The job of the executive

When Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed by the State of California a couple of weeks ago there were the expected protests. One such came from the leadership of the city of Graz, Austria, hometown of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Politicians in the city who oppose the death penalty launched a petition drive to remove Schwarzenegger's name from the city's sports stadium. In response, the Governor sent a letter to the city's mayor, "telling him that he is rescinding the city's right to use his name, effective immediately." In addition, he is returning the city's ring of honor that he received in 1999.

This situation nicely illustrates a point which a lot of people don't understand about how the different branches of government work. To begin, here are a couple of excerpts of the above-linked article with additional emphasis added by yours truly:

Death penalty opponents argued the prisoner's authoring nine children's books detailing the dangers of gang life meant he deserved to have his sentence commuted to life in prison. Schwarzenegger said he found no legal grounds for changing the sentence, particularly since Williams did not show any remorse for the killings.

...

"I rejected the clemency plea of a rightfully condemned four-time murderer after thorough review and as a result, he was executed according to the laws of the state," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Article 5, Section 8, subsection a of the California State Constitution provides the Governor's power to affect criminal sentences:

Subject to application procedures provided by statute, the Governor, on conditions the Governor deems proper, may grant a reprieve, pardon, and commutation, after sentence, except in case of impeachment. The Governor shall report to the Legislature each reprieve, pardon, and commutation granted, stating the pertinent facts and the reasons for granting it. The Governor may not grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on recommendation of the Supreme Court, 4 judges concurring.

Just as the President is the chief executive of the Federal Government, the Governor is the chief executive of the State Government. Their job is to implement the law, not create or negate it. The people of California, as represented by the state legislature, have decided that certain crimes merit the ultimate sanction. Williams was convicted of such a crime, the sentence was handed down, and it was carried out. People who oppose the death penalty doubtless want the Governor to commute every death sentence that comes to him for review. He theoretically has the power to do this, but from the quotes above it's clear that he understands that doing so would be defying the will of the people and an abuse of power. He understands that it would be de facto outlawing the death penalty and, regardless of his personal opinion of whether or not the death penalty should be legal, it is not his place to override the legislature.

Driving the economy into the ground

This chart shows just how disastrous the Bush tax policy over the last couple of years has been to the economy and to federal government tax revenue. (Hat tip Acidman.)

All sarcasm aside, this shows that you really can grow federal tax revenue with tax cuts, at least as long as they're the right ones and work to stimulate the economy. As Rob notes, however, there's still a problem with runaway federal spending. Note that I'm not talking about what we're spending on the war, which is one of the few things that the federal government is actually authorized to do under the Constitution. It's time for the President and the Republican Congress to remember what it's like to be fiscal conservatives.

On the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams

Early this morning, the execution of Stanley Williams, convicted of four counts of first-degree murder, was carried out by the State of California. I will not here argue for or against the use of the death penalty. Suffice it to say that it is legal in California and that the process was carried out according to the law.

When the state, through the instrument of the criminal justice system, determines that a human being has committed a crime which warrants the ultimate sanction, it is not a time to rejoice or celebrate. It is instead a most solemn occasion. It leads us to think about redemption, retribution, justice, and a host of other concepts that we often take for granted in our lives. It's one thing for a person to murder another. That person is acting on his own and must take responsibility for his actions. But when a criminal is executed, it is society as a whole that is taking this action. In a sense, we are all doing it since we live in a nation where the power ultimately resides in the people who directly through the initiative and referendum processes, or indirectly through electing legislators, determine the laws under which we live.

Many have said that Williams deserved to have his sentence commuted to life in prison because he had done positive works since his conviction. He had written children's books and written and spoke against the dangers of gangs and gang violence. However, one of the principles of our justice system, regardless of how consistently it is applied in practice, is that of equal justice under the law. If a person can avoid the death penalty through performing good works and/or showing believable remorse between the time of his conviction and the scheduled date of his execution, then it should be made a part of the law so that everyone who is sentenced to die can have this opportunity. It should be applied objectively not subjectively.

Ultimately it comes down to the difference between punishment/reformation and redemption. Rather than attempt to differentiate the two myself I will instead point you toward a very good essay over at From the Grand Stand contrasting the two and how they apply to death penalty cases. (Hat tip to Kim)

Building the HTPC, part IV

It's done. I actually stayed up until 4:00 am Saturday morning configuring it. I placed it on the rack and connected it to the tv and the amplifier and it just worked. At first I disconnected the coax that connects the wall socket and the cable tuner box and from the back of the box and connected it to the computer. This allowed the computer's tuner to receive channels up to 99 but none of the digital channels. Yesterday I put it back the way it was and then used three cables with RCA connectors to connect the left and right audio outputs and the composite video output on the cable box to the corresponding jacks on the computer's tuner card. The Media Center remote came with an IR emitter (what I earlier referred to as an IR Blaster) which allows the computer to control the cable box. I'll eventually end up splitting the coax from the wall so that one side will connect directly to the computer, thus allowing it to record two analog channels, or one analog and one digital, at the same time, or allow me to watch one while it records the other.

There was one other snag I encountered while setting up the system. Since I'm using SATA drives instead of IDE, the Windows installer wasn't able to work with those drives without using a separate driver. Fortunately, it has the ability to load such a driver during installation but it requires that the driver be on a floppy disk. I still have a floppy drive so I was able to get past it. Once Windows was installed, the floppy drive was no longer necessary.

I'm using a program called LCD Smartie to drive the VFD on the front of the case. It's amazingly flexible and I've just barely started playing with its capabilities. One thing it can do is interface with Motherboard Monitor which is what I'm using to monitor the temperature of the computer. So far it doesn't appear to be running much, if any, hotter than it was when I was using it as my desktop system.

There are a few more tweaks I'll probably perform but as of now the system is basically done and in place. It has replaced my DVD player which I'll probably move to the bedroom and connect to the tv there. I dunno how often we'll use it, though.

If anyone out there is planning on building their own home theater PC, especially if you are planning on using Windows Media Center Edition as your OS, a very good resource is The Green Button, named after the large green button on the Media Center remote control that launches the Media Center software.

Building the HTPC, part III

It's up and running, and I'm using it to make this post. Right now it's sitting on my dining room table with the mouse, keyboard, and monitor from my regular computer hooked up to it. The next step is to take it over to the rack by the tv and hook it up there. I may have to connect the monitor to it if the system doesn't automatically detect that it's connected via S-video to the television and automatically route the display accordingly. Either way I should be able to configure Windows and the Media Center software to use the tv for the primary display.

I did run into one snag while putting it all together. The power supply has two fans, one that sucks air into the power supply from within the case, and one that blows air out the back. Both fans have a grill over them, or at least they used to. The Zalman cpu cooler's heatsink was just wide enough that it was up against the internal fan grill and I couldn't mount it without seriously bending the fins. I figured I'd go ahead and put the old cooler back on, but then decided to see what happened if I removed that grill. Once it was removed, everything just barely fit. It shouldn't be a problem as long as I don't stick my fingers in the fan while it's running. Somehow, I don't foresee myself doing that.

Other than that, everything fit although it's pretty tight in a couple of places. I'll need to watch the system temperature to make sure that there's adequate airflow. The case has the capacity for an additional 80mm fan mounted on the bottom so I can put one there if I decide it needs additional air circulation.

The AP steps in it yet again

Via The GeekWithA.45, we see yet another example of a "reporter" writing a "story" that is nothing but falsifications and regurgitation of anti-gun propaganda. Under the pretense of researching a "business feature" on Barrett Rifles, Rose French came to the company and was able to interview Ronnie Barrett and others. However, if you read the article, you will see that it isn't remotely a "business feature." SayUncle posts, with permission, the content of an email sent to the AP's Nashville bureau by Dan Goodwin, Media Relations Manager for Barrett Rifles. He also links to a scathing response by Michael Marks of the Fifty Caliber Institute.

The AP has since published a "correction" which does admit and correct inaccuracies in the original article. However, nothing is said about Ms. French misrepresenting herself to Barrett Rifles.

Building the HTPC, part II

After a bit of a snafu, I picked up the case yesterday evening on the way home from work. I bought it from a local computer shop but, when I went in a few days ago, they didn't have any in the store. However, they did have a few in the warehouse so they said they'd have one sent to the store. The next day, which was the day before yesterday, I went in to pick it up but it turns out that it was the wrong one. The model I wanted comes in two variants. One has a vacuum flourescent display (VFD) while the other does not. Both come in the same box which has graphics and text for each on opposite sides. A sticker on the box denotes which one is actually inside. The folks at the warehouse apparently didn't realize this and sent the LC03 without the VFD.

Yesterday they got the correct unit in and I picked it up. I now have everything I need. I plan to assemble the machine this weekend.

The new project

I've been kicking around the idea for a while that I'd like to build a home theater PC (HTPC). I'm going to do it as my Christmas present to myself. As I put it together and set it up, I'll chronicle the process here.

The majority of the system will come from the computer that preceded my current rig. However, in order for it to serve as the new centerpiece of the home entertainment system, some changes are in order:

First, and probably most important, will be the new case. I've ordered a SilverStone LC03V in black to match the rest of the system. A good friend of mine built an HTPC using this case and is very happy with it.

Second is the TV tuner/capture card. I picked up a Hauppauge Win TV-PVR-500 MCE which has two tuners and can either record two shows simultaneously, or record one show while you watch another. Of course, given that we have digital cable with a tuner box, there are limitations. I'll discuss those later.

Next up is the fat hard drive that will store my recorded shows. I'm going with the Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB drive. This is the WD2500KS model rather than the WD2500JS that's in my desktop machine. It was only a few bucks more but it has a 16MB cache instead of 8MB and is designed to run at a higher duty cycle which it will be doing as the storage drive of an HTPC. If I find I need more space, I'll add another one and set up a RAID array with the two drives.

For the OS drive, I'll be using a Western Digital Caviar 80GB drive. That should provide plenty of space for the OS and any applications that I might want to run on this system. As it will be pretty much dedicated to its HTPC duties, I won't be installing large numbers of apps such as games or Office on it.

The current CPU cooler is a brand that I don't even remember. It's a basic copper-finned heatsink that originally had a 60mm fan on it. Since that fan was rather loud, I replaced it with an 80mm fan and an adapter. However, the design of the adapter is such that a good portion of the air does not flow through the heatsink and it's not as efficient as it could be. So, to keep the processor cool, and keep it quiet as well, I'll be using a Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu. I have the all-copper version of this cooler in my desktop system but the reviews I've read have indicated that there is little difference in the cooling effectiveness of the two. The aluminum/copper cooler is lighter, was less expensive, and should keep the AthlonXP 2800+ cpu plenty cool.

The power supply, video card, RAM, and optical drives will come from the old system, though I may replace one of the optical drives with a DVD burner in case I want to burn some recorded shows to DVD.

Although there are several software packages that will do the job, I'm going to use Windows Media Center Edition. I'll also need to pick up a Media Center remote and IR receiver. Microsoft makes a wireless infrared keyboard that is designed to work with Media Center, although I would need to buy a regular remote as well since the keyboard doesn't come with the necessary IR receiver. Alternatively, a company named Gyration makes a keyboard and remote set that uses radio rather than infrared so it has a longer range and doesn't require line-of-sight.

As for using the HTPC with the cable box, here's how it will probably work. Even though we have digital cable, the channels up to 99 are actually still analog and any cable-ready tv, vcr, or tuner card can receive them. Channels 100 and higher are digital and some of those are in high-definition. We don't currently subscribe to the high-def channels as we don't have an HD television. Also, support for high-def cable channels isn't currently available in a tuner card although I'm told that support is on the way.

The way I envision hooking it up is that I will split the cable and connect one line to the cable box and one line to the coax input on the Hauppauge card. The composite video and stereo outputs from the cable box will then connect to the corresponding inputs on the Hauppauge card. I'd prefer to use S-Video but the cable box doesn't support it. With this arrangement, the computer will be able to record one analog channel directly, and record any channel from the cable box. The computer will be able to change the channel on the cable box using a small module called an IR blaster. One didn't come with the tuner card so I'll either get one with the Media Center remote or may have to buy one separately. The cable box also has what appears to be standard 9-pin serial port on the back so I may be able to connect the computer to that instead. I'll have to do some research.

The video output from the computer will be via the S-Video connector on the video card (ATi Radeon 9800 Pro) connected to the input on the TV. Audio will be via the S/PDIF connector on the motherboard which will transmit digital audio directly to the Pioneer receiver/tuner/amplifier unit which supports Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. The cool thing is that the sound hardware on the motherboard can encode any audio into Dolby Digital so I should theoretically not require any analog audio connection between the computer and the receiver.

And that's the plan. I imagine I'll run into at least one snag along the way but I should be able to get this working as I'm not using any obscure hardware and the tuner card, the part most likely to be an issue, is one that is specifically designed to work with Windows Media Center Edition. Still, it will almost certainly be a learning experience.

Back in black

After taking a well deserved vacation, in my opinion at least, I'm back home and back to the blog. The weekend before last the Geekette and I spent four days and three nights in Victoria, British Columbia, where we basically just unwound from our lives. I took all last week off and we spent Thanksgiving in the company of some good friends. But now it's time to write again. I'm going to take a break from the politics for a bit and do something else. I'll start it in the next post.

San Francisco is dead to me

San Francisco has demonstrated irrefutably that is no longer a part of this country:

Proposition H, which requires city residents who already own guns to turn them in to police by April 1, was winning 58 percent to 42 percent with 98 percent of precincts counted.

The measure also makes it illegal to buy, sell, distribute and manufacture firearms and ammunition in the city.

Only two other cities in the country -- Washington, D.C., and Chicago -- have similar bans.

One of the sponsors of the bill displayed his appalling ignorance and supreme incapacity for rational thought:

"San Francisco voters are smart and believe in sensible gun control," said Supervisor Chris Daly, who was among the four board members who placed the measure on the ballot. "If Prop. H gets some handguns out of San Francisco and mitigates some of the violence, then it's a win."

I'm not going to go through why this is so wrong for the umpteenth time. Just read my past writings on the subject, or browse the links on my blogroll. I will only say this: I will never voluntarily visit San Francisco again unless and until it returns to the world of reality. To me, it simply no longer exists.

Washington State election results and commentary

There were several important initiatives on the ballot here in Washington State. Here's how the vote is being called at this time.

Initiative 330

The main feature of this initiative is a cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases of $350,000. It also provides for a cap on lawyers' fees, addresses the statute of limitations, affects how delayed payments are handled and several other issues.

Current status: Failing, 54% to 46%

How I voted: No

I voted against this initiative because it would allow healthcare providers to require that all disputes be settled through arbitration. Perhaps they should be allowed to do so, and then the market will make its own decision on whether that's a good idea or not. However, I considered it likely enough that the entire industry in this state would choose that option and the thought of the right to a jury trial being denied was too scary.

Initiative 336

The main features of this initiative are that it would require notices and hearings on insurance rate increases, establish a supplemental malpractice insurance program, require license revocation proceedings after three malpractice incidents, and limit numbers of expert witnesses in lawsuits.

Current status: Failing, 59% to 41%

How I voted: No

It was the part about establishing a supplemental malpractice insurance program that did it for me. It would be a program managed by the state, yet another government program that increases the size and scope of government. No thanks.

Initiative 900

This would direct the state auditor to conduct performance audits of state and local governments.

Current status: Passing, 57% to 43%

How I voted: Yes

Currently there is too little accountability in how governments and their agencies spend our money. Recent legislation passed by the state legislature is better than nothing, but this initiative would provide even better accountability.

Initiative 901

This initiative would prohibit smoking in buildings and vehicles open to the public and places of employment, including areas within 25 feet of doorways and ventilation openings unless a lesser distance is approved.

Current status: Passing, 63% to 37%

How I voted: No

I hate cigarettes. Smoking has killed several relatives, including my mother. I would dearly love to see all cigarette smoking cease. However, as much as I hate smoking, I love individual choice, responsibility, and property rights even more. This initiative would take away the right of business owners to decide whether or not to allow smoking in their establishments. I believe this is a choice for the free market to make. If you don't like to breathe smoke, then don't go to a place that allows smoking. This is yet another expansion of the nanny state; a further increase in government control of our lives.

Initiative 912

This initiative would repeal the recently legislated motor vehicle fuel tax increases of 3 cents in 2005 and 2006, 2 cents in 2007, and 1.5 cents per gallon in 2008.

Current status: Failing, 53% to 47%

How I voted: Yes

This one was probably the toughest. Living in Western Washington, and driving to work every day, I know that our highway and freeway system is in need of some serious work. I know that these taxes can only be used for roads and cannot be diverted anywhere else. Opponents of the initiative do have some valid arguments. The aging Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated double-decker structure similar to the one that collapsed in San Francisco in the 1989 earthquake, is badly in need of replacement, especially after the damage it took during the smaller but still powerful Nisqually earthquake in 2001.

But this state already has one of the highest fuel taxes in the country. Also, I see so many projects that really don't serve to increase safety or reduce congestion. Recently, several on- and off-ramps were constructed which lead directly to park-and-ride facilities for use by buses and carpools only. While this improves the situation somewhat for buses and carpools, it doesn't help everybody. It should be about priorities. If something has to be done now, it should be given top priority and less-important projects should wait.

When it comes to the Alaskan Way Viaduct specifically, there are other ways to pay for it. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that governments used to fund large civil works projects by selling bonds. There's also the option of making it a toll road, at least until it's paid off. It does not affect the entire state, so why should the entire state pay for it? I suppose that someone living in Spokane might realize an indirect benefit since he would be buying products and services from companies located in Seattle but it would pale before the benefit realized by someone who drives on that road every day.

And, to be honest, I think we need to send a message to Olympia that, even though the legislature and the governor's office are both controlled by Democrats, that they do not have free reign to raise taxes. Governor Gregoire, almost as her first official act, signed this legislation despite running on a platform of not raising taxes.

In short, while I agree that the roads need work, I believe we can re-prioritize the projects and come up with more targeted ways of paying for them.

More on oil profits

In a column for Townhall.com, Neal Boortz expands on what I linked to in an earlier post in response to the latest Senator to weigh in on the oil industry's recent profit announcements:

[Senator Charles] Grassley [R-IA] has apparently decided that free enterprise no longer works for America. (The truth here is that Grassley discovered that free enterprise doesn’t serve the goal of empowering politicians.) It is Grassley’s view that American businesses must now seek the favor of the imperial federal government of the United States as to just how business profits must be disbursed. No longer, in Grassley’s economic world, will corporate boards decide on the distribution of profits. No longer will the private businessman be the captain of his entrepreneurial ship. Grassley apparently wants the government to have a de facto seat on every corporate board and a share of control in the spending decisions of every private business.

He also provides a clear and concise definition of fascism:

Sheldon Richman writes in “The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics” that fascist thought acknowledge(s) the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state.” In other words, state approval must be sought before important business decisions can be implemented. I think I can simplify Richman’s definition of fascism so that even Americans educated in state schools can understand: Free enterprise (capitalism) is private ownership and control of the means of production. Socialism is government ownership and control of the means of production. Fascism is private ownership of the means of production, with government control. Private ownership with government control? There’s a somewhat familiar ring to that, isn’t there?

He follows it up with some additional commentary in today's Nuze:

Now ... here I am to expand on one train of thought presented in that column. If this Republican senator thinks that it is the role of government to tell privately owned businesses just how they must distribute their profits, here are a few suggestions:

• Automobile manufacturers could be required to spend a portion of their profits on public transit projects.


• Broadcasters, who, after all, are government regulated businesses, should donate a portion of their profits to buy radios for poor people so that they can get the information they need to prepare for disasters like hurricanes .... as if the poor were actually going to prepare.


• Homebuilders could be required to donate profits to low income housing projects.


• Pfizer could be required to donate profits from the sale of Viagra to fertility clinics for the poor. Just what we need, more pregnant poor people.


• Financial institutions could be required to donate profits to a federally subsidized loan program for low-income Americans with bad credit.


• Food processors and manufacturers could be required to donate profits to community food banks.

Ahhh .. the list is endless. Once we establish the concept of the government telling businesses how their profits must be spent and invested .. the way is clear for our political class to further consolidate it's power.

In another section of today's Nuze, Neal links to this article at Townhall.com by Alan Reynolds who tears apart radio talk-show host Bill O'Reilly's recent blasting of the oil industry:

When the unsurprising news came out that big oil companies had big profits, Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV concluded: "My contention is the oil companies don't have to double their profits. They can maybe make them two-fifths (40 percent). Take a little less for the good of the nation."

Exxon-Mobil's recent profit margin was up to nearly 9 percent of sales. Suppose they tried to cut that to a nickel out of every dollar by offering to sell crude oil for $3 a barrel less than the going price on the Chicago mercantile exchange. Refiners around the world would instantly commit to buying every drop. By the next day, the world price of crude would be same as before.

Suppose the Big Five oil companies got together and agreed to cut retail gasoline prices at their company-owned stations by 20 cents a gallon. Motorists would soon drain those stations dry, leaving the much larger number of independent gas stations in a position to charge even more. Meanwhile, independent station owners would file a complaint with the antitrust division of the Department of Justice accusing the majors of collusive predatory pricing to drive them out of business.

He also provides a good explanation of "inventory profits":

If you sell your house for much more than you paid for it, you will receive a "windfall profit." When you take that windfall from selling your old home and go out shopping for a new one, however, you'll discover prices of replacement homes have gone up, too. That may explain why the Senate has not yet contemplated imposing an extra "windfall profits tax" on windfalls homeowners receive when selling their homes. Since 1997, in fact, couples can pocket half a million dollars of such windfalls tax-free.

Aside from the tax break on homes, something very similar happens in any business whenever the price goes up for something bought earlier at a lower price. Businesses that process raw materials hold inventories of those materials, for example, and those inventories may have been purchased for much less than the current price. When the book value of those inventories is adjusted to reflect today's higher price, accountants add that difference to the firm's profits. But this is called "inventory profit," because those paper gains will soon be needed to replace the raw materials at the new, higher price. Then they vanish.

So what do you think? I'm of the opinion that this is merely the market at work, that it's not as simple as most people think, and that messing with the industry like Senator Grassley is calling for may make us all feel good in the short term, but it will have unintended consequences in the long term that far outweigh that. Sure, it would be nice if oil companies voluntarily donated to a fund to help poor and low-income folks afford the fuel to keep warm but the government taking it by force is just another form of income redistribution, and would be another step toward socialism or, yes, even fascism.

Keurig single-cup coffee maker

In today's installment of "Stuff We Like," I would like to present the Keurig single-cup coffee brewing system.

A coworker of mine brought one to work and introduced me to the concept. I had been aware of "coffee pod" brewers such as the Senseo brewer and others but this was the first time I'd heard of the K-cup. Each cup is a sealed container of ground coffee, just enough to make a single cup of coffee. You insert the cup in the system which punctures the top and bottom and then forces heated water under pressure through the coffee grounds. Once it's done, you remove the cup and toss it in the trash. It has a large water reservoir so you don't have to worry about filling it up every time you want some coffee. Although the coffee is pre-ground, the cups are sealed so they stay fresh much longer.

The Keurig K-cup isn't the only single-cup coffee system. The second major type is the coffee pod which is much like a large tea bag. Since the bag is not sealed, they probably don't retain their freshness as long, though I would imagine they come in plastic wrappers which help alleviate that somewhat. The third major type I'm aware of is Senseo. However, as far as I know Senseo is the only company which produces pods for their brewers so you don't have the same variety as with the other two systems.

Prior to this I had been reluctant to purchase a single-cup brewer of any type because I was concerned about the expense. For some time I had a standard coffee maker both at home and at the office. But after talking with my coworker I realized that I very seldom brewed my own coffee either at home or at work. The main deterrent was the time required to grind the coffee, brew it, and clean up afterward. Lately I've been either drinking the engine degreaser which passes for the free coffee, or going to the cafeteria where they serve one of the big name brands and buying a cup. My coworker and I did some math.

The Keurig B50 coffee maker was 150 bucks and the K-cups work out to be around 40 cents or so each if you order them online. If you figure that I spend between $1.20 and $1.60 for a cup of good coffee anyway, this brewer would pay for itself in a year or less. And the variety available is quite large. I recently received my first order from Coffee Whiz. Check out the varieties available. They deal in both K-cups and coffee pods and have a great page which compares and contrasts the two technologies.

I currently have my Keurig brewer at work though I'm seriously considering getting one for home as well, or getting a lesser model for work and taking this one home. Another option would be to get a coffee pod brewer for work since I drink more coffee here and the potentially shorter freshness duration would be less of an issue.
Another nice thing about single-cup brewers is that you don't have to worry when entertaining friends and family that one or more will only drink decaf. With a single-cup system, you can give everybody what they want without worrying about wasting a significant portion of a regular pot.

The price of oil

Many people from across the political spectrum are up in arms over the recently announced profits of the oil industry. We expect this from the Democrats but even Republicans have joined the cry:

The frustration is so great that even top Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., are demanding answers from Big Oil.

“We need to make sure that there's no abuse in the current system,” he said. “We need to make sure there's full transparency, and if there's any price gouging, we need to cut it out.”

When I first heard of these seemingly incredible profits, my first reaction was along the lines of what we're hearing from politicians. But then I started thinking about it some more. You see, what we have here is a global market and, in general, the market is best left to regulate itself. There is likely more to this than the sound bites would indicate.

Once again, Neal Boortz comes to the rescue and puts it all into better perspective, explaining the difference between profit and profit margin:

Now ... for those of you who went to government schools, let's expand on the explanation. Let's say that the total gross revenues for a company for one year equal $1,000,000. That's a million bucks. This company spends $930,000 to bring in that million. The difference between the one million and the $930,000 is $70,000. That's your profit. Divide the $70,000 by the one million and you get 0.07, or 7%. That's your profit margin. Now let's say that the very next year the company sells twice as much product the second year and brings in two million bucks. Let's also say that the cost of making those products doubles as well .. to $1,860,000. How much money did you have left over? Those of you who went to government schools get out your calculators .. the rest of you can figure it out in your head. You have $140,000 left over. That's your profit.

Wait! Your profits have doubled! How dare you? What are you doing, price gouging? These are excess profits -- windfall profits -- and the government ought to step in immediately and take them away from you, you greedy capitalist pig!

Hold on ... before we get carried away with our little price gouging rant here, let's grab those calculators again. Divide the $140,000 in profits by the $2,000,000 in gross receipts and what do we have? Why, it seems the answer is once again 0.07, or 7%! The profits have doubled, but the profit margin remains exactly the same!

He goes on to address a suggestion that the junior Senator from New York has made:

Hillary's brilliant idea of seizing profits does not come as a surprise to many. After all, Hillary was identified by her college professors as a budding young socialist many years before she achieved fame as Bill's "wife." Hillary's idea is for the oil companies to hand over about $20 billion a year to the government to be used for "research" and to subsidize consumers. The subsidies, of course, would become just another government entitlement that Democratic politicians would use to buy votes. The research? Well, sad to say there are actually people out there who think that the government can do a better job conducting research to insure our future energy needs than can the private sector. The impact of state education is widely felt.

Let's explore Hillary's profit-seizure idea a bit more. Another source of funds for oil companies to use for exploration and the development of additional energy resources would be the money that comes from investors. These investors purchase shares of stock in oil companies because they believe that their investments will appreciate in value and, in some cases, will pay dividends. If the government bows to the paranoia and anti-capitalist ignorance of the state-educated masses and seizes those profits, what then will be the reason to invest in these oil companies?

While price gouging does occur, for the most part high prices as a result of scarcity are not gouging but the natural operation of the free market in the efficient and effective allocation of resources. If prices for scarce resources are held artificially low, you then run into a shortage of said resources.

Maybe we should have some sort of investigation. However, like Neal, I'm going to assume that what we're dealing with here is simply the law of supply and demand and not any deliberate attempt at price gouging unless and until it is proven otherwise.

Who are we?

A question I've been mulling over for some time is this: Who are we to make judgements on other cultures and societies, and go so far as to attempt to bring them to freedom and democracy? Mike, in his own inimitable style, provides the answer:

As for that last bit, here’s who we are to judge other cultures: we’re the creators - not just the inheritors, the creators, every single day, by a bazillion different actions and in a bazillion different ways — of the most successful, benevolent, and all-around right nation this poor sad planet has yet produced, and the world would do well to profit from our freely-offered example rather than merely jealously carping about some detail we may have gotten slightly wrong. If that sounds arrogant, insensitive, or jingoistic, well, tough shit, Poindexter; I just don’t care.

And for the rest of us, we would do well to always remember not how lucky we are to have had so grand a birthright handed to us, but how serious the responsibility for maintaining, respecting, defending, and advancing that birthright is. And what that means in turn is not that we should ignore or shout down honest and legitimate discourse over how best to live up to that responsibility, but that we must acknowledge valid criticism and work to correct what mistakes we can, without denigrating or debasing the very foundations of our society as so many on the Left seem so eager to do. As Americans, we must respect honest dissenting opinion; however, the hateful tripe offered up by the present-day Left is, for the most part, nothing of the sort, and needs to be vigorously countered.

The United States is simply the greatest, the most free, the most successful nation this world has ever seen. Period. Obviously we're doing something right. Recognizing this is not being racist, culturalist, or any other word ending in -ist; it's merely stating objective fact. Just because we're the ones saying it doesn't mean it isn't true.

So if we've determined that the best way to secure the future safety of the United States, and all the other nations that share our love of freedom, from the depradations of a fascist theocratic ideology that calls for our complete destruction - simply because we are successful and are not under their dictatorial bootheels - is to attempt to remake their society and show them there's a better way, why not adapt what has worked well for us? The key word here is adapt. The recently approved Constitution of Iraq is not the same as the Constitution of the United States. It reflects that there are certain cultural differences between us and them. But those differences do not preclude a common desire for freedom and democracy, the desire for a nation where government is by the consent of the governed, the aspiration to the dignity of free people. They do not, and the approval of the Constitution of Iraq should be all the proof anyone needs that this is so.

On with the show!

It's Sam Alito, folks, and I couldn't be happier. Well, that's not entirely correct. I was really hoping for Janice Rogers Brown. It would have been most entertaining to watch the Democrats cope with the cognitive dissonance of opposing a black woman. But, ah well. Alito is a fine choice and certainly reinforces the theory, held in some circles, that the initial choice of Miers was deliberate and that the President and his people intended for it to come out the way it did. For now we have a real judge as a nominee, someone the Republicans can rally around.

Adding to the euphoria is the reaction from leading Democrats. For example:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that he is "disappointed" in the pick of Alito in that he is not a "consensus nominee" and said one day earlier that that nominee would "create a lot of problems."

And:

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also blasted Bush for not picking someone in the "mold of Sandra Day O'Connor, who would unify us."

"The president seems to want to hunker down in his bunker" and "soothe the ruffled feathers of the extreme wing of his party," Schumer said. "This controversial nominee, who would make the court less diverse and far more conservative, will get very careful scrutiny from the Senate and from the American people."

Hallelujah! This is the contest we've been waiting for, folks. Fact: Judge Alito has twice previously been confirmed by the Senate by votes of 100 to 0. Fact: Judge Alito would bring to the Supreme Court more experience than any other nominee in the past 70 years. Of course this will mean nothing to the idealogues on the left. They will oppose him because he's Bush's rational choice and because they fear that he will interpret the law and the Constitution as a Supreme Court Justice should. They wanted someone who at least had a chance of going along with the legislation of their agenda from the bench. If they really want to fight this, they will have no choice but to reveal their true colors to the American people. They're caught between a rock and a hard place and it's about damn time.

Will they filibuster? I can't say. I will, however, predict that if a filibuster occurs, Frist will push the button. Either way, Alito will be confirmed and a grand step in restoring the Supreme Court to their proper, Constitutionally-mandated role will be taken.

Rebirth (hopefully)

If you've been stopping by occasionally over the last few months, you've doubtless noticed that posting has been rather infrequent. I've been thinking about what to do with this blog for a while and I've decided to make some changes. First, a new template. This is one of Blogger's stock templates which I've modified to suit. Second, a new name. "Musings of a Techno-Geek" was the first name I came up with when I created the blog in the first place and, admittedly, it wasn't very original. I wanted something a bit more unique, and one that fit my personality and interests better. The result is what you see at the top of the page.

In the past I've wanted my posts to have some sort of original contribution, rather than just a collection of links. But writing essays takes time and I'm not one of those who can always come up with several paragraphs on a moment's notice. I need time to think about things and, by the time my thoughts are more-or-less in order, other bloggers have already made posts which would render mine redundant. Going forward, my plan is for the posts to be more numerous, although they will be correspondingly shorter. I may just post a link with a one-sentence comment. Or just pose a question. If something warrants additional commentary, I'll make it a followup post. The idea is to keep the blog going forward and, hopefully, prompt more comments from readers.

Bring your gun to work day

I just couldn't resist the subject line even though it may give the wrong impression.

Legislation has been introduced in the Florida State Legislature that would force Florida companies to allow their employees to bring guns to work, as long as the weapons remained locked in their cars.

The legislation is modeled after an Oklahoma law that drew national attention when a number of major companies, including energy giant ConocoPhillips and oil-services conglomerate Halliburton, sued to have it overturned.

A Florida version could have similarly sweeping effects, particularly in Central Florida, where the region's largest employer -- Walt Disney World, with more than 57,000 workers -- does not allow its employees to bring guns onto park property. Universal Orlando, which employs 13,000 people, has a similar policy.

The legislation is backed by the NRA.

Marion Hammer, an NRA lobbyist, said the group will make the parking-lot bills (HB 129 and SB 206) a priority in 2006.

"For a business to tell you that in order to come onto their property, you have to give up your constitutional right is wrong," Hammer said.

Florida businesses are opposed to the legislation, despite an attempt to make it more palatable.

In an effort to blunt opposition from businesses, Baxley and Senate sponsor Durell Peaden, R-Crestview, included provisions that would shield companies from lawsuits should an employee commit a crime with the gun kept in a car on company property.

"I would think that business folks would embrace this readily because it gives them immunity from liability," Hammer said. "They should be happy as clams."

But businesses are unimpressed.

"If they have to get in the car and drive home to get a gun, chances are they are going to cool down a little bit," said Frank Mendizabal, a spokesman for Weyerhaeuser, which owns the Oklahoma mill that fired employees found with guns in their cars.

That the law could protect companies from lawsuits is irrelevant because immunity "doesn't prevent someone from being shot," he said.

This is a tough one since it is a conflict between the right of self-defense and private property rights. When in doubt consult the final authority, which is the Constitution. The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

My first inclination was to side with the businesses. Private property rights are of paramount importance in this country and I believe that property owners have the right to say what does and does not come onto their property. However, the Second Amendment is an absolute. It says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, period. It does not limit itself to restricting the US Congress, as does the First Amendment. It simply says, in effect, "this action is prohibited." The question then becomes whether or not this applies to private entities such as businesses or individuals and not just governments.

My personal opinion, as you may surmise, is that businesses should allow their employees to bring their personal weapons to work. Ideally, they would be allowed to carry their concealed weapons while on the job, provided it is legal for them to carry the weapons at all. As for Mr. Mendizabal's statement that having to drive home to get a gun would allow the person to cool down, I'm willing to bet that the majority of the workplace homicides he cites occurred when the person came to work and brought their weapon into the workplace with them to begin with, rather than the person leaving the weapon in their vehicle and retrieving it when they decided that it was time for the lead to fly.

And don't forget that the number of criminal shootings committed by people with concealed weapon permits, as opposed to those that were in self-defense, is an extremely small percentage. Folks with CCW's are not the ones you should fear. If someone is going to shoot up the place, corporate policies against bringing guns to work won't stop them. And if that should happen, it seems to me that law-abiding armed employees would provide the best defense, unless you happen to have armed security which is rare.

But should companies be required by law to allow something on their property that they don't want, regardless of the wisdom of such prohibitions? What do you think?

Quotes of the day

From the usual source.

"The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men." —Robert Lafollette, Sr.

"What if I told you that there was a magic bullet—something that would improve the quality of your daily life, your children's chances of success in the world, your family's health, our values as a society? Something that is inexpensive, simple to produce and within the reach of pretty much anyone? Miriam Weinstein begins her book 'The Surprising Power of Family Meals' with those two questions and then suggests that the 'magic bullet' missed by so many families is as simple as a shared meal. A 2003 survey indicated that children and teens who share dinner with their families five or more nights a week were far less likely to have tried alcohol, cigarettes or marijuana. 'Those who eat lots of family dinners are almost twice as likely to get A's in school as their classmates who rarely eat as a family.' Now that's something to chew on. Launch a revolution. Have dinner as a family." —Albert Mohler

"I was a Democrat once...for a long time, a large part of my life. But in those days, its leaders didn't belong to the 'blame America first' crowd. Its leaders were men like Harry Truman, who understood the challenges of our times. They didn't reserve all their indignation for America. They knew the difference between freedom and tyranny and they stood up for one and damned the other. To all the good Democrats who respect that tradition...and I hope there are many...you're not alone. We're asking you to come walk with us down the new path of hope and opportunity, and we'll make it a bipartisan salvation of our country." —Ronald Reagan

"Establishment Republicans all pretend to have seen Reagan's genius at the time, but that's a crock. They wanted to dump Reagan in favor of 'electable' Gerald Ford and 'electable' George Herbert Walker Bush. Newsweek reported in 1976 that Republican 'party loyalists' thought Reagan would produce 'a Goldwater-style debacle.' This is why they nominated well-known charismatic vote magnet Jerry Ford instead. Again in 1980, a majority of Republican committeemen told U.S. News and World Report that future one-termer George 'Read My Lips' Bush was more 'electable' than Reagan. The secret to Reagan's greatness was he didn't need a bunch of high-priced Bob Shrums to tell him what Americans thought. He knew because of his work with General Electric, touring the country and meeting real Americans. Two months a year for eight years, Reagan would give up to 25 speeches a day at G.E. plants—a 'marination in middle America,' as one G.E. man put it. Reagan himself said, 'I always thought Hollywood had the wrong idea of the average American, and the G.E. tours proved I was right.' Because of these tours, Reagan knew—as he calmly told fretful advisers after the Grenada invasion—'You can always trust Americans.' The G.E. tours completely immunized Reagan from the counsel of people like Karl Rove, who think the average American is a big-business man who just wants his taxes cut and doesn't care about honor, country, marriage or the unborn. Reagan knew that this is a great country. If only today's Republicans would believe it." —Ann Coulter

"[B]oth compassionate conservatism and welfare-state liberalism alike are uncompassionate. Inheriting from the neocons a basic philosophical comfort with the concept of the welfare state, compassionate conservatism—which also goes by 'big government conservatism' —sees no pressing need to pare government down to its core functions. Traditional conservatism, on the other hand, considers a lean government essential to the task of fulfilling its core responsibilities... Ultimately, this is the core problem with all ideologies that try to make government an extension of the family. Welfare-state liberalism wants the government to act like your mommy. Compassionate conservatives want the state to be your daddy. The problem: Government cannot love you, nor should it try. Love empowers us to do some things government must never have the power to do and other things the government can almost never do well." —Jonah Goldberg

"If you want to understand the Left, the best place to start is with an understanding of hysteria. Leading leftists either use hysteria as a political tactic or are actually hysterics. Take almost any subject the Left discusses and you will find hysteria... America neglects its poor, beats up its gays, oppresses its women, fouls its environment, ignores its children's educations, denies blacks their votes, and invades other countries for corporate profits: These are common accusations of the Left. No event is free of leftist hysteria. On the third day after Katrina, civil rights activist Randall Robinson reported that blacks in New Orleans were resorting to cannibalism. Indeed, most of the news media coverage bordered on the hysterical. Not to mention the hysterical predictions of 10,000-plus dead in New Orleans... [T]he irony in all of this is that the Left sees itself as the side that thinks intellectually and non-emotionally. And that is hysterical." —Dennis Prager

"Nobody doubts that [John] Roberts is a conservative. Presumably he has 'feelings,' conservative ones. The record is pretty clear on that. But this doesn't mean he's playing possum and waiting for the chance to give these feelings the force of law. That's the liberal racket. Liberals celebrate precisely those justices who love women and minorities not wisely, but too well—the ones whose 'feelings' impel them to overturn law and precedent and tradition in search of penumbras formed by emanations unsuspected by the authors of the Constitution. So when liberals ask you if you recognize the constitutional right to 'privacy,' the last thing they want to hear is a politely skeptical, 'Well, it depends what you mean.' Have you no feelings, man? Hence liberals are forever complaining that conservatives 'lack compassion' and are 'mean-spirited.' The only feelings they can imagine conservatives having are nasty ones, primarily 'hate.' Ignoring such childish spite, Roberts has taken a quiet and dignified stand for the sovereignty of reason." —Joseph Sobran

"[Ruth Bader] Ginsburg [doesn't] like the idea that she might be the only woman on the Court. She said that the president should nominate a 'fine jurist' to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, and that she—Ginsburg—had 'a list of highly qualified women,' but, she continued, 'the president has not consulted me.' I wonder under which penumbra she fits this idea... Ginsburg has her list of prospective women nominees, because, as she said, the president must be particular to choose which woman, and just 'any woman will not do.' She said there are 'some women who might be appointed who would not advance human rights or women's rights.' Advance. Not interpret. Not apply the Constitution according to its principles to protect. Advance... Because Ginsburg believes her job is to 'advance human rights [and] women's rights,' she is, [under Title 28, US Code, Section 455], disqualified from ruling on those cases. Which means that she may not legally vote on any case that may affect Roe v. Wade or—for example, in the 'human rights' arena—any case that might affect the manner in which America treats terrorist prisoners in places such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." —Jed Babbin

"One of the many negative consequences of America's defeat in the Vietnam War has been the uncontrolled proliferation of Vietnams since then. Nicaragua threatened to become another Vietnam. Lebanon nearly became another Vietnam. Had Grenada been only slightly larger than a manhole cover and lasted one more hour, it would have become a Caribbean-Style Vietnam. The invasion of Panama was rapidly degenerating into a Narco-Vietnam, right up until we won. Likewise, the First Gulf War was certainly developing into another Vietnam, but then sadly, it ended quickly and with few casualties. For people of a certain age or political stripe, Vietnam is like Elvis: it's everywhere. For example, during a long wait at a Chinese Buffet in Georgetown in 1987, Ted Kennedy was reported to have exclaimed 'QUAGMIRE!' and attempted to surrender to a Spanish-speaking busboy. And that was probably the smart thing to do, because the lesson of Vietnam is: it is best to lose quickly, so as to avoid a quagmire... If you liked what our quick, casualty-saving withdrawal from Somalia did for us at the Khobar Towers, at our embassies in East Africa, at the waterline of the U.S.S. Cole, and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then you'll love what a quick 'casualty-saving' withdrawal from Iraq will do for us for the next twenty years. It'll finally make you stop worrying about Vietnam." —Mac Johnson

And so it goes

As I stated in an earlier post, the so-called International Freedom Center, as proposed, should not be located within the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City. Via The Belmont Club comes the news that New York Governor George Pataki has heard the message and has decided that the IFC will not be a part of the memorial.

"Freedom should unify us. This center has not," Pataki said. "Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the IFC. ... We must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world."

As Wretchard notes, the New York Times has expressed its displeasure with the decision, further assuring its correctness.

And in a further display of regurgitating what better bloggers than me have written, Wretchard notes:

Nowhere in the article does the NYT say why the September 11 families clamored for revision; it happened after Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of one of the hijacked planes and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

drew attention to behind-the-scenes plans to host exhibitions at the complex devoted to such issues as the genocide of native Americans, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Gulag, instead of the bravery and dignity of nearly 3,000 victims of the Al-Qaeda suicide squads. It will also be the site of academic symposiums on the foundations of freedom, providing a “magnet” to activists and academics to debate the US “domestic and foreign policy they despise”, she said. An early design for the cultural centre included a large mural of an Iraqi voter. But in a sign of things to come, said Burlingame, this was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King, the murdered civil rights leader, with President Lyndon Johnson.

He goes on to list the principal backers of the IFC and makes the following very interesting observation:

The effort illustrates the extraordinary importance that the Left places on the control of symbols. By preference, a good Marxist symbol should represent the very opposite of its counterpart in reality because its foremost goal, in common with unscrupulous Mesmerists, is to emasculate the mind. It was no accident that in Orwell's 1984, that the Ministries of War, Rationing, Propaganda and Repression were called the Ministries of Peace, Plenty, Truth and Love by the Party.

He then leaves you with a question to which the answer is all too obvious....

Computer upgrades

I've updated the "About my rig" post to reflect the recent hardware changes I've made to the home computer system. It's a pretty rockin' box now.

Quotes of the day

Via The Federalist Patriot.

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." —Thomas Jefferson

"I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit... The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood." —President Grover Cleveland

"Consider that black households that are headed by married couples have median incomes almost 90 percent that of white households headed by married couples. The problem in the black community is that far too few black households are headed by married couples. Black social reality in New Orleans at the moment when the floodwaters started pouring in was fairly typical of black inner-city social reality around the country. Upwards of 70 percent of the households were headed by single parents, mostly women. When I discuss social statistics with audiences around the country, I invariably hear gasps when I point out that the out-of-wedlock birthrate today among young white women (30 percent) is higher than it was among black women 50 years ago. There, of course, remain residuals of racism in America today, and it's news to a lot of whites that black families were relatively intact, headed by married couples, in the '40s and '50s. Today's out-of-wedlock black births and single-parent households are triple what they were then. The collapse of the black family took off when big government programs, particularly welfare, were launched, compliments of black and white liberals, after the civil-rights movement." —Star Parker

"Perhaps President Bush has inadvertently nominated a true conservative to the court with this Roberts fellow. I remain skeptical based on the following facts: (1) Anita Hill has not stepped forward to accuse Roberts of sexual harassment. (2) The Democrats did not accuse Roberts of having a secret life as a racist. (3) We have no idea what kind of videos he rents. Also, I'm still steamed that Bush has now dashed my dreams of an all-black Supreme Court composed of eight more Clarence Thomases. Incidentally, eight more Clarence Thomases is the only form of human cloning I would ever support... For Christians, it's 'What Would Jesus Do?' For Republicans, it's 'What Would Reagan Do?' Bush doesn't have to be Reagan; he just has to consult his WWRD bracelet. If Bush had followed the WWRD guidelines, he would have nominated Antonin Scalia for the chief justiceship... [M]ost important, if Bush had nominated Scalia, liberals would have responded with their usual understated screams of genocide, and Bush could have nominated absolutely anyone to fill Justice O'Connor's seat. He also could have cut taxes, invaded Syria, and bombed North Korea and Cuba just for laughs. He could even have done something totally nuts, like enforce the immigration laws... According to my WWRD wristwatch, it's time for Bush to invade Grenada, bomb Libya, fire the air traffic controllers, and joke about launching a first strike against the Soviet Union. In lieu of that, how about nominating a conservative to O'Connor's seat on the court? It would be a bold gesture."—Ann Coulter

Not surprising in the least

The Gun Guy notes the following:

[T]he latest FBI crime stats (2004) are out—and in the first full year after the sunsetting of the vile Assault Weapons Ban (AWB), murders and robberies each dropped by 3.6%.

Yes, the word is dropped.

You may recognize The Gun Guy's website as the same one that I have had on my Blogroll since the beginning, and one that I have linked to on numerous occasions, except now the author posts under a pseudonym. I won't say who it is; suffice it to say that The Gun Guy has a very good reason for pulling the cloak of online anonymity around his virtual self.

The IFC must go

Once again I pop my head up from my busy life. I'm currently contemplating the future of this blog but here's something I wanted to put out there for those who happen to find their way here.

Over at Cox and Forkum is their latest editorial cartoon regarding the proposed International Freedom Center which is slated to be a part of the September 11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York. The IFC, as noted in this WSJ article, will present to visitors, "a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world."

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has come out in opposition to the IFC, as has Senator (and likely 2008 presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton. Hopefully Governor Pataki and the others involved in this decision will listen to the will of the people and cancel plans to build this memorial to apology and moral relativism on that sacred ground.

Where are the statesmen?

The ever-irascible Kim du Toit, being under considerable pressure from the concerns of everyday life, has taken a break from his regular prodigious blogging schedule until such time as the situation improves. He still posts occasionally, but he has also introduced his "Best of" feature where his blogging software randomly presents one or more posts from the past. Today's is titled, "Where Is Washington?"

When asked how long the Republic would last, James Russell Lowe famously remarked, “The Republic will endure as long as the ideals and principles of the Founders remain dominant in the hearts of the people.”

Someone else less-famously remarked that the framers of the United States Constitution had it easy when they were drawing up that wonderful document: they had the august and brooding presence of George Washington sitting in the room with them while they wrote it. And if at any time an ignoble urge might come upon them, they had only to think of Washington’s frown of approbation for that urge to be curbed—and they had the certain knowledge that whatever they produced would eventually have to be subjected to the stern scrutiny of Washington’s unbending honor.

Where is Washington now? It is clear that people in government need some kind of moral compass, some kind of final arbiter, in order that their machinations be kept in check, and that the baser side of their natures be cowed at the thought of awful displeasure.

Where is Washington? He's probably spinning in his grave so fast that, were we to connect him to a generator, we could probably light all of Washington DC with its output. The last president we had which even approached Washington in stature was Reagan. George W. Bush tries, and he sometimes succeeds, but he simply isn't of the same caliber.

This country has so lost the vision of the Founders that I sometimes despair of it ever correcting itself. There are many things that need to be done if we are to return to the type of nation that was forged over two centuries ago. Here are just a few:

• Eliminate the current system of punitive taxation of individuals and corporations. Replace the income tax with a consumption tax, whether it's a national sales tax (i.e. the Fair Tax) or a value-added tax. There are good arguments for either. (Ideally the Federal government would not require a tax on the people of any kind, but fund itself solely through tariffs as it did originally. However, in today's world that's merely wishful thinking.)


• Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution and return the responsibility for selecting Senators to the legislatures of the various states. The original intent was for the House of Representatives to represent the people of the states, and for the Senate to represent the states as entities in their own right. No longer beholden to special interest groups, other than the states, they would be far less inclined to pass legislation that panders to such groups.


• Reign in the judiciary so that it once again acts as the arbiter of the law and not its creator. The Supreme Court must only determine whether or not laws are contrary to the Constitution, and not make new law where none was before.

I could go on and on but these three things would make a large difference. What changes would you suggest?

Katrina

It’s been a long couple of weeks since I last posted anything here.  Mainly I’ve been going to work, playing games on the computer every so often, and generally going about my life.  I’ve wanted to put up a long and detailed post about Cindy Sheehan but so many other bloggers out there are doing such a good job that there really isn’t any reason for me to do so.  Of course this past week has been dominated by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, pushing Cindy off the front page.  I don’t have a lot to say that hasn’t already been said but I did want to point out a couple of things related to the Hurricane that caught my attention.

First up we have rap “artist” Kanye West.  Along with many other performers, he appeared on a televised concert last night to benefit those affected by the hurricane.  However, like all too many famous people, he elected to inject his own political views into an event that should have been about helping people and not about partisan politics:

Appearing two-thirds through the program, he claimed "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

Of course he played the race card.  And of course he’s full of it.  There are all kinds of reasons, some justified, some not, that the efforts to help those still in the city were delayed, but the fact that those people are predominately poor and black are not among them.

Next up, Robert Tracinski writing for The Intellectual Activist believes he knows why we’re seeing the behavior that is occurring in New Orleans, namely the looting and general lawlessness:

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

He compares the scenes in New Orleans with scenes from another well-known part of the world:

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

The article he refers to appeared in the Washington Times, a link to which appears in Tracinski’s article.  Further down, he describes a specific condition that is likely exacerbating the problem:

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

As you would expect, a lot of people have spent a lot of time assigning blame. Whose fault is this?

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

Of course we didn’t see this sort of behavior in New York on and after 9/11.  But that was a relatively localized event, affecting only a small part of the city.  If something like Katrina were to come along and force the total evacuation of New York, I expect that similar conditions would obtain there as well.  Let us hope that never happens, but we better start getting ready in case it does.

Man on the ground

Michael Yon is with the Deuce Four in Iraq and is blogging about what is really going on over there. In today's dispatch, he has something to say about what certain words really mean:

Particularly among fanatics, there seems to be an intentional misappropriation of meaning in the liberal misapplication of labelling words. Let's start with the BIG ones: suicide-bombers and martyrs. Suicide is a term that should evoke empathy, if not sympathy, for a lonely and despairing act. A distressed soul, harboring a crushing, agonizing lebensmude, weary of the strain of a terrestrial existence, perhaps seeking mere relief, or just an end to psychic pain, may be contemplating suicide. If this person straps a bomb to his or her chest and walks out into the solitude of the desert and detonates, they would then be properly called a "suicide bomber." But when the media reports every day on "suicide bombers," they are talking about different people.

A fanatic who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into a market crowded with women and children, then detonates a bomb that is sometimes laced with rat poison to hamper blood coagulation, is properly called a "mass murderer." There is nothing good to say about mass murderers, nor is there anything good to say about a person who encourages these murders. Calling these human bomb delivery devices "suicide bombers" is simply incorrect. They are murderers. A person or media source defending or explaining away the actions of the murderers supports them. There is no wiggle room.

Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man "customer" because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. There's no need to whisper. I hear the bombs every single day. Not some days, but every day. We're talking about criminals who actually volunteer and plan to deliberately murder and maim innocent people. What reservoir of feelings or sensibilities do we fear to assault by simply calling it so? When murderers describe themselves as "martyrs" it should sound to sensible ears like a rapist saying, “she was asking for it.” In other words, like the empty rationalizations of a depraved criminal.

So who are the true martyrs in Iraq? Michael answers that question thusly:

The only martyrs I know about in Iraq are the fathers and brothers who see a better future coming, and so they act on their beliefs and assemble outside police stations whenever recruitment notices are posted. They line up in ever increasing numbers, knowing that insurgents can also read these notices. The men stand in longer and longer lines, making ever bigger targets of themselves. Some volunteer to to earn a living. This, too, is honorable. But others take these risks because they believe that a better future is possible only if Iraqi men of principle stand up for their own values, for their country, for their families. Theses are the true martyrs, the true heroes of Iraq and of Islam. I meet these martyrs frequently. They are brave men, worthy of respect.

He goes on to describe what groups make up the enemy and what groups make up the friendly forces. Read it all. Then start working your way back through the archives.

NARAL's lies about Judge Roberts

Regardless of what side you take in the debate over whether or not abortion should be legal, telling bald-faced lies about a Supreme Court nominee only serves to cast your organization in a bad light and expose you as irrational extremists.

NARAL Pro Choice America (NARAL stands for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, though the words "and Reproductive" were added after the name was initially chosen) is running the first television ad opposing the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court of the United States to replace the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. There's only one problem. Much of the ad is lies and false implications.

Factcheck.org has the scoop:

An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama.

The ad is false.

And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn't deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.

The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question. (Emphasis in original. -RR)

Read the rest as it presents a lot of detail you probably won't hear elsewhere.

If you are advocating a certain position, and you believe that a Supreme Court nominee is likely to rule against that position should he ever hear a relevant case, and you can back up your belief with facts, then by all means you have the right to purchase ads on television or any other media which present your objections. But NARAL is flat-out lying in order to prejudice opinion against John Roberts. One would hope that the FCC or other relevant authority would investigate this ad and take appropriate action.

Hat tip: Boortz

Brain buckets

In today's report from the "Duh!" Department, we have the latest statistics on motorcyclist deaths and injuries in Florida since helmet use was made optional five years ago. Sure to surprise nobody, "In a survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in the three years after the optional helmet law took effect, the number of fatal motorcycle accidents increased more than 81 percent -- compared with a 48 percent increase nationally."

Another article states:

A federal study has found motorcycle fatalities in Florida increased more than 81 percent, and the number of deaths for riders younger than 21 nearly tripled, in three years after state lawmakers repealed a law requiring riders to wear a helmet.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study also found injuries have become more expensive to treat. The average hospital cost to treat a head injury was $45,602, more than four times the $10,000 insurance non-helmeted riders are required to carry.

But the study also noted that some of the increase in fatalities can be attributed to alcohol use, speed and increased ridership.

The study has its critics:

James Reichenbach, president of American Bikers Aimed Toward Education in Florida, who lobbied to repeal the helmet law in 2000, said the federal agency is biased against riders who do not wear helmets.

He said the increase in fatalities can be largely attributed to motorcycles' increasing popularity.

I would say that the 48 percent national increase noted in the first article can be so attributed, but I do think that being allowed to ride helmet-less is the major factor in the disproportionate increase in Florida state.

In an ironic turn, the woman who was a big promoter of the change was killed while riding shortly after the law went into effect. I have heard that it was determined that lack of a helmet was a contributing factor and that she may have survived if she'd been wearing one.

I have gone on record as opposing mandatory helmet laws. I consider it an infringement of freedom by government and I believe that people should be able to make their own choices about whether or not to assume the risk. Yet it is clear that the risk is greater if one rides without a helmet. I don't think there's an answer that will satisfy everyone. One potential solution I've discussed with others is as follows:

• You can ride without a helmet if you want.


• Insurance companies have the right to deny your claim if you were not wearing a helmet at the time of an accident.

The big problem with this, of course, is that we are not a cruel society and hospitals won't refuse treatment if you don't have insurance. Nevertheless, somebody's going to have to pay for it in the end whether it's the accident victim, his or her insurance company, other patients through increased costs (or their insurance providers), or the taxpayers. I think Florida's law was a pretty good compromise although it appears that the minimum $10,000 of insurance is insufficient. Perhaps increasing it to a higher amount, such as $50,000, is warranted.

As for myself, I always wear a full-face helment, along with protective jacket, pants, and boots, and will do so even if Washington's mandatory helmet law is repealed or modified.

Israel pulling out of Gaza

As anyone remotely interested in such things knows by now, Israel is going ahead with pulling its settlements out of the Gaza Strip. Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister of Israel, resigned his position as Finance Minister in protest.

There have been many arguments, both for and against, on whether this withdrawal is a good idea. Netanyahu opposes it because he believes it will allow Gaza to become a stronghold for terrorists and result in even more bloodshed.

Hamas and the Palestinian authority see it as a victory for their side(s). They have been competing to see who can take the most credit and Hamas has even launched a contest to see who can come up with the best poster to "portray the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a victory for Palestinian groups."

I could very well be wrong about this but the first thought that comes to mind when I contemplate this withdrawal is that Prime Minister Sharon and his supporters in this plan expect that the Palenstinians will use Gaza as a base for terror. I see the sequence of events proceeding as follows:

• Israel removes all settlements and military personnel from Gaza.


• Hamas and probably other terrorist organizations begin to use Gaza as a staging ground for terror attacks into Israel.


• Israel launches a massive military operation into Gaza and essentially cleans it out.


• Israel is possibly able to take out a considerable portion of Hamas and the other organizations since they've probably concentrated a large portion of their personnel in the area.


• Israel justifies their actions (and rightly so) by noting that they basically gave Gaza to the Palestinians and in return got more terror attacks, not less.


• Optionally Israel sweeps all Palestinians out of Gaza and completely occupies it. I would have to say this unlikely, though.

Of course, I could be wrong. I freely admit that I'm not an experienced strategist in such matters and there is a lot about what is going on over there that I simply don't know. This is a pretty simple premise and I imagine that the Palestinian leadership has thought of this possibility as well. In any case, it's certainly going to be interesting to see what happens after the pull out. Unfortunately, the word "interesting" in this case will probably have the "Chinese" connotation.

It takes a community

When reading Chris Muir's daily webcomic Day by Day the other day, I discovered that the author of the blog Electric Venom, who goes by the moniker Venomous Kate, had suffered a rather severe injury. Given her financial situation, she put out a reluctant request for some help paying for the dental work she now has to undergo.

I don't read her blog regularly but other bloggers that I admire do, or else know her personally, so I decided I would kick a few bucks her way. Even with the new house and all, I had some to spare so I shared.

Now that a couple of days have passed since her initial request, the response has been staggering. She has received donations totalling about three-fourths of the total she needs. I have seen this before. The Blogosphere, specifically the more conservative/Libertarian/Republican/right-leaning side, is incredibly generous, as opposed to the stingy, selfish characterizations that we are often smeared with by those who hold opposing political views.

Some critics on the Left might say that we're only helping Kate because she's "one of us." After all, aren't we the ones that want to do away with welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement programs, thereby causing massive starvation and disease? Not at all. You see, we understand that there's nothing wrong with helping people out when they find themselves in a tight situation. What we have a problem with is the government confiscating our property (the income we earn by working and investing) by force and giving it to other people. Kate and her family are normally self-sufficient and they take responsibility for themselves. When we donate to her "Fang Fund" so she can get her teeth fixed, we know that she only asked because she was really up against the wall. We also understand that, were it someone else who needed help, and Kate was in a position to provide it, she would do so. In fact, I fully expect that this will happen in the not-to-distant future, as Kate "pays it forward" by helping out someone who is in trouble with some cash or other assistance. I don't know her personally, and haven't read enough of her blog to get a feel for what kind of person she is. Nevertheless I can say with confidence that she will feel obligated to help out others as she was once helped. And this is a one-time shot, not an ongoing process. Once she has the money she needs, she will stop taking donations and refund any excess. Should anyone refuse their refund, she will donate it to charity.

By contrast, if the government just gives handouts to people, they become dependent on it and lose the incentive to become self-sufficient. If the government provides enough to live on, even if it's just at the subsistence level, someone who doesn't know any other way to live will likely be content to live off the dole as long as they are able to. They become a drain on society and fail to achieve their full potential.

Of course there are those who are simply unable to provide for themselves, no matter how willing they are to do so. Obviously we should provide for their needs and enable them to have a decent quality of life. Still, I would much rather that this is done by private charities rather than the government. And I'm sure they would much rather receive assistance from actual people who care about them than some nameless, faceless bureacrats in Washington DC and/or their state capitol.

Woman sues over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

According to this article:

A woman upset that she bought the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing it contained hidden, sexually explicit scenes sued the manufacturer Wednesday on behalf of consumers nationwide.

Florence Cohen, 85, of New York, said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the game's manufacturer, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., engaged in false, misleading and deceptive practices.

While the suit itself may have merit, this woman is an idiot. Why? Here's why:

Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated "M" for mature, for players 17 and older. According to the suit, she directed that it be taken away from her grandson, which was done.

The game was rated for ages 17 and older at the time she bought it for her 14 year-old grandson. So the profanity in the game, as well as all the violence -- gunfights, fistfights, running over people with cars, beating up prostitutes -- that's all okay but a litle simulated sex (and poorly simulated, I've seen the video clips) is enough to take the game away from the kid and file a class-action lawsuit over?

The Grand Theft Auto series of games have been alternately praised and reviled. There is no denying that they contain a lot of "adult" material. But there is also no denying that they are, from a technical and gameplay standpoint, outstanding examples of the computer game art. They present large virtual environments which you can explore however you like and the free-form style of play, in the context of an overarching plot, are a significant change from games which basically funnel the player along a relatively narrow path. Even the mighty Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 don't allow you to explore your environment as freely. But, make no mistake, these games are not for kids. Rockstar and Take Two have never said otherwise.

What it boils down to is that the boy shouldn't have been given the game in the first place. This woman's poor judgement leads me to question her fitness to be in any way involved in his care and upbringing.