Racism - It's a Black Thing

Racism - It's Not A Black Thing

Any fair-minded observer believes that O.J. was guilty. At least there was as much or more evidence of his guilt than for any other murderer on death row, but there are those who see the trial as a matter of right vs. might. as this yahoo snippet shows. As the unconsciously racist writer says,

What she found was someone whom people believed was probably guilty — but who'd been framed by the police... "It didn't really matter to the black population if Simpson was guilty or not. They knew the police lied," she says... "We say, 'So what? Cops always lie.' But if you're black, it's different. The black community doesn't really want justice — they've given up on justice — they just want equality.

And the racism does not stop at the whites. Says a black observer,

"I asked one of the people I interviewed, a professor, if anyone [in the black community] thought Simpson was guilty," Bikel says. "He said, 'I did, but I liked the verdict. When you're black in Los Angeles, every one of us is hassled.'... "It doesn't matter to blacks if Simpson was guilty or not. It's very striking and difficult [for whites] to understand... "What I discovered is that we really live in different countries — the [racial] divide is huge," she says. "We don't pay much attention to it . . . but when something like [the Simpson trial] happens, then we realize it's really two countries.

Two countries? So both sides think that there is a racial divide here, one that the founders never saw. Indeed, our system of justice is based upon the proposition that the power of the state is manifested in the criminal justice system, and that we must have checks on the state's police power. indeed, it is enshrined in our founding documents that, if the constable creates evidence, the only recourse that the people have is to acquit the defendant; that police misconduct must be punished in this, the only way that we have to exert the people's power over the system of justice - by acquittal.

There is really no racial component in this, yet our public discourse is so poisoned by racial - and racist - thinking that most of us can only see this with a racial filter. O.J.Simpson was indeed guilty, and the LAPD did indeed bring evidence that was stronger than that left by the killer. That the jury acquitted Simpson is actually a victory for justice, or at least a necessary exertion of the peoples power over the ultimate power over the police. If we did not have this power, well, then we would have nothing on Stalin's or Saddam's police state.


Back at the farm. Cindy She-Hen goes on dishonoring her son's good name, as this blog post has a fair roundup of the fatuity of it all.

Michael Yon

Michael Yon

I never do this, but never before have I read such a combination of great writing and information at the same time. This is no infotainment, but the dispatches of a very brave soul who is in deep, living and writing from Mosul, Iraq. He deserves our support, and our prayers.

After reading his latest dispatch of Michael Yon's Online Magazine, and then the archives, and signing up for email notifications of any updates, you will contribute. That's not an order, but it is a prediction. Yon's stuff is the best stuff I have seen yet coming out of Iraq. It compares well to the best stuff that came out of Vietnam. Michael Herr's Dispatches, finally, has some competition, at least in the literary sense. but the immediacy, and the reality, is absolutely mind-boggling.

Do not click the link unless you have time to read. Really. This stuff is riveting.

Sex With Women is Different

Sex With Women is Different

Yes, that headline is deliberately provocative, but I just couldn't resist it. It is, however, an accurate starting place for this essay. Recent research reveals that women do, indeed, have a startlingly different response to sexual stimuli than men do, which is completely congruent with the ages-old knowlege of humanity that women respond differently to sexual situations. What interests me today is more the way that the media use this research to push their agenda.

We start with this post at Gene Expression, one of my favorite blogs, where the discussions are frank, open, and anything but politically correct. There one can go to explore the relationship between our genes and our behavior without any agenda beyond the discovery of scientific truth. It is exactly the opposite of most media outlets, where facts are seen as convenient tools, or inconvenient obstacles, only there to help one make one's point. But GNXP is there with the facts, ma'am, only the facts. And today, the facts are these:

Men are only physically aroused by either male or female stimuli, and men do not exhibit a bisexual arousal pattern (i.e. men who are aroused by male stimuli are only aroused by male stimuli). Men who report being gay or ‘bisexual’ are also aroused only by male stimuli. Women, on the other hand, exhibit physical arousal to both male and female stimuli, which does not track their subjective/psychological arousal or their stated orientation (lesbians and straight women are physically aroused by both male and female stimuli).

Of course, it has not been a secret to zero base thinkers that women see the world through a sexual filter, but that fact is not a part of the common wisdom, and it is anything but politically correct. Even as research has demonstrated that female sexual arousal is nonspecific, whereas, in males, sexual arousal is strongly related to sexual orientation, our society is spending a large amount of effort "gender norming" various human activities, and trying really hard to get us to accept as normal the tiny portion of humanity who self-identify as male homosexuals. Thus the mainstream media use this research in articles such as "What Makes People Gay?" While this particular article offers a wide-ranging review of a lot of recent research, its beginning, its end, and especially its headline declare exactly what the "correct" result of the research should be. As hard as he tries to be even-handed, the author reveals his biases throughout the piece. And he never mentions that women get aroused at the sight of animals doing it. Or the fact that all women are bisexual. Or the fact that no men are.

Why it is so hard to just allow that human sexuality is incredibly complex, and varies hugely from person to person? Beyond our physical equipment, we have the mind, which is very different from each to the other. Not surprising, since we each have to write the software for this fine instrument ourselves, and do it at an extremely early stage of life. Now we can see proof that women have a relationship with their sexuality that is very different from that of men. We can now understand why a threeway with two girls is so much more satisfying for all concerned than one with two guys. We now know that the differences between the sexes are quite basic, and efforts to "norm" the sexes are doomed to failure. And we can appreciate one of the few examples of French culture that remains valid still ; Vive le difference!

The Death of Kyoto

The Death of Kyoto

As we forge ahead into the brave new world of the twenty first century, as junk science and propaganda continues to stymie the science fiction-future many of us anticipated (a world of rational improvements in the lot of mankind) we have to be content with small victories. The confusion and political grandstanding that has accompanied the climate changes seen in the last two decades, culminating in the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, seemed to be a victory of the forces intent on the pursuit of power rather than the improvement of life on Earth. But the forces of truth and rational thought fought back, resulting in the final victory over these blatantly political, power-grabbing protocols. At least, that's what Tony Blair meant when he said, at the G8 summit, ""There's no point in going back over the Kyoto debate, that is an argument that has been, and we can't resolve that, and we're not going to negotiate some new treaty on climate change at the G-8 summit." French President Jacques Chirac said essentially the same thing.

What the leaders at the G8 meeting realized is that Kyoto has failed. The sound bite that emerged in the mainstrean media on climate change reflected the U.S. change of position, with President George W. Bush saying that climate change is man-made and important to address. The point that is receiving less attention, but that is even more important, is the consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is essentially no longer relevant to international climate-change discussions. Most signatories will not be able or willing to meet Kyoto's targets and timetables, and the G-8 leaders said they will no longer criticize Washington for not abiding by Kyoto or participating in Kyoto-based discussions.

Now, this is a minor victory, to be sure, as both sides of the debate are now free to pursue other approaches to the perceived problem. No doubt the Greens will continue to press for legislation, and the West will continue to restrict the emission of carbon into the atmosphere. But the attempt to break the back of the Western economies had failed. Washington has shown no interest in any regulation that will cost too much, instead promoting new technologies. Of course, any attempt to promote technology by government is prone to corruption by pork barrel and single issue politics, but at least that is a positive boost to an economic sector, rather than a negative drag on the economy as a whole, as carbon restrictions are. And now China and India, along with the rest of the developing world, are back in the carbon wars with the rest of us, rather than being given a pass, as was done in the Kyoto protocol.

What has not changed in all of this, is the absolute fraudulence shown by both sides. No scientist claims that carbon dioxide reductions will result in any warming reduction within the lifetime of anyone now living, yet the debate is entirely focused on carbon reduction. If indeed we want to cool, or at least to slow the warming, of the Earth's atmosphere, why would we pursue a method that all can agree will not work for at least 100 years? Why would both sides pursue the use of Hydrogen, when it would only increase the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere? And, most strongly indicative of what is really going on here, if the Greens actually believe that carbon dioxide is the culprit, how can they continue to stand against Nuclear power? Nuclear is the only technology that can reduce carbon emissions on a significant scale, and is the only way that hydrogen makes any sense at all.

Whatever. We can rail against the stupidity of the world, but can do precious little to make it better. Small minded humans will continue to mendaciously obfuscate the truth, in the pursuit of the power they crave. Single interest politics will continue to be the engine of our governance, and needless, meaningless, or even harmful legislation will continue to be produced by the sausage factory in Washington D.C. We can at least revel in this small victory over the Kyoto protocol. Kofi Annan and the undeveloped world have failed, with their fifth column allies here at home, in their attempt to impoverish us. One can only hope that we are more vigilant, and act more decisively, against their next attack on our way of life.

Supremes Diverge

Supremes Diverge

Until recently, we had an idea of where the justices of the Supreme Court stood. But today, a couple of recent decisions show that the predictable votes of the polarised members can no longer be predicted. In one Thomas and Rehnquist departed from Scalia (and the lefties), and in another, unanimity prevailed in a case where it could have never been predicted. What is going on?

THE CASES: In the first case, Gonzales v. Raich, the right of states to allow medical use of marijuana without federal interference was rejected by a six to three margin. Sandra Day O'Connor joined Clarence Thoman and Chief Justice William Rehnquist in confirming the fact that private use of locally grown medicine has no impact on interstate commerce. It appears that Scalia and Kennedy voted as they did simply because they oppose marijuana legalization, since they have heretofore been reliable votes to restrict unbridled federal power. Now it sems that the high court can see interstate commerce in a situation within a single state, involving no commerce. It must be nice to exercise power in a millieu without rules. It must also be nice to legislate your own personal morality, under color of authority. The very highest authority in the land.

In the second case, the Supreme Court threw out the June 2002 conviction of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm for destroying Enron Corp. related documents, ruling unanimously that the jury instructions at the trial for the now-defunct company were improper.

The court ruled unanimously that the Houston jury that found Arthur Andersen LLP guilty of obstruction of justice was given overly broad instructions by the federal judge who presided at the trial.

As a result of the faulty instructions, the justices ruled, the firm was convicted without proof that its shredding of documents was deliberately intended to undermine a looming Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry in fall 2001. U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon should have instructed the jury that the law required the government to prove that Andersen knew it was breaking the law, the court ruled.

"Indeed, it is striking how little culpability the [judge's] instructions required," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in the opinion for the court. "For example, the jury was told that, 'even if [Andersen] honestly and sincerely believed that its conduct was lawful, you may find [it] guilty.' " Legal analysts said the decision was a major setback to the Justice Department's corporate crime prosecutions.

We can understand that an aggressive prosecutor will ignore the law when he believes that he can attain a conviction. What we can not understand is how the trial judge, and then the appeal panel, can allow this sort of official lawlessness, when the parental control then finds unanimously that the emperor in the case wore no clothing. Meanwhile, 28,000 employees are out of work, and a venerable firm that never intended to break the law has been destroyed. In effect, the Bush Administration destroyed the largest of the Big 6 accounting firms and they were not even guilty. It is the most basic of tenets of our system of laws that a perpetrator must have intent to commit a crime in order to be found guilty. This unanimous ruling by the Supremes sets us back upon that path. Maybe now some prosecutors will stop attempting to criminalize civil, commercial misbehavior.

What is more important is that people come to realize that careerism is rampant in the prosecutorial ranks, where winning and making headlines has become much more important than rooting out crime, or discovering the truth. Further, judges will often ignore the law, and even good sense, when they believe that a greater good will ensue. Just yesterday a famous pedophile went free, because Tom Sneddon, the prosecutor, filed charges against a man without having enough evidence to convict. Sneddon evidently believed that he had enough to convict, when all he had was a few whisps of questionable evidence, which he thought that he could hang on his weird defendant. Kudos to that jury, for following the law. Jacko was obviously a man who needs help, but the law requires a clear showing, within the evidence, of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Too bad the Anderson jury followed the herd, instead of the law.

My Friend the Leftist

My Friend the Leftist

Friendship. The word itself is strange, almost campy. What ship is this, that describes a man's relationship with other men? Aside from the ship, what indeed is the meaning of the word friend? An acquaintance? Or does the word imply a deeper bond, and how deep? I suspect that the meaning of friendship is different to each of us, as it can describe anything from the most frivolous acquaintanceship to the deepest pair bond between two men. For many men, a friend is someone with whom we would willingly walk into fire, should attempts at dissuasion fail. I put my own definition of the term up that high. Yet, do we have to agree with the personal philosophy of the man with whom we would walk into disaster?

I have a friend, we can call him Larry, with deeply held, deeply wrong, leftist beliefs. No bleeding heart on this guy, and a clearheaded view toward the racial divide in the country, and the world, as it really is. An entrepreneurial capitalist to boot. Yet this guy insists that America is always wrong. Not as a general rule, but case by case, every single time. He has never met a government program he didn't like, or that he thought was receiving enough money. Indeed, after over a half century roaming this planet, this fellow still thinks that government can be an effective force for positive change. And he sincerely believes that the craven fools who run under the democrat banner are inherently superior to the power mad hacks who self identify as republicans. The few truly committed leaders that emerge from time to time are dismissed as wrongheaded dreamers. To Larry, John Kasich was a fool, probably because he left politics just as his ability to wield power began to affect his thinking. Al Gore was a hero, not a self-serving power-craving sociopath who put his personal ambition above the nation's need to move ahead. Michael Moore produces documentaries, not propaganda with little regard for the truth. Al Franken might just save the world, if only enough people could be forced to listen to him, and Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar, even though Larry can not cite a single lie he ever told. Larry lives in the Bizarro World, where everything is reversed. Faced with Al Franken's ratings, he decides that Arbitron is a right-wing plot.

If you listen to talk radio, you will be familiar with the name Savage. Michael Savage is a reprehensible character who is difficult to listen to for very long. Very little of what he says is accurate, or makes much sense, but he nails a few ideas right on the head. The most correct thing that he says is that liberalism is a mental disease. That is so clearly true. It is the only explanation for Larry. Indeed, it explains a lot. It is not enough to say merely that lefties feel their politics, since many on the right also feel their own. And even touchy-feely bleeding heart liberals can explain and rationalize their misapprehension of world events. Few do, but some can. So, clearly it has been shown that they have a flaw in their logic circuits. Savage is close enough to the truth when he describes this as a mental disease. Larry is suffering from this mental disease.

So what can be done to alleviate Larry's suffering? He is resident in the intellectual New York City Kool-Aid world, so, since I am the only right-thinker he can get on the phone, he likes nothing better than to call me up and attempt to discuss at me the latest accusation that Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman have pre-masticated for his circle, and then he will anticipate my reaction. Me being me, however, I seldom answer with the preconceived response, which never sways him from his course. He will respond to whatever he has anticipated, and no demurrer on my part will get him to confront the facts of the case, whatever it is. In his world, American troops routinely practice torture and war crimes, Lt. Calley was never punished for his crimes at My Lai, no CEOs have been, or ever will be, sent to jail for stealing from or lying to the public, and, amazingly, Larry believes that an all-white jury would have acquitted OJ Simpson. In Larry's cracked calculus, Iraq=Vietnam, and wealth is a zero-sum game. Take from the rich and the poor will become richer. This from a guy who licenses biometric patents for a living. This from a guy who used to be a philosophy professor at a prestigious university. And somehow, this guy is still my friend. Go figure.

It seems to me that the best treatment for Larry's disease is to continue taking his calls, and treat his opinions as valid, even as he will not concede the same to mine. Continue pointing out the truth, and insisting on a certain rigor as concerns acceptable sources for facts (Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, and opinion columns are NOT acceptable sources for facts). Keep hoping that he will get better. And pray like crazy that no person like him ever achieves serious political power.

Republicans As Statists

Republicans As Statists

Statism may be too strong a term, so far, but there are ominous portents of a statist future for the Republican party. As Lord Acton warned repeatedly, the greater power a man or a group accretes to itself, the greater will become the use, and abuse, of that power. Today's Republican party, and President Bush, are a living embodiment of that idea, as they seek to award new entitlements and protections to the electorate in pursuit of the expansion of their incumbency and their sinecure.

I am an old style reactionary conservative, a Lincoln republican, with strong libertarian leanings. As late as Nixon's Vice presidency where, in his "Checkers" speech, he declaimed that his wife wore "a respectable Republican cloth coat," the Republicans were the party of the working man, and Republicans were the party that sought to create a smaller and less ambitious government. But today, what with the democrats retreating into the arms of an ever smaller coterie of elitists and leftists, the republicans have become emboldened to seek to extend their power into areas never before considered, and to serve their natural constituency less, as they turn to good old single interest politics. Their "big tent" has become more of a tent city, with the social conservatives, the neocons, and the libcons dwelling in their separate quarters in the republican campsite.

This phenomenon takes on a sinister meaning when we contemplate the inevitability of its continuing nature. Absent some major political cataclysm, the power of the national republicans shall grow in the years to come. Indeed, even if the democrats were not bent upon self-destruction, just the mechanics of electoral incumbency would not allow the left to take over the Senate for a decade. In the House, a sea change in political opinion would still not allow for a change in leadership for four years. And there is no chance of a democrat attaining the White House unless and until the war against us is over, or at least until the electorate feels safe from terror. And, just in case such a change in attitudes were possible, the national democrat party seems intent on making the public feel even less safe, showing no sign of a willingness to reverse course on that item any time soon.

So we find ourselves spiralling into the abyss, with a statist republican party "saving" us from an even more sinister leftism, and no end to it in view any time soon. It might be enough to induce one to consider suspending his blogging, in frustration at the futility of the debate, of the inability of an increasingly small minority in the middle to attract supporters from either side to come to their senses. As those on the right become more and more righteous, and those on the left more shrill and even more divorced from reality, one might consider leaving the debate.

But no. Now is not the time to withdraw from the ebb and flow of ideas. Not the time to retire. It is the time to reinvigorate, reenergize, and double, even treble one's efforts. There are those who have been satisfied to see the lethargy in this space of late, and have speculated that this site might go dark. Banish the thought. Expect the opposite. More, not less. More often. Verbose. Informed. Opinionated. Frequent. Right.

Congress Outdoes Itself

Congress Outdoes Itself

Amazingly, the United States Congress, an institution that has demonstrated that it has absolutely no ability to feel embarrassment, has gone over its previous level of self abasement, and has wasted an entire week on absolutely nothing of substance. Don't get me wrong though, as any week that the Congress does nothing is a week that the rest of us are protected from the evil that that institution does.

Of course, if you were Michael Schiavo, you would never agree that they have done nothing, in a week that saw them pass a bill of attainder that seeks to prevent Michael's wife from having her last wishes carried out. No matter that Terry Schiavo's brain has been replaced by spinal fluid, her parents' baseless hopes for her recovery, overruled by a process that has been reviewed by 17 judges in 6 courts, have been given new life by our fearless leaders in Washington. We can only pray to God that there is no longer a piece of her brain that survives that can perceive pain. Yet this exercise in the unfeeling abuse of power, masquerading as sensitivity, was only a side show to last week's display of craven pandering by the 535 power and ego driven fools.

No, the real show was the hearing, at the Committee of Government Reform, on Baseball. It is hard to understand what figleaf they plan to hide behind, but our legislators are threatening to legislate the use of performance enhancing drugs. No matter that most of these drugs are illegal already. No matter that baseball is an entertainment, rather than a strictly athletic, occupation. These brilliant thinkers are prepared to jump into Baseball with regulations, in order to slow down the advancement of the sport. I just have to ask: if Baseball wants to become more like professional wrestling, by what authority is the Congress empowered to stop them? Doesn't our constitution account for anything anymore? Exactly which enumerated power allows them to micromanage a SPORT?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, technology has advanced far beyond whatever it is that congress plans to regulate in any case. They can only regulate anabolic steroids but, while they were not looking, recombinant DNA technology has allowed pharmaceutical companies to manufacture metabolic steroids. That is, regular human chemicals without which we would die if we did not produce them in sufficient quantities. How do they propose to decide whether or not Mark McGuire has a naturally high testosterone level? And, how about the unmentionable: what if blacks really do naturally have more testosterone than whites? Does Congress want to stop white athletes from overcoming this racist bias?

And the steroid thing is passe anyway. New advancements in surgery have made inroads into sports, just as they have in other forms of the entertainment industry. If they make it illegal for a pitcher to have the "Tommy John" surgery, can Brittley Spears be banned from show biz because of her breast implants? Does Stallone's eye job make him inegible for an Oscar? Weighty questions for our deliberative body to sort out. I only hope that we can be protected from overly pretty, overly strong, and overly fast entertainers. What a farce!

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

It is now time to take a stand against the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In an editorial at IFeminists.com, Ray Blumhorst puts the savage effects rendered by the gender feminists, using VAWA as fuel, into perspective.

The domestic violence industry clings tenaciously to a belief that it must manufacture more and more female victims to get more and more money. To do that, more and more men are fed into the domestic violence arrest system to meet the goals of the industry. Thanks to laws like "primary aggressor," and "mandatory arrest" the gender feminist trained police are coerced to manufacture, ignore, or destroy evidence to support their gender profiling prejudices. It appears from numerous sources the rate of false arrests is greater than one in three. False accusations can be just as devastating and occur much more frequently. In sum, it appears false accusations and perhaps false arrests exceed legitimate accusations and arrests, which are appalling by any measure.

While my regular readers will not find this surprising, the rest of the world is just beginning to come around to understanding just how badly radical feminists have abused our society in their lust for power.

Similarly Trudy W. Schuett has another editorial on the subject, also well worth reading. As she puts it:

Generally speaking, the radical elements who haven't yet realized their work is done are easily dismissed, and most often ignored. Malcontents in society will always be with us. It is only when we allow these malcontents to dictate public policy, and our government to fund programs to further their extremist philosophies that society puts itself in harm's way.

Now congress will have to consider whether to extend VAWA or not. It is to be hoped that the craven princelings on Capitol Hill can take their heads out of their asses long enough to hear both sides of this debate. When ideology trumps justice, freedom loses. When government mandates quotas of a maximum of 5% of arrestees can be women, when the science says the 50/50 is more like it, any idiot can see that we have a problem. Giving billions of dollars, and and the power that results in the incarceration of thousands of innocent men, to radical feminist lesbo-fascists, is a travesty that must be stopped. As I have detailed several times, single interest politics will result in this type of thing. After all, no one wants to condone violence against women, especially a craven vote seeking coward. But now that we have ten years of VAWA under our belt, and we have the opportunity to reexamine the results before reauthorization takes place, we owe it to our society to take a good look before we continue to move in this hateful, and counterproductive, direction.

Hat tip to Iguana at Silly Seattle for the link to the Schuett piece.

Why We Do the Things We Do

Why We Do the Things We Do

Since my teen years I have known that, to a large extent, we humans are passengers in our own bodies - that many if not most decisions we make are made on a level that we are not even aware of. The effect of the subconscious, the sense menory, and the eerie way that smell can catapult one back in time in an instant are all evidence of this. The autopilot function that allows us to walk and talk without ever thinking about our legs or our tongues is the clearest indication of this. Now U.S. News and World report has an article that sums up the state of our knowledge of that magnificent machine that is behind all of this. It

reveals an aspect of a rich inner life that is not a part of conscious, much less rational, thought. Today, long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the fact that much of what we do is determined by mysterious memories and emotional forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored anew. "Most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious, " says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan. "Life would be chaos if everything were on the forefront of our consciousness."

Fueled by powerful neuroimaging technology, questions about how we make snap decisions, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what motivates us, and what satisfies us are being answered not through lying on a couch and exploring individual childhood miseries but by looking at neurons firing in particular parts of our brains. Hardly a week passes without the release of the results of a new study on these kinds of processes. And popular culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Blink, journalist Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of "thinking without thinking," has remained on the bestseller lists for four weeks.

Goes rather well with last Friday's post, don't you think? Keep reading....

Modern Skulls House Stone Age Minds

Modern Skulls House Stone Age Minds

It has long been an interest of mine to develop a better understanding of how our biological inheritance affects our ability to thrive in this technological and crowded world. This has drawn me to blogs such as Gene Expression and Enlightened Caveman. Now political think tanks are getting into the act. Cato Institute has published a policy report based upon the study of evolutionary psychology, entitled Capitalism and Human Nature, which attempts to reconcile our hunter-gatherer origins and our therefore primitive mentation with our ability to interact on a global level with the rest of the human race. The report reviews recent research in evolutionary psychology, which it describes as a field of science that "specializes in uncovering the truth about human nature."

Pointing out that human nature is absolutely incompatible with socialism is easy enough, even without the aid of peer-reviewed research (we have the mountains of corpses to prove it), but applying those same findings to a quest to understand how compatible our minds might be with a global free market is a bit more difficult. What we can not easily understand can be seen this way, thus:

Our zero-sum mentality makes it hard for us to understand how trade, innovation, and investment can increase the amount of total wealth. We are thus ill-equipped to easily understand our own economic system.

Anyone who has read the scribblings of economists, who devote their lives to the understanding of this "science," has realized that no two economists can agree on anything more than grand principles, and there is a huge amount of argument even at that level. Science can allude to a certain hopelessness inherent in progressivism, as in:

The shape of society is constrained by our evolved nature. Remaking humanity through politics is a biological impossibility.

But progress we shall, indeed we must, so gainsaying the direction in which leftists wish to take our society is not necessarily going to point to the true direction the human race, and American society, should take. It does provide food for thought, however, and it would be wonderful if more of our public policy were to conform to what is known about human propensities and abilities, rather than the current state of our legislation, which more often defies human nature, and attempts to change it, rather than trying to work with the raw material of the human mind.

We are what we are, and not some progressive construct of what we wish we were. Political correctness stands in direct opposition to progress, which is directly opposite to what its promoters claim. Human knowledge is ill-served by denial of, say, the cannibalism of the Anasazi, or refusal to recognize the nature of Homosexuality. Refusal to allow the study of, and understanding of, whatever it is that impairs many African-Americans from succeeding in our society does not help them. Indeed, it holds them in bondage to false ideas, and encourages the destruction and refabrication of the ideas of Martin Luther King, among others, in a mad attempt to avoid embarrassment. The continued attempts to redistribute wealth similarly shows a denial of human nature, as well as a poor understanding of the economics of wealth creation. The plain truth, that wealth is not a zero-sum game, seems to be hidden from these "thinkers," and the facts of the tension between our charitable nature and our resistance to coercion are denied as well. The current debate over Social security is a debate between those who want power over their fellows, and is not at all about providing for the elders of our society.

Until public policy reflects an understanding of the good, as well as the bad, in our natures, the personal freedom forseen by our nation's founders will continue to be elusive. Better understanding of human nature, and thus what will work, is the key, and the Cato piece is a great step forward. Too bad almost no one will read it. But it is a sign of better days ahead.

Hat tip to Enlightened Caveman for the link to the Cato piece.

Criminalizing Fantasy

In a further demonstration that the government is truly out of control, Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger is apparently attracting a lot of positive response to his attempt to extend the already foolish statutes against suicide to a ban on the mere discussion of, and fantasy concerning, suicide. I have (so far) found no news items suggesting that this action is overstepping the boundaries of the law, giving me more reason to believe that I have been right all along, that almost everyone can clearly see the Emperor's new clothes, and is not merely reticent about discussing their lack.

A sample of the news coverage, "Man Allegedly Sought Suicide Pacts for Years", from the Washington Post, seems to me to allege no crime that has been committed. Even a conspiracy charge requires that at least one act in furtherance of the commission of a crime must be performed before the conspiracy becomes a criminal act. Yet, incredibly, it seems that the mere act of clicking the "send" button in a chat room transforms conversation about suicide into a crime. This completes the realization of the aim of those who would seek to make illegal mere unpopular speech. If this prosecution succeeds, all internet communicators will have a far heavier burden to carry. But. Far more important is the silence. Why are not civil liberties activists of all stripes screaming about this? Is it because of the supposed victim status of the so-called scheme's so-called participants?

Where does it stop? If a man can not speak to strangers about fantasy hangings that will noy take place over non-existent beams in his trailer home, after they discuss sex acts that will never be performed, at what point does harmless banter become an actionable crime? This is very troubling to me, mostly because it does not seem to trouble anybody else.

Darfur Is No Genocide Says UN

Darfur Is No Genocide Says UN

One of the best essayists today is Mark Steyn, whose insights and observations never fail to make one laugh as he skewers the pompous and powerful. And we have to laugh, or we will never stop crying. Just today a government report finds that gun laws have no effect on crime, but goes on to conclude that its conclusions are no reason to change anything. I expect that Steyn will have something to say about that presently, but today's piece is about the U.N. Oil for Food Scandal. While he covers that travesty with a completeness and brevity at the same time, what really got me going was a little bon mot at the end, about something entirely different. he sums up the transnational mindset - and standard operating procedure - perfectly

If Paul Volcker's preliminary report on Oil-for-Food dealt with the organisation's unofficial interests, the UN's other report of the week accurately captured their blithe insouciance to their official one. As you may have noticed, the good people of Darfur have been fortunate enough not to attract the attention of the arrogant cowboy unilateralist Bush and have instead fallen under the care of the Polly Toynbee-Clare Short-approved multilateral compassion set. So, after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the UN to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide.

That's great news, isn't it? For as yet another Annan-appointed UN committee boldly declared in December: "Genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated." So thank goodness this isn't genocide. Instead, it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group – which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead, and Polly and Clare don't have to worry their pretty little heads about it.

Isn't that the truth? Great stuff. Too bad that the black Africans in Darfur can not laugh, and may even be fresh out of tears. But if we can not lampoon those who could make a difference to them, but refuse to, nothing will ever change.

Having it Both Ways

In a telling piece of journalism, the Washington Post today reveals some of the rank hypocrisy of which our elected officials are capable. They criticize Bush for spending too much money, and running deficits, then, when he shows fiscal discipline, they attempt to destroy those efforts. You may laugh or you may cry, but the reaction of the democrats to this budget proposal are beneath contempt. In fact, they are beneath comment. Anyone with his or her brain plugged in can fisk this document. And, it is called a NEWS article! Read it and weep.

UPDATE - Just in case you think I'm being too hard on WaPo, take a look at the same story, without editorial content masquerading as news.

Dems Moving Left, Again

So now the waiting is over, and we know that the democrat party has no intention of taking any substantive steps toward reversing course and moving toward the middle politically. It seems that they have settled on Howard Dean as their standard bearer. Just as the choice of Terry McAuliffe moved them toward the left, Dean will move them more so. Even as a reactionary libertarian conservative like me was hoping that the opposition party would once again become relevant, they push inexorably toward obscurity. Perhaps this is a good thing. Maybe this will make room for a truly conservative party to come to the fore. The only problem with this, there IS no conservative party available to do so, unless you consider the isolationist Libertarian Party conservative. Me, I consider them a utopian party, and thus as capable of achieving a majority as the communists. For a majority party, you need a big tent, and the Libertarians are (mostly) true believers, and thus are fighting to have the smallest tent possible.

In national politics, single-interest coalitions beat out ideology every time. That is why the Republicans are the majority now, and the Democrats are sinking. The more ideological they get, the happier their base will be, the their relevance to our national polity will decrease. What will sustain them when they no longer have Bush to kick around? Their coalition of academics, labor movement socialists, angry masculine women, journalists, and artists is a mile wide and paper thin. Who listens to those people anyway?

We're Back

We're Back

Happy New Year! It has been a long vacation for us, and it is good to be back at home at last. Folks here in Seattle are unhappy about the mid-sixties temperatures, which actually fit right in with their mid-sixties politics, as it seems to show them that the globe is actually warming. The fifty two below zero readings in Minnesota do not fit their theory, but environmentalists are never going to allow mere facts to hinder a good supposition. The further fact that these ultra-low temperatures occurred in a town called Embarrass is also lost on these people, since irony is another thing that they never seem to get.

Meanwhile, I have been steaming for the last couple of weeks over the response to the Tsunami. It would be hard to market a work of fiction in which an earthquake's sequelae are blamed on a political leader in a nation six thousand miles away, yet that is exactly what has happened. First Bush didn't do enough, then he didn't do it fast enough, then he did it in the wrong way (W stands for wrong!). I can forgive the political class from spinning and hyping the story, but what about the media solons, who so recently were wringing their hands over their fading influence. Don't they realize that their influence is fading precisely because they can no longer be trusted to get the most basic facts straight?

Last week it seemed that every news outlet was declaring that the death toll in the tsunami was the "greatest loss of human life in a natural disaster in human history." A quick glance at a compendium of disasters shows that Bangladesh alone has had two greater disasters since 1970, and if we include famine, this tsunami is an order of magnitude short of being on the all-time greatest list. This is the sad truth: the so-called NEWS has degenerated into entertainment, at least in its broadcast form. We can get as much accurate fact from Rush Limbaugh as we can get from CBS News. I have long said in this space that the "Common Knowledge" is always wrong. I must now report that the broadcast news is not much more accurate than that. File this under sad but true.

Making A Federal Case Out of Almost Everything

It's time to rediscover constitutional limits

Guest Post by Gene Healy

"Don't make a federal case out of it," we used to tell people who blew things out of proportion. But that phrase is quickly losing its bite as the federal government expands its jurisdiction to every area of American life.

Responding to the Barry Bonds-Jason Giambi steroid scandal, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recently threatened to bring the federal hammer down on Major League Baseball: "Major-league baseball players and owners should meet immediately to enact the standards that apply to the minor leagues, and if they don't, I will have to introduce legislation that says professional sports will have minimum standards for testing," McCain said on December 3rd. (Up next, perhaps, legislation to revoke the American League's designated hitter rule.)

The week before McCain issued his threat, the Justice Department fought in the Supreme Court to maintain the right to jail sick people taking marijuana on the advice of their doctors and with the approval of their state government. On November 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ashcroft v. Raich, a case involving two desperately ill women who use marijuana and seek protection from prosecution under federal drug laws. Acting solicitor general Paul Clement told the Court that medicine grown in one's own backyard for home consumption was a national matter, subject to Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce—despite the fact that there is nothing remotely commercial or interstate about the conduct at issue.

Those are just two recent examples of a federal government that views its jurisdiction as limitless. That's a view quite at odds with the one held by the Constitution's Framers. The document they drafted envisioned a federal government focused on national issues, such as "war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce," in Madison's words. Even the most devoted advocate of national power, Alexander Hamilton, agreed, explaining in Federalist 17 that under the Constitution, "the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice" would be left to the states.

We've drifted far from that understanding. Congress's power to "regulate Commerce...among the states," which was designed to eliminate state-level trade barriers, has become a limitless font of federal power, used to regulate or criminalize behavior better left to the states or the civil law.

With commerce clause limits eviscerated, almost anything can be a federal crime. We've gone from a Constitution that mentions only three federal crimes (treason, piracy, and counterfeiting) to a federal criminal code with over 4,000 separate offenses, some of them stunningly trivial. In 2002, President Bush signed legislation making it a federal crime to move birds across state lines to engage in fights. The ban on cockfighting joined such notable federal crimes as interstate transport of unlicensed dentures (punishable by up to a year in prison), tampering with an odometer (up to three years), and pretending to be a member of the 4-H Club (up to six months). These and other offenses larded throughout the U.S. code could make for an interesting conversation with one's cellmate: "What are you in for, kid?"

But out-of-control federalization is only rarely amusing. It brings serious costs. In addition to the trivial crimes mentioned above, Congress has federalized a host of ordinary street crimes already covered by state criminal codes, crimes like arson, carjacking, and gun possession by felons. Shunting these cases into federal court causes huge delays to civil litigants and unsustainable pressure on the federal courts. Chief Justice Rehnquist has characterized the result as "a crisis in workload." Forcing the federal courts to handle workaday criminal matters crowds out civil suits and leads to huge delays for civil litigants because criminal defendants have a constitutional right to a speedy trial and everyone else has to wait in line.

Moreover, a federal government focused on everything from cockfighting to steroid use is a federal government that's not focused on truly national issues. Case in point: In the months leading up to the September 11 attacks the FBI was engaged in an 18-month-long sting operation at a brothel in New Orleans that netted 12 prostitutes. September 11 should have concentrated the mind wonderfully as to proper federal priorities, yet federal law enforcement to this day continues to behave like the local vice squad.

But the most important costs of overfederalization are the costs to the rule of law. A federal criminal code that covers everything essentially delegates to prosecutors and police the power to pick targets they think they should get rather than offenses that need to be prosecuted—leaving everyone at risk. That is unacceptable in a country that still considers itself a government of laws and not of men. It's well past time we rediscovered the wisdom of constitutional limits.

Gene Healy is senior editor at the Cato Institute, and editor of the new book Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything. This essay originally appeared at Reason Online

Question Authority

Guest post by John R. Guardiano

To the media, it was a dramatic revelation of Bush administration hypocrisy and incompetence: A lowly American GI courageously speaks truth to power, thus showing that the emperor has no clothes. But to this Marine veteran of the Iraq war, the hullabaloo over Army Spc. Thomas J. Wilson's question reveals far more about media bias, prejudice and ignorance than it does about the U.S. military and Iraq.

Spc. Wilson asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why, nearly two years after the start of the war, his unit still has too few "up-armored" humvees. The media were surprised that an enlisted man would ask so direct and pointed a question of the Pentagon's highest official. I wasn't.

I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after Sept. 11, 2001, and served in Iraq in 2003. Throughout boot camp, combat training and subsequent preparation for war, my instructors always stressed the importance of independent thinking and initiative. Obviously, when you're in the middle of a firefight, you cannot--and must not--second-guess split-second command decisions. However, when preparing for war, thoughtful and considered questions are not only tolerated; they are encouraged--even demanded, I found.

As one of my combat instructors told us: "Marines, you're more likely to die from someone doing something stupid than because the enemy is skilled and ingenious. So make sure you've thought things through and that everyone's on the same page. Be polite. Be tactful. But don't be afraid to ask questions."

I soon discovered that this command to think and to ask questions wasn't mere rhetoric. I was serving with the First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment at an abandoned pistol factory in Al Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Every three weeks or so, we were visited by Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who was then commanding the First Marine Division in Iraq.

Gen. Mattis is a Marine's Marine, a true warrior who speaks bluntly and candidly, without being bound by the constraints of political correctness. For well over an hour, on a routine and regular basis, the general would gather together his Marines and field questions. Nothing was out of bounds. The event was entirely democratic and thoroughly American--though marked by standard military etiquette and respect for rank. Thus, newsmen and commentators who fear "retribution" against Spc. Wilson haven't a clue as to what the U.S. military is all about. Spc. Wilson asked a tough but fair question; however, for any U.S. serviceman who's ever been to war, this was hardly surprising.

Nor does his question demonstrate, as some have argued, that the Iraq war was ill-conceived or poorly planned. War is, by its very nature, surprising and unpredictable; it forces us to adapt and to be innovative. Armchair "experts" notwithstanding, the fact is no one anticipated the Baathist-Sunni insurgency, certainly not the U.S. military. We all expected to knock off Saddam Hussein and his elite Republican Guard and then head home in time for the July 4 celebrations. That's why, when I deployed to Iraq in 2003, I traveled throughout the country in a standard canvas humvee with no special armor. Nor did I have any special body vest or protection.

I thought nothing of this at the time and still don't. My team went as far north as Baghdad, but we were situated mainly south of the Sunni Triangle, in predominantly Shiite Iraq. Throughout our entire time there, the Iraqis welcomed us as liberators. We were well prepared for the threat as it then existed and as we understood it.

But when my old Marine Corps reserve unit redeployed to Iraq in September, it did so with fully armored vehicles, new sappy plated vests and special goggles--all designed to protect against shrapnel and improvised explosive devices. That's because the unit was deploying to Fallujah, and the threat there was different from what we had faced in southern, Shiite Iraq.

This type of change and adaptation has occurred in all wars from time immemorial. It reflects not poor planning but the unpredictable nature of war. That's why the Defense Department has been moving quickly to up-armor its humvees, producing nearly 400 such vehicles a month, up from 30 a month in August 2003, according to Army Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb.

The U.S. military ultimately wants 8,100 up-armored humvees versus the nearly 6,000 such vehicles that it has currently, Gen. Whitcomb told reporters last week. Moreover, according to the Army vice chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the military long ago embarked on a "Manhattan-like project" to remotely jam IEDs with radio sensors.

If you're an American soldier or Marine whose life is on the line now, clearly that's not good enough. On the other hand, it simply isn't true that U.S. military leaders have callously ignored the troops' request for up-armored vehicles and other protective equipment. In fact, most of our troops in Iraq have up-armored vehicles, and units there take force protection quite seriously.

Delays ought to be blamed on the military bureaucracy, which Secretary Rumsfeld has been trying to reform. Indeed, that's what military transformation--a Rumsfeld priority--is all about. Yet, many of the same people who are most vociferously denouncing the lack of up-armored humvees in Iraq also fight military reform tooth and nail.

Example: When the Army decided last winter to cancel development of its Cold War relic Comanche helicopter, Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, immediately took to the barricades. "It simply doesn't make sense to pull the plug on the Comanche," Mr. Dodd said. "Obviously, this will not be an easy fight, but I intend to work with other members of the Connecticut congressional delegation to seek to retain the Comanche as part of our military arsenal."

It didn't seem to matter to Mr. Dodd that the Comanche was a $39-billion boondoggle that the Army didn't want because the aircraft isn't suitable for 21st-century urban warfare. Nor did Mr. Dodd seem to care that much of the displaced Comanche money would be used to equip existing Army helicopters with new countermeasure systems necessary to neutralize the ubiquitous threat posed by rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, and man-portable air-defense systems, all of which are omnipresent in Iraq.

Yet Mr. Dodd, who has never been a champion of big defense budgets, now has the chutzpah to lecture Mr. Rumsfeld about the need to "spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq." Mr. Dodd says Mr. Rumsfeld's response to Spec. Wilson--"You go to war with the Army you have"--is "utterly unacceptable. Mr. Secretary," he writes, "our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide."

Quite true--and Mr.. Dodd is one of those leaders.

Nor does the entire hullabaloo concerning up-armored humvees show, as some commentators contest, that U.S. troops lack confidence in their military and civilian leaders. The reality is that troop morale is consistently high.

Of course, American soldiers and Marines yearn to come home; it is not in our nature to colonize or occupy a country. By the same token, however, most U.S. troops take understandable pride in a job well done. They are pleased to have the historic chance to serve and to practice, in a real-world operation, that which they have been training for all these many years. That's why re-enlistment rates are high.

As U.S. Central Commander Gen. John Abizaid told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" Sept. 26: "The constant drumbeat in Washington of a war that is being lost, that can't be won, of a resistance that is out of control, simply does not square with the facts on the ground." In fact, the vast majority of Iraq is not a war zone; it is peaceful, tranquil and doing surprisingly well. I refer specifically to the Shiite south. The Kurdish north, too, is doing relatively well, despite the recent upsurge of violence in Mosul.

"So is this fight in the Middle East worth fighting?" the general said to Mr. Russert. "Absolutely," he said. "In my mind, and in the minds of our young people that are out here fighting and sacrificing, it's absolutely worth it."

Of course you won't hear any of this in many news articles or broadcasts. The media long ago decided that its job was to put a negative slant on all things Iraq. Truth is, as they say, the first casualty of war.

Mr. Guardiano is an Arlington, Va.-based journalist who served in Iraq in 2003 as a field radio operator with the U.S. Marine Corps' Fourth Civil Affairs Group.

My Body is My Own (Isn't it?)

My Body is My Own (Isn't it?)

I wanted to post something early this morning, as part of my new plan for world domination, but I have held off, since my editorial board has been having a difficult time agreeing on a topic. While my editors have had quite a few suggestions, my bullheaded writing staff can not get off this one thing, the single most bothersome thing that we have heard since Friday. The greatest threat to our republic. The most irksome task that our overreaching government is preparing to undertake.

Nothing bothers me more than the increasing intrusiveness of our government, the erosion that is occurring in our constitutional protection. The government itself, the small people who legislate and execute, prosecute and judge, do about what one would expect. They are human beings, after all, and therefore their selfishness and venality, their grasping and subordination to the grasping for power and wealth, are to be expected. Humans all have feet of clay, and very few of us are large enough of soul to rise above our essential ape-ness. No, that is not the problem. My problem today, and every day, really, is the credulous, sheeplike quality We the People exhibit when our governors make ready to take yet another iota of power from us. With our opinion leaders leading the charge over the cliff like Lemmings, we acquiesce to almost all of the inroads into our personal rights that the government attempts. Power is a zero-sum game, and each iota of power that we grant to the government is one we have lost, until we may have precious few freedoms left. We have lost so much already, we can not afford to lose more. Each new instance is seen as such a little thing, yet the addition of them all amounts to a terrible chasm between our constitutionally mandated position on the spectrum of power, and the puny position that we inhabit today.

I am a child of the sixties, and can testify that, by 1969, freedom was breaking out all over. We could say whatever we wanted, live wherever we wanted, and if it pleased a homeowner, he could cut down the tree on his front lawn. But, just then, even as we were at our pinnacle of reclaiming our personal power, the culture of victimhood, and the nanny state, swung into the ascendency. Each little inroad seemed small to most of us at the time, yet the aggregate result has been overwhelming. Hate speech laws. Special treatment for violence, when it was conducted against women. The Supreme Court of the land confirming that a plant in our garden is a threat to interstate commerce, since, after all, one might hurt oneself thereby. The area of government applying the interstate commerce clause alone has been used to remove more of our personal freedom and power over ourselves than two world wars. Almost a century ago, when government sought to impinge upon our freedom, they sought shelter in our constitution, asking for, and receiving, constitutional amandments in order to institute the income tax, or the prohibition against alcohol. But they have become so brazen that they do not seek such authorization when they seek to diminish us any more. Or, when an amendment fails, or seems to be unwinnable, they merely pass a law. We, usually, acquiesce. Then the Supreme Court says Amen.

On Friday, Barry Bonds, perhaps the greatest living baseball player, was revealed to have made some admissions about the use of performance enhancing drugs. On Sunday, Senator John McCain proposed a sweeping new legislative incursion into the regulation of baseball. And no respected commentator, that I have heard so far, has offerred a word in opposition. After all, steroids are bad, aren't they? Violence against women is bad too, isn't it? Hate speech is bad as well - who could argue against that? I suppose that, as the sheep walk calmly into the abbatoir, they can see no harm in merely walking up a ramp.

There are two issues involved here. One is, steroids are bad for you. While there is an argument to be made that it is anabolic steroids that are dangerous, and that the metabolic steroids, which have only recently become available in quantity and at a low price, prescribed and monitored by a physician, might not be, but I will concede the point: Steroids are bad. Next item, children should be protected from themselves in a manner that adults might not be forced to allow. Again, while I could put up a spirited argument in opposition, I will stipulate this point as well. Children should be protected from themselves. Yet, incredibly, these are the pegs that will drive the debate toward federal government intrusion into the administration of a professional sport. I find that stunning.

Take a fully grown man, whose performance in college sports has placed him in a position to make millions of dollars per year in his business. Today, government allows this man to make a decision to undertake some personal risk in order to further his career. His body is his own. It is perfectly legal today for this man to have his doctor administer Human Testosterone of Human Growth Hormone. He will have an enhanced ability to build muscle mass, and an increase in his aggressiveness. Now along comes government, that seeks to insert itself into this doctor-patient relationship. As Big Brother rattles his sword, expect baseball to cringe in fear, and modify its rules to keep the beast at bay. Yet almost no one sees the danger.

There are many who will say that this is an unimportant new government incursion into our rights. They will say, if they are knowledgeable enough, that the government already legislates and regulates the prescription of Methadone, when administered to addicts. (With gruesome results. For more reading on the politics of methadone, read this) But professional athletes are not addicts, nor are they guilty of criminal behavior, necessarily. At the very least what has been proposed is a usurpation of the doctor-patient relationship in a setting totally without a criminal element. As with violence against women, all the acts proposed to be made criminal acts are already illegal. And, we do not yet know what else will be added to the legislation, what incursion into our privacy will be made. If we even have any privacy left. There are those who have already thrown in the towel, who say that all of our privacy is gone. That is what they say about the Patriot Act, and NASPER (see post below, Freedom Hijacked). But that is demonstrably untrue, as, if it were true, there would be no need for this new law. There are those who say that this will become moot, as Baseball will change its rules. But any change will be made in the shadow of this threat from government, which is even more insidious. There is no appeal from a settlement. No judicial oversight, no constitutional test. While I would not expect any protection from the Supremes on this one, they might surprise me. But they will not get the chance thus time, if Baseball caves in to the pressure.

Finally, there are those who will say that good ethics or morals would obviate the need for government to intervene. But that is the very heart of this thing. It used to be that we could use ethics and morals as a guide to our behavior. No more. If you remember the Clinton impeachment debate, you will recall that the legality of his actions were the limits that he placed upon himself, and the impeachers in Congress respected those limits. We have entered an age where the law is the arbiter of behavior. I long for a world where men and women placed limits upon themselves that were far stricter than mere law would mandate. Today we have a world where the student who fails to cheat in school is the exception, and our media have becomed coarsened to anything resembling good taste or modesty. In such a world, it is argued, the law must expand to encompass more of human interaction. And that is truly frightening. And, what with the social conservatives in the ascendancy, it will be getting worse.

Drug War Failure

Drug War Failure

Another study has been released that shows that our benighted policy on drug consumption has failed, according to the Washington Times. While this can not be surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, this study points out that both availability (up) and price (down) are going in the opposite direction to what the entire War on (some) Drugs has promised:

The report conducted by the Washington Office on Latin America, a non-governmental organization that has the stated goal of trying to "reorient U.S. drug control policy to the region," concludes that U.S. policy geared toward "reducing drug abuse and availability in the United States" from a "supply-reduction model does not work."

Citing falling wholesale and retail cocaine and heroin prices and collateral damage suffered in Latin American countries as a result of U.S. anti-drug policy, Joy Olson, executive director of WOLA, said, "We've been tough on drugs, now it's time to get smart on drugs."

But the most disturbing part of all of this is the chilling effect that the war has had on our government's relationship with the truth. As the Times says:

The three-year study, "Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of U.S. Policy," includes independently recorded data and unreleased studies carried out by the Rand Corporation for the Office of National Drug Control Policy that were leaked to WOLA by a congressional office, according to John Walsh, WOLA senior associate for the Andes and drug policy.

Walsh and a senior adviser at the ONDCP confirmed the initial report had been submitted to the office in spring 2004 but has not yet been released.

When our government hides and obfuscates the truth, commissions and then 86s a study critical of one of its policies, the entire fabric of our democracy is diminished. When our "Drug Czar" refuses to debate, or even take questions from any journalist who has not been previously vetted by his department, we slip further down the slope into unresponsive, and unrepresentative government.

If such a debate would be held, any zero base thinker would first examine the very basis of our policy, before delving into the arcana of its implementation:

Over the last 25 years U.S. policy has tried to attack the war on drugs from a supply-side perspective. Through the eradication of coca crops in producing countries, interdicting drug shipments to the United States and jailing drug offenders, authorities were hoping to significantly drive up the cost of cocaine and heroin -- thus reducing cocaine's economic appeal to potential users.

However, the attempted siphoning of the supply side has lowered street prices and increased the number of incarcerated drug offenders, driving up government spending, without significantly reducing the amount of drug flow, the study's findings show.

Data compiled by WOLA show that since 1981 the retail price for 2 grams of cocaine went from $544.59 to $106.54 in 2003. Retail heroin prices mirrored the decline in cocaine prices, falling from $1,974.49 to $361.95 during the period.

Walsh noted that "price estimates are manifestations of supply and demand" and thus are the most accurate indicators to "determine what is coming in."

The number of incarcerated drug offenders rose from 45,272 to 480,519 from 1981 to 2002, and government spending on overseas supply control rose from $373.9 million to $3.6 billion from 1981 to 2004.

Once again, government has failed to observe the emperor's new clothes. That is, when they seek to drive up the cost, they are, if successful, driving up the profit motive for the criminals who pursue this business. When they are unsuccessful, as in the present instance, they lower the barriers to entry into the business. Thus there are ever more young recruits into this trade.

This is enough to make one tear one's hair out. The government claims to seek to make drug abuse more rare. Instead, they create a new criminal class. Now that the failure of their policy becomes more and more clear, they seek to hide the evidence. Meanwhile, collateral damage (see yesterday's post, below) increases, and government, rather than attempting to remedy the problem, merely increases the budget of the failed bureaucracy. For just one instance of this, the government has instituted a policy of spraying poison on the Colombian and Bolivian hillsides where coca cultivation is believed to take place. At first, the poison kills everything, both the drug crop and any legal crop that is grown in the area dies. That is bad enough, but recent reports show that the growers have developed poison resistant plants, so the spraying has the effect of performing the weeding that the illicit growers previously have had to do themselves. Government's answer? Increase spraying 50%.

When our government decided to ban alcohol, they figured that they would need a constitutional amendment to accomplish this legally. When they sought to ban marijuana, they levied a tax. But over the years, they passed ever more restrictive legislation, with little public complaint. Now, when a case against any little element of this anti-drug approach makes it to the Supreme Court, the government's response is to claim that, if the supremes restrict the government's little war, it would be an intolerable burden on the judiciary, as hundreds of thousands of appeals might be filed. In the case argued Monday, in which two women are accused of growing a few marijuana plants for their own use, the government claimed that this activity interferes with interstate commerce, since otherwise they would have to buy regular prescriptions. (That's after the bit where they claimed that marijuana has no efficacy as a medicine in the first place.) Under this analysis, anything at all that a citizen does interferes with interstate commerce. All choices are economic to an economist. Getting married reduces the profits of pimps. Going to the bathroom spurs sales of toilet paper. If interstate commerce can be construed this broadly, then there is no hope left for the enumerated powers set forth in our constitution.

It would seem that the mendacity of our government knows few if any boundaries. They pursue a blatantly unconstitutional "war," and lie to protect their right to continue to do so. They silence debate, and then hide studies and polls that show that their policy is not only ineffective, but unpopular. We are ruled by two parties whose main differences are in the personalities of the candidates, rather than any substantive policy split. Didn't Kerry just run a campaign where he said that he would have done exactly what Bush has done, only better? At some point the people must demand that their government be responsive to them. Or not.