreign policy initiatives during the Clinton Administration. Which raises the interesting observation that Leftist/Liberal celebrities really do view their allegience to the United States as conditional and secondary to their status as "children of the Universe." James Lileks observes in reference the to Senator Wellstone:

That is because you still have “Desiderata” on your office wall, despite the fact that you are not a child of the universe. If you want proof, consult your W2 and note that the Universe is not withholding any payroll taxes. You are a citizen of the United States, and it would be nice if you could act accordingly.

Ditto for Ms. Lange. Although perhaps we should set up a system where these people could elect to be Citizens of the United States or Citizens of the United Nations, but not both at the same time, and not American citizens on just those occasions when they like the President.

Thank you, James Lileks

In his latest take-down - this time of Senator Paul Wellstone - James Lileks does a riff on the passive-agressive argument style. Lileks notes:

Questions. Always questions. In modern debate, we’ve been taught to respect the people who Question Authority, not the people who provide authoritative answers. The very act of questioning is Noble, regardless of the idiocy of the query.

Thank you for that insight. The vapid "Question Authority" slogan has always set my teeth on edge for some hitherto nebulous reason. I realize now that the answer is that it epitomizes an easy and cowardly way out of doing the intellectual heavy lifting required by real thought.

My new slogan: Don't question authority; be an authority.

Then, you have a basis to question other authorities.

[Via Mark Shea] You can learn a lot from skimming through the Rename "The Two Towers" to Something Less Offensive Petition Petition Petition. The first is that you shouldn't mess with people who take their Tolkien seriously. The second would be redundant.

cut on the bias discusses the forensic psychology of the murderer or murderers in the Maryland spree/mass/serial murders.

In case you missed this - important changes in California Litigation

CB&M Monthly Memo reports that on September 10, 2002 signed into law legislation that (a) extended California's statute of limitations for personal injury from one year to two years and (b) extended the time for noticing a motion for summary judgment in California from 28 days to 75 days. The new law goes into effect on January 1, 2003.

Cary Stayner Trial update

The Fresno Bee reports:

Thursday, in a place no parent would want to be, the mother and father of convicted killer Cary Stayner told a jury about the boy they knew. In hopes of staving off an execution, they talked about the obedient child, the artistic soul, the ideal son and the damaged man they visit in jail.

"My son is sick right now; he's very sick," said Delbert Stayner, raising his voice over the objection of prosecutors. Even murder convictions didn't change that father's love, didn't shake that desire to see his only remaining son go on living.

The "situation" comes to the parish where I was married and my three daughters were baptized. Please pray that this is not true.

This Torrecelli thing has me longing for the days when this kind of political gamesmanship was decently kept in smoke-filled room and out of the public view, and politicians would have the common decency to lie about it. I saw Alan Colmes on Hannity and Colmes last night begin his question to a Dem operative with the observation about the need to make every vote count. I take it, then, that the Dem voters in the primary were vegetables who haven't been disenfranchised. The Dems let a corrupt politician run. The machine-like majority of the New Jersey Democrat party dutifully voted for Torricelli. Now, when it's obvious that Torrecelli will lose before all the voters, they get religion. Great, just what our society needs, another example of political actions without consequences.

I need to rethink my values

Like everyone else, I have taken the Ethical Philosophy Test. Here, are my scores, and I swear they are wrong:

1. Aristotle (100%)
2. Mill (100%)
3. Rand (100%)
4. Aquinas (96%)
5. Sartre (91%)
6. Kant (88%)
7. Prescriptivism (75%)
8. Plato (71%)
9. Hume (70%)
10. Bentham (60%)
11. Nietzsche (55%)
12. Epicureans (51%)
13. Ockham (50%)
14. Hobbes (45%)
15. Stoics (45%)
16. Augustine (43%)
17. Spinoza (36%)
18. Noddings (35%)
19. Cynics (21%)

I don't think I am a utilitarian. I read Rand when I was 20 and rejected all of her works. However, I do read St. Augustine like some people read John Grisham. Sartre at 91%? I don't think so. Well, maybe the test was skewed by not having a John Locke/Robert Heinlein axis.

Read this for Lileks take down of the knuckle-dragging, mouth breathing types who still believe that Cuba is a worker's paradise. That phrase allows me to share this memory, which seems all the more surreal on reflection. In 1993 I was doing some litigation for a company headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, which caused me to spend some time in that delightful town. One time I wandered into a used bookstore where I overheard, the owner mention to someone who was obviously a regular that he always listened to Radio Havana because that was the only place he could get truthful news. It's something that you look back on and wonder if it really happened.

Preach it, Brother Rand

Ozone hole update

Antartic Ozone hole shrinks and splits in two. The hole is smaller than it has been at any time since 1988. This is interesting:

Ozone depletion occurs only at very low temperatures under the influence of solar radiation. As a result, the ozone hole only appears over the cold region of Antarctica, when the sun returns after the polar winter.

Great site for SF wonks

Futurist at the movies reviews SF movies based on their plausibility and entertainment value. [OK, this is another Penner lead.]

Cool Site of the Day plus an obscure Science Fiction reference.

Via the California Lawyer magazine, via Penner, check out Copyright Website which is cool for two reasons:

(a) it provides "practical and relevant copyright information for anyone navigating the net." [California Lawyer, October 2002, p. 14.] and

(b) it makes gratuitous references to Dune. "as spice is to Dune, information is to the web; the spice must flow."

The Myth of the English Reformation- Article by the History Channel seems to have an interesting corrective approach to the English Reformation. For example, yes, there really was one, and it was pretty heavily Calvinist.