Archive for 2015
July 17, 2015
JAMES LILEKS DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE WORSHIP OF NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, and deconstructs one of his patented “dude – might wanna lay off the bong for a while” tweets:
Had to wait in line to renew a Passport allowing me to visit members of my own species across artificially conceived borders.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) February 5, 2015
Artificially conceived is meant to connote a a falseness, a violation of Natural Things. But the major accomplishments of civilization are artificially conceived. Why, even some really fine people were artificially conceived.
Wouldn’t a Man of Science know that borders have perfectly reasonable reasons for being where they are? Like, say, rivers. Or mountains. Or large bodies of water we laymen call “oceans.” Stay with me here, because this gets tricky – sometimes these borders are drawn for cultural reasons. People on one side, for the most part, speak one language and have a certain set of folkways; people on the other speak a different language, and have different traditions. This may seem to argue against the universality of man, the idea that we are all brothers and sisters, and I would suggest that it seems that way because the universality of man is a rather useless concept on which to base your understanding of the world as it is today. I have a lot in common with fellow members of my species, but the differences are what we grapple with. And the differences not only lead to borders, they require them.
Didn’t G.K. Chesterton preemptively respond to Tyson’s tweet 85 years ago with his famous paradox of the wall?
NOW MAKE THEM OUT OF PHOTOVOLTAIC MATERIAL: Plastic Roads Sound Like a Crazy Idea, Maybe Aren’t.
I DUNNO, THESE Men’s Fashion Week duds don’t look like they’d appeal to most InstaPundit readers. But hey, it takes all kinds.
SIX STRATEGIES TO MAKE TRAVELING WITH YOUR BABY AS EASY AS POSSIBLE: Just in time for summer vacation season, at the PJ Media Parenting section.
DAVID BROOKS, HOUSE CONSERVATIVE FOR A CERTAIN DEMOGRAPHIC, takes on Ta-Nehisi Coates, House Black for that same demographic, generating considerable discussion within that demographic. For the rest of us, meh. But they are equally authentic in their roles.
A QUADCOPTER DRONE that fires a pistol on command.
CHANGE: Concealed-Carry Permits For Women Rose 270% Since 2007.
All is proceeding as I have foreseen, going back, in this case, to 2001.
IN THE MAIL: From Dan Hoyt, Ninth Euclid’s Prince.
Plus, today only at Amazon: 63% Off Fast & Furious: 6-Film Collection on Blu-ray.
And, also today only: Up to 40% Off Select Bikes.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 799.
MISS US YET? Philippines to Reopen Huge Old U.S. Naval Base.
It’s a fixer upper, but the old U.S. Navy base at Subic bay in the Philippines used to be one of the largest U.S. naval bases in the world. Now, Manila is refurbishing and reopening it as part of a $20 billion military modernization project aimed at standing up to China. Because of its location and its deep water port, Subic Bay is a major strategic asset, one that will house, according to the plan, both high speed jets and littoral combat ships. . . .
The Philippines is pressing its case against China in court, but that’s unlikely to constrain the country even if the court sides against Beijing. Manila knows that ultimately it’s a weak power in its region and is therefore working outside the courtroom to change the calculus. Before this news, the most it had done recently was reinforce the rusted out shell of a beached ship that’s served as a remote outpost in the Spratlys. The Subic base project is in a league of its own.
The big question that might be on the minds of Beijing’s strategists is whether the U.S. will be able to use the base as well. Washington and Manila signed a defense deal in 2014 that would allow U.S. forces to use Philippine bases on a rotating basis. However, the deal’s constitutionality was challenged, and the issue hangs in the balance as a Philippine court adjudicates. If the agreement makes it through the legal gauntlet, the American and Philippine militaries both get access to a key base across from the South China Sea.
Funny, the Phillipines tried pretty hard to squeeze us out.
ANJEM CHOUDARY WANTS YOU TO HAVE NO FUN, EAT NO BACON, TRADE NO STOCKS: Man, radical Islam morphed into Sacramento so slowly, I hardly even noticed. Or is it the other way around?
THE ASTRONAUT STORY IS ALMOST CERTAINLY FAKE, but Hillary’s right that we should be mapping asteroid locations. Not sure if it’s Hillary, or the Politico reporter, who doesn’t understand the difference between an asteroid and a meteorite.
AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.
Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.
Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.
And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE (CONT’D): When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable: A man is finally freed, but that doesn’t mean the system worked.
Three years ago, one of the strangest criminal cases in recent memory began in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, when a young woman sent a series of text messages telling her boyfriend that a man had abducted her, followed by a series of texts, allegedly from her captor, taunting her boyfriend with threats of sexual violence. Her story was strange, and the case was fraught with complications from the get-go, but the accused ended up in prison long after the doubts outweighed the evidence.
This story is bizarre, but it’s not all that unusual: Prosecutors can prosecute even the weakest, most clearly flawed cases relentlessly, and innocent people can end up in jail.
This week, after two and a half years in prison, Mark Weiner saw his conviction vacated. It finally ended a saga in which Weiner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her. . . .
The Albemarle County prosecutor, who is elected to the post, is currently Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford. As part of her prosecution strategy, Weiner’s trial lawyer later said, Lunsford “sought the advice of two respected detectives in the city and the county” to pinpoint where the alleged victim’s text messages had originated. Each cop concluded independently that the texts had been sent from near where Steiniger’s mother lived. Lunsford interviewed the first officer for the first time at the courthouse, just before he was scheduled to testify. He told the prosecutor he’d guess the calls came from Steiniger’s mother’s house, not the abandoned property.
Some prosecutors would call that sort of thing exculpatory information that must legally be turned over to the defense. Lunsford thanked the officer for stopping by and said she would no longer be needing his testimony after all. (This officer would later call the defense attorney and tell him what had transpired.) The second law enforcement officer offered up the same conclusion. He didn’t get to testify, either.
Railroading people on bogus rape charges seems to be a Charlottesville specialty.
UPDATE: “Isn’t Mark Weiner’s experience exactly what Obama seeks to impose on college campuses?” Yes. Believe the women!
ANDREW KLAVAN ASKS, HOW WILL FUTURE GENERATIONS VIEW PLANNED PARENTHOOD?
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: We Aren’t The World: Barack Obama’s Global Test. “Qaddafi was deposed, killed by a mob in October 2011, his arsenal plundered, and his country left to the depredations of warring tribes, al Qaeda, ISIS, and human traffickers. The opinion of ‘the world’ trumps its American counterpart. In early March 2011, 63 percent of respondents told the Pew Research Center that America did not have a responsibility to end the Libyan civil war, and public opinion was split, 44-45 percent, on whether to enforce a no-fly zone there. Obama went to war anyway, without congressional authorization.”
WELL, SHE’S AN UNAPPEALING PERSON WHO’S RUNNING A LOUSY CAMPAIGN: Hillary favorables tumble in new AP-GfK poll.
DOESN’T GAWKER KNOW YOU’RE ONLY SUPPOSED TO OUT GAY REPUBLICANS? Gawker Helps Gay Escort Blackmail Timothy Geithner’s Brother, Ted Cruz Is the Hero of the Story.
UPDATE: “All the worst people you knew in high school moved to NYC or DC and went into journalism.”
NEW VIDEO FROM STEVEN CROWDER: MICROAGRESSION, A BEGINNER’S #SJW GUIDE.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
ASHE SCHOW: Updating the cliche that it’s better to let ’10 guilty men go free.’
The old liberal cliché that it’s “better 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer” has been upended in recent years — at least when it comes to accusations of sexual assault.
The cliché has been replaced by: “It’s better 10 innocent persons suffer than one guilty escape.”
The push to reduce campus sexual assault has bred this new sentiment, as policies purporting to make colleges and universities safer actually increase the likelihood that innocent students will be accused and punished. The new policies broaden the definition of sexual assault while narrowing the definition of consent, and remove due process protections for accused students while severely limiting what constitutes “evidence” in their defense.
We can see the destruction of the above cliché in last month’s Washington Post survey on campus sexual assault. Students were asked whether it was “more unfair” for an innocent student to get kicked out of college based on an accusation or for a guilty person to get away with it.
Forty-two percent of respondents (including 49 percent of men but just 36 percent of women) said that it was “more unfair” for an innocent student to be expelled. Conversely, 49 percent of students (including 42 percent of men and 56 percent of women) said that it was “more unfair” for the guilty to get away.
The question itself is absurd, as both options are terrible. No one should be playing “victim Olympics” — deciding whose victimhood is more legitimate.
Actually, there’s a lot of power in doing that, and a lot of people who want to wield it.
OBAMA’S EID MESSAGE: ‘A REASON TO CELEBRATE AND EXPRESS GRATITUDE ON THIS HOLIDAY.’
And at another intersection of church and state, “Remember when Obama said ‘God bless you’ to Planned Parenthood?”
IT’S SHEILA JACKSON LEE, NATCH: Sheila Jackson Lee at Center of Capitol Police Collision Questions.
A recent Capitol Hill collision drove a confrontation between Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Capitol Police.
On June 17 at around 1:45 p.m., Jackson Lee’s chief of staff had a minor traffic accident on the House side of the Capitol grounds.
Glenn E. Rushing, 49, backed a gray Nissan SUV into a Capitol Police officer who was posted near the barricades at New Jersey and Independence avenues Southeast, according to a June 17 police report obtained by CQ Roll Call. . . .
The Texas Democrat wasn’t in the car at the time. But a tipster said Rushing’s boss showed up on the scene not long after a police cruiser responded, and she demanded contact information for Chief Kim C. Dine.
“What happened?” Jackson Lee asked when she arrived, according to an unofficial transcript from sources on the scene. “This is ludicrous. I am tired of Capitol Police harassing me and my staff. Who do I talk to about this?”
Remember, her guy backed into a cop.
GAWKER HELPS GAY ESCORT BLACKMAIL TIMOTHY GEITHNER’S BROTHER, TED CRUZ IS THE HERO OF THE STORY: At Reason, Robby Soave outlines Gawker’s latest meltdown, (perhaps not coincidentally involving an executive at rival publishing house Condé Nast), and the reaction from Twitter users last night.
Read the whole thing. And then check out Twitchy, which notes, “Even Gawker senior writer disowns site’s ‘repugnant’ attempt at clickbait.”
AN OPEN LETTER FROM A MILITARY WIFE TO OBAMA ABOUT MILITARY PROPERTY SECURITY:
Dear Mr. Obama,
I have little hope that you’ll ever read this, but I have to get this off my chest. Since 1993, our military personnel, many of whom have had extensive weapons training including sidearms, have not been allowed to carry weapons openly or concealed on military properties. Yet on your watch the following incidents have occurred:
- 2009 – Fort Hood, 13 killed, 29 wounded–many permanently disabled
- 2009 – Arkansas recruiting station, one killed, a second wounded
- 2010 – Pentagon shooting by a 9/11 truther, two wounded
- 2013 – Washington Navy Yard shooting, 13 killed, three injured
- 2014 – Norfolk Naval Base, one killed
- 2014 – Fort Hood AGAIN–three killed, 14 injured
- 2015 – Chattanooga, 4 Marines at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center killed, two others wounded at a local recruiting station
These incidents, which resulted in the deaths of 35 innocent people and serious injuries to 51 others, might all have been minimized or even prevented by trained, armed military members.
Why is it that these men and women, who carry firearms on our behalf, whom we entrust with the security and well-being of our nation, aren’t allowed to bear arms on military bases in order to defend themselves and others?