Karl Rove:

"Like too many Democrats it strikes me they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough, they fall back of that party's old platform of cutting and running. They may be with you for the first few bullets but they won't be there for the last tough battles," he said.

Let me get this straight -- this guy, who as far as I know never saw a day of combat, is saying this about twodecorated combat veterans? Besides, he's wrong:

* WWI was started by Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic President. WWI was finished in victory by Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic President.
* WWII was started by Franklin Roosevelt, a Democratic President. WWII was finished in victory by Harry Truman, a Democratic President.
* Korea was started by Harry Truman, a Democratic President. WWII was finished by leaving before winning (or "cutting and running in Rove parlance) by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican President.
* Vietnam was started by John Kennedy, a Democratic President. Vietnam was escalated by Lyndon Johnson, a Democratic President. We began withdrawing before winning (or "cutting and running in Rove parlance) under Richard Nixon, a Republican President. withdrawing before winning (or "cutting and running in Rove parlance) under Gerry Ford, a Republican President.
* Grenada -- fricking Grenada? -- was invaded under Ronald Reagan, a Republican President. Grenada -- fricking Grenada? -- was finished in victory under Ronald Reagan, a Republican President.
* Iraq War I was started by George HW Bush, a Republican President. We left before removing Saddam Hussein from power (or "cutting and running in Rove parlance) under George HW Bush, a Republican President.
* Bosnia war was started by Bill Clinton, a Democratic President. Bosnia was won by Bill Clinton, a Democratic President.

Not that accuracy makes a difference. All this guy is doing is playing into the Republican-created and perpetuated stereotype of Democrats being wimps. Hell, even George McGovern was a decorated WWII veteran as a B-24 pilot. Let us all keep in mind the Hitler/Goebbels lesson of the "big lie:" The bigger the untruth, the easier it is to get people to believe it en masse.

Ben Fong-Torres gets the Howard Stern treatment: "Back in San Francisco, I heard from people who'd caught the show. Stern and Quivers, they said, had treated me with respect. Is that what you call it? But it's true. Through all the grilling and joking, they'd maintained an all-in-fun tone. In exchange, I'd had my 10 minutes of (almost) fame."

Ben Fong-Torres gets the Howard Stern treatment: "Back in San Francisco, I heard from people who'd caught the show. Stern and Quivers, they said, had treated me with respect. Is that what you call it? But it's true. Through all the grilling and joking, they'd maintained an all-in-fun tone. In exchange, I'd had my 10 minutes of (almost) fame."

Ben Fong-Torres gets the Howard Stern treatment: "Back in San Francisco, I heard from people who'd caught the show. Stern and Quivers, they said, had treated me with respect. Is that what you call it? But it's true. Through all the grilling and joking, they'd maintained an all-in-fun tone. In exchange, I'd had my 10 minutes of (almost) fame."

The "Jersey Girls" respond to Ann Coulter:

"We have been slandered. Contrary to Ms. Coulter's statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day," the women said.

Extremism, or zealotry, whether on the left or the right is equally bad. Coulter, who has made a name for herself largely on the fierceness of her invective and her looks (would she have gotten on the cover of Time had she NOT been an attractive, leggy blonde?) exemplifies the reprehensible natrue of the right's approach. While The Anchoress condemns Coulter's statement, her phraseology on this topic is telling:

To me she is embodying everything I currently cannot abide in the “conservative movement,” the arrogant presumption of absolute moral certitude (which is ugly, ugly, ugly coming from the left, so honey, it’s not pretty when it’s from the right, either), combined with the sense of over-confidence which is sending so many on the right into a self-destructive Roy Moore/Tom Tancredo plunge off a cliff.

Thus, if it comes from the left, its "ugly, ugly, ugly," but whenit comes from the right, it's mere'l "not pretty." I hope that's just her turn of phrase, but I believe that right wingers see the distinction in just that way.

Shredder Trucks? Shredder Trucks??

Well, before we jump to conclusions, maybe it's all an innocent mistake. After all:

With identity theft on the increase, State Farm wants to keep customer information out of the wrong hands. State Farm spokesman Richard Ludke said the company works to maintain the confidentiality and security of private records.

"It would be of course cost-prohibitive to maintain every document, obviously, and so we've implemented this program to orderly dispose of the records we don't need.

"But we do issue litigation hold orders so that we make sure we retain the records that may be needed for specific litigation."

On the other hand:

at least one shredded document was an engineering report that went missing after Attorney General Jim Hood subpoenaed such State Farm reports for a grand jury investigation. Scruggs said he also had subpoenaed that report and others for his lawsuit against State Farm.

But wait:

The employee was told that State Farm was transferring paper records to computer images, then shredding the original paper.

Well, that's fine, except:

while computer imagining works fine for photographs, the quality at the State Farm office is so poor with printed documents that they are almost impossible to read.

How do we know this? A State Farm employee explains:

The employee first learned while working on a policyholder file that an original engineering report had been destroyed. The copy scanned to images could not be located, either.

"I can tell you I was in a file that was supposed to have an engineer report. No one could find the engineer report and the person I was working with was told it had been shredded because they'd decided to scan it into images.

No problem! Just get another copy from the engineering firm, right? Except:

The employee's co-worker was about to call the engineering firm for another copy, but a claims manager said not to. Instead, an employee authorized to talk to the engineering firm called and requested another copy of the report.

The firm sent over another report, the employee said, adding, "but of course at that point you don't know if it's the one we originally got or not."

I feel like I'm watching a tennis match. These charges are serious, though, and if it's demonstrated to the court's satisfaction that State Farm is destroying evidence, the court ought to be imposing severe sanctions based on spoliation of evidence. Moreover, if State Farm destroyed subpoenaed evidence [i.e., a court order to produce], then it ought to be held in contempt of court.

By the way, if a plaintiff was caught doing what State Farm is alleged to have done here, then you can bet the defendant insurance company would be pushing hard for sanctions, including dismissal of the plaintiff's case.

By the Numbers:

$44.8 Billion: Record profit of insurance companies in 2005

18.7%: Increase in insurance industry profits over 2004

$427 billion: Total insurance industry surplus

So I guess I don't feel too much sympathy for the insurance industry in its efforts to deny liability for hurricane losses in 2005

No, Glenn is not the antichrist. And no, that's not a comb-over, either.

Nice fake smile, though....

God is the chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

Well, I guess I really am on the wrong side.

Glenn says that Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal fisks the Kennedy article. Well, not precisely, as Blumenthal states at the outset of his post:

First, despite its weaknesses, the Kennedy article raises some important and troubling questions about real problems in Ohio in 2004. As Ohio State University Law Professor Dan Tokaji puts it, the article is "useful in exposing how shoddy election administration practices can result in lost votes, and how some recently enacted laws will make things worse rather than better." The summary of problems deserving attention includes long lines in minority precincts, efforts of the Republican Party to selectively challenge (or "cage") new registrants and the many examples of pure incompetence by local election officials. And then there is partisanship of Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, now his party's nominee for governor. Blackwell will need to answer to Ohio voters for, as Salon.com's Farhad Manjoo writes, having "used his powers for partisan gain," issuing "a series of arbitrary and capricious voting and registration rules that could well have disenfranchised many people in the state" (but interests disclosed: I am a Democratic pollster with clients in Ohio)

Second, while I have devoted 68 posts and tens of thousands of words to the exit poll controversy since Election Day 2004, I have never argued that the exit polls can be used to rule out or disprove the possibility that vote fraud may have occurred in Ohio or anywhere else during in 2004.

Blumenthal's overall point: the discrepancy between the exit polls and the eventual announced vote tabulations does not affirmatively demonstrate electoral fraud. As indicated by his disclaimer as quoted above, he doesn't rule it out, either. Blumenthal clearly thinks Kennedy and Rolling Stone are making too much of the exit poll issue, though.

And while maybe I'm dense [maybe?], I don't see how this is an embarassment for RFK and Rolling Stone, any more than the polemics of, say, an Ann Coulter or Mark Levin are for the radical right. Well, OK, maybe it is embarassing, considering those two....

Remember the wildly inaccurate exit polls in the 2004 presidential election? In a documented and sourced piece from Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues persuasively that the exit polls were not inaccurate:

In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered "27," in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.

Such results, according to the archive, provide "virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount." The discrepancies, the experts add, "are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent." According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, "No rigorous statistical explanation" can explain the "completely nonrandom" disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are "completely consistent with election fraud -- specifically vote shifting."

Read the whole article. Considering the likely shenanigans in Florida in 2000 -- whose election mechanism also was controlled by Republicans -- I tend to be convinced. Remember, the reason the Nixon Administration is justifiably castigated is not because their people broke into Democratic headquarters, it was the overall pattern of subverting the electoral process. If it is true that the Republicans threw the election to Bush -- a conclusion that is statistically inescapable, according to this article -- then the subversion of everything this country is about is even more massive and pernicious. I fear for the electorate that fails to cry "foul" and bring the wrongdoers to justice.

Update on MCE 2005 and the mystical [ha!] Adaptec dual TV tuner:

The latest info I have had -- relative to my problems in connecting a set top box [STB] to one input and direct cable through a VCR to the second input is that it simply can't be done. Those who know -- supposedly -- say that I must have the same input source for each input. Thus, I can have two STBs, or two direct cable inputs, but I cannot mix and match the two. Well, they're wrong!

Here's what I did last night. I connected the STB to input 1 and direct cable through a VCR to input 2. I then went through the MCE tuner setup manually. As before, the STB on input 1 set up properly -- MCE saw the picture, the remote set up for my particular STB, etc. The MCE setup then automatically went to the same setup procedure for input 2. It saw the picture, and I just pretended that it set up a remote properly. Setup ended normally, and I was left seeing input 2 [direct cable through VCR].

Using the electronic programming guid [EPG], I started recording what I was seeing on input 2 [direct cable/VCR]. Once the record started, I went to the EPG again, and chose another channel. Voila! The STB changed to that selected channel, and I could see/record from input 1 [STB]. While one or both inputs are recording, I can toggle between the two by going to the guide and selecting those channels. If both inputs are recording and I try to select a third channel, MCE gives me a pop-up asking if I want to terminate the record on one or the other channels. It's a little kluge-y, but at least (1) I can go back and forth between the tuners, (2) I can record from the VCR using the manual record, and (3) if I want to record from input 2 [direct cable/VCR], then all I have to do is manually set the VCR channel at the same time I set the record with the EPG. I can live with this.

Next problem: MCE saves the recordings in a proprietary format called DVR-MS. If I want to edit the recording after the fact -- to remove commercials or to add an alternate audio track -- what's the best, if any, software to convert from DVR-MS format to a recognizable format like MPEG 2? Any ideas out there?

I saw that Glenn was talking about kids' books. I too [can't remember if he got Henry Reed from me or I got Henry Reed from him] have fond memories of my pre-adolescent reading. For geeks like us, those books were incredibly formative. They must have been, because I still vividly recall,albeit through the filter of a kid's perceptions, all those books. I mean, Glenn wouldn't be Glenn without the Mad Scientists Club. Trust me on this.

Personally, I started with the Happy Hollisters, and moved on to the Hardy Boys. In those halcyon days, every book I read was the best book I'd ever read, which was, I guess, literally true. Believe, me, I was disappointed years later when I actually ran across books I didn't like. The bloom was off the rose....

One of my dreams has always been to pass on the books I read as a kid to my children, such that those books would have the effect on my kids that they had on me. Not be be, apparently. My nine year old, who is an avid reader, has eschewed both my Hollisters and Hardy Boys books, sadly enough. His current favorites seem to be the Goosebumps books. A couple of years ago, he couldn't get enough of Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series. He'll be happy to know the Captain will be appearing in a new story soon.

Maybe my six year old will like my old books ....

For all those who, like me, are relatively clueless on Windows MCE 2005 issues, we have -- you guessed it -- an MCE blog!

Thanks to all for checking out my reviews of Dell's customer service and my odd-yssey involving Adaptec. I got a couple of emails about trying to get the AVC-3610 TV tuner to work properly, and one canny emailer posited that the problem was likely through Windows Media Center edition, and not necessarily with Adaptec. Spurred by this cogent comment, I went into Microsoft's MCE site, and posted the following question into the applicable newsgroup:

I've got MCE 2005 with an Adaptec AVC-3610 dual tuner. I set it up originally with input 1 coming from set top box RCA out to AVC-3610 RCA in. The device saw the signal and set up for the remote. Then I set up Input 2 with direct cable, split at the wall, coming through a VCR, into Input 2 of the AVC-3610. MCE went through the setup for both inputs and saw the signal on both inputs. Even though I had no STB on Input 2, I allowed MCE setup to use the EPG that was also being used for input 1 [STB]. After all, the reference the same channels.

When I completed MCE setup, however, I could see and control only Input 2 -- the second input set up. It is as if the first set up -- through the STB -- doesn't exist. I have been able to find no way to toggle between input 1 and input 2. How can I record from both signal feeds if I can't toggle between the two to set the record commands for one, the other or both?

What am I missing? Right now, I;m running only one tuner setup, through the STB. I want to be able to record VHS tapes up to digital, and currently can't, without recabling and re-setting up.

Then, after a response which was nice but not too helpful, I got more specific:

OK, let's say I use 2 STBs on each input. How then do I toggle between the two feeds? Example: I start recording West Wing at 7:00 through input 1,
but I want to watch/record MSNBC on live TV through input 2. How do I go back and forth to set the timer for each input source and to watch one or the other?

Here is, I think [finally],the answer I have been looking for:

Since they're both the same, MCE treats each source as identical and
interchangeable, and it manages it for you.

In other words, if you're recording West Wing through the schedule, and you turn on MCE and go to watch Live TV and switch to MSNBC, it does so without question or hesitation. This is as opposed to the case where you only have one tuner. In that case, it will give an error saying that you will have to interrupt the recording if you want to watch Live TV.

Want to record two programs simultaneously? Just tell it to do it, and it manages it for you. If you try to record three, it will then give an error and ask you to pick which 2 of the 3 you want to record.

Does that help?

So here's the solution. First, I have to use the same signal sources on each input, although I don't know how the device senses the different signals. Second, apparently, I don't have to do anything to toggle between the two input sources -- MCE does it for me seamlessly.

Cool, if it actually works. Here's my next question, though. One of the reasons I sprang for the new computer and TV tuner was to be able to move my Tennessee football games [I've got most of the televised games since 1989] up to digital, and then move them to DVD. If I have to use the same input sources on each input, how do I get a VCR into the chain. Can I daisy chain the VCRin between the set top box and the AVC-3610? Any bright ideas out there?

In my previous post, I described the Kafka-esque experiences in dealing with Dell on the supposedly bundled-in TV tuner with my Dell XPS-M140 computer. Here is a review of the computer. Well, the pain continues, focused now on the TV tuner, an Adaptec AVC-3610. Here is how Adaptec describes the product:

Dual TV tuners and dual hardware MPEG-2 encoders let you watch one show while recording another, record two shows at the same time, or even record two shows and watch another pre-recorded video. Enjoy DVD-quality video on your desktop PC or notebook.

Based on these kinds of statements, I figured that I could hook up my cable converter box to one input, and direct cable through a VCR to the second input. Thus, I could record off the cable box, off direct cable through the VCR, off the VCR [converting VHS programs to digital], and potentially record two signals at the same time.

Last Saturday, I set up the device, which appears above. You can see that it has RCA inputs on either side of the device, with S-Video capability and RF/Coaxial capability as well. So here's what I did: From the wall, I split the cable with a splitter. One side goes to the converter box. From converter box RCA outs to Adaptec RCA 1 ins. From the other side of the splitter, Co-ax to VCR Co-ax in. Then, VCR RCA outs to Adaptec RCA 2 ins. Voila. I thought.

I used the Getting Started Guide, which is the only documentation Adaptec has for this device. Nothing in its knowledge base, no troubleshooting. Just this guide.

Windows MCE had no problem installing the Adaptec device drivers. To use the device, however, you must go through the MCE set-up. OK, so I did that.

With the Adaptec dual tuner device, MCE sets up the first input, and then does the same setup procedure for the second input. As part of the setup, MCE tries to "see" the signal being sent through the device. Then MCE sets up the included remote control to operate the converter box.

The setup for input 1 [with the converter box] was fine. MCE "saw" the signal, and the remote control setup was seamless and easy.

The setup for input 2 [cable to VCR to Adaptec] was conditionally fine. MCE "saw" the signal, but could not set up the remote control to work with the Sony VCR. I expect that's because it's a VCR, and not a cable converter box. But that's OK. If I have to manually change the VCR channel to record from that input, fine. In any event, I wanted the VCR in the loop more for VHS conversion to digital than for timer recording of cable programming.

So, once it was all set up, I sat down with the remote control and realized there was a problem. A big problem. There was no control on the remote to toggle between input 1 and input 2. What I was seeing on the computer/TV screen was input 2 [VCR], i.e., the last input installed through MCE setup. There was no way to see, or to record, input 1 [cable converter box].

Could the problem lie with the fact that I was attaching two different input sources: cable converter box vs. direct cable/VCR? I couldn't see how, because there is no control to switch back and forth, even if both inputs were from a converter box.

I had to wait till Monday to call Adaptec. I had to be missing something. I talked to Adaptec tech support on Monday. They set up a service ticket [or whatever], and took a few hours to look at the problem. The guy I talked to did not sound too knowledgeable, but I had to hope that the manufacturer of the device knew more about it than I did.

Well, maybe not. The guy probably knew less about the device than I did. At least I had played around with it, and he obviously had not. His conclusion was that I could not "mix and match" input sources. OK, fine, but how do I switch between sources? I have to be able to do this, because if Adaptec's above-quoted sales come-on is accurate, then I have to be able to view and set up recordings on input 1 and input 2. And, if I am recording on input 2, how do I watch input 1? Or vice-versa. There has to be an answer to this. The Adaptec guy had no answer, and knew of no one at Adaptec who knew the answer. He said he would keep working the problem, and get back to me. That was Monday, May 22. I haven't heard from Adaptec or that guy since.

Now, this makes no sense to me. How can it be that no one knows the answer, because there has to be an answer. I'm currently operating off input 1 alone, and it works fine. But the dual tuner capability is completely unused.

I'm hoping someone out there in the Blogosphere has the [hopefully ridiculously easy] solution to this problem.

The Trials and Tribulations of Buying From Dell [grrr], by Instalawyer:

OK, so I had some extra cash, and/or needed a deduction, and my none too reliable Sony Vaio finally bit the dust with a motherboard glitch that crashed the computer anytime I physically moved it. After weeks of dithering as to what type replacement laptop to get, I finally decided at the end of March to go with the Dell XPS-M140, a relatively light and compact notebook that I could load up with features. Interestingly -- and of some concern to me -- Dell's web site no longer seems to contain a link to the XPS-M140. Have they taken it off the market already?

Anyway, I elected to get the full 1 GB of RAM, the fastest processor available for the unit, Bluetooth, even though I currently have no Bluetooth devices [you never know in the future], the longer life [9 cell?] battery, and the three year on-site service deal. Finally, I got the Windows Media Center Edition 2005 [MCE] operating system and the bundled "TV tuner" [make and model unspecified by Dell], with the goal of using the new computer as a quasi-do-it-yourself personal video recorder and video capture device.

In this latter respect, I would be able to record items off the cable TV [for work purposes, of course -- news stories and such related to cases], as well as take items on VHS video and convert them to digital editable form. You see, with my TIVO, I can do this conversion, but TIVO's digital file format is not susceptible of editing. Why would I need to edit? Well, to remove commercials, to redact deposition testimony that I don't need, that sort of thing.

After a couple of weeks, I finally received the computer. The computer itself seemed fine: appropriately speedy and compact, but with a wide-format screen big enough that I didn't have to squint to see, and a well-sized keyboard for typing.

However, no TV tuner was included. I called Dell, and the heavily accented overseas customer service person [Indian?] told me that the TV tuner was not included with what I ordered. Now, this makes no sense, because there's really no reason for me to get MCE unless I have PVR capability, for which I would need that TV tuner. I made some noise about this , and the Dell person generously agreed to ship me a TV tuner for free. OK, great, I thought to myself. Problem solved.

After another week or so, I got the tuner. It was an ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 model. I took it home and thereupon spent about four hours trying to install it. For some reason, the install program off the CD-ROM kept failing at the outset. I did kluge an install once, but then the device wouldn't see the cable TV signal. I was stymied, but because it was Friday night, I couldn't get any customer support from ATI until Monday, during business hours.

The following Monday, I got ATI on the phone [their support rep was in California], and while on hold, I found semi-hidden documentation on the ATI web site that this particular device only worked with Windows XP. In other words, Dell's idiots had sent me a TV tuner device for my MCE computer that was incompatible with my MCE computer!

So I called Dell again. This call was the second or third to Dell, not counting their "inadvertent" hang-ups. The new overseas Dell person i spoke with needed some convincing that the ATI device was incompatible with an MCE computer, but finally agreed to take the return and then ship me a new device. Dell's accessories page showed a few devices that allegedly worked with MCE 2005. The top contenders in my my mind were the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 Personal Video Recorder and the Adaptec AVC-3610.

I suggested to the rep that Dell send me the Adaptec device, because it was a dual tuner device, so [at least] theoretically, I could attach one signal input from my cable converter box, and the other from direct cable/VCR. That way, without any recabling, I could record signal off cable, as well as using the device for VHS conversion to editable digital format. Also, if I wanted, the dual tuner capability would allow me to record two different signals simultaneously. That's pretty cool. To my surprise, the Dell rep said they would send the Adaptec device. Standard delay time: three to five days to ship. Great, I said, we're finally straightened out, I said. Little did I know....

Two weeks later, I still didn't have my TV tuner. I called Dell again, and the overseas rep [apparently, Dell uses no one in the U.S. for customer support] stunned me by asserting that the Adaptec AVC-3610 is not available from Dell!. While this person was saying this, I was punching up that very item on Dell's web site. While looking at Dell's page for the AVC-3610, I told this person, in [ahem] exasperated tones that he was flatly wrong, and that it was available from Dell. The person put me on hold for a few minutes. When he/she came back on the line, lo and behold, the AVC-3610 was available. He/she agreed to send the device, using the exact same language as had been used two weeks previously. I could have bitched more, but it would have served no purpose. I was just going to have to wait and see whether Dell actually made good on its [second] promise to ship me this item.

Finally, finally, I received the Adaptec device. Total time elapsed from when I received the computer to when I received the TV tuner: six weeks. Am I happy with Dell? Not a bit. The computer works fine. The large battery I got is great -- I used the computer at depositions this past Friday. I turned the computer on at 9:00, and when we finished at 2:30, I still had an hour and a half of battery time left. That's great. Dell's customer service leaves a lot to be desired, however. I estimate that between the phone calls, the time spent on trying to install the ATI device and the general tsouris of it all, I spent about five hours dealing with what should have come with the computer originally. I bill my time at $225 per hour. In the words of Paul Newman in Absence of Malice: "Who do I see about that?"

Instapundit and Power Line are clearly better proofreaders than CBS viv-a-vis miscategorizing Rep. Jefferson as a Republican. CBS has now corrected its online news story to identify him as a Democrat.

Scary, and not surprising:

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

One commenter to the piece asserts that the Nazis didn't start such practices, Muslims did: "Anyone who knew the rules applied to dhimmi would not be in he slightest shocked by news of its implementation. Any more than the marriage age being lowered to 9 for girls by the Ayatollah. Most think it was the Nazi's idea, it wasn't, it was Mohammed's."

For years, people looked at the Nazi atrocities and said, "it could never happen again. It will never happen here." I suspect a lot fewer people are saying that these days.

ATLA reports that, in a new book entitled "The Medical Malpractice Myth,"Tom Baker, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and director of the Insurance Center at the University of Connecticut, uses empirical evidence to dismantle the myths that permeate the national debate over medical malpractice and liability insurance costs. A couple of excerpts:

. . . except for auto accidents and the occasional “mass tort” situation like asbestos, Agent Orange, or breast implants, Americans actually do not bring tort claims all that often, especially compared to the number of accidents and injuries there are. We now have two decades of solid research documenting this fact. What is more, the rate of auto lawsuits—the most frequent kind of tort lawsuit—is going down. And, despite the media focus on mass torts, products liability, and medical malpractice, those kinds of cases are far less important in dollar terms than either auto accidents or workers’ compensation.

And:

Where Americans do excel in litigation is in the area of business lawsuits. If you read the business section of the newspaper, you know that B2B—business-to-business—sales are hot. So is B2B litigation. Some of the business executives who complain about the litigation explosion must be thinking about their own behavior. In one indication, the proportion of lawyers who bring personal-injury lawsuits has remained steady since 1975, while the share of lawyers involved in business litigation has more than tripled.

Read the whole excerpt I posted to, but the conclusion this author reaches is that "Built on a foundation of urban legend mixed with the occasional true story, supported by selective references to academic studies, and repeated so often that even the mythmakers forget the exaggeration, half truth, and outright misinformation employed in the service of their greater good, the medical malpractice myth has filled doctors, patients, legislators, and voters with the kind of fear that short circuits critical thinking."

Here's a summary of Baker's findings. Interestingly, Baker cautions Big Insurance to be careful what it wishes for. If injured victims of negligence are denied access to the courts, then businesses, doctors, and individuals have no need for insurance. They could win the battle for "tort reform," and lose the war by putting themselves out of business.