"A dragon lives forever; but not so little boys. Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys."

Rich Galen is recycling his essay from last year on the topic of the "first day of school," but it's really about parenthood. It has particular resonance for me this year because I took the Widget to her first day of Kindergarden last week, which doesn't seem possible since it was only yesterday that I was taking her to her first day of daycare in her baby carrier.

LA Cathedral

If I did this right here is the LA Times graphic of the new LA Cathedral. Now, my aesthetic ability is so questionable that they've revoked my critical judgment, but when I first saw drawings of the Cathedral, my immediate reaction was "Hey, it looks like the ski lodge at Squaw Valley." On further reflection though, I realize that it may actually evoke a memory of California Mission architecture. If so, it may stand the test of time.

Stayner Trial Update

The Stayner trial enters the sanity phase. I didn't realize this, but it appears that the guilt phase goes first, and that the defendant gets to put on evidence of sanity to negative the intent element, then there is a sanity phase, which seems redundant to the finding of guilt, and then there is the penalty phase. Anyhow, Stayner had a defense expert testify about his family history:

Stayner, too, was shaped by his environment, McInnes said. The kidnapping of his brother, Steven, when he, too, was just a boy. Molestation by an uncle who showed young Cary pictures of nude young girls that he could never erase from his mind. The return of Steven after seven years of sexual abuse. Steven's death in a motorcycle accident. The murder of a favorite uncle. A suicide attempt.
Those incidents and more fueled Stayner's mental illness and his break with reality in 1999, she said.
He thought the world was ending, that he was receiving messages from television and others commanding him to "do something that he didn't want to do," McInnes said. And he saw dotted lines on the necks of people around him, shortly before he strangled Sund and Silvina and cut Juli's throat.
Then, McInnes said, he could no longer distinguish right from wrong or comprehend his actions -- the legal test for insanity.
Evidence in the sanity phase of the trial is expected to conclude this week.

I suspect that Stayner will lose the sanity phase also - the jury has already found against him once on the sanity issue and the evidence that he was not able to understand his actions is nonexistent. On the other hand, this evidence is really designed to have an effect on the only phase that matters in this trial, which is the penalty phase.

The Angry Clam continues a loney struggle to remain the last rational person in Berkeley with this post on the appropriate way to commemorate the one-year anniversary of 9/11. What the heck is this stuff with candle-vigils and national days of service? Would that have been an appropriate anniversary commemoration on 12/7/42? Heck no. The only appropriate commemoration of 9/11/01 is to bomb some significant asset of those who were part of or supported that treacherous unprovoked attack on defenseless Americans.

Correction: I am informed by said truculent crustacean that he is no longer matriculating at Berkeley. He has climbed the greasy pole of education and clawed his way into one of America's elite educational institutions - the Harvard of the West - UCLA Law School. [Of course, out here we refer to Harvard as "the UCLA of the East."] 20+ years ago, UCLA was rated as one of the nation's Ten Most Respected Law Schools, a rating which it should have retained unless it went heavy into the Critical Legal studies nonsense.

Military Secrets Update

Tanks being shipped to Mid-east. [Via Megan McArdle.]

Chiropractors are "Doctor." Dentists are "Doctors." Educators are "Doctors." But holders of Juris Doctors are unethical if they call themselves "Doctors" or "J.D.'s." From William Sulik - who is a treasure trove of the obscure - comes this San Diego Bar Association Ethics Opinon that discusses the history of this ethical paradigm. [Thus endeth my bitter guerrilla campaign to acquire the same social status as the Ed.D.'s.]

Here is the link to a convert Catholic blogger writing on religious news and living in Spain -... ibidem ... The internet, isn't it cool.

Media values

Stuart Buck at The Buck Stops Here links to a USA Today article acknowledging that something like 200 people jumped out of the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11. During the last year, there have been hints here and there about this, but I have seen no numbers, and I missed the French filmmakers' documentary the one time it was aired. Last night Hannity & Colmes had Charley Daniels on to play a moving 9/11 song which PBS had refused to let him play on its July 4th show. Connect these dots with the Hillary Clinton piece several posts below - and factor in the incessant "I am an American" spots post 9/11 - and you have to wonder if the media weltanshauing doesn't include the view that Americans mustn't be provoked because we are inherently violent and irrational. What a strange view of a country that has proven both its ability for domestic tolerance - e.g., no synagogue burnings here - and forebearance in foreign affairs - e.g., no reparations required from Afghanistan.

Skakel innocent?

I have absolutely no brief against Michael Skakel. I'll admit that my gut reaction is that he is probably guilty, but I'm willing to chalk that one up to my ethnic dislike for the Kennedy clan. [Basically, as an Irish Catholic, I hate aristocrats - even if they are Irish Catholic aristocrats.] Anyhow, TalkLeft: Skakel: What Went Wrong makes an interesting case for Skakel's innocence. However, missing from TalkLeft's analysis are the many, many instances where Skakel confessed to murdering Moxley. Frankly, unless there was a convincing explanation for Skakel to confess to cold-blooded murder years later to complete strangers, I'm inclined to think that the jury had substantial evidence for its verdict.

Kennewick Man Update

From William Slawski at Delaware Law Office - a Delaware Legal Weblog - who apparently has figured out how to blog and bill - comes the definitive rundown on the Kennewick Man controversy. Kennewick Man, you will recall, was a Holocene era skeleton dating back approximately 8,500 years ago which had skeletal features suggesting that some immigration to North America came out of Europe. [Drawings of the reconstructed find looked like Jean Luc Picard.] Almost immediately various Native American groups began to cite their tribal stories and their religious belief that the skeletons of ancestors should not be disinterred for study. The Army Corps of Engineers obligingly buried the site under tons of concrete.

Now stop there for a moment. Eight thousand years ago. What were your ancestors doing at that time? Who knows? But if you are Caucasian you can bet that they weren’t in Europe. My Celtic ancestors arrived in their portions of Europe only about circa 500 BC, displacing earlier non-Indo-European peoples, and were displaced in turn by Germanic and Latin invaders within the next thousand years. There is approximately zero chance that the random skeleton unearthed in County Galway from the Holocene epoch has any connection to the modern Irish.

Yet, an implicit racism exists when it comes to Native Americans. Somehow Native Americans are immune from the turnover of populations that exists everywhere else, and somehow Native American oral tradition can actually trace back history in North America over eight thousand years, a claim unimaginable in European history outside of silly psuedo-scientific documentaries.

Fortunately for science, the Magistrate ignored the myths and superstitions that apparently ruled the Department of Interior during the 1990's. Mr. Slawski also has the opinion from which these quotes are gleaned.

On the burying of the archeological site:

In April 1998, the Corps buried the discovery site of the remains under approximately two million pounds of rubble and dirt, topped with 3700 willow, dogwood, and cottonwood plantings. COE 5873-74, DOI 2347-51, 2515. The lengthy administrative record that Defendants filed with this court documents only a portion of the process by which the decision to bury the site was made. Nevertheless, that record strongly suggests that the Corps' primary objective in covering the site was to prevent additional remains or artifacts from being discovered, not to "preserve" the site's archaeological value or to remedy a severe erosion control problem as Defendants have represented to this court.

On the notion that modern groups can claim the Kennewick Man as one of their own:

There is no reasoned starting point from which to evaluate whether a
shared group identity exists between the present-day Tribal Claimants and a particular earlier
group.

The Court relied on this pragmatic construction of the statute for the purpose of determining whether a modern group could claim seizin with respect to really, really old bones:

The statutory language also implies that the members must perceive themselves as part of a group and function as such. There must be at least some common elements of language, religion, customs, traditions, morals, arts, cuisine, and other cultural features; a common perspective on the world and the group's role within it; and shared experiences that are part of the group's erception of its history. See, e.g., DOI 3021-24, 7512, 8992, 9031-33, 10309. This commonality distinguishes the group and its members from other groups, and legitimizes the present-day group's authority to represent the interests of deceased members. See, S Rep No 101-473 9, DOI 0581, ("The requirement of continuity between present day Indian tribes and material from historic or prehistoric Indian tribes is intended to ensure that the claimant has a reasonable connection with the materials"). Retention of group identity over time also requires transmission of "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom...

The Court quite correctly concluded that no such group identity could be traced from the Holocene epoch:

“In other words, the available evidence is insufficient to either prove or disprove cultural or group continuity dating back 9,000 years.”

The Kennewick Man incident is important both as archeological data, and as an example of the harm that politics - now exclusively politically correct politics - can do to science.

Here is an LA Times article on that controversial statue of the Virgin Mary that appears to have been modeled on Michelle Pfeiffer.

I'm siding with the trooper on this one.

According to the LA Times' article Who You Calling 'Hon'? the traditional greeting in Baltimore is to call people "Hon," which sparked this law enforcement incident.

It is now at issue in a lawsuit filed against the Maryland State Police by a suburban Baltimore computer systems analyst who claims that a female state trooper went ballistic, arresting and mistreating him, after he called her "Hon" during an August 1999 traffic stop. When word of the lawsuit surfaced this summer, the "hon" case became a sensation on television news and radio talk shows.

I might consider going "ballistic" next time a bank clerk or phone marketer calls me by my first name.

Great Moments in Media Bias

Media Research Center CyberAlert shares this John Stossel report:

A holiday weekend video treat: How cable music channel VH1 turned booing of Senator Hillary Clinton into cheering.
Senator Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, as ABC's John Stossel illustrated in a July 20/20 special on media distortions, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event.

I'm certain that VH1 would explain that they were intending to eliminate rancorous political partisanship from an event that should have been uniting and not divisive. How come, then, political unity is never a virture when it involves a conservative politician or cause, at which point we celebrate the strength of our country in its tolerance of disunity?

Lit Crit

According to Mystique et Politique not only did Belloc not write the poem that starts "wherever the Catholic sun doth shine...," no one wrote that poem.

James Chen, who must be the only living conservative in San Franciso, has this before and after look at immigration policies over at Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

What Would Janet Reno Do? - A child living in a Communist country disappears on the way to the United States, and then resurfaces alongside relatives living in the East Coast. The relatives, also refugees from Communist tyranny, announce their intention to seek asylum for the child. Unfortunately for the child, one parent remains back at home and is unable to speak freely with American immigration authorities. Sound familiar?

No, it's not Elian Gonzales, but Jia Yukun, a 12-year-old Chinese girl who disappeared from San Francisco International Airport earlier this month and later turned up with relatives in Massachusetts. Her timing is better than Elian's, for if she had arrived on America's shores back in 2000, she might have found herself facing the barrel of a machine gun and 200 heavily armed INS officers trying to force her out of the country. Look for the John Ashcroft's Department of Justice to handle the situation differently from Janet Reno, whose strong-armed tactics eventually cost Bill Clinton's hand-picked successor Al Gore the 2000 Presidental Election. The irony of it all.

Thirty years from now, astute historians may well be pointing to the obscure story of Elian Gonzales as a "first-order counterfactual" and writing essays about "what if" Bill Clinton and Janet Reno hadn't sent in machine-gun carrying law enforcement agents into that house in Miami.

"If there has to be only one superpower on this planet, the United States is the best choice for the job."

Another litmus test between conservatives and liberals is their respective attitudes toward the United States' role in the world. Liberals feel some prurient reassurance in the notion that the world's premier democracy is secretly controlled by a hidden oligarchy which manipulates international crises for monetary gains. Conservatives accurately note that the United States' foreign policy provides a host of resources while generally asking nothing more from foreign populations than that they not trouble America's peace. Over at Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen there is this reminder:

Memmott, ends his piece with a quote from a returning refugee:
"We are thankful to the US and its allies for kicking out the Taliban. We have freedom and security. We are living peacefully."
This article should be distributed to every school child in America on September 11th with the simple message:
This is what we do.
This is what Americans do.
It should also be distributed to all 40,000 PKCs at that Summit in Johannesburg with THIS message:
The Afghan people got their nation back;
That is within the capability of the Earth's only superpower.
Nothing was asked in return;
Because the Earth's only superpower is the United States of America.

More litmus tests

You have to love the internet. In the course of making the point that while both the hard left and the hard right reject modern society, the right seems to have a better time in doing so, James Lileks writes:

... if they’re cultural conservatives, they retire to their version of Heston’s apartment in “The Omega Man,” surrounded by the remnants of Western glory, keeping to themselves, and venting their spleen now and then by burping off a few rounds at the moaning zombies outside in the darkened park.

Where else in the world would somebody make a cogent political metaphor out of Charlton Heston's forgotten classic, which all Omegaphiles remember was based on a Richard Matheson story and had been previously made into Vincent Price's Last Man on Earth. Oh, and by the way, Lileks is also correct about the left being a bunch of dour, life-hating, kill-joys.

Science vs. Faith

No, not evolution. See this article by the UK's Telegraph. news.telegraph.co.uk - Underclass is a myth, Left admits.

Great Moments in the First Amendment

Surprisingly, one issue that seems to crop up repeatedly is whether the wearing of "colors" is protected by the First Amendment or by various Civil Rights laws. In California, there have been a number of cases where a motorcycle gang [or, in their vernacular, a "club"] brings an action under the Unruh Act, which protects the right of people to associate with other people, when bars [aka "adult beverage vendors"] prohibit the wearing of "colors," which are the patches and other regalia by which one group of motorcycle enthusiasts distinguish themselves from other similar groups. It seems that bar owners have noticed a propensity for the destruction of property - chairs, windows, etc. - and personal injuries occuring when different groups of motorcycle enthusiasts get together while wearing their respective indicia of club allegiance.

When the bar owners enforce the "no-color" rules, the enthusiasts hire lawyers. [Now, stop there for a moment. These are motorcycle gangs. Why would any self-respecting motorcycle gang hide behind an attorney?]

Typically, California courts have been reluctant to accord Civil Rights status to "colors" and motorcycle gangs, but the issue is far from clear. [Penner had one of these cases a couple of years ago, where he succesfully defended the bar owner's "no colors" policy.]

Now comes SAMMARTANO V FIRST JUD. DIST. CT. in which the Ninth Circuit struck down a Nevada state court's "no colors" preliminary injunction under the First Amendment challenge. According to the San Francisco Daily Journal, "interestingly, a dozen of the the same bikers from the Branded Few and aother clubs - sporting their colors and chains - had no problem gaining entry to the 9th Circuit's San Francisco courthouse in February for arguments."

Good news for the Mongols, Hells Angels, Branded Few, Scream City and other vigorous proponents of an absolutist position on the First Amendment. Perhaps someday similar concern will be shown towards actual political speech.

I've never felt more ethnic empowerment

More news from the enraged ICBDP front. Under the heading Barkeeps boycott Boston Beer Co. this report:

Massachusetts bar owners are revolting against the makers of Sam Adams beer.
The barkeeps are refusing to sell Boston Beer Co. products, protesting company founder Jim Koch for ``kicking the Catholic Church when it's down.''

Here's another neat quote:

``We called the company and asked them to take back all the products,'' said Jim McGettrick, who owns the Beachcomber in Quincy. ``I just think it's unbelievable. Whatever his religion is, I would never go and desecrate his place of worship. The Catholic Church has enough problems without all of this from outsiders.''

[Actually, I threw that quote in so I could point out that the Sainted Mother of the Publisher of Lex Communis hails from Quincy, which is pronounced "Kwinzee" and not the way it's spelled. If things had worked out different, I could be sitting in the Beachcomber's tonight - actually, right now since it's almost 2:00 pm PST - and not ordering Sam Adams in a nifty Boston accent. I guess I could console myself by going to some Fresno Bar and not ordering Sam Adams in the flat-midwestern-with-an-Okie-twang we use in these parts.]

Also, the Diocese of New York - where the sacrilege occurred -has announced that it is satisfied by Boston Beer Co.'s apology. Great, but one can't help but think that if this was an issue that Rev. Jesse Jackson could wedge himself into, one of his family members or retainers would find themselves with a shiny new Sam Adams distributorship by next Tuesday.