March 22, 2008

HELP FOR PARENTS with badly-behaved children.

TIMOTHY SANDEFUR: Reason and Common Ground: A Response to the Creationists' 'Neutrality' Argument.

THE HUGO AWARD FINALISTS have been announced. Among them is John Scalzi's The Last Colony, part of the Old Man's War trilogy that has been so well received in the blogosphere.

Our podcast interview with Scalzi is here. (Bumped, because it's cool.)

OBAMA'S UNFAVORABLES HIT 51% -- a new high, reportedly.

WRIGHT AND WRONG: Jeff Jacoby on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

MORE ON THE FLIP VIDEO CAMERA, mentioned below, as Jack Lail weighs in on its utility for professional media. "We've been using the PureDigital's cameras for reporter shot video since before the company came up with the Flip name. The newer, "Ultra" models are as excellent for shooting short news clips as they are for that unforgettable family moment. Put the HD Canon in its case and try one!" I guess I'm going to have to try one of these out myself.

TOM MAGUIRE on affirmative-action campaigning. "Do not scoff at me. If Bill were to praise Hillary's marital and parenting skills while overlooking Barack's that would be the worst sort of racial pandering, playing on unspoken prejudices of black abandonment."

WELL, GOOD: "The inhabitants of the Falkland Islands are preparing for a South Atlantic oil rush which they hope will make them among the richest people in the world. After 10 years of frustrating delays since oil fields containing up to 60 billion barrels of 'black gold' were discovered off the islands, oil companies are planning to start drilling within the next 12 months."

JACK BALKIN TO DAHLIA LITHWICK:

Dahlia, you seem to think that there is some important difference between the way that political and social movements influenced and interacted with John Roberts and his conservative brethren and the way that they influenced and interacted with Earl Warren and his liberal allies. I'm here to tell you that there are not that many differences, if you put aside who you happen to be rooting for. . . .

The notion that "the individual right to bear arms `ar[o]se full blown' from the head of Chief Justice John Roberts" and not out of the text of the Bill of Rights is news to me. I guess you could also say that the right against sex discrimination sprang full blown out of the head of William Brennan or that the right against segregated schools sprang full blown out of the head of Earl Warren. This is not historically accurate in either of those cases, and it's not historically accurate in the case of Roberts. Believe me, I'm not generally in the business of carrying water for our current Chief Justice. But let's give credit where credit is due.

Indeed.

HEDGING BETS in Iraq.

WELL, THIS WILL IRRITATE THE RIGHT PEOPLE: Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim. The Pope's action is an interesting response to Osama's words from earlier this week.

MOVIE FOOD. Er, the name pretty much explains it.

IS BEACHFRONT PROPERTY WORTH HAVING? Yes. But is it worth buying? Maybe not. When we were in Hilton Head we looked at the market and there seemed to be a lot of places for sale -- on one street, we saw eight for-sale signs in a single block; when we rented a house on that street a few years ago there were none that I remember -- certainly nothing like the forest that we saw this time. Although the realtors in the area are talking happy, as they tend to do, I wonder if things are really moving. Reportedly, however, the low dollar is bringing in foreign buyers.

UPDATE: Fritz Schranck emails:

Your point about beach property is well-taken, although even in these areas, there are lots of variables, with absolute proximity to the sand providing the most protection against deflationary effects.

Where I live in Rehoboth Beach, for example, the properties within a few blocks of the Atlantic are essentially stable in pricing, and moving at a reasonable clip. Further back, say within a mile or two of the ocean, properties are definitely cheaper, and slow to sell. Local agents say there's a one year inventory, which is a huge change from the go-go times of 2-3 years ago.

Charleston reader John Marcoux writes:

While Hilton Head is about 60 miles south of here, I'm guessing the kind of seller you have there is like the sellers around here, on Kiawah Island, Sullivan's Island and Isle of Palms. They tend to be financially secure and not in any hurry to sell. Places tend to remain on the market for a long time, without much lowering of price, and so for sale signs will accumulate in a slow market.

The place next to us, on the marsh, was for sale for 18 months after the owners moved back to Connecticut, leaving the house vacant. It finally sold this past January for $1.1 million, about 12% below the asking price. That' a somewhat atypical bargain. I was in a $4.3 million place in the historic district in downtown Charleston that has been on the market for over a year, and still is, because the seller refused to close the difference of $100,000 with a motivated buyer.

And reader Ron Stack emails:

I am a big believer in waterfront property. It is the most desirable and scarcest property in any given community (Manhattan and LA possibly excepted) and will always command a premium relative to the market. When the market as a whole is overpriced, as in South Florida, waterfront takes a hit, too. But it should drop less and recover faster than the equivalent inland property. For a vulture investor like me, the best set of facts is an overpriced waterfront property owned by a speculator who is under water (so to speak) as soon as the market drops. In other words, a good property held by a very highly motivated seller (or the bank). The trick is finding a community where the owners aren't in it for the long term. If they are, and if they have bought intelligently, they just ride out the recession like any sensible person
should.

So look for a place where people are shortsighted and gullible!

IT JUST GETS WORSE: "Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign is trying to clarify comments by former President Clinton that seemed to question Barack Obama's patriotism - comments an Obama aide likened to Joseph McCarthy."

GEE, THINK THE CHINESE ARE BEHIND THIS? Cyber-attacks against Tibetan communities.

SO "PASSPORTGATE" LEADS BACK TO THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN? "The State Department investigation of improper computer access to passport records of three presidential candidates is focusing on one remaining employee — a contract worker with a company headed by an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama." I suspect this is a case of idle curiosity and coincidental connections -- but had the coincidental connection been with the McCain campaign, people would be making a big deal out of it.

UPDATE: More: Chief of firm involved in breach is Obama adviser.

MORE: Reader Michael Gebert emails: "I heard they found out from McCain's passport file that as a young man, he spent several years in a Communist capitol. And with no entry stamp!"

"AS DRAG RACES GO, YOU WILL AGREE, this is quite a good one."

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL on the Second Amendment and the Heller case:

Judging by Tuesday argument, the High Court has a majority in support of the circuit court opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts asked why the Framers included the word "people" if the Amendment only applied to militias. Justice Antonin Scalia discussed the importance the Framers attached to providing citizens the means to protect against tyrannical government. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the Court's swing vote, informed all in attendance that "In my view, there's a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way." . . . We hope the Supreme Court agrees with Judge Silberman that the Second Amendment does protect the right to own pistols, rifles and other guns of the kind the American Founders believed were needed to protect liberty.

Indeed.

THEY QUIT EMAILING ME LINKS, but here's the latest Grand Rounds.

I NOTED EARLIER that Jericho has been cancelled, and some people aren't at all surprised:

Many of you have lamented the disastrous left-turn the television series Jericho took last season. Well, it was awarded with spectacularly low ratings and now cancellation.

A military reader emails with similar sentiments:

Just saw your post on Jericho's cancellation and think the producers have no one to blame but themselves. I liked the first season, but the 2nd season has gone off the rails. Let me count the way:

1. The bombs were an old white guy conspiracy set in motion by facist conservatives and a big, bad corporation. God forbid that they say it was a foreign power or terrorists, nooooooo.

2. As a soldier, I found it very offensive that the military is now the oppressing enforcer. How many times I have seen what was happening in the show and saying, "There's no way we'd do that." Jake's interrogation, not punishing Getz, shooting at civilians for violating "curfew." The list goes on and on.

3. So many holes in the military aspect that it was pathetic. Here's the most obvious - MAJ Beck says he's from the 10th Mountain Division, but they're stationed at Ft. Drum, NY. In order to join with the ASA military, wouldn't he have had to have sought them out by finding a way across the "blue line?"

This was possibly the most offensive aspect, as if we would just throw allegiance to some new government outside of the constitutional line of succession in Cheyenne, under a new flag and new name. Pray tell why we wouldn't have fallen in line with whoever actually had succession, since the entire line is never together in the same city because of just such a possibility. It's not like we would have said, "ASA, USA, no big difference."

In short, who wants to watch a show that denigrates their country, denigrates their military, and seems to blame the possible evils of the world on corporations? Wouldn't a show about how we pulled together and united against an external threat been a little more palatable?

Not to Hollywood in an election year, I guess.

UPDATE: Reader Ed Stephens emails:

I echo your other reader's comments about the reason for Jericho's demise. Perhaps only blue staters could imagine that scattered nukes would cause the dissolution of the United States. That American's would suddenly decide they need a "new" constitution? Personally, I would have liked to see more emphasis on the recovery efforts, setting up windmills, solar power, etc (now that the bureaucracies hindering it were gone). Think Gilligan's island/McGuyver on steroids highlighting "yankee ingenuity" and Heinlein's quote about specialization.

A more probable scenario would involve an invasion by Mexico into CA, AZ, NM and Texas (if not UT and CO) to capitalize on a weakened US; but I'm sure that would be too un-PC.

CBS's "THE UNIT" also similarly went off the rails the same way, but maybe Mamet's turn from liberal orthodoxy will cause it to change.

Have not these people learned anything from "24"?

Indeed. Related thoughts here.

A BIG ROUNDUP of Apple news, including a picture of a MacBook Touch. I'll believe it when I see the hardware.

"CRUCIFIXION FOR YOU?" "No thanks, it might be too disturbing for pre-schoolers."

Mark Steyn comments: "So now the story ends with the Last Supper - and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively 'disturbing' is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity of the mainline churches."

UPDATE: Reader Greg Kemnitz emails: "A passion play without the Passion! How postmodern..."

A VERY ROUGH FIRST WEEK for New York's new Governor.

WELCOME TO Planet Clinton! If it's not to your liking, try Planet Olbermann!

ENJOYING SPRINGTIME IN MINNESOTA: It's sunny and warm here.

UPDATE: But if you believe this, I could be chilly in the future: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

MORE PHOTOS AND REPORTING from the New York Auto Show.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE ON THE FUTURE: "Don't panic!"

TIBET SUPPORTERS MARCH IN INDIA. Meanwhile, China vows to crush Tibet's independence movement.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS. Believe again.

IN THE MAIL: James Bessen & Michael Meurer's Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk. Personally, I think that the patent system has fallen far, far away from its original purpose of promoting "progress in science and the useful arts," and become largely another case of special-interest legislation and generalized rent-seeking. This is something that Rob Merges and I wrote about a while back.

KARL ROVE, MacHead:

NB: All right, I've got just one more quick question for you. Last time I saw you, you'd just gotten an iPhone. How's that working out for you?

ROVE: I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness. I've got my 3,500 people in my addressbook on the phone, I can sync my calendar. I keep track of my modest little stock investments. I can check the weather of my house in Washington, my house in Florida, my boy at school, my hunt-lease in south Texas. I can surf the web, I'm just--I get part of my email there.

I mean it is just shocking how much better, how much more productive I am. I no longer carry around a giant address book, if I don't have my calendar close at hand, I can quickly check it out of my-- I don't have to carry, I used to carry several notecards, now it's just as easy to scribble on my little notepad, I can take photographs and forward them on immediately, it's just remarkable.

NB: All right. Well it sounds like Steve Jobs should call you up as a spokesman.

ROVE: There we go, there we go. And not only that, I also have the Mac Book Air which is really cool. Even my wife is jealous of my MacBook Air.

Perhaps a lucrative spokesperson gig is in his future.

INTERESTING QUOTE ON IRAQ:

Is Iraq the last country we confront in the Middle East?

Who wants to volunteer to get cross-ways with us? We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.

From Obama's military adviser.

AN INSPIRING SPEECH TO AMERICA that just might save IowaHawk's candidacy.

CLINTON, OBAMA, and the Hawaiian quid pro quo.

WOW: "Scientists have detected an interstellar explosion so bright that it was briefly visible to the naked eye—from 7.5 billion light-years away. . . . GRB 080319B, located more than halfway across the visible universe, crushes the previous record holder for most distant object visible without assistance by three orders of magnitude. That would be the galaxy M33, located just 2.9 million light-years from Earth." Glad not to have been closer.

TOM MAGUIRE on our non-conversation about race.

CBS HAS cancelled Jericho.

EMILY YOFFE: Forget Juno. Out-of-wedlock births are a national catastrophe. I blame Ingrid Bergman.

UPDATE: Reader Christian Southwick emails:

Regarding your Emily Yoffe/Out-of-Wedlock Births post, did you mean Candice Bergen (of Murphy Brown fame) rather than Ingrid Bergman?

I'm not being a smartass, I'm seriously asking . . . is there some Bergman cultural reference that I am unaware of?

Why yes, yes there is. Ingrid Bergman became pregnant by Roberto Rossellini in 1949 and bore his child out of wedlock in 1950. (See this Wikipedia entry for a summary). Her career was more or less ruined in America for many years as a result. This was all long before I was born, but my sense is that despite the backlash, in retrospect this is the point at which attitudes toward out-of-wedlock motherhood began to shift.

YESTERDAY'S POST on the cheap and popular Flip Video Camera produced this email from Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal:

I LOVE the Flip. Bought one from Amazon several months back and I'm having a ball with it. I'm not interested in making Hollywood-quality movies, just recording events, and the Flip does that extremely well. And it's true about the low-light quality. I tried it out in the back stacks of the library where I work, where there is very little light, and the result was outstanding. I first learned about it at InstaPundit so I guess a thank you is in order.

Glad it's worked out.

THE ROAD TO 100 MPG: A report from the Automotive X-Prize, with video.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "The good news is, the weak dollar isn't the catastrophe that some people seem to think it is. While it is falling, it will trigger capital outflow, but when it bottoms, US capital markets will become attractive to foreigners. Meanwhile, our export industries will get more competitive. . . . Psychologically, a weak dollar is a blow to our pride. But practically, it was going to have to happen, because Americans have been buying more than they sell for much too long."

A UNITER, not a divider.

March 21, 2008

WILLIAM CREELEY on blocking JuicyCampus.com.

DANIEL DREZNER: The decline and split of the West?

DOES THE STATE DEPARTMENT NEED A Deferred Prosecution Agreement?

ANOTHER BIG Disaster-Preparedness List. Lots of interesting stuff here. There's more (a lot more) to disaster preparedness than just buying things, but it's true that anything you're going to want to buy needs to be bought before the disaster. Still, you need to acquire skills and knowledge, not just stuff, in advance of a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, or whatever. (Here's a roundup of some books on that subject). And for less cataclysmic disasters, this book is good.

BILL STUNTZ: "Like many who heard it, I was powerfully impressed by Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia this week. But I found the speech unsatisfying, because it all but ignores the issue that is central to racial division in twenty-first-century America: crime and criminal punishment. . . . While white fears of black crime are more reasonable than Obama admits, black rage at a discriminatory justice system is more justified than most whites understand."

TOM STOPPARD ON 1968. "The year of the posturing rebel."

Some of the more radical lefties seem to want to recreate it. Then again, posturing rebellion by faux-rebels has never gone completely out of style since.

UH OH: "Obama had his NAFTAGATE, now Hillary has hers."

AN IMMIGRATION AGENT DEMANDS A SEX-FOR-GREEN-CARD SWAP:

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

Just think how things will be if we get national healthcare. "I want sex. One or two times. That's all. You get your operation. You won't have to see me anymore."

SO WE MET CARDIOLOGIST-BLOGGER Dr. Wes Fisher for dinner as he passed through town. (He's also the guy behind MedTees.com, which he runs with his wife Diane, a clinical psychologist. Here's Helen modeling one of his t-shirts.) A fine time was had by all.

JACOB SULLUM: Why is Barack Obama afraid of drug decriminalization?

WHEN YOUR SPRING BREAK PARTYING INVOLVES DYNAMITE, you're partying too hard.

EUGENE VOLOKH corrects Dahlia Lithwick on the Second Amendment. To me it says a lot about modern legal thinking that a right explicitly mentioned in the Constitution can somehow be characterized as "new" based solely on what the Supreme Court does.

JOHN KERRY: Black people, Muslims, whatever.

IT JUST GETS WORSE: McClatchy reports on Obama's church:

Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation. Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church.

Obama is giving us a "national conversation on race," but mostly by letting a lot of white people realize just what circulates, unremarked, in the black community. (Via Gateway Pundit.)

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Spengler.

DON SURBER INTERVIEWS Don Surber. Topflight interviewer, interesting subject -- it's a winner!

FLEMMING ROSE RESPONDS to bin Laden's latest threat. “What kind of civilization are we… if we refrain from mocking and ridiculing bin Laden and his followers?”

A pretty sorry one. Which, I fear, would suit some people fine.

NEW ULTRAPORTABLE LAPTOPS from Dell. Of course, to be really appealing, they'd have to come with Windows XP instead of Vista . . . .

JOHN STOSSEL, the lone libertarian.

A LOOK AT THE TAIWANESE ELECTIONS.

FROM KITHBRIDGE, an aggregated look at Obama/Wright blog coverage.

ABOUT THAT TIP YOU LEFT AT STARBUCKS. It may not have gone where you thought.

SINBAD 1, HILLARY 0: The WaPo awards Hillary four Pinocchios for prevarication.

GHOST RIDING in Afghanistan.

PASSPORTGATE EXPANDS BEYOND OBAMA: Clinton, McCain passport records were also viewed. This is nothing compared to what we'll see if we go to national healthcare.

I'M NOT HAPPY with current trends in eco-thinking. First, a shower that punishes you for using too much water. Then, a combination toilet/washing machine? Uh huh.

YEHUDAH MIRSKY: Can the American approach to religion work outside the West?

JAKE TAPPER: Pennsylvania Democrats set to defect: "In a sign of just how divisive and ugly the Democratic fight has gotten, only 53% of Clinton voters say they'll vote for Obama should he become the nominee. Nineteen percent say they'll go for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and 13% say they won't vote. Sixty percent of Obama voters say they'll go for Clinton should she win the nomination, with 20% opting for McCain, and three percent saying they won't vote." I blame racism.

GOTHAM GALS: A tribute to booth babes at the New York Auto Show.

IN THE MAIL: The Fidelity Files. Send a copy to McGreevey, Spitzer, Paterson, et al.

BOINGBOING TV on Tibet's uprising and the Internet.

HEH: Already cashing in on the Obama "typical white person" flap. I love the Internet. And capitalism!

FLORIDA, wrecker of elections.

VICTIM KILLED BY BURGLAR while on the phone to 911. She'd have been better off with a gun.

A VERY COOL PHOTO of Atlanta during last week's tornado. (Via Neal Boortz). Follow link for much larger image.

WOW: According to this review, the cheap and easy to use Flip Video Camera has captured an amazing 13% of the camcorder market. Why? "Having finally lived with the Flip, I finally know the answer: it's a blast. It's always ready, always with you, always trustworthy. Instead of crippling this 'camcorder,' the simplicity elevates it." I still don't see much advantage over video from a digital still camera, though the review says the Flip does a lot better in low light.

CRUCIFIXION IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH: Having been crucified myself,* I have to say that it's no picnic, even when they don't actually nail you to the cross.

---
* During my brief acting career, when I was understudy to Thief On The Left in the Smoky Mountain Passion Play.

ADOBE: Taking the fun out of fun?

TOM MAGUIRE: "Is there any doubt why Obama is resisting the re-vote in Florida and Michigan? Try to picture him losing those two states as well as those listed above and then trying to persuade the superdelegates of his inevitability."

KOSOVO: The Israel of the Balkans.

THE OBAMA PASSPORT KERFUFFLE: Taylor Marsh says it's so 1990s. I say, just think what these privacy-breach scandals will be like with national health care.

HEH: The 10 formats HD-DVD will meet in video heaven. I remember seeing the first LaserDisc player before it was released. But U-Matic isn't really dead, except as a consumer format. We have a couple of U-Matic decks in the Law School studio.

DON SURBER: Why does YouTube suck? "I realize You Tube is free. But man, it sucks. It is like watching over-the-air TV in an HDTV age." Yeah, the YouTube videos always look worse than what I upload.

A TYPICAL WHITE PERSON? They all look alike to me.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Tom Maguire.

Plus this: "Obama, with his unique understanding of America's problems, has done what no white man could have done. He has managed to make Hillary look good."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Further thoughts here. "Surely, if race relations are as bad as Wright and Obama would have them, they’d manifest themselves much more brutally here in the part of America that still takes pride in the Rebel flag than they do in mega-liberal Chicago. That’s not my experience, nor is it my observation…and believe me, with kids who are just as subject to the 'one-drop rule' as Obama himself is, I’m a keen observer."

March 20, 2008

CONSTITUENT SERVICE? Well, somebody was being serviced . . . .

ADVICE FOR JOHN MCCAIN: Don't get cocky!

TED NUGENT ON the Second Amendment.

JOHN KERRY AS Geraldine Ferraro. Plus, Obama and the American Flag. He's bringing patriotism back!

MEGAN MCARDLE EXPLODES MARKET MYTHS.

LARRY KUDLOW: "With the dollar rising all of a sudden, and commodity prices plunging, this would be a great time for the Treasury to get out there and buy dollars."

COUNTRY CLUB DEMOCRATS? "The Democratic nomination process is becoming more exclusive than Augusta National Golf Club."

WHILE TRAVELING, I pretty much missed the McCain/Obama video kerfuffle. But Ann Althouse has it covered.

CLIVE DAVIS: "I guess I might as well remind Barack Obama that the war in Iraq hasn't lasted longer than WW2. There were, in fact, some isolated outbreaks of fighting before Pearl Harbour."

EUGENE VOLOKH: "Can anyone tell me, please, just what JuicyCampus has been saying that is supposedly a misrepresentation?"

All I can say is that state Attorneys General should be glad they can't be held liable for claiming they're for impartial justice, while actually pursuing politics and publicity . . . .

POPULAR MECHANICS gets a National Magazine Award nomination. Two of the three issues had my column, which means that at least I'm not holding 'em back!

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, Christian?

A RECIPE FOR Easter Lamb. Mmm. Lamb.

THE EXAMINER: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has received more campaign money from disgraced lawyers at the controversial Milberg Weiss law firm than any other member of Congress, but she won’t say whether she’ll keep the contributions."

RON COLEMAN ON changing definitions of eloquence. "It once meant a talent for powerfully, persuasively and elegantly communicating ideas. Now it is used to describe the use of pretty words to obscure meaning."

SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE OBVIOUS: It's healthier to take the stairs. A lot healthier.

THE MCGREEVEY SCANDAL: Not just sex, but corruption. Yep.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Watch out for those sources!

MORE ON ARTHUR C. CLARKE, from Rand Simberg.

BERNSTEIN ON LITHWICK ON HELLER. "But surely it would be problematic to refuse to enforce a federal right against a part of the federal government just because the incorporation doctrine suggests that the right will have to enforced in exactly the same way against the states. If that is indeed a problem, it's a problem with incorporation (essentially invented by the liberal Warren Court, though that is a very long and complicated subject), and not the current majority's fealty to federalism."

ALEX SINGLETON: "People say that the market promotes selfishness, but it turns out that it is when things are owned collectively that greed thrives."

TALKING WORLD WAR TWO HISTORY with Nicholson Baker.

MCCAIN'S LONDON VISIT: A British blog report.

BELGIUM NO LONGER EXISTS: "The states of convenience cobbled together by nineteenth century European imperialism are still falling apart. In the long run, in the modern world it seems hard to have a state without a nation. I'm curious to see whether the process has some natural resting point."

YEAH, BUT THE ELECTION'S A LONG WAY OFF: McCain Surges Ahead. I mean, who would have expected this headline just a few months ago? Meanwhile, Hillary pulls ahead of Obama in the latest Gallup poll.

A MODEST PROPOSAL from The American Thinker. I'm sure it will be appreciated . . . .

BOY, MATT WELCH REALLY UNDERSTANDS this whole Internet shilling business. For the record, I don't own the thong.

PICKING LOCKS, and minds.

JACK BALKIN ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT:

Although I enjoy making sport of the Justices as much as anyone, the question of whether the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right, including a right to self defense, is not that difficult, at least to me. The framers of the 14th amendment assumed that it was one of the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. And if a right is a privilege or immunity of citizens of the United States, it hard for me to conclude that it does not bind the United States as well as the individual states.

Now, as a unreconstructed liberal (I'll show you pictures of my bleeding heart), I don't particularly like this result. But it follows sufficiently strongly from other commitments I have about the Constitution that I must accept it.

But read the whole thing.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: How to be a blogging star. Including my advice on time management, and this important caveat: "Don’t expect to get rich."

TAX PREP SOFTWARE SHOOTOUT: Turbo Tax takes the number one slot.

THE POLITICS OF the Obama predicament. "I think the "O'Mentum" has been stopped dead in its tracks."

Weirdly, the "O'Mentum" ceased on St. Patrick's day . . . .

CHINA: Tibet protests have spread: "China acknowledged Thursday that anti-government riots have spread to other provinces since sweeping through Tibet last week, as communist authorities announced the first group of arrests for the violence. . . . The protests have been the biggest challenge in almost two decades to Chinese rule in Tibet, a Himalayan region that the People's Liberation Army occupied in 1950 after several decades of effective independence."

REMEMBERING the golden age, at The Mudville Gazette. It may not even be past!

March 19, 2008

BANG THE DUMB slowly. No, it's not about Alexandra Dupre.

NPR ON Global Warming's missing heat. "Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them."

I blame the Bush Administration.

SIZING UP SACRIFICE: Gateway Pundit compares the Iraq War death toll with some battles from World War II.

OBAMA MEETS Ahmadinejad.

Plus, from bully pulpit to pulpit bullies. "As for 'the soul of our nation,' we have heard a lot of late about America's need for racial reconciliation. Thanks to the Obama-Wright episode, we also have learned that racial antagonism and anti-Americanism are much more common than we would have guessed among predominantly black congregations in America."

ADVENTURES IN BLOGGING ABOUT AMAZON: "this morning there was a message on my answering machine, from an Amazon.com Vice President, asking me to call him in relation to this post."

UH OH: "A new and virulent wheat fungus, previously found in East Africa and Yemen, has moved to major wheat growing areas in Iran, reports the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization. The fungus is capable of wreaking havoc to wheat production by destroying entire fields." More here. Keep an eye on this one.

PHIL BREDESEN'S MODEST superdelegate proposal.

A REALITY CHECK: "Mere mortals, and we can now count Obama among them, don't get elected to national office by eschewing cliches, pandering and condescension. I did a show last night on New England Cable News with a black preacher from Boston and a black Obama supporter. Both thought the speech was magnificent because Obama spoke the truth, and the woman thought that Obama had finally laid to rest her fears that Obama didn't see himself as part of the civil rights struggle. Geez, I can't think of a worse outcome for the first 'post-racial' candidate."

MICHAEL TOTTEN: What Iraqis want you to hear.

LOTS AND LOTS OF New York Auto Show coverage, from the Popular Mechanics folks.

A BIG ROUNDUP OF Arthur C. Clarke remembrances. Plus, a look at his writing.

ABC NEWS: Buried in Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor.

Not buried deep enough, it seems: "Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons."

BOINGBOING TV: Technology and the Iraq War.

Plus, Iraq: Five Years On.

HERE'S A ROUNDUP of all the Heller coverage at ScotusBlog.

OLYMPIC THOUGHTS:

At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It's not clear they understand this. They've been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.

Works for me.

AN ARTHUR C. CLARKE ROUNDUP, from Clark Lindsey.

IN THE MAIL: James Gustave Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability. One of a sudden huge wave of lefty books. Is it an election year? Interestingly, though, the accompanying promotional material tends to spin the books as farther-left and more anti-Bush than they really are. What does that say about their target audience?

Of course, some of them don't need any spinning.

IT DOESN'T MATTER, except when it does:

"Race doesn't matter," the crowd chanted after Sen. Barack Obama's sweeping victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary, made possible by heavy black support and a solid showing among white voters.

But in the seven weeks since, race has mattered more and more in his presidential struggle against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, threatening to dent his lead.

Indeed.

SHOULD MAC USERS run antivirus software?

OBAMA'S race against race.

EXTREME MORTMAN says that Pennsylvanians should ask Obama and Hillary about the Heller case and the Second Amendment. "A simple question: Which way do you hope the case is decided?"

SIGH. IT NEVER ENDS: More NY Gov. sex scandals. No wonder Spitzer thought he was just engaging in business as usual . . . .

ITUNES MOVIE RENTALS dubbed "not ready for primetime."

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Porkers of the Month:

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named all 71 senators who voted against a one-year earmark moratorium March Porkers of the Month. The amendment to the fiscal year 2009 Budget Resolution was offered by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and had fourteen bipartisan co-sponsors including the support of all three presidential candidates.

“King of Pork” Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) dismissed the earmark ban saying, “The idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful executive bureaucracy is more trustworthy than the elected representatives of the people when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars challenges the most basic tenet of our political system.”

In a similar vein, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opposed the ban as “unrealistic” and even went so far as to erroneously claim that earmarking “has been going in this country for 230-some-odd years,” and that “The Founding Fathers would be cringing to hear people talking about eliminating earmarks.”

There is a proper system for projects to be vetted by agencies (the “all-knowing, all-powerful” bureaucrats) that’s fallen by the wayside. Congress did not earmark extensively until the 1980s. Instead, Congress would fund general grant programs and let federal and state agencies select individual recipients through a competitive process or formula. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees named specific projects only when they had been vetted and approved by authorizing committees. Members of Congress with local concerns would lobby the president and federal agencies for consideration. The process was aimed at preventing abuse and allocating resources on the basis of merit and need.

Today, Appropriations Committee members arbitrarily pick winners and losers by earmarking funds for specific recipients.

It's not only wasteful, but it contributes -- significantly -- to corruption.

IN PENNSYLVANIA, Clinton leads Obama by 26 points.

March 18, 2008

MICKEY KAUS on the Obama speech.

UPDATE: Sympathy for Grandma.

A REASON TO SUPPORT OBAMA: Super Delegate Jack Murtha endorses Hillary Clinton.

CALLS MOUNT FOR BEIJING OLYMPIC BOYCOTT.

SO I'M AT THE BEACH, but it's kind of a working trip. Among other things, I spent a couple of hours having my picture made for a news article on blogging, emphasizing that bloggers can, and do, blog anywhere. Though I actually did manage a couple of midday posts while this was going on, it had the predictable effect of causing me to do less blogging than usual. Luckily, I had scheduled a few items so that things weren't completely dead. Meanwhile Helen got to serve as "grip," helping the photographer with lighting, etc. And yes, that's a Reason shirt I'm wearing.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE HAS DIED. I first spoke with him back in 1988. I sent a copy of my first book to him in Sri Lanka, and got a phone call from him the next day -- from Baltimore, where he was at Johns Hopkins and thought to be suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. He wrote me a while later to give me the good news that it was just the post-polio syndrome. It seems that it finally got him, but at the ripe age of 90. He was a very thoughtful guy, and a very good correspondent; he even autographed a copy of 2001 for my daughter when, at age 2, she could name all the moons of Jupiter. I doubt that I would do as well, if I attained his degree of fame. I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, but Yasser Arafat got it instead. I think it's pretty clear that Clarke would have been a better choice . . . .

The world is better for his having lived, and worse for his having died.

UPDATE: Bruce Webster on Clarke's influence: "He was the last of the Big Three — Isaac Asimov, Clarke, and Robert Heinlein — to pass away, and we shall not see their like again. It is hard to overstate the impact that these three authors had upon not just one, but at least two or three generations of scientist and engineers in the Anglosphere, particularly those of us who grew up in the 1950s through the 1970s."

QUEENFISH: A Cold War Tale. "After Dr. McLaren’s mission, the Arctic became a theater of military operations in which the Soviets tried to hide their missile-carrying subs under the fringes of the ice pack while American attack subs tried relentlessly to track them. The goal was to destroy the Soviet subs if the cold war turned hot, doing so quickly enough to keep them from launching their missiles and nuclear warheads at the United States."

The story's about Alfred McLaren's new book, Unknown Waters: A First-Hand Account of the Historic Under-ice Survey of the Siberian Continental Shelf by USS Queenfish (SSN-651). The book sounds interesting enough that I've ordered a copy.

GEORGE CLOONEY'S SELECTIVE ACTIVISM: "George Clooney is Hollywood’s 'heartthrob with a conscience' — except when it interferes with lucrative endorsement deals." Hollywood activism is about stars feeling good about themselves. But nothing makes stars feel as good about themselves as money, so . . .

TENURE: THE MOVIE.

OBAMA'S SPEECH: I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said, and I was too busy to do more than glance over the text, which is no substitute for seeing it delivered. But it seems to have been a good speech. The question is, how much does that help a guy who's known for giving good speeches, when the real question is whether he means what he says?

Roger Simon, meanwhile, was moved to poetry.

UPDATE: A Rand Simberg roundup.

LOS ANGELES TIMES: U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to strike down D.C. handgun ban. I certainly hope so, though GOP partisans might prefer that it went the other way, since that would make a McCain presidency much more likely.

UPDATE: More here. Predicting votes based on oral arguments is iffy, but there seems to be a lot of agreement that there are at least 5 votes here. I hope that's right.

MORE: Ilya Somin: "Unlike some of my co-conspirators I don't have the expertise to opine on the question of how far a constitutional right to bear arms should extend. However, experience in other areas of constitutional law suggests that any victory for individual rights will be a hollow one if the Court defers to the government in determining how broad the right should be."

SHOWING OFF A CRASH-TESTED FORD TAURUS.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of this weekend's book reviews from all over.

JOURNALISM: "New and troubling questions."

DREW CAREY ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABLE TO SELL YOUR KIDNEYS.

HERE'S THE TEXT OF Obama's big speech on race. I'm really busy right now, but here's a roundup of reactions from Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse comments. And Tom Maguire is all over it.

SO IS IT BECAUSE OF WHAT HE'S DONE, or because of what Hillary and Obama have done? McCain’s 67% Favorable Rating His Highest in Eight Years.

S.M. STIRLING'S In the Court of the Crimson Kings -- which I read in an advance copy a while back and liked a lot -- is now shipping.

LOTS MORE ON THE HELLER CASE, at ScotusBlog.

SOULJAH ADVICE FOR OBAMA, from Mickey Kaus: "There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births. Three strike laws! But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright's most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races."

I HAVE A SHORT PIECE ON HELLER, the Second Amendment, and the problems it poses for the Court's unenumerated rights jurisprudence available right here.

FIRST SPITZER, THEN MCGREEVEY, NOW THIS

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state's new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

We're approaching a national Too Much Information crisis. It's almost enough to make you long for the reticence and hypocrisy of the Victorian era. But it's not too much information in every respect, since the story offers another chance to play Name That Party! -- though a close reading of the sidebar sort of answers the question. But only sort of . . .

THE EXAMINER: Let the Sun Shine In.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s responses were featured Monday on the Sunshine Week Web site. Clinton told the Sunshine Week survey that she believes “in an open, transparent government that is accountable to the people. Excessive government secrecy harms democratic governance and can weaken our system of checks and balances by shielding officials from oversight and inviting misconduct or error.”

She promised to “make it clear to everyone in the Executive Branch that I expect my administration to be open and responsive to the public.” She further promised to appoint an attorney general of similar mind, to roll back President Bush’s executive order making release of presidential documents dependent upon the whims of former chief executives, and to put federal contracts and budgets online. Finally, according to Sunshine Week, she promised that if elected she would “prospectively” release names of donors to the Clinton presidential library and the Clinton foundation.

Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has responded to the Sunshine Week survey, but Clinton is uniquely positioned to demonstrate good faith by delivering on her promised openness now, instead of after the election.

Indeed.

HERE'S MORE ON HELLER from Randy Barnett in the Wall Street Journal:

The Second Amendment protects an individual right. In the 1960s, gun control advocates dismissed the Second Amendment as protecting the so-called "collective right" of states to preserve their militias -- notwithstanding that, everywhere else in the Constitution, a "right" of "the people" refers to an individual right of persons, and the 10th Amendment expressly distinguishes between "the people" and "the states." Now even the District asserts the new theory that, while this right is individual, it is "conditioned" on a citizen being an active participant in an organized militia. Therefore, whoever wins, Heller won't be based on a "collective" right of the states.

Still, a ruling upholding an unconditioned individual right to arms and invalidating the ban is unlikely to have much effect on current gun laws. Here's why:

Read the whole thing. And query: Would a win for the DC position create a constitutional obligation on the part of the states to maintain an active militia? Or, at least, allow states that chose to do so to immunize their member citizens from Federal gun laws on Second Amendment grounds? That topic is explored in more depth in this (relatively short) article from the William and Mary Law Review.

BYRON YORK:

Speaking of "God damn America," if you read only the New York Times — if that were your only source of news — you might not even know that Wright had uttered those words. A Nexis search shows that the only place Rev. Wright's "God damn America" proclamation has been reported in the Times was in Bill Kristol's column yesterday. That column was noticed mostly for a factual error — Kristol repeated a claim from an inaccurate NewsMax report — but as serious as that was, it seems that Times readers should at least thank Bill for telling them what the news pages would not.

Indeed.

ROBERT LEVY on the Heller case.

Even if the court believes that a ban on an entire class of protected weapons can sometimes be justified, it should conclude that regulations like those in Washington are subject to strict judicial scrutiny: government, if challenged, would have to demonstrate that restrictions serve a compelling state interest, will be effective at attaining the desired goal, and do not unnecessarily compromise Second Amendment rights..

Read the whole thing. And Clayton Cramer has pictures of the Harry Potter-like line of people waiting to hear today's oral argument.

March 17, 2008

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I didn't!

RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC? Blame the Neocons!

"THIS SHOULD NOT BE A CHURCH, this should be a mosque."

WHAT TO DRINK for St. Patrick's Day.

TONY DYE discovers the long run.

OUCH. Ron Fournier writes: "Both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement."