Bill's Comments

In the WSJ Opinion Journal today there is an op-ed piece on a decision by a bankruptcy judge in Washington. It threatens the Freedom of Religion.

Here are some quotes:

When Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., warned recently of the "national consequences" of a bankruptcy ruling that has rocked his diocese, it wasn't an instance of self-serving rhetoric. The fate of the decision has implications not just for Roman Catholics but for anyone who cares about religious liberty.

According to federal Bankruptcy Judge Patricia Williams, more than 80 Catholic parishes in the Spokane area are no more than branch offices of the local archdiocese. Archdiocese creditors--in this case, the victims of sexual abuse by various priests--have as much right to the assets of churches and schools as they do to the buildings and investments under direct diocesan control. Or so the judge reasoned.

It so happens, however, that the Catholic Church does not think of parishes as a diocese's branch offices. It never has. The church's Canon Law, the world's oldest formal legal system in continuous use, says that parishes are separate entities, while spelling out their relationship with the presiding bishop. He wields considerable authority within his domain, but parish assets are not his to dispose of as he pleases.

"The notion that a bishop isn't in charge of his parishes and assets has always seemed ludicrous to us," said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, in a statement praising the bankruptcy decision. But this decentralized design is no formality. It is honored in the everyday operations of parishes and even in their closings. Just last month the Vatican stopped the Boston archdiocese from claiming the assets of several parishes it had shut down in the wake of the sexual-abuse scandal there. Responding to the appeals of parishioners, the Vatican's Congregation of the Clergy affirmed that parish property cannot be seized by the archdiocese without the consent of the pastors and their finance committees.

As always, when money is involved the plaintiffs will do everything they can to deepen the pockets they want to draw from. In this case the judge is helping them. Expect appeals.

Today TCS posted a short article by Michael Fumento on the men who dispose of the bombs in Iraq. My middle son is in training for this currently. I figure after he graduates in March, this is where he will be.

It's what he wants to do, and I'd rather he be happy and doing this than miserable and safe.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect. "

-- James Madison (letter to Jacob de la Motta, August 1820)

....not separation of Religion and State.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 74, 3/25 1788)

...Harry S. Truman is the only Democrat to whom I pay respect, and in him we had a man who truly understood the responsibility of the Presidency.

06 July 2005
Federalist Patriot No. 05-27
Wednesday Chronicle

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." --John Adams

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone." --Frederic Bastiat

May the Maximum Leader be aware of the underlying pun.

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

-- Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 3/4 1801)

.....NO.

The RiteWing TechnoPagan just posted a note to the effect that a bacterium had been discovered that eats nylon, a material created in 1935. His post makes a strong jab at ID.

.... or should I say evolution.

In fairness, there are some adherents of ID that believe in evolution, just not the start of it.

....then start.

Dennis is the best source of information on immigration issues and general curmudgeonry that I have found. Always outspoken and anti-PC, he sometimes reminds me of Don Quixote of the Spanish literature that he often quotes or alludes to.

Don't bother to spam me. If a site is off-topic to the post, it counts as spam and will be deleted. I don't get so much comment spam as to restrict comments automatically, but it is my site, and I determine what gets to remain. The rules are easy, post on topic or present a very overwhelming reason why the comment is OT. I am reasonalble, but not easy.

From TCS today:

Like the bedraggled patriarch in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" who can't make sense of why his daughter would ever want to leave the fold, Europeans cannot for the love of Zeus understand why the world does not pay constant homage to their clear superiority.

...

Shamefully, the European Union's constitution did not fail because citizens blanched at a retrenchment of sclerotic Eurocracy (quite the opposite). Appallingly, Gerhard Schröder's biggest losses were to the unreconstructed communists and other disaffected leftists -- for whom even the existing labor and tax laws are too "Anglo-American."

To repeat what has become an unfortunate cliché, Europe is dying -- literally (in terms of population) and figuratively (in terms of living standards, social cohesion, and economic growth). The United States meanwhile, while not without its own problems and pathologies, is prospering.

...

But even more, we should feel pity. For no amount of anti-Americanism (or Windex) will counter Europe's malaise.

....read this for the wonderful descriptive language.

It is a serious and well-stated essay, but the language it is coached in is almost prose poetry. Oh, yeah, I left some of the best parts for you to find yourself.

Today in TCS, Arnold Kling posted one of his more memorable essays. He is focusing on immigration, and that of itself is worth the reading. However, more importantly, he also focuses on the fact, that despite our ideal of being a nation of rule by law, we are in effect a nation of rule by man. Go read it, there will be a test.

....staying free solely by the whim of the state.

A new ID argument
Dr Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, posted a very different argument in favor of Intelligent Design. It did not depend on the interpretation of scientific data, and was more in the tradition of classic philosophy which draws upon experience common to everyone for its arguments. It was a very interesting effort and quite a challenge to create a response to it. I did so and published it last Thursday here. For those who have an interest on either side of this question, I encourage you to go read it, but warn you it can be heavy going at times.

An overview of the ID controversy as normally presented
Evolution applies to just the emergence and differentiation of life on earth. Cosmology applies to the origins of the universe as a whole. Evolutionists, of which I count as one, though a theistic one, see life starting from the soup of chemicals that was created on the earth as soon as there was liquid water. The chemicals are preferred products of high energy impacting collections of methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, and water. The precursor molecules that we find in living organisms today can be found in many places in the galaxy around forming star systems and in our solar system around the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. It would appear it is impossible for the pre-cursor molecules of life not to occur.

The mechanisms to get from the molecules to life are speculative but are being demonstrated a bit at a time in laboratories. As we find living organisms in stranger and stranger environments on our own earth, the possibilities of life starting from various scenarios increases. Once life has formed, the mechanisms by which it diverges into all the species become far less speculative and more demonstrable. The competition for the necessary resources to maintain life become the controlling factor; those changes that lead to better acquisition and utilization of resources become fixed in the subsequent generations. This is what is meant by survival of the fittest. The phrase is not just a jingoistic reference to might makes right.

The IDers attack evolution at several points, one is the transition from non-living to living. They insist that it cannot be done. Another is the so-called Cambrian explosion of species. They say that before that there is little to no evidence of living forms, and suddenly all the major phyla appear. There are some possible counters to that argument. Another argument is that the probability of the elements coming from random and forming a living human are astronomical, greater than the age of the universe. This argument amounts to a gross abuse and misuse of both statistics and the scientific data. A fourth major argument is the so-called complexity argument, that certain complex systems cannot function if only one of their parts is missing, so therefore they had to be created all at once. Again I consider this a distortion of the situation. One final argument that is often stated is that there are no transition species. I will be posting a rebuttal to that one in the next several days.

When it comes to cosmology, the current reigning theory is the Big Bang with inflation. Here there is major speculation constrained by what we actually do know about physical law. From astronomy, we infer that the universe is 14.5 billion years old. We find no way to extrapolate any known data to a time before that point. Also from astronomy, it would appear that the entire universe was a single dimensionless point of infinite density at that time that suddenly expanded (the Big Bang) and continues to expand to this day. The physics at this point becomes pretty exotic. Because the universe has an average density of matter that is very smooth on a universal scale, it has been postulated that there was a sudden inflation of the universe shortly after it formed from the Big Bang, and this is called the inflationary scenario.

My own view of this is that we really don't know, and are speculating on inadequate data and incomplete theory. Much of it depends on both quantum mechanics and relativity, both of which I have some problems with, since they are being used in ways that may not be appropriate.

I have no idea from where the point of infinite density, from which our universe sprang, came. I would rather say, "I don't know," than put God there as a gap-filler. This is a form of what is dismissingly called God-of-the-gaps. God is used to explain all that is currently not explained. I think that is a misuse of the concept of God. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe in God and that He is the ultimate source of good in mankind. With respect to the physical world, we don't know and cannot know. Science can neither prove or disprove God, whether used by IDers or secularists respectively. I think both parties are off in the wrong directions when trying to use science to support or diminish God. As the old testament makes abundantly clear, God said, "I am that I am." He needs no support and cannot be diminished.

An important observation on Ezekiel
Today's First Lesson was from Ezekiel 18:1-4,19-29. The lesson presents an extremely significant change in Judaic attribution of guilt and God's displeasure. Up to this time, the Jews rose or fell as a people on the perceived collective sinfulness or lack thereof for the entire people. In Ezekiel we see that sinfulness will be punished on an individual basis. The sins of the father will be punished, but if the son is righteous, he will not be punished. This removal of collective guilt presages the message of Jesus by almost 600 years.

My son just told me this:

"Hey Dad! I just heard on the news that life is returning to normal in New Orleans, the first Starbuck's just reopened. I can imagine what people down there are thinking, 'my house is destroyed, there is tons of money coming in and I won't see a f***ing dime, but hey, I can now go spend $6 for a cup of coffee.' "

I must have done something right along the way. He sees some things pretty clearly for a liberal.

I am joining Dymphna in her request to declare a moratorium on Cindy Sheehan.

Henceforth I will neither post nor add comments concerning her.

From Dennis Mangan is a link to this bit of description:

The Third-Worldization of London

An English reader writes:

Your posting today from an American living in London is true. I live there myself and see the absolute disintegration of the city into a Third World cesspit. This has already happened in areas like Wembley, Southall, East Ham (Indian areas), Soho (Chinese), Peckham, Brixton (African, Black). However it is now spreading to the better areas. Almost all the good shops in Kensington High St are closing- Barkers a quality department store of 150 years standing is closing along with many others. Harvey Nicholls and Harrods are both owned by foreigners (Chinese and Arab). Both are now disasters. The former has been reported in the Daily Mail to be a venue for prostitution run mainly by Eastern Europeans and the latter resembles an Egyptian bazaar. Restaurants are closing fast and the whole city just seems to be falling apart.

Teachers say schools are disintegrating as there are children speaking 57 different languages and no English. Teachers cannot cope. Hospitals are closing wards. Meanwhile Third Worlders and Eastern Europeans continue to pour in. The Chinese and the Muslims don’t mix. The blacks and Asians are everywhere and the English have just totally lost the plot. Brainwashed by pro-immigrant propaganda, they are revelling in diversity as their country collapses. People are moving out of central London and into the suburbs.

It is unbelievable how rapidly this has happened. It is incredible that English people allow some of their best jobs to go to (often incompetent foreigners) and allow them to pursue their own agendas. The worst thing is that no-one seems to be facing up to the reality of the situation and doing anything about it.

I was last in London in 1996, and at that time was struck by the fact that London was more like New York, in being a racially diverse, Third-Worldized city, than unlike New York, in being English rather than American. Diversity makes all places the same. It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics as applied to race and culture.

.....are you fleeing to the suburbs or staying to enjoy the results of your work?

From New Scientist comes this report:

A landmark legal trial begins on Monday that could determine how the theory of evolution - one of the basic tenets of modern science - is taught in US schools.

In the town of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 11 parents of children who already attend the nearby Dover High school or who will in future, together with the American Civil Liberties Union, are suing the Dover Area School District for voting in new rules that will encourage children to consider alternatives to evolution such as “intelligent design” (ID).

...

ID is the controversial assertion that an intelligent agent rather than an undirected process such as evolution is responsible for certain features of the universe and living things.

The parents claim the school board violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by creating new teaching requirements at the end of 2004 that cast doubt on evolution, introduce students to ID and encourage them to read anti-evolutionary, pro-ID literature. The First Amendment prohibits teaching that is religiously motivated, or has the effect of advancing religion. [emphasis mine, bk. This is a gross distortion of the First Amendment. It prohibits the advancement of a specific religion by state establishment. It does not prohibit the teaching of religion.]

...

It will hinge on whether ID is a respectable scientific theory, or a religious belief that masquerades as science to sidestep a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the teaching of creationism in schools.

Latest incarnation
The plaintiffs will argue that it is the latter. “There is so much evidence that this is just the latest incarnation of creationism,” says Walczak. He points to early drafts of Of Pandas and People, written before 1987. “It’s identical except for where it says creationism it now says intelligent design.”

This view is shared by the mainstream science community. Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science based in Washington DC and publisher of the journal Science, says: “ID was an effort to correct the legal problems of creation science.”

It will be up to the defence to prove that ID is in fact a scientific concept that has a primarily secular purpose and a secular effect on students.

One expert witness for the defence will be Michael Behe, a scientist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and an outspoken ID proponent. He declined to comment when contacted by New Scientist because of his involvement in the trial, but he promotes ID as a scientific theory.

Reasonable explanation
In July 2005, he told New Scientist that because some systems cannot function properly without all their components, they could not evolve by the accumulation of chance mutations. The only reasonable explanation is ID, he asserted.

...

There will be no jury because the case is about interpreting the constitution, and although the judge’s decision will only be binding in Dover, either side could appeal. An appellate court decision would apply in four states - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands.

If that decision was also appealed, the trial could move to a Supreme Court, whose verdict would apply to the whole nation, says Walczak.

I see this as a lose-lose case unless the grounds of the decision are carefully crafted. If ID is forbidden to be taught, it constitutes a repression of speech on grounds of scientific orthodoxy, in effect creating the establishment of anti-religion, which I do not for a minute believe was the desire of the writers of the Bill of Rights. If ID wins, it will consider itself as having been validated as a scientific theory, which is false. It will only have been given permission to be taught as an alternative to orthodox science. What will happen is that it will be distorted in one direction or another depending on the teacher and the particular school system. A clear comparison of competing theories is beyond the ability of almost all high school science teachers, or for that matter many university-level teachers. The high school teachers have insufficient background and training, and the university teachers are too wedded to their own orthodoxy. If ID wins, it will amount to affirmative action for ID.

From TCS here is a synopsis of a study on childhood obesity that actually used decent science. Here are the money quotes:

The study, from two researchers at the University of Alberta looked at the health, nutrition and lifestyle factors of 4,298 fifth grade school children in an effort to determine which risk factors were most important for overweight children.

Unlike so many studies that rely on estimates of height and weight -- estimates which always lead to an overestimate of both overweight and obesity -- the study actually took measurements of the kids' height and weight, as well as assessing their dietary habits including whether they ate breakfast, whether their lunch came from home or was purchased at school, whether they ate in fast food restaurants, whether there were regular family suppers, and whether supper was eaten in front of the television.

The results are startling, for they disprove so much of the contemporary "wisdom" that appears to be driving America toward a series of completely ineffective obesity policies. First, eating in a fast food restaurant -- which to hear the Fat Police talk, is the major source of childhood obesity -- was not statistically significant as a risk factor for obesity,...

Second, the study found that there was not a statistically significant difference between the quantity of soft drinks consumed by children attending schools that did not sell soft drinks and those that did....

Third, there was not a statistically significant association between the availability of soft drinks at school or schools with food vending machines and the risk of children being overweight or obese....

Fourth, the study, like so many others, found that the really striking association between overweight and obese children was with their physical activity levels in general and the frequency of physical education classes at their schools in particular....

But don't hold your breath waiting for a change in school-based obesity policies, for whatever the evidence suggests, the folks like the Terminator and the experts at the Centers for Disease Control claim to know best. Commenting on Schwarzenegger's pop ban, William Dietz, head of the division of nutrition and physical activity at the CDC noted that while the "evidence that control of soft-drink intake is effective against obesity is pretty limited", it is nonetheless "logical". Really? So were explanations as to why the world had to be flat. Perhaps Dietz might get some of the CDC folks to explain why policymakers ought to act on "logic" as opposed to real world scientific studies. Or, better yet, perhaps Dr. Dietz ought to re-read his 2002 testimony to Congress on the critical importance of getting obesity strategies right, where he said that

"Physical activity represents our most effective strategy for obesity and the one for which the most substantial body of evidence exists."

....because it is not about health, it is about power.

The Weekly Standard online edition published an opinion piece today by Stephen Schwartz, an observer of Islam for whom I have much respect, that may describe a watershed as the author claims. In an official government report by the GAO, Islamic Extremism, is explicitly named as our enemy. Here are a few quotes:

FOUR YEARS AFTER September 11, 2001, the United States government has passed a significant turning point in the war on Islamist terror. In an official report the federal authorities have directly and identified the enemy as "Islamic extremism"--one of the few instances in which they have dared to commit to print this term, to which apologists for radical Islam so heartily object. More, the document forthrightly identifies the main threat: the Wahhabi cult that is the state religion in Saudi Arabia.

This breakthrough in policy nomenclature comes after four years of waffling about the Saudi problem.

The GAO's report, Information on U.S. Agencies' Efforts to Address Islamic Extremism, is dated this month and was submitted to intelligence agencies, the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The document is paired with a classified report on the same topic, to be released later.

...

In the view of the GAO, "Islamic extremism" as a broad category "is the pre-eminent threat to U.S. interests"--rather than al Qaeda, which is a single exemplar of the phenomenon. Further, the GAO is admirably clear on what Islamic extremism consists of: "an Islamic ideology that denies the legitimacy of nonbelievers and practitioners of other forms of Islam [aside from the Saudi version] and that explicitly promotes hatred, intolerance, and violence." The report takes into account the differing definitions of Islamic extremism: "militant Islam," "radicalism," "fundamentalism," "jihadism," "Wahhabism," and "Salafism."

...

As a pragmatic check on its findings, the GAO traveled to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where its representatives interviewed government officials along with leaders of two massive Islamic organizations, Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, and the reformist Liberal Islam Network (see In the Shadow of a Fatwa). Using Indonesia as a control on the data was wise; Southeast Asian Muslims are forthright in analyzing the problems of the global Islamic community, and are unafraid to describe Saudi-Wahhabi ambitions accurately, as religious colonialism.

The desert kingdom still owes us a Saudi version of the 9/11 Commission Report fully elucidating the involvement of their subjects in the terrorist assault on America; they owe the world a cutoff of support to Wahhabism; and they owe themselves the establishment, with our help, of the institutions of civil society. In other words, a clean slate that can reestablish the U.S.-Saudi alliance on a firm basis of transparency, honesty, and trust.

There are two observations I would make on the contents of this essay in TCS today.

1. Letting the Saudis deal with terrorists makes much more sense. They aren't overconsumed with PC rectitude and have no qualms about killing them.

2. When will we finally tell the environuts to piss-off and start producing our own oil in decent quantities?

Yes, it is definitely worth the reading.

Today in TCS there is an excellent short review and analysis of Jacques Chirac's foreign policy and its explicit catering to the Arab world. Certainly worth the read.

I have two comments:

1. Isolate the SOB and his country until they throw him out

2. Events will eventually prove him wrong--I'm impatient, hence #1.

This post by the Maverick Philosopher appeared a couple of weeks ago. At the time, I commented that it was a very different type of argument for ID, and was worth studying. I affirm my original statement, having studied it. This is definitely a new, at least to me, type of argument for an intelligent designer. It has the virtue of not depending on distortions or abuse of data. In a way it reminds me of St Anselm’s Ontological Proof of the Existence of God.

Because this response is quite long and detailed I have placed it in Bill's Big Stuff, here. If you wish to comment you will have to return to this post as I do not have comments enabled in Bill's Big Stuff.

Today in TCS, there was a very interesting essay entitled, "Confessions of an Engineering Washout". In it, the author described his experiences in engineering school before he dropped out. Please read the article before proceeding with the comments below.

The author entered college with good grades and records from high school in both math and science. However, he actually had a preference for verbal activities which is where he eventually went. He points the finger primarily to the quality, or lack thereof, of the teaching at the university, and I would say to a great degree he is correct. He also points out that he was a complete clutz in the laboratory.

I think that the problem lies not just with the college, but also with the primary and secondary education system he graduated from. There is so much grade inflation and rote memory in school now that a good grade in science and math is NOT indicative of ability. Those with ability can usually learn despite poor teaching. They may not learn as much, but learn they will. In the case of the author, he was lulled into thinking that math and science were processes similar to the verbal processes he was accomplished at, and when faced with the reality of the difference in thinking, he almost failed, and finally had the wisdom to turn to a different area of study.

I was trained as a scientist, and I raised a son with verbal ability and another with artistic ability. The former enjoyed civics, economics, philosophy, and great literature. For me they were necessary evils. The latter exhibits a kind of thinking when working, of which I can only stand in awe. Neither of them could or can, as the case may be, work with math and science with the ease I had at their age.

By reducing the rigor of the primary and secondary education system, graduates are given a false idea of how easy or hard it is to follow a serious career path. They are not guided by their failures and difficulties into more appropriate areas when the transitions are easy. The bigotry of low expectations, and the PC dictum not to hurt feelings, deprives them of useful lessons in life at an age where they really are of value.

The author's basic message is that we, the US, are getting what we deserve in the way we fail to train engineers. I agree, but I think it is not just the training of engineers, but in the education of all students. Only those gifted in some area can overcome the handicaps imposed by our school system. I was educated in the fifties and sixties. My children and all the day-care kids were educated in the late eighties and nineties. The differences are so great that I am amazed, that any high school graduate succeeds in college even after remedial work or has any clue about an appropriate major.

You are a Social Liberal (76% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (91% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

About what I expected. It was interesting to take and different from some of the usual political tests.

Thanks to the Maximum Leader for the link.

This essay appeared in the WSJ Opinion Journal today. It is well worth reading the entire thing, but here are some quotes:

Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam's bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil.

The rapidity of the democratization and reform of Iraq is staggering. There was no German state for four years after the Second World War. By contrast, Iraq has moved from a centralized, one-man dictatorship to a decentralized, federal republic in half that time.

...

Creating these Iraqi forces has not been easy, but Iraqis have been undaunted by the difficulties. Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment--the opposite of the appeasers' myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism. For all the short-term problems, the soundness of the long-term strategy of building up Iraqi forces was demonstrated in recent days when Iraqis took over sole control of security in the holy city of Najaf.

...

That commitment to liberty has shaped our opposition to any timetable for withdrawal. There are also two practical, policy reasons to avoid such a scheduled reduction in foreign troop numbers. First, a timetable will aid the terrorists and tell them that all they have to do is wait. Second, military plans must be flexible. We should have the suppleness to respond to the often-changing level of terrorist threat. Indeed, we will require ongoing security assistance in many forms for many years to come.

If we keep progressing at the present rate, Iraqis may be able to take over many security functions from foreign forces by the end of 2006. That is not a deadline, but it is reasonable aspiration. During my visit to the United States, I was fortunate to meet relatives of some of the brave troops serving in Iraq. They were staunch, and I want their loved ones to have to serve in Iraq not a moment longer than is necessary.

...

Americans should be proud of what its soldiers have achieved. The presence of foreign forces has prevented a renewed civil war in Iraq--renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.

...

Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism.

Note that he considers Iraq to have been in a civil war, as compared to the predictions of civil war by anti-war commenters.

The AnalPhilosopher published a letter to the editor claiming that, "our government has instead engaged in a self-destructive war on science in favor of religious teachings."

This is in obvious reference to President Bush's remarks that ID should be taught in the schools.

I just saw a book review in the newest issue of Scientific American that claimed that politics was countermanding mainstream science. Interesting that the author claimed that mainstream science included a belief in man-caused global warming. It appeared to me that the author was simply unhappy that his science didn't have political support.

Funny how people love to accuse others of their own behavior.

In a case of road rage, a driver followed a teenager who cut him off. When the teenager ran across the street to get in his house, the driver hit him with his car. The kid rolled off the hood (just like Hollywood) went around to the driver and hit him in the head twice. The driver died and the teen is in lockup on aggrevated assault. We can let the lawyers and courts sort that part out.

Here's what gets me:

Gerri Carroll, the schools superintendent in Lindenwold, said extra help was available Tuesday for high school students who needed support after hearing about the incident.

What are we raising for children? What happens when there is a real crisis? They huddle up in the fetal position in a corner and wait for someone to bring them a Teddy Bear? I guess they become journalists that think they should have a Starbucks on the next corner or it is too dangerous to venture forth.

Thanks to Drudge for the link.

Bill O'Reilly had Secretary of State Rice on his show. Here is an interesting quote from the transcript:

O'REILLY: Yeah, but the truth of the matter is, that our correspondents here at FOX News can't go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad.

Michael Yon reports from the Deuce-Four with whom he is embedded as an independent. Instead of worrying about a corner Starbucks, he is risking his life to report what is really happening. If the Iraqi people can go about their daily business, why can't the reporters leave their hotels? Cowardice, pure and simple. If they don't want to be real reporters, go home.

This is what our schools of journalism produce these days. We need to ask for a refund on the product.

O'Reilly is rude even to the Secretary of State. When she won't go along with him, he does to her like he does to everyone else that disagrees, he interrupts.

According to Manuel Miranda in the WSJ Opinion Journal, both a Republican and a Democrat tried to use a religious test for office on Judge Roberts. This is specifically and explicitly prohibited in the Constitution. One more demonstration that religious belief is being persecuted under the guise of separation of church and state.

The clowns are taking off their makeup and looking for weapons. They have a high risk of becoming a goon squad.

I'm on the road again, this time to Southern California. We flew south of the Grand Canyon, but still picked off a bit of the Great Basin to the north, and stark desert of Arizona. I spent six years in Carson City, Nevada, while in HS and first two years of college. I hiked all over the area, mountains desert, in between. The only place in the US I might love more than the great basin is southern Indiana, where my family comes from. I have spent a lot of time in that area as well.

Most of the flight was over haze and the ground was not visible from 30+K feet. But past the Rockies, the air cleared, and I would look out and feel so homesick just for the country. It was a powerful yearning, almost painful, like the love for a long lost lover. The Sun had lowered to about 30 degrees or so above the horizon, so all the mountains were in relief from their own shadows, making them stand in rows from SE to NW. And all that was visible was the dark, black-red of the soil and rock with only scrub vegetation, not readily visible from our height.

And while looking at all that harshness, I was proud of humanity in that mankind had entered and tamed that wilderness as well as more temperate ones. Where the jackrabbits took thousands of generations to adapt to the desert, mankind created tools and a means of making his own environment and subdued it in less than 100 years or five generations. I am talking about our society. The Indians also lived there but on the basis of an armed truce. Western society flat wrestled it to the ground and pinned it.

Unlike the sniveling fops that call themselves environmentalists, I am not afraid of nature or my own shadow. I have actually lived in the wild for short periods of time and studied much of nature's ways of doing things. Sentimentality holds no place in the wild. It is harsh and vicious. There is nothing noble about a puma catching and eating a rabbit. Puma's are one of the most beautiful creatures on earth. They move like velvet-covered ball-bearings. They are also deadly. When we campaign to "save-the-[charismatic, furry being]" we are introducing our own competitors back into the space we inhabit. And we aren't equipped to deal with the consequences. We are raised to see a puma as just a bigger house cat. In a sense it is, but not the sit-in-your-lap-and-purr sense. It is in the line-the-mouse-heads-up-on-the-doorstep-in-the-morning sense. You don't say, "Nice kitty" when you meet a puma in its own territory. A 357 Magnum makes more sense.

Mankind belongs on this earth as much as any other species and perhaps more, simply by virtue of having subdued more. In nature might does make right. If we choose to preserve things it should be for our own long- or short-term benefit. Not from some altruistic impulse that considers the animals worthy in their own right. They are worthy only in relationship to our values. As I see it, mankind is the only animal that has a sufficiently developed brain to create a moral sense. Animals have no moral sense that controls their behavior. It is a pleasure/pain, eat/be eaten existence. It is we, as humans, who assign value to the rest of the world. If we choose to preserve an area of our country as untouched wilderness, it should be because the value it gives us is greater than using it. This also means that it should be accessible to us. Taking tax dollars and making parts of the National Park System off-limits to all but the most extreme of outdoors people is ridiculous and a rip-off of the rest of the country. I have a major alert--snowmobilers pay the same or more taxes as the rest of us. They should have the same privileges.

This is a great country, the greatest in the world. It has a greater variety of people and environments than any other country I can think of. Even Russia does not have as great a variety and it is far larger. Let's appreciate, enjoy, and use what is ours. Let us quit apologizing for our existence and celebrate it. We owe it to ourselves.

Radley Balko has a petition at TCS that is a must read.

A PETITION from the public health movement, including the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Public Health Association, the American Cancer Society, and of every organization generally connected to negating risk and choice at the expense of individual freedom and personal responsibility*

To the Honorable Leaders of the G8:

Gentlemen:

We are on the right track. We have persuaded a large portion of this Earth's governing bodies to reject sensible risk assessment, freedom of choice, and any semblance of personal responsibility when it comes to issues of the "public health." Toward that end, we have expanded "public health" to include not only threats to which no reasonable person would subject himself -- communicable diseases, for example -- but also risky behaviors we find distasteful, even when those who engage in them know full well the risks. We've done this by citing the costs of said behaviors to society, mostly in terms of health care costs.

At the same time, we have succeeded in socializing health care in most of the developed world. In so doing, we've created a system where everyone has a stake in everyone else's well-being. This makes our end goal of controlling and manipulating personal behavior much easier to implement.

When naysayers question what business the government has in regulating alcohol consumption, weight, or caffeine consumption, for example, we can merely point to how much public money a state effort to modify personal behavior will save in public health care costs. Thanks to socialized medicine, we've managed to make even the most private of behaviors subject to government regulation!

Our triumphs are considerable: We have banned all public smoking in Ireland, New Zealand, Italy, Australia, Iran, Montenegro, Malta, Norway, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, and Uganda. Even in America, once a bastion of so-called "personal freedom," we've secured bans in eight states and hundreds of counties and cities, effectively canceling out America's anachronistic, unhealthy addiction to principles like the "freedom of association," or "property rights." Even New York City -- icon of American ingenuity and self-reliance -- has not only banned smoking, but sends dedicated public health soldiers into private offices to issue citations for illegal possession of ashtrays. New York is currently considering a proposal to ban trans-fats from all of the city's restaurants!

Now go read the rest and enjoy the finale.

Manuel Miranda has been posting a series of op-ed essays in the WSJ Opinion Journal for the last couple of months on the run-up and hearings for Judge Roberts confirmation to the Supreme Court. Today's piece on what the confirmation hearings will tell us, not about Judge Roberts, but about our Senators is especially good.

Where I see the clowns coming out of the car, he sees a chance to learn why we have to pay attention to how we vote.

Stephen Schwartz has published many times on Islam in TCS. This current article is well worth the read to see what errors in reporting we have received on what Islam is.

Israel has now completely pulled out from Gaza. Here is what happened according to Fox News:

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Joyous Gazans flooded into empty Jewish settlements Monday and Palestinians climbed ropes and clambered over walls from the Egyptian side of this border town to join a chaotic celebration of the end of 38 years of Israeli military rule over the Gaza Strip (search).

Plans by Palestinian police to bar crowds from the settlements quickly disintegrated. Militant groups hoisted flags, fired wildly into the air and set abandoned synagogues ablaze, illustrating the weakness of the security forces and concerns about their ability to control growing chaos in Gaza. The pullout is widely seen as a test for Palestinian aspirations of statehood.

Among those crossing were purported members of the radical Islamic group, Hamas (search), who waved the group's green flag on Egyptian territory, raising immediate concern over Egypt's ability to meet Israeli demands to prevent militants from leaving Gaza.

Egyptian security forces stood by and let the crossings take place, describing it as a "humanitarian" gesture to let people separated for years reunite. Security officials also suggested the crossings would be short-lived as Egypt deploys 750 heavily armed troops to secure its border with Gaza.

Israeli soldiers long guarded the high walls splitting the Egyptian town of Rafah (search) against cross-border infiltrators smuggling weapons and other contraband from Egypt into the volatile Palestinian territory. But within hours of the Israeli withdrawal, hooded Palestinian militants toting guns stood atop the Palestinian wall as grinning Gazans climbed over to meet relatives.

...

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz urged the Palestinian to impose law and order or face a tough response.

Abbas insists he can persuade militants to disarm peacefully. He has outlined an ambitious plan to reconstruct Gaza's shattered economy, an effort he believes will bolster forces of moderation. But he faces a difficult task in Gaza, where militants and armed gangs operate freely and wield considerable power.

Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said the group "will support any step that will produce something for our people" but made clear it has no plans to disarm as long as Israel controls the West Bank and Jerusalem.

"We should protect the resistance option and the resistance weapons," he said. "These weapons liberated the land and by these weapons, we will continue the liberation process."

.....and already it isn't promising.

From Fox News comes this information:

Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, has allowed Catholic and Jewish faith-based tribunals to settle family law matters on a voluntary basis since 1991. The practice got little attention until Muslim leaders demanded the same rights.

Officials had to decide whether to exclude one religion, or whether to scrap the religious family courts altogether.

McGuinty said such courts "threaten our common ground," and promised his Liberal government would introduce legislation as soon as possible to outlaw them in Ontario.

"Ontarians will always have the right to seek advice from anyone in matters of family law, including religious advice," he said. "But no longer will religious arbitration be deciding matters of family law."

A representative of the Canadian Jewish Congress was not happy.

....Maybe. I certainly hope so.

Despite the desires of specific beliefs, if one group is allowed their own courts, all must be allowed their own courts or the state is establishing religion. When the risk that one set of courts would promulgate decisions contrary to the law of the land or to basic human rights as stated in the law of the land, then it cannot be allowed. If it cannot be allowed then none can be allowed. The religious courts are no longer to have legal authority. Members of the various faiths may still voluntarily seek religious counsel.

The fundamental truth of freedom is that all people are equal UNDER LAW, which means all share the same privileges or are denied the same privileges.

See this article in Fox News.

They are ILLEGAL immigrants. What part does the press not understand about illegal? If they were legal I would applaud giving them help. Let them pay the price for not doing it the right way. If you want to do something, make it easier to become legal or increase the quotas for legal, but at the same time seal the borders.

Deport them, as fast as possible.

The WSJ Opinion Journal carried this editorial today. It has a different high level view of our overall strategy both past and future with respect to our self-defense from both terrorists and from conventional armies. He is especially concerned about China. Here are some quotes:

For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.

The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.

...

Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal.

Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

...

When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.

Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.

.....and a very pessimistic look at the future.

This is well worth reading and discussing. It may be more pessimistic than reality, but, always, it is a better course of action to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

"I expect people, white or black, to behave in a civilized manner no matter how they were born. Racism is the making of excuses for that behavior."

From Dennis Mangan, Mangan's Miscellany, New Orleans Again .

The Maverick Philosopher has posted a very interesting and difficult argument to challenge on the issue of Intelligent Design. I have pulled a copy for later study (that's study not read) along with the comments which are also quite good.

....a new approach to the ID issue.

What do relief bureaucracies and panhandlers have in common?
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.
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.
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THEY ONLY WANT MONEY, NOT REAL HELP.

From this article linked by Drudge:

"When nobody directs the effort [at the federal level], you end up with a ton of well-intentioned folks who want to help but have no idea how," said Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, a charity rating service. "That's a recipe for disaster. We've been telling people since day one that the real way to help with this disaster is to write a check, because they're just not prepared at the other end to receive goods."

...

"The Red Cross is saying, 'We don't want freelance people bringing supplies down here,' " Courtemanche said. "The Red Cross and FEMA are absolutely in denial. They're saying, 'Send money.' How many times have you chewed on a dollar bill when you're hungry?"


...

Also, trained volunteers could be diverted from counseling victims or other important tasks by having to stop and unload unexpected donations, she said. "If you just arrive with truckloads they're not expecting, it takes people away from doing other work."
[So why don't they expect it? People donate goods for every disaster.]

At Catholic Charities headquarters in Alexandria, for instance, a small mountain of donated goods has appeared in the lobby, far from where such goods are needed. "Money can buy this stuff, and money is flexible," said spokeswoman Shelley Boysiewicz.
[Money is so flexible it may not go for what it was intended.]


'''

Kelly Tidwell, a Lorton resident and electrician, recalled the uncertainty he experienced after Sept. 11, 2001, after taking a truckload of respirators, batteries and gloves intended for rescue workers to an anonymous donation center in a Northern Virginia business park.

"In the back of my mind, I couldn't be sure it had actually been received by the people who needed it," Tidwell said. "When this happened, I wanted to make sure it got where it needed to go. More of a grass-roots effort."

So yesterday, Tidwell was driving south with a friend and a flatbed trailer with five tons of supplies. The supplies -- donated by members of the Neighbors Great Falls community listserv -- included a generator, 100 cases of water and more than 50 cases of food and baby formula.

On Capitol Hill, as lawmakers demand an inquiry into the federal government's handling of the disaster, lobbyist Campbell Kaufman has been directing back-channel aid efforts. A Baton Rouge native, Kaufman was ready to climb into a friend's Explorer and drive supplies from Alexandria to the bayou on the day of the hurricane. But reason took hold, and Kaufman decided to stay put long enough to send out a mass e-mail to Capitol Hill contacts requesting donations and help.

Those pleas grew into a do-it-yourself relief effort scheduled to head to Louisiana on Saturday. By last night, Kaufman had two 24-foot rented trucks parked near his offices on Independence Avenue, ready to be packed full of water and food.

"This was the quickest and most effective way to positively help," Kaufman said. "There are a lot of fundraisers going on around here. But our focus is to get supplies to people now. You avoid red tape that way. "

[All emphasis and anything in brackets is mine, bk.]

A friend of mine sent me this essay which had been forwarded to him. In light of the questions concerning the rebuilding of New Orleans this is well worth reading. I don't have the complete citation information. If anyone does, please send it to me so I may update this.

UPDATE: The reference is here. Thanks to my friend Peg for finding the link.

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize
By George Friedman

The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.

But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.

For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers - which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.

Since this is fairly long, you can read the rest at Bill's Big Stuff.

When gangs roam the streets shooting, raping, killing, and looting, the time has come to declare martial law. I'm tired of the President playing nice with Congress and with this mess. And the governor of Louisana is a joke. She isn't doing anything useful or the news would be howling like a pack of hyenas. The results of PC, codling of miscreants, and welfare are now being seen in the packs of animals roaming the streets of New Orleans and the corners of the SuperDome.

....the balls to actually deal with the mess in New Orleans?

It's time for people of principle to take back the US from the fools we have let run it.

My friend, Mike Gilleland, pointed me to this excellent essay in National Review Online. I will make a proviso in my recommending it and its suggestions. When one takes into account the skills of most science teachers, this is a proper course of action. Few teachers are sufficiently skilled and few classes of students are sufficiently motivated or academically prepared to deal with conflicting theories.

Craig Howard at North Coast Online, points up one of the environmental rulings that has made our fuel cost so much.

.....to why we have a crunch on fuel.

.....go read Norm at Quantum Thought.

When it comes to looting anything besides food and water, I'm with Norm.

There is currently a focus in the news on fuel supplies for airlines. This article in USA Today is the latest.

But the question nobody is asking is.....

Why don't we have refining capacity?

I have stated why several times already. The MSM doesn't want the answer out because it will hurt their environmental agenda.

Fox News has posted an article describing the impact that John Bolton has made already at the UN. He has managed to derail a typical UN document and force its reconsideration.

......and the usual suspects are screaming.


Good!