CATO UNBOUND looks at the future of work.
Archive for 2006
June 5, 2006
America’s motto is “E pluribus unum,” Latin for “Out of many, one.” Some U.S. senators seem to be reading it backward. This week the Senate will consider legislation that would create an independent, race-based government for Native Hawaiians. If the bill becomes law, it would create a racial spoils system that would hand special privileges to up to one-fifth of the state’s population–including many with only a trace of Hawaiian blood. It could inspire mainland groups such as Hispanic separatists to seek similar spoils, should they ever gain enough political leverage.
Sounds like shameless prejudice against immigrants to me. . . .
DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER MARK BLUMENTHAL is Fisking RFK, Jr. Really, this is an embarrassment for RFK and for the Rolling Stone.
GUILTY UNTIL PROVED INNOCENT? And maybe not off the hook even then. That seems to be the attitude of the German media where U.S. soldiers are concerned — and of some folks in the United States, too.
PATRICK HYNES says it’s not 1994 again. Republican Party leaders had better hope he’s right, since Republican elected officials seem to be doing their damnedest to prove him wrong . . . .
THE NEW YORK TIMES WANTS more photos of American corpses.
Meanwhile, the London Times is apologizing for mis-labeling photos of Iraqi corpses so as to blame Americans instead of insurgents for their deaths.
BARRY MCCAFFREY REPORTS ON IRAQ, and thinks things are going better than the news reports suggest. Full report is downloadable at the link.
UPDATE: Read this post from Zeyad about Balkanization in Baghdad, too. It’s not inconsistent with McCaffrey’s report, since he identifies the same problem, but the two can be profitably read together. (Via PJ Media).
JOHN KERRY, off the record. Er, or not quite.
EUGENE VOLOKH says that the San Francisco Chronicle is still airbrushing Pete McCloskey’s antisemitic comments.
COLUMNIST JIM WOOTEN is now blogging.
BILL ROGGIO sends a report from Kandahar. Click “read more” to read it. You can also hear an interview with him and with Matt from BlackFive over at Pundit Review Radio.
PODCASTING IS NOT BLOGGING: Some thoughts on the way different forms promote different content.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. debunked in Salon. Put that together with the debunkings in Mother Jones and on NPR, and that puts RFK, Jr. in a pretty uncomfortable place. And congratulations to all these outlets for refusing to lend any credence to silly conspiracy theories.
LESSER OF TWO EVILS: A Peru election roundup.
THE MU.NU SERVER is under a DDOS attack. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Andrew Maizels emails: “With the help of our hosting provider we’ve managed to block enough of the nasties out that we’re back on the air. Slightly wobbly, but definitely alive.”
IN THE MAIL: Jeremy Lott’s new book, In Defense of Hypocrisy : Picking Sides in the War on Virtue.
I blurbed his book quite favorably, but the blurb doesn’t really do it justice as it doesn’t account for my delight in the excellent writing, which produces laugh-out-loud zingers on almost every page. I found it a really enjoyable book.
Two weeks ago, I pointed out that we live in something close to the best of times, with record worldwide economic growth and at a low point in armed conflict in the world. Yet Americans are in a sour mood, a mood that may be explained by the lack of a sense of history. The military struggle in Iraq (nearly 2,500 military deaths) is spoken of in as dire terms as Vietnam (58,219), Korea (54,246) or World War II (405,399). We bemoan the cruel injustice of $3 a gallon for gas in a country where three-quarters of people classified as poor have air conditioning and microwave ovens. We complain about a tide of immigration that is, per U.S. resident, running at one-third the rate of 99 years ago.
George W. Bush has a better sense of history.
Read the whole thing. Back on September 11, I remarked that we could expect a lot of bad stuff to happen, and that things were likely to be that way for a while, because that’s the historical norm. The 1990s were a fool’s paradise — which I liked, too, but then I was one of those fools. That things aren’t like the 1990s now, other than economically, is a case of returning to norms, not of an unusual deviation from them. That doesn’t mean anything specific with regard to particular policy disputes, of course, but it does mean that people who are shocked and appalled that the situation isn’t like the 1990s are missing the point.
MORE IRANIAN UNREST: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.
ARNOLD KLING: “If the tendency of government were to expand on its successes and cut back on its failures, then I probably would not remain a libertarian.”
MATT SHERMAN WRITES THAT GOOGLE is not living up to its own rhetoric on “net neutrality.”
People unhappy with Google can always try Ask.com, or Dogpile.com. I’ve been using Ask — including Ask News — quite a bit lately and I’ve found it quite satisfactory.
MICKEY KAUS notes Al Gore’s “withdrawal from Kosistan.”
Just as well. It’s a small country, of which we know little and care less. . . .
LASHAWN BARBER OPPOSES GAY MARRIAGE, but isn’t impressed with Bush’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. There are times when I’ve found Bush’s transparent lack of enthusiasm for this measure comforting, but of course it just makes it more obviously pandering when they trot it out at this point. Or maybe I should say “attempted pandering,” since if LaShawn’s reaction is typical it’s not a very successful effort.
UPDATE: Message to Karl Rove: When you’re being double-teamed by LaShawn Barber and Dave Weigel, you’re probably working from the wrong playbook.
Given the WSJ poll that showed earmarks and immigration as the #1 and #2 concerns of voters, why not try addressing those issues sensibly, instead of trying to run on symbolism? Just a thought . . . .