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Monday, September 15, 2003
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Beer and a Haircut. The aptly named Michael Puffer, an intrepid investigative reporter for the Danvers, Massachusetts, Herald, asks for a cup of beer at a local hair salon, receives the complementary beverage he requested, and returns the favor by ratting out the owner for serving liquor without a license. Then he brags about the feat in print. It makes you proud to be a journalist.
[Thanks to Doug Geiger for the link.] [Hit & Run]
I think the owner of the business has the best quote in the article:
Asked whether he had thought to ensure his staff could practice identification checks to ensure they didn't serve anybody under age 21, Petipas said he had not.
"I will put in an identification check for snot-nosed reporters looking to make a mark," Petipas said.
1:35:45 PM 
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America's hidden battlefield toll. The true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures obtained by The Observer, which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously.
The figures will shock many Americans, who believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been relatively light. Recent polls show that support for President George Bush and his administration's policy in Iraq has been slipping. (link)
The human cost of this war is far greater even than the monetary cost. Support the troops - bring them home safe now! [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs]
That's an awful lot of non-wounded medical evacuations. Problems with the heat, perhaps? Very few Americans live in places where the temperature gets as high as it does in Iraq.
I suspect this war may have a rather negative effect on Bush's re-election. The last presidential election had the deciding electoral votes determined by a statistical tie--which makes various small interest groups important. One of the groups that Bush had going for him last time was the military, whose members were tired of being having their families broken up and being sent of to various third-world hellholes for the greater glory of President Clinton and the UN. Bush promised to end Clinton's imperial overreach and adopt a "more humble" foreign policy, so he got military votes. However, in practice, Bush has not ended but extended Clinton's imperial foreign policy. I think in the next election our military personnel may well demonstrate that they are no more eager to have their lives messed up for the greater glory of President Bush and the neocons.
1:28:32 PM
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Five More Months of This?!?!. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that the California recall must be postponed, due to concerns over hanging chads and suchlike. The ruling (which you can read here) is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Recall legal blogger Rick Hasen will likely have interesting observations throughout the day. [Hit & Run]
I guess I spoke too soon when I commented that it was a good thing Davis couldn't just have the recall petition thrown out, as Hugo Chavez did. This isn't exactly the same tactic, but it's pretty close.
12:45:35 PM
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A monster awakens? [Online Journal]
Apparently there's been some unusual activity recently under Yellowstone. The article also explains what would happen if Yellowstone erupted--basically, the end of the world. Yellowstone is due for an eruption at any time, but fortunately "any time" on a geologic time scale could easily mean "not for another 50,000 years."
12:28:12 PM
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Did the Framers Favor Hard Money?. The Old Republican leader John Randolph, the aristocratic liberal from Virginia, once famously remarked that the framers intended ours to be "a hard-money government." Is it true? Contrary to the efforts of academics and judges to obscure this issue, the framers' intentions in regard to money and banking were quite plain and are easily reconstructed.
On balance, the framers' views can be summarized as follows. On the one hand, they believed in fractional-reserve banking, generally following Adam Smith's currency and banking theories. On the other hand, they were resolutely opposed to government-issued paper money, fiat money, legal tender laws, inconvertible paper currency, and land banks. On the question of a national bank, they were divided, but they all believed in a hard dollar (defining the dollar as a certain weight of silver and/or gold). On a spectrum, their views would be closer to those of Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul than John Maynard Keynes and Alan Greenspan. [Ludwig von Mises Institute]
11:45:17 AM
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Just What We Need: Another "Czar". Only one hour after posting this (on Internet policing and preaching), I saw this. The White House (Dept. of Homeland Security) now has a Cybersecurity Czar. He's a former Symantec executive named Amit Yoran. Yoran "will be the government's evangelist... [LewRockwell.com Blog]
I certainly hope Symantec makes sure to distance itself from this guy. Otherwise it's likely to hurt sales with people who have enough sense to recognize that the Feds are far more of a threat to "cybersecurity" than some teenage hacker.
10:43:36 AM
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PATRIOTic Mission Creep. "New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals" reads the AP headline.
How is the PATRIOT Act is being stretched by law enforcement types? As Stan Lee used to say, "Read on MacDuff":
In the two years since law enforcement agencies gained fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on al-Qaida cells but on people charged with common crimes.
The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers.
Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.
The most disturbing element of the story may be the charge leveled by a spokesman for a criminal defense attorneys organization:
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."
Which should leave PATRIOT Act defenders and critics alike wondering where we'll be in a few more years' time, especially if the sunset provisions in the original act are amended. [Hit & Run]
10:36:35 AM
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Democrats committing political suicide with gun laws. Talked briefly over the weekend with Chrissy Gephardt, daughter of Democratic Presidential candidate Dick Gephardt. She is working for her father's campaign so I tried to offer at least one helpful suggestion: "You dad doesn't have a prayer unless he becomes a pro-gun Democrat."
Why does the rabble vote Republican? This question has been looked at in this blog before, in the posting entitled "Democrats = mediocrity; Republicans = lottery ticket". It might be too much to ask Democrats to give up their devotion to mediocrity and pandering to public employee unions. But shutting up about gun laws would be a small change that would yield an enormous number of voters.
Why are gun laws so important? Consider Johnny Paycheck. He has no freedom of speech, at least if he wants to keep his job. He has no freedom of action; a hierarchy of managers tells him what to do all day every day. Johnny Paycheck has no wealth; all of his income goes for rent and payments on his SUV. He has no pension; his retirement mutual fund is being eviscerated by managerial looting at American public companies. Johnny spends about 40% of his income on various taxes so that rich people don't have to pay taxes.
Why does Johnny support the Republicans then, the party of corporate looters and tax cuts for rich people? He expects rich people and the government to take away all of his money and freedom, regardless of which party is in power. The difference to him is that the Republicans will allow him to keep his gun, the one shred of personal dignity that he has left. The Democrats want to take away Johnny's gun, his last vestige of personal freedom and manhood.
Perhaps if gun laws made a difference alienating half of America's voters might be worthwhile. It would be nice to strip America's underclass of their ability to perpetrate violence. But the gun laws proposed by the election-losing Democrats are feeble pathetic measures that serve only to annoy gun nuts.
You can have a powerful semi-automatic rifle... but it can't look exactly like a military "assault rifle". You can get a machine gun but you need to fill out some forms. You can buy a pistol but unless you fill out the right forms you can only kill 5 people with it before popping in another magazine. These then are the achievements for which the Democrats have sacrificed their relevance to American government.
Gephardt's Web site doesn't put the harassment of gun lovers #1 on his agenda but it is there and that is enough to lose him any election. His charming daughter is clearly ready to follow him into politics because she managed to ignore the idea without anyone liking her less... [Philip Greenspun Weblog]
Here's something you don't see every day--a socialist making an arguement from a liberal elitist viewpoint for why the Democrats should stop pushing for gun control. I don't think I've ever seen an arguement against gun control combined with such contempt for the American people before.
10:14:54 AM
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© Copyright
2006
Ken Hagler.
Last update:
2/15/2006; 1:56:53 PM.
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