Archive for 2013
June 23, 2013
ANN ALTHOUSE: “Is Gregory part of the problem of criminalizing journalists? Or is Greenwald throwing up a smokescreen to defend himself?” It’s possible that they’re both tools, of course. But whose? With Gregory, it’s pretty obvious. With Greenwald? . . . .
MICKEY KAUS: One More Metaphor For The Gang of 8. “The best I can come up with is this: A man comes into your restaurant. You recognize him–he’s a guy who ate a $100 meal last year and said he’d pay later, but he stiffed you. Now he’s back and wants another meal on credit. He senses you are wary and makes a new offer. ‘This time I’ll pay you … $2 million! How can you refuse? It’s 2 million dollars!’ You get the idea. Just try and collect.” Much, much more at the link, where Mickey analyzes the various assurances that are offered.
TRACY QUAN: Prostitution Protests Make Strange Bedfellows.
SEEMS REASONABLE TO ME: Kristol: GOP Senators Should Block Immigration Monday, Let Us and Them Read the Bill. I’m sick of being told I have to pass it to find out what’s in it.
STEVE HAYWARD: Why Immigration Reform Is The Panama Canal Treaty Redux. “It’s true, we have a two-party system in America: The Evil Party, and the Stupid Party. And every once and a while the Evil Party and the Stupid Party get together to pass something really evil and stupid. That’s called ‘bipartisanship.'”
Plus: “I’m actually in favor of some sensible immigration reforms, and believe the GOP could handle this issue in a way that would make liberals howl (start with including some anti-multicultural poison pills in the law, and then debate the matter openly). But increasingly this bill looks to me that it is this decade’s equivalent of the Panama Canal treaty of 1977: if it passes, it is going to end several political careers, starting with Rubio’s. Howard Baker’s Panama Canal treaty vote not only killed his presidential ambitions, but also eliminated him from serious consideration to be Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1980.”
DO-IT-YOURSELF GUNS going viral on Reddit.
THE REGIME DEFENDS ITS INTERESTS: Revealed: U.S. Justice Department and New Hampshire’s Criminal Investigation of James O’Keefe’s Voter ID Video. Note that the DOJ managed to get O’Keefe out of action for the 2012 election season elsewhere.
And True The Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht was targeted by not only the IRS, but also the FBI, the ATF, and OSHA. (More on that here.) It’s like they don’t want anyone looking into voter fraud. Why might that be?
ANGELO CODEVILLA: The Ruling Class Consensus On Domestic Spying. “It is not speculation to expect that these powers will be used for what they are indeed useful. To recapitulate: ‘Constant Informant’ can find patterns of communication between people who are not trying to mask them, while PRISM makes everyone’s cyber activity accessible. This allows the US government to pick and choose and build cases for any reason against any person on whom it has such data. . . . The relevant question about the uses of the NSA programs, then, is simply ‘against whom, in the broad American public, is the US government likely to turn its animus?’ Alas, the ruling class has shown itself all too able to treat domestic opponents as public enemies. But that is another story.”
I might trust some people with that kind of power, though it’s doubtful. But I definitely don’t trust these people with it, since they have a demonstrated tendency to abuse the power they have.
OVER AT RICOCHET, they’re talking about Men On Strike, but — as is usual with Ricochet — the most interesting stuff is in the comments. Here’s my favorite, which quotes Adam Smith:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. – Adam Smith
Similarly, why can it not be true that it is not from the benevolence of men that we expect marriage and family, but from their regard to their own interest?
Indeed.
THE UPSIDE OF GLOBAL WARMING.
The Arctic boom reminds us that global warming, like most every macro phenomenon, has good and bad effects. The pace of warming has slowed down in recent years and it’s uncertain what the long term effects of climate change will be. But even if we grant that some of the greens’ fears will be realized, there are still countervailing benefits to consider. It looks to us as if the affects of climate change are much more complex and harder to predict than green publicists claim; the earth’s climate system has surprised us before and is likely to surprise us again as the interactions and interrelations of different factors lead to unexpected changes in the world around us.
Given that climate change is a mixture of curses and blessings, any policy addressing it is going to involve trade-offs. Slowing it down, for example, would hurt some, help others. It’s not clear why a cold, Arctic-reliant country like Russia whose economy is linked to the oil and gas trade would find a benefit in cooperating with efforts to stop climate change. It also appears that human activities like farming are better able to adjust to temperature variations than some pessimists would have us believe. Crops like soya, corn and wheat can be bred (or genetically modified) to grow in warmer and dryer conditions at a modest cost.
Greens, many impelled by emotional overreactions or a deep inner belief that unfettered capitalism is a terrible thing, have tried to simplify the discussion about the earth’s changing climate into a morality play.
That’s because environmentalism is better understood as a religion than a scientific movement. Meanwhile, better to face global warming than a Fallen Angels scenario, which is also noted here.
TEST-DRIVING the 2014 Nissan Versa.
A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING: Cops: Robber fatally shot in Little Five Points.
Atlanta police still had not released the name Sunday of an armed citizen who shot a would-be robber in Little Five Points on Saturday morning.
The dead man, who also has not been identified, was killed after allegedly trying to rob a group of people waiting in line to buy the new, $180 LeBron James sneakers.
Witnesses told one man in line outside Wish, a clothing and shoe store on Moreland Avenue, pulled out a gun and shot the would-be robber.
The shooter then got back in line, according to Channel 2 Action News.
Police have not charged anyone and for now consider the shooting to be self-defense. No additional information was being released Sunday morning, said Officer John Chafee, an Atlanta Police Department spokesman.
“He [the shooter] really stood up for all of us,” said Taylor White, who told Channel 2 that he was in line when the shooting happened. “I salute the homie that did that.”
The robber, apparently, was after people’s “shoe money.”
FROM KEN AT POPEHAT: A LOOK AT THE CHARGES AGAINST EDWARD SNOWDEN. “Note that the second and third charges both require the feds to prove that Snowden’s release of information to the press was harmful to the United States. This puts our government in the position of attempting to prove that it is harmful to release accurate information about how it is spying on us, and how it is misleading us about spying on us. Espionage charges usually describe someone with classified information leaking that information to powers hostile to the United States government. We, the people, are those hostile powers.”
CLIMATE CHANGE: Super-hurricane-force winds on Venus are getting stronger.
BEN SMITH: You don’t have to like Edward Snowden. Whether you do or don’t, in fact, is likely to distort your thinking about whether what he reports is true, and what it means if it is.
ED DRISCOLL: Ride The David Gregory Recursion. “Gregory in particular has a fair amount of prior experience breaking the law as an activist masquerading as a ‘journalist’ himself.”
BOB WOODWARD ON THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL: When Nobody Has ‘Read the Bill’ the ‘Outcome Is Absurd.’
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: Two Men Arrested For Trying To Build An X-Ray Gun.
But there are a lot of problems with this story. First, is an X-ray gun illegal? Second, the builder was reputedly a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer who wanted to help Israel “kill its enemies.” Er, dude, the Klan’s supposed to be anti-semitic. You’re doing it wrong. Third, the article conflates experimental “pain ray” devices — which use microwaves — with X-rays. Microwaves are non-ionizing radiation, generating pain by heating the skin. That’s a totally different mechanism, not just a question of dosage, as the rather sloppy article implies.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanotube Probe Gives a Single Neuron’s View of Brain Activity.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Barbara Oakley reviews Men On Strike.