July 31, 2003
Damning With Faint Praise
You know things can't be going too well when your own wife goes to bat for you, and the best she can do is label you an
"average guy."
Ozone Whole?
Maybe
they sky isn't falling after all.
Kobe's Non-Accuser
It remains to be seen whether or not Kobe Bryant will be found guilty of rape. One thing is clear, however: he's absolutely, positively not guilty of raping Katie Lovell, the
18- year-old girl whom many web site owners have falsely accused of accusing him. She is also one of the reasons I'm not sure I agree with the mass media's "ethical" rule against divulging the identies of rape accusers. In this case, the media's ham-handed attempt at protecting the privacy of the real accuser has created a nightmare for a young woman who had nothing to do with the incident.
Continue reading "Kobe's Non-Accuser"
Needless to say, Ms. Lovell is not amused by these careless attempts at wannabe journalism, and has retained an attorney to look into possible legal action against these idiots. The attorney, Sienna LaRene, believes they may have a case. I agree. Based on what little I've read, it seems like Lovell may be able to sue for libel, invasion of privacy (false light), and maybe certain other well-established torts. I would not rely on a broad theory like this one, however:
In this country, America, where there's a wrong, there's a remedy. If the remedy doesn't exist in law now, it will be created because in this country, we find remedies for wrong.
Apparently, Ms. LaRene has never heard of that obscure legal doctrine this blog is named after.
Link via So Cal Lawyer.
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Sauce for the Goose
Daniel Weintraub reports that Joe Davis has pledged,
sort of, to waive his right to force taxpayers (not to be confused with Taxpayers™) to pay for his campaign if he survives the recall. Weintraub writes:
He just announced that he won't take the money, and in a clever twist, has challenged his "millionaire" opponents to promise to help pay for the recall if they lose. Of course they won't, but it's a good line that I am sure you will hear again.
Frankly, I'm not sure it is such a good line, for Davis anyway. If I were Congressman Issa, I'd take him up on the challenge, provided that he also agreed to help pay for the recall if
he loses.
I Know Our Credit's Good, 'Cuz God California Don't Make Issue No Junk
I recently
blogged that California's new Standard & Poor's rating, BBB, is one level above junk bond status. Turns out I was mistaken. According to
this article that ran in today's
Orange County Register, bonds rated BBB- are also considered investment grade, albeit barely so. Time for another Pollyanna Post™.
Continue reading "I Know Our Credit's Good, 'Cuz God California Don't Make Issue No Junk"
Wow, that's great news! Our state's bonds are even more reliable than some privately issued bonds that are considered investment grade. The news at the national level is even more exciting than that: all 49 of our sister states have better ratings than ours. Much better, I might add. Way to go, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming! You guys kick some serious ass.
Best of all, those nice folks over at S&P; are confident that California's budgetary issues won't be changing too much in the near future, so it seems a safe bet we'll remain two whole levels above junk status for some time to come. Who knows? Maybe someday we'll even turn things around and catch up to those other 49 states that are leading us by example. Just think of all that interest we'll save when that happens. Enough to hold at least one, maybe two recall elections every year.. Woo-hoo!
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I'll Be Damned
Looks like it really was
all about oil after all.
July 30, 2003
Obscure Recall Candidates
The
San Jose Mercury-News reports that
123 Californians have taken out papers to run for governor in the recall election. I hope that at least one of them - or, preferably, 118 - are ordinary Joes whose name happen to be "Joe Davis."
On the one hand, this insanely long list is going to make the recall ballot look extremely stupid. On the other, given the current budge crunch, maybe that's a small price to pay. At $3,500 a pop, 123 candidates means $430,500 of much-needed revenue. If the trend continues, maybe this recall election will end up paying for itself. That will surely come as good news to the Taxpayers™, or whatever they are calling themselves this week.
Hat Non-Tip: Some guy who won't admit he's a blogger, and who therefore won't be identified here.
Lemons to Lemonade Dept.
Neal Boortz has
an interesting idea: now that the American Psychological Association has published
that idiotic Berkserkeley study on the mental illness known as conservatism, maybe we can start claiming a disability under the ADA?
All-Time Google-Low?
nude pictures of uday hussein
Maybe this person remembered a weird phrase from my
"Google Bait" entry and was actually looking for that post. Or
maybe not.
July 29, 2003
Speaking of Weird Lawsuits
FoxNews reports that certain liquor establishments are
suing underaged drinkers to recoup the fines they had to pay for selling alcohol to minors. Apparently, these suits concentrate on individuals who were "carded" but who produced a fake ID.
Continue reading "Speaking of Weird Lawsuits"
Giving a new meaning to the name "Stella Award" is Joanne Stella, a lawyer retained by the University of New Hampshire's student government to defend students sued by such establishments. In a manner reminiscent of the other Stella, this one takes the position that fault lies with the business who believed the fake IDs, not with the students who defrauded these institutions by producing them.
But Stella's a lawyer, and representing her clients' interest is her job. Thus, I would not nominate her for the Stella Award simply for defending them. That honor goes instead to "Kate," who declined to give a last name. Her take:
I feel like I made my mistake and I paid for it. I did my hours of service, I learned my lesson. And just because they were negligent, I don't think I should have to pay.
[Emphasis added.]
To recap: Kate defrauded an institution by producing a false ID, which she knew to be false but which the establishment believed to be real. Kate thinks it was the establishment's fault for believing Kate's lie, not Kate's fault for telling that lie in the first place. Yup, she's learned her lesson, all right.
UPDATE: Spoons, Ith, the Eleven Day Empire, and the Accidental Jedi have more.
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Another Recall Suit
U.S. District Judge Barry Moskowitz has just
struck down Section 11382 of the California Election Code, which requires voters to vote "yes" or "no" on the recall in order to have their votes counted as to the replacement candidate (hat tip:
Daniel Weintraub). This sounds like a Really Important Rule for Elections (RIRE). Don't you sleep better at night knowing that your Right To Vote is so important that you can't even deprive yourself of it by choosing
not to vote? I know that I do.
Continue reading "Another Recall Suit"
Judge Moskowitz had this to say of his ruling:
What is at stake is the right of a voter to decide who shall succeed the governor, if recalled. Every voter, whether they voted for or against that recall, has a paramount interest in choosing the person who will govern them," said U.S. District Judge Barry Moskowitz.
I don't disagree with the holding on the merits, but this lofty language about voters' "paramount interests" seems a bit over the top. Judge Xrlq would probably have dismissed the case entirely for lack of standing. Barring that, however, here's what Judge Xrlq would have written, instead:
This case, which was brought by two bored law professors from San Diego, is uncommonly silly. Then again, as two other law professors have aptly pointed out, the U.S. Supreme Court's equally silly decision in Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation Inc., 525 U.S. 182 (1999) doesn't give me much wiggle room. So for now, I'm going to throw these two bored law professor-plaintiffs a bone, and hope to God the Supreme Court overturns the silly little ruling that compels today's silly little ruling.
Justene Adamec thinks today's ruling won't really matter. Daniel Weintraub agrees:
If someone is out there who is dying to skip the recall question but vote on the replacement, please call me. I want to know more about who that would be and why they would want to do it.
I agree with Weintraub's argument, as far as it goes. I would not be surprised at all, however, if a significant number of voters did in fact end up skipping Question 1 while voting on Question 2, for reasons having nothing to do with the "paramount interests" of anybody except campaign organizers.
Let's face it. Right now most of the Crats Unit is still behind Davis, but that could change. If, late in the campaign, poll numbers reach the point where Davis's recall is a fait accompli I would not put it past campaign organizers of the leading Democrat to bus in large groups of senile, homeless, or generally stupid "voters" to help elect Dianne Feinstein, Audie Bock, Richard Riordan, or whoever the Democrat front-runner may be. These "voters" are not the sharpest knives in the drawer; in fact, they are California's answer to the Floridian geniuses who, less than three years ago, got their "Gore" votes invalidated by voting for Buchanan instead, gently poking a barely visible dimple in the chad, or voting for a separate President on each page. Is it far fetched to suggest that these same rocket scientists may screw up their votes on Question 1, while voting for exactly who they had been told to vote for on Question 2?
Of course, you don't have to guess which side will be systematically helped by the present court decision to allow voters to select a replacement candidate without voting on the recall. This lawsuit wasn't brought by the McClintock For Governor campaign, and for a reason.
I didn't think I'd find anyone who actually wanted to skip Question 1 but vote on Question 2, but I finally did.
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How to Spot a Hoax, Pt. 1
While on the topic of urban legends in general, and in particular those that make it into the "responsible" press, I note that Bryon Scott recently
linked to an
op-ed piece by Zay N. Smith of the
Chicago Sun-Times on the topic of silly product warnings spawned by crazy lawsuits. The piece makes some valid points, but seriously misstates the facts on Stella Liebeck, the plaintiff in the infamous McDonalds coffee case. The rest of the cases cited by Mr. Smith have no names, dates, case names, etc., and basically haev "hoax" written all over them. Here's hoping Snopes will look into some of them - as if these brave souls don't have enough crap to debunk already.
Remember, folks, just because you read it in the mainstream press does not mean it is true! Maybe newspapers need to come with warnings, too, such as caveat lector, or let the reader beware.
UPDATE: Snopes has an impressive list of real and phony "Stella Award" type cases. I just alerted them to the Sun-Times article to see if they know anything about the cases discussed in it. Stay tuned!
Taxpayers™ for Higher Taxes
The
Oakland Tribune notes that if the recall is not successful, taxpayers may be stuck with the bill for Joe Davis's campaign. Seeking a repsonse from the Davis camp, the paper noted that:
Continue reading "Taxpayers™ for Higher Taxes"
Davis representatives said they did not know whether Davis would seek the money. "It's not something he's concerning himself (with)," said anti-recall spokesman Roger Salazar.
On Sunday, I
pointed out that some statements are so dumb and so self-fisking that the only way for a blogger to fisk them is to point out the fact that they were made. This last statement is a prime example.
For better or for worse, the cost of the recall election itself is now a sunk cost, which will be borne by taxpayers whether you vote YES or NO on October 7, or even if you don't show up at all. The cost of having taxpayers pay for Gray Davis's campaign, however, is not, and until/unless Joe Davis accepts responsibility for his predicament and pledges not to seek reimbursement from the state, remember that your NO vote on the recall is really a YES vote for a taxpayer-funded election campaign. This ought to give all taxpayers (if not all Taxpayers™) pause.
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McClintock for Governor
Dan Weintraub reports that Bill
Mulligan Simon is planning to run. Thanks, Bill, but no thanks. If you had run even a mediocre campaign in 2002, there would be no recall election now, no Taxpayers™ to oppose it, and hack journalists from
Texas to
New York would have to find something else to write about. So for now, I'm siding with the
Orange County Register and "just saying no" to Gov. Mulligan. Um, I mean, Simon.
As for Ah-nold, if he still can't make up his mind whether or not to run, I say hasta la vista, baby. He's basically a RINO anyway, so no big loss. It would be nice if he would give a formal "I'm not running" speech somewhere in Vista, CA, with a parting line like "Hasta La Bye-Bye, Vista." And don't even get me started on that "Republican" who helped get Joe Davis elected in 1998, only to lose to the guy who lost to Davis in 2002.
In other news, Justene says she's not running. Too bad. That makes my support for McClintock a relatively easy choice.
Continue reading "McClintock for Governor"
I Know It's True, 'Cuz I Saw It On TV
As you know, the recent "Hunting for Bambi"
hoax was initially covered by several mass media sources (
e.g., KLAS-TV, MSNBC,
FoxNews) as though the story were legit.
Continue reading "I Know It's True, 'Cuz I Saw It On TV"
I began questioning its legitimacy early on, as too many parts of the story rang stupid, particularly the part about offering prostitution services in one of the few Nevada counties in which prostitution is illegal. Kelley raised this possibility early on, as well, but as far as I know, everyone else (except Snopes, of course) took the story at face value.
This got me to thinking: how many other urban legends persist because because some credulous news reporter was so eager to "get the scoop" that he took a bad story and ran with it? One other past example comes to mind, namely the lie that domestic violence spikes on Superbowl Sunday, a lie which feminists and other left-wing oddballs repeat to this day.
Then again, the media ran the Superbowl violence hoax in 1993, and the newer Hunting for Bambi Hoax didn't happen until 2003. "Cold fusion" came about 5 years before that, with "rhino ammo" coming about five years later, give or take a year. My working hypothesis is that the mass media goes through five-year cycle of careful fact-checking for the first two years, not-so-careful fact-checking for the next two, then a fifth year of "shoot from the hip" reporting before they get caught with their pants down, and the cycle repeats. What say you?
UPDATE: Then again, it's hard to fault the media for swallowing a hoax when real (?) stories like this one abound. The weirdest thing about the short-lived "terrorism futures market" was that Paul Wolfowitz claims to have never even heard of it until he read about it in the paper.
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Comcast Hella-Sucks
Geoffrey Allen
recently opined that Comcast, his ISP, sucks. As I have never used Comcast's Internet service, I will have to take Geoffrey's word on the quality of their service. I will note, however, that there are at least two other things about Comcast that truly suck, to wit:
- While other ISPs are contesting the RIAA's harassing subpoenas on various grounds, Comcast is rolling over and selling out its customers' names without a fight.
- Comcast pays employees a $1.50 bounty to spy on their neighbors and report any homes with satellite dishes that aren't already in Comcast's spam-list.
Anything else I missed?
July 28, 2003
Life Imitates Scrappleface?
First, Scott Ott predicted that Bill Clinton would
inject himself into the recall election. Now,
Matt Drudge is basically predicting the same thing. Say it ain't so, Joe.
As far as I'm concerned, this is not happening. Until I hear it from the insider, it's just an unfounded rumor, nothing more. Dammit.
Great Britain, Gun Control Utopia
Today's
Evening Standard reports that there
164 muggings per day in London. It sure is a good thing English people don't get to carry guns, as Americans do. Imagine the huge occupational hazard an armed citizenry would pose to these 164 fine young men who are just trying to make a living the only way they know how.
At the same time, the news of 164 muggings per day can't be all good, even by British standards. I mean, with that many people being mugged at random, the law of averages all but guarantees that sooner or later, someone is going to mug a burglar.
Don't Get Mad, Get Glad
Jonah Goldberg gives
those nutty Berserkeley "researchers" the level of consideration
they deserve.
People Unclear on the Concept
Lessee. Democrats have controlled both houses of the Legislature since 1996, all three branches of the California government since 1999, and every single statewide office since this January. Meanwhile, our already abysmal bond rating has been lowered to near-junk bond status, resulted in additional interest in excess of the cost of holding a recall election
every year, but the Senate's top Democrat, John Burton, doesn't care because "the money" (mine, for example), will be there to pay it. So of course letter writer Teri Markson blames the obvious culprits,
the Republicans.
Adamec for Governor
Justene's husband
wants her to run but can't move with her to Sacramento. Justene doesn't want to live 400 miles from her family, so she's opting not to run.
Xrlq says Justene should re-consider her candidacy. I mean, hey, if the Governor of Illinois can live in Chicago, then why can't the governor of California live in L.A.? Based on this new (to me) information, I will withhold my endorsement for Tom McClintock until Justene has had time to consider whether or not she would like to become the nation's second literal absentee governor. We already have an "absentee governor," figuratively speaking.
Naming Names (Or Not)
For longer than I can remember, Tom
"Have I Stopped Beating My Wife?" Leykis has been conducting a one-man campaign to end the media policy of keeping (alleged) rape victims secret. Leykis's own problems with women notwithstanding, I believe there are some decent arguments to be made against the policy, particularly given the fact that rape
suspects' identities are not kept private. Unfortunately, Leykis made
this argument instead:
We're told that rape is violence, not sex, and if that's true there's no reason she should feel shame or embarrassment."
It's a perfect argument, aside from two minor flaws: a bad premise and bad logic.
Continue reading "Naming Names (Or Not)"
The premise is bad because it's based on a popular meme, not an empirically proven fact. Leykis himself probably knows this, which explains why he qualified his statement with "we're told that..." rather than asserting it outright. In other words, Leykis knew his logic was based on a faulty premise, but proceeded with the argument anyway. Blow me up, Tom.
The logic is equally bad because even if we accept the "Rape Is Not Sex" premise, that says nothing about the psyche of the victim. The whole point behind the "rape is not sex" theory is that some self-appointed "experts" refuse to admit, even to themselves, that there are men lut there who are vile enough to get sexual pleasure out of a violent act against women. It says nothing about how rape victims feel about it. Thus, as applied to Kobe vs. his accuser, the question of whether ornot Kobe enjoyed the incident has no bearing whatsoever on whether or she will be ashamed of the event. Maybe she will, for having put herself in a position where she was likely to become a victim. Or maybe she won't, but may nonetheless prefer to keep the matter private for other reasons.
Take, for example, the violent offense Leykis himself appears to have commited against his then-wife Susan in 1993, which no one would construe as sexual. According to The Smoking Gun:
Susan told cops that he struck her in the head with a drinking glass during an argument in their home. Leykis then allegedly "pushed the victim's head into a brick fireplace" and "threatened to kill her."
Nothing remotely sexual about any of that, so does this mean Susan Leykis is not ashamed of the incident? I don't know! Maybe she's extremely ashamed at her own judgment for putting herself in that position by marrying a scumbag like Tom Leykis. Or maybe not. But either way, the fact that Tom probably got no sexual pleasure out of the incident has zero, zip, nada to do with the question of whether or not Susan should be, or will be, ashamed of herself for having been in the same room with this idiot.
None of this answers the more fundamental question of whether an alleged crime victim's desire for privacy should trump the public's "right to know." A policy of making crime victims' names public (as they typically are in crimes other than rape or sexual assault) would almost certainly deter some bona fide victims from coming forward. On the other hand, it would also deter some false victims from doing so, knowing that they cannot cloak themselves in anonymity while "sniping" at the alleged criminal, who is himself the victim of a smear campaign.
Leykis recommends that if rape victims' names will be held private, the perpetrators' names should be, too. This would tend to prevent the problem of "moral sniping" as far as it goes. This would not work for suspects who are at large, but may provide some privacy for those who are apprehended quickly or who turn themselves in. And in a case as high-profile as this one, efforts to keep either person's identity secret seem doomed to fail, or worse. Case in point: at least one innocent 19-year old girl from Eagle, CO, who has no connection with Kobe Bryant whatsoever, has been falsely named by a number of web site owners who, as her attorneys put it, "put two and two together - these intersections of similarities - and came up with five." This would not have happened if the identity of the real accuser had been made public.
The bottom line is that I really don't know what I think about the issue, save this: an accused has a right to confront his accuser in any court where his accuser attacks him. In the case of a criminal trial, it means that the victim's identity must be revealed at trial, though it need not be (and, perhaps, should not be) revealed to the media prior to that. But where the battle is fought in the court of public opinion, well, that's a different matter. That was clearly the case with Jennifer Reisch, who hid behind a veil of anonymity to use a shaky, three year old allegation of sexual assault against Boalt Hall's then-dean John Dwyer to ruin his career and force a number of "structural" changes in the UC system. The charges themselves were never pursued in court. Thus, when Erin O'Connor and Stefan Sharkansky "outed" Reisch, I did not object; in fact, I joined in. All three of us took some heat for it, but I stand by our actions (theirs, mostly) in that case, and I'll bet they do, too.
This time around, I'm not so sure. I am not yet convinced that Kobe Bryant's accuser is attemping to do anything analogous to what Jennifer Reisch and her attorney, Laura Stevens, did to my alma mater. For that reason, even though I happen to have stumbled across the name of Kobe's accuser I choose not to divulge it at this time. I will say, though, that this "ethical" policy is not without a real cost, both to Kobe, if he's innocent, and to the girl falsely identified as his accuser. The answer is not an easy one, and no amount of overblown rhetoric about "the public's right to know" or more-ethical-than-thou name calling will make it so.
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No Gov. T3
Daniel Weintraub reports that Arnold will be sitting out the race for governor in the recall election.
UPDATE: Or maybe not.
Why I Spell My Name "Xrlq"
Any questions?
Prop 54
Prestopundit reminds us of
the other issue we need to concern ourselves with on October 7, and the one that may matter more in the long run.
UPDATE: Or maybe not.
July 27, 2003
Fisking 101
Justene recommends that bloggers new to fisking cut their teeth on
this article by Maureen Dowd. I'm not sure I agree. A lot of the stuff Dowd puts out nearly fisks itself. This one is bad - almost all Dowd articles are - but it's not completely rotten. I rather like this (undowdified) quote, for example:
But the effort could not have succeeded, even in a state festooned with do-it-yourself democracy, if someone besides Sharon Davis liked Gray. Even before he mismanaged the energy crisis and the budget mudslide, he irritated his fraternity brothers at Stanford by calling the police to report them for car theft when they borrowed his red Chevy to go surfing.
Anyway, while I'm not sure the current Dowd article is the best one for a newby to cut his teeth on, it certainly is doable. For anyone thinking of taking up the fine art of fisking, I have a few ideas you may want to consider. Depending on what comments I get, if any, I may update the list from time to time.
Continue reading "Fisking 101"
Xrlq's Rules of Fisking
- Remember why we call it FISKing. Almost every op-ed piece has a logical flaw here and there. That doesn't make fisking fodder. So before you even start tearing the article apart, ask yourself this: is this article bad enough to warrant a comparison to Robert Fisk? If not, argue but don't fisk.
- Never force a fisk. If you start fisking an article and it turns out to be harder than you thought, this does not necessarily mean you aren't a good fisker. Usually, all it means is that you're trying to fisk the unfiskable. It's an easy trap to fall into, especially if an article demonstrates a poor writing style, contains numerous spelling and/or grammar errors, or states opinions which just plain offend you. All of these can make an article almost scream out "fisk me!" even though the logic of the article may not really be bad enough to warrant a fisking. So be careful to avoid this trap for the unwary.
- Be extra careful when fisking an article with which you disagree ideologically. If you are like most people, it is easy to mistake an intelligent article with which you disagree vehemently for a stupid one. If you can refute each point line-by-line without relying on statements the other side is unlikely to accept, that's a good sign. If you can't, then maybe this is someone you should be arguing with, rather than fisking him.
- Notwithstanding Rule #2, don't run from a fisk just because it is hard. Instead, ask yourself why this article is hard to fisk. If it's hard to prove that his points are wrong, then that is a red flag - maybe he isn't wrong after all, or at least, maybe it isn't as self-evident as you thought that you are wrong and he is right. On the other hand, a fisk can be difficult for other reasons, which should not get in the way of a good fisking. For example, the topic of the article may relatively arcane, so your responses may require a great deal of explanation. Or the article could make some points that seem reasonable enough on the surface, but can be proven to be wrong. This can make for a difficult fisk, but a worthy fisk nonetheless, if you're up to the challenge.
Also, once in a while, a journalist will write a piece that is so asstastically stupid that every statement is wrong on multiple levels, and as a fisker, you just don't know where to begin. In that case, my advice is to hit as many points as you can, but don't worry about catching all of them. If you don't, other bloggers will, and you will have started a fisk-for-all, which is also quite pleasant.
- Be creative in your responses. The "normal" format is to refute each bad argument verbally, but sometimes, other approaches may be more effective. One of the best fiskings I've ever seen (hat tip: Instapundit) consisted of no words at all, just strategically placed photographs. And, every now and then, journalists will say something so dumb that there's nothing left to do but point out the fact that they said it, and maybe regurgitate that statement later on in the article. Bottom line: there is no one "right" way to fisk.
- Never fisk an article because of who wrote it. Remember, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and no one - not even Grand Master Fisk himself - can always be trusted to provide fisking fodder.
- On the other hand, there are some individuals who are so rational and so well-informed on the issues that they should never be fisked. If you ever try to fisk Eugene Volokh, for example, then you are either (1) today's answer to Einstein or (2) an idiot.
- Fisking bloggers is generally a bad idea. I inadvertently violated that rule myself myself when I fisked an anti-recall article by Loyola Law Professor Rick Hasen. Note that I do not regret fisking a law professor - I did that twice before and would do it again. I do regret not first emailing Rick to give him a chance to clarify/backtrack/whatever before reading him the riot act online. I probably would have done that if I had known at the time that he was a blogger, which I did not learn until later on, when the other Xrlq linked to me later that day (and also recommended I switch to decaf).
Anyway, these are the first things that come to mind. I welcome input from readers, and will update the list accordingly.
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July 26, 2003
Not Everything That Can Be Done Should Be Done Dept.
The Crats Unit is beginning to crack, or is it?
This article reports that ultra-leftist Audie Bock is running as a Democrat in the October 7, 2003 recall election, and suggests that Arianna "Damn, I'm annoying" Huffington, Michael "Please Ignore My Ex-Wife And Elect Me For Once, God Damn It" Huffington, and Gary "Chandra Who?" Condit may do so as well. I have to wonder if Team Davis put them up to it. After all, it's not as though any of these clowns is going to win. All their candidacies would do is to make the whole recall election look like a farce. The more known oddballs' names we see under question 2, on either side of the aisle, the more convincing Davis's argument will get as to why we should all vote no on question 1.
20K served
Congratulations, 65.139.28.#, you are my 20,000th customer. I hope you visit was worth every penny you paid for it.
July 25, 2003
Stalker Sites
Dean Esmay
links to an anti-Dean Esmay site called
Dean Esmay Sucks. That reminds me of
another site I had all but forgotten about, which doesn't appear to have been updated for a while now. I mean, the attention is great, but I have to feel sorry for the guy; he's on Blog*Splat, after all.
Tonight, on the O'Really Factor
The credulous mainstream media has
finally figured out that "Hunting for Bambi" was a hoax. You read it
here first.
Ah'll Be Back - Ven It's Conwenient
Businesses are fleeing the state, our bond ratings are one notch above junk bond status, and the recall election date is set, but T3 has
more important things to do than to announce whether or not he'll run.
Link via Prestopundit.
You Can't Make This Stuff Up
Ever wonder why California's bond rating is in the proverbial toilet (no, I don't know any proverbs about toilets, but thanks for asking)?
here's why (hat tip:
Justene Adamec). No sooner had Standard & Poor's lowered California's bond rating from A (already the worst in the nation) to BBB (
one two grades above junk bond status), then Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-Frisco) proudly announced that:
I don't care about Standard & Poor's, and I don't care about Wall Street. I care about 27 and 54 and a signature.
Continue reading "You Can't Make This Stuff Up"
Well then, why didn't you say so? If we had all known that bond ratings don't matter, we could have attained junk bond status a long time ago. Not to worry, though; we're almost there now.
Noting that money grows on trees, Burton further stated that he was not concerned about the extra interest Californians will now have to pay for what are essentially sub-prime loans. This extra interest, by the way, will cost more in the first year alone than will that oh-so-expensive recall election the Taxpayers are so worried about. Here's the "money" quote:
Silly me, all this time, I thought our state's anti-business climate would chase more business away, taking more tax revenues along with it. It's comforting to know that there's a big pile of money sitting around somewhere for the Legislature to use anytime they want, at no cost to anybody.
UPDATE: On an unrelated note, I swear I did not steal the heading of this entry from this entry by Erin O'Connor.
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July 24, 2003
Google Bait
This is a test entry consisting of nothing but naked, ignorant rambling. Ignore it, there's nothing to see here.
Continue reading "Google Bait"
You won't learn anything about Dave Matthews, Barry Farber, or Venomous Kate (no, her name isn't Venemous Katie), who according to Reuters and Instapundit would make a great governor of Iraq. Nor will you find nude pictures of Uday Hussein's corpse, that of his lieutenant, Qusay Faber, or anything about Jessica Lynch or Kobe Bryant's 19-year old accuser from Colorado. Expect not a word about the "Hunting for Bambi" hoax. I know nothing. In fact, I don't even recall the distance between Davis and Sacramento, I just remember they are both in California. Oh yeah, not speaking of California, I also have nothing of interest to say about Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose surname is often misspelled "Schwartzenegger," except that I haven't seen T3 yet.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Have some uranium. It's from Niger, which President Bush said is in Africa. However, 20% of Germans think Bush lied about that. So do Howard Dean and John Kerry, who is a Vietnam veteran, as does my buddy Joe Lovell. So sit back, relax and enjoy a nice, cold glass of amber ale. And remember, your best buys are always sometimes at Fry.
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Clinton and Iraq's WMD
He said:
We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn't have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think.
He meant:
Continue reading "Clinton and Iraq's WMD"
Terry McAuliffe, you ignorant slut! Did you really think this BushLied™ crap was our party's ticket back into the White House? News flash: it ain't. Half the American people know it's a bunch of crap, and the other half couldn't give a rat's patootie about the issue at all. If you're trying to help Howard Dean get himself re-elected governor of Ben-and-Jerry-Land, then by all means, knock yourself out. But if you're hoping to help our party accomplish anything at the national level, then you'd better drop this political loser like a hot potato(e), and do it yesterday.
Oh yeah, one other reason to drop this BushLied™ crap. You know why our opponents have an elephant as their party mascot? Here's why: like elephants, they have memories that go back further than last week. You may have forgotten what I said about Iraq's WMD in 1998, but they haven't, so if this thing goes too far it won't make me - or you - look too hot, either. Thanks for reminding us all why their party got an elephant and ours got stuck with an ass.
Speaking of asses, we Donks should have fired yours as soon as Gore lost the 2000 election. Yeah, you heard me right, I said "lost." As in, "didn't win." As in, spare me that crap about how you helped my buddy Al "win the popular vote." So you helped him "win" under rules that didn't even exist. La-de-friggin' da! Maybe my team scored more first downs in last year's Superbowl. Maybe they won, under Australian rules. It doesn't matter. All that matters, numnuts, is that your job was to help him win the electoral vote, and you failed to do that, even at a time where I was riding high and every American who isn't an economist thought "my" economy would go on booming forever. Bush was beatable then. He may not be now, and we have you to thank for that.
But I owed you a favor in 2000, so we let you off that time, and again in 2002, when you helped our party lose big under everybody's rules. Now your Crats Unit is practically begging the voters of California - one of our staunchest allies to elect Darrell Issa governor. What the hell is that all about? And so far, your national strategy for 2004 doesn't look much better.
Terry, do us all a favor and step down gracefully rather than leaving us no choice but to fire you. It's OK to be the "loyal opposition" every now and then, but you, you idiot my friend, you are turning it into a permanent role. I still can't say that publicly, so all I will say is this: drop the BushLied™ stuff now, before it completely kills us.
One last thing about your BushLied™ stunt. That was a cute dowdification you included in that TV ad. Too bad it didn't fool nobody. You see, Terry, lying may be easy, but getting away with an obvious lie is not. I know, I know - I made it look easy when I was President, and before. That's because I'm an expert liar, which you ain't. Experts always make things look easy; that's what experts do. Ever see a Cirque du Soleil show? Those clowns practically defy gravity, and they make that look easy, too. Maybe you should try your hand at that sometime. So quit lying; you suck at it. I will give you one point for trying, though. Now git!
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Mark Your Calendars
The date has been set: Tuesday, October 7, 2003. With Cruz "Tourette" Bustamante backing off from his clearly inappropriate reading of the "if appropriate" clause, the Crats Unit has until August 9, or 59 days before the election, to reconsider their non-committal "I have no intention" non-pledge. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Via Daniel Weintraub, here is the Summary of Qualifications and Requirements. It lists August 9 as the deadline, but does not say whether anyone will actually be there to accept a filing on that date, or whether the weekend moves the de facto deadline to Friday, August 8 or or Monday, August 11. If you're thinking of running, better get the signatures in by the 8th just to be on the safe said.
July 23, 2003
Hey Joe, Where You Goin' With That Gun in Your Hand?
It is
official. Joe "Gray-Out" Davis has made California history.
Mommy, Mommy, Make the Bad Man Stop!
I just found one more reason to recall Acting Governor Joe Davis: he's a whiny little snot.
Here's what he said in today's press conference:
Remember, there's [sic] a lot more people willing to vote against the recall than there are who think I'm doing a good job. If you look at those voters, they say, "it's not fair to blame this on the governor." It's that sense of fairness that I think will carry the day.
Two new potential campaign slogans come to mind:
- OK, I'm a sucky governor, but re-elect me anyway.
- Don't recall me, it's not fair!
I doubt Davis would have the guts to push #1 very hard, although it is a theme that may actually resonate with at least
some voters. The fairness theme of #2 is a bit more palatable, but if he's serious about pursuing it he may want to clue in the
Lieutenant Governor. Apparently, not all members of the Crats Unit got the memo.
UPDATE: Claire has more.
Governor Bustamante?
Cruz "N-Word" Bustamante has proven to be
even stupider than I thought. Is it too late to recall him, too?
UPDATE: Election law blogger/law professor Rick Hasen sort-of agrees with Dan Weintraub that Bustamante is wrong, but ultimately blames the victim, i.e., the drafters of the recall statute. I disagree. It is appropriate for some recalled officials - judges, for example - to have their positions left unfilled. The position of Governor, obviously, is not one of these positions, and no one in his right mind believes it is "appropriate" for the Lieutenant Governor to appropriate the governorship to himself just because he wants the gig. This is either a ham-handed attempt at a power grab, or just another stall tactic, not a good faith legal argument.
Link via Calblog.
July 22, 2003
Here's Something to Get Angry About
Just when I thought today couldn't possibly get any crappier, Angry alerted me to
this "study" just released by four Berkeley psychology "researchers" who purport to have figured out how to diagnose that strain of dementia commonly known as "conservatism." Below are the key symptoms of this common disorder*:
Continue reading "Here's Something to Get Angry About"
- Fear and aggression
- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Need for cognitive closure
- Terror management
Angry worries that his Berkeley degree will become worthless. Xrlq says not to worry, your highest degree is the only one that will really matter anyway. Which, in my case, gives me plenty to worry about. My undergrad degree was damn near worthless anyway.
Read the whole thing, if you can. [Note to the Clam: as far as I'm concerned, the jihad is still on, so don't be shy.] If you can't get Blog*Splat to open, at least be sure to read the press release.
UPDATE: OK, I'm really hurting for good news today (besides this, obviously). Here it is: Clam's post has been instalinked.
*This disorder is less common in the Golden State, which is why the climate is so business-friendly. It is also why our governor, unlike the other 49, is in no danger whatsoever of being recalled.
UPDATE x2: Angry now links to the actual "study."
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The Other Clinton Library
Bill Clinton is about to become the first U.S. President to have
two libraries dedicated to him.
This one might actually be worth visiting. Heh.
Link viaVenomous Kate.
That's So 45 Minutes Ago
FoxNews
has the scoop on
an issue the
blogosphere disposed of last week.
UPDATE: Or maybe not (hat tip: Daily Pundit).
Hurry Up, Idi, You're Lagging
The Pentagon has confirmed that Uday and Qusay
McCormick Hussein are finally
dead. This time, let's hope they stay that way.
Tony Martin's Final Insult
Notwithstanding
this gross mischaracterization of the issue, I stand by my
previous statement that Bush didn't "lie" when he cited the British government's findings about about uranium in Niger, particularly since there is still a good chance that this "lie" may ultimately prove to be true. I must say, however, that Bush made one collossal, inexcusable mistake: he relied on the "intelligence" of a nation that
imprisoned an innocent homeowner for protecting himself and his property, and which is now denying him a routine, preparatory home visit because his parole officer thinks he poses a continuing
"danger to burglars."
I have a kinder, gentler solution. If the idiots who serve in the British government are really that concerned about citizens posing a "danger to burglars," they should let Martin go immediately, on the condition that he post a large, conspicuous sign in his front yard which reads "Warning: This House is Occupied By a Known 'Threat To Burglars.'" The burglars, having been duly warned, will burglarize his neighbor's house instead, and everyone will be happy. If the Brits won't accept this modest proposal, then the least we can do is offer Martin instant citizenship and a pardon for any "crimes" he may have committed on his own property in August, 1999. Britain's burglars will be able to sleep better at night, and America's non-burglars will, too. It's a win-win.
Link via Rachel Lucas.
UPDATE: Spoons has more.
Hacker Attack?
The L.A. Times offers an
uncharacteristically sensible editorial on Liberia.
Pollyanna
Today I have to start work at 6:00 a.m. to do a bunch of menial tasks unrelated to my job description. That that means no commuter traffic and a really awesome parking space! Woo-hoo!
Continue reading "Pollyanna"
UPDATE: I guess I was tempting fate when I posted this. The day has gotten more and more asstastic since. First, after being misdiagnosed by an incompetent nurse, Mrs. Xrlq was diagnosed by a real doctor with walking pneumonia. That was yesterday; however, one of the medicines prescribed was not going to be available until today at 11:00. So I raced back to Asco Sav-On at lunchtime to get the missing meds, only to be told upon arrival that they didn't come in after all. It sure was thoughtful of nobody to tell me that. Then they tried to sell me the name-brand equivalent at an insanely high price, which I refused. Then they offered to transfer it the local Rite-Aid, only to call a different pharmacy but not tell me that, either.
By the time I finally got the meds and pulled into my own driveway, I figured that just about everything that could have gone wrong had, and things could only go up from there. Then I discovered that some paperboy had delivered an unsolicited copy of the L.A. Times to my house. So now you know why I'm in such a spiffy mood right now. How was your day?
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July 21, 2003
Kobe's Defense
"Well at least I didn't
kill anybody."
Heh
Michele Catalano has a great idea for anyone wanting to
get back at PETA.
Bizarre Google Search
Today's assignment, kiddies, is to tell me which of the following Google search terms does not belong with the others. Ready....go.
Continue reading "Bizarre Google Search"
July 20, 2003
If Bad Logic Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Read the L.A. Times
Stefan Sharkansky
fisks a bumper sticker.
More Nonsense from the Daily Monopoly
Just in case you had any illusions that anyone at the
Daily Monopoly Los Angeles Times had read the
memo, be sure to read this article from today's
Monopoly.
Gov. Gray Davis, a longtime political centrist, appealed aggressively Saturday to his Democratic base, hoping to cast the upcoming campaign in sharply partisan terms to survive California's first statewide recall election.
A "lifelong centrist," eh? Let's see what "centrist" causes he champions:
With a banner proclaiming "Crats Unit""Democrats United" as his backdrop, Davis told 250 cheering supporters that the recall would threaten legal abortion, gun control, labor protections, gay rights, public schools and preservation of the California coastline.
Your job: to find
Waldo the "centrist" issues identified above. I can't think of any, with the possible exception of legal abortion, which is a
lie. Who is behind this effort? How about "Centrists For Citizen Disarmament" (or, if you prefer, "Citizens Who Support the Odd Amendments of the Bill of Rights")? Or maybe that should be "Centrists for Forced Unionism," "Centrists Against Public School Accountability," "Centrists Against Business" or "Taxpayers Against the Governor's Recall."
Here's the very next paragraph, in which Greedy Joe elaborates even further about his "centrist" agenda:
"This is not simply about me," he said. "This is about all Californians who believe in a progressive agenda."
In other words, even Joe Davis himself doesn't pretend to be a centrist. Then again, why should he? He knows the largest newspaper in the state will do it for him.
More Hand-Waving from the Crats Unit
As I've pointed out
before, Republicans can "lie" by making statements they believe to be true, or which may even turn out to be true, provided that enough Democrats really, really want those true statements to be lies. The bar for Democrats is much higher, however. This is demonstrated by the great number of Democrats who once stood by Clinton's "legally accurate" (
i.e., false on every level) statements, yet who are now on Bush's "technically true" (
i.e. true on every level, albeit inartfully defended by Donald Rumsfeld) statements like white on rice.
Continue reading "More Hand-Waving from the Crats Unit"
For a Democrat to "lie," the statement has to be 100% false at every level, and the rest of us have to find out about it early on, while Americans still care. This is why Clinton never "lied;" of course his statements were false, and of course he knew they were false at the time he said them, yet miraculously enough, all but the most partisan Republicans gave him the benefit of the doubt. By the time all doubts were gone (stained dress finally appeared, Clinton admitted "inappropriate" relationship, NBC finally aired an interview with Juanita Broaddrick, etc.), no one cared anymore; it was time for all Americans to get a five year old's attention span and "move on."
California "Democratic" Party Chairman Bob Mulholland, however, seems to have met the high threshold required for a Democrat to lie. Justene notes two doozies Mulholland got caught in on Tony Snow's Weekend Report, including references to (1) "busloads of" (i.e., two) convicted felons collecting signatures for the recall, and (2) Darrell Issa's large "prison tattoos," despite Issa's lack of a prison record.
Tony Snow, to his credit, called Mulholland on both of these lies. He also sort of called him on a third, namely the implicit lie that it matters whether or not felons participated in the signature gathering process, any more than it matters whether or not Issa and Co. actually used Greyhound buses to bring them into the state. Section 102 of the California Elections Code provides as follows:
102. A person who is a voter or who is qualified to register to vote in this state may circulate an initiative or referendum petition in accordance with this code. A person who is a voter may circulate a recall petition in accordance with this code.
Note the absence of any reference to a criminal record, or lack thereof. Note also how the phrase "qualified to register" is qualified by "in this state," while the two references to a "voter" are not. This suggests that anyone who lawfully votes in
any jurisdiction, or at least any U.S. jurisdiction, is qualified to circulate an initiative, referendum or recall petition. This poses no problem for convicted felons domiciled in California, who are qualified to register to vote. The requirement
may pose a problem for convicted felons domiciled in states that do not permit felons to vote; even they, however, are "qualified" to register to vote the minute they cross the state line with the intent to remain here indefinitely. Such a disparate requirement - allowing California felons but not non-California felons to collect signatures - introduces potential constitutional infirmities of its own, which I elaborate on below.
In addition to the general requirements of Section 102 above, there is a more specific provision on point with respect to recall signature gatherers. That section is Section 11045 of the Elections Code, which provides that:
Only registered voters of the electoral jurisdiction of the officer sought to be recalled are qualified to circulate or sign a recall petition for that officer.
As I have pointed out
here, Elec. Code 11045 is almost certainly unconstitutional, probably in two ways. First, voter registration requirements generally have been held to violate the First Amendment in
Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation Inc., 525 U.S. 182 (1999). Second, in
Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, 470 U.S. 274 (1985), The U.S. Supreme Court held that states could not condition bar membership on residency. It is likely that the same rule would apply to petition gatherers, whose job requires much less scrutiny by the state than does the practice of law.
But see Lawrence v. Texas, (holding that existing precedent doesn't mean squat if the current make-up of the Supreme Court dislikes the result).
It would be nice if we could challenge these blatantly unconstitutional statutes now, and get rid of them once and for all. The recall camps won't do this, of course, because the result of such litigation would be to delay the recall itself unnecessarily. Once this recall thing is over, however, perhaps someone should challenge Election Code 11045. By bringing the challenge between election cycles, there would be a decent chance that these constitutional issues could be resolved in time for the Legislature to fix the statute before the next attempted recall election. In the meantime, it would appear that there are no valid restrictions on who may collect signatures for a recall election; only an unconstitutional provision which, if challenged, will languish in the courts too long to allow the recall proponents to get around it.
Just for the record, I do not think another governor, or any other statewide officer, will be recalled in my lifetime. I am all but positive that other officials will be, however. Thus, my concern about fixing the requirements for recall election is not purely academic.
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Gotta Love That "Crats Unit"
Justene links to
this story in the
San Jose Mercury News concerning the Democrats' game of high-stakes poker on the recall. Nancy Pelosi, predictably, decries the recall as "part of the Republican agenda to achieve [at the polls in 2003] what they have not achieved at the polls [in 2002]." Here's another gem, from the horse's mouth:
This election is not about changing governors.
Somebody better break the news to this guy.
It's about changing directions ... They want to go backward. We want to go forward
I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.
If you're curious as to the source of the title of this blog, here's the photo that inspired it:
Continue reading "Gotta Love That "Crats Unit""
July 19, 2003
Passwords
Windoze always asks you to password protect your computer. I've never done that in the past, because I figured that there was no need. We live in one of the lowest-crime neighborhoods in the country (or, for that matter, world), so it's not as though some tech-savvy burglar is going to break into my house, log on to my computer and post a few embarassing entries on this blog which purport to be from me. [IOW, sad to say, all the embarassing entries on this blog
really are from me.] And unlike
Justene, I don't have any kids who might log on to the computer and post
stuff of their own. So I figured, who needs passwords?
What never occurred to me was that one of our dogs might break in to the system and start blogging on her own. Apparently, this has been going on for some time now.
Wishful Googling
From Google.FR: "france was right"
Speaking of France, any bets as to how much longer "le Google" lasts before going the way of l'email?"
Tinfoil Hats
David Kelly's death (no, alas, not
that David Kell(e)y) has been ruled a
suicide. Yeah, sure, that's what they said about Vince Foster, too.
July 18, 2003
Proof That 60% of all CNN Readers Are Brain-Dead
This on-line poll on CNN's web site asks, "Has the charge against Kobe Bryant changed your opinion of him?" Currently, 40% say yes, 26% say no, and the other 34% have declined to express any opinion at all until the trial. Here are a few possible explanations:
Continue reading "Proof That 60% of all CNN Readers Are Brain-Dead"
- 60% of CNN's readers were already convinced that Bryant was a rapist, so by the time the indictment was handed down, there was nowhere else to go. However, slightly over half of that 60%, or 57% (i.e., 34% of the original group), thinks that acquittals never happen for any reason other than actual innocence. If he walks, he must be innocent after all, so they are reserving judgment until the trial.
- 60% of CNN's readers think prosecutors pick their indictments by lottery. Thus, the fact that Bryant was just charged with a felonious sexual assault has no bearing whatsoever on the likelihood that he has commited any crimes. The group is split 57%/43% (or 34%/26% of the original sample) on the question of whether judges and juries have an equally random method of determining guilt .
- 60% of CNN's readers slept through most of high school civics, but remember just enough snippets to be dangerous. Thus, when their civics instructors lectured them about the burden of proof and the legal presumption of innocence, they tuned everything out except "blah blah blah, innocent until proven guilty, blah blah blah blah." From this, they deduced that until a judge and a jury say that you did it, you haven't really done it yet.
Any other theories I missed?
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It Was an Honest Mistake, Honest
The Court of Appeal has
swatted down Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's
dilatory stunt aimed at persuading counties to stall the signature counting process. This was not the first Stupid SOS Trick attempted by Shelley, so don't bet that it will be the last.
UPDATE: Jeff Lewis beat me to the punch.
UPDATE x2: Daniel Weintraub has more, including a link to the decision.
UPDATE x3: Weintraub reports on the newest Stupid SOS Trick: grossly underreporting the signature count.
UPDATE x4: Or maybe not?
"If Appropriate" - Bustamante's Nuclear Bomb?
Dan Walters writes that
Article 2, Section 15 of the California Constitution may technically allow Lt. Gov. Cruz
"N-Word" Bustamante to prevent Bill Simon, Darrell Issa, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Xrlq, Richard Riordan and everyone else from running on the recall ballot, leaving nothing but an op-or-down vote on the recall. If that happened, a 50%+1 vote for the recall would result in Bustamante himself becoming governor.
Continue reading ""If Appropriate" - Bustamante's Nuclear Bomb?"
At issue is the phrase "if appropriate," in Art. 2, sec. 15(a), which reads:
An election to determine whether to recall an officer and, if appropriate, to elect a successor shall be called by the Governor and held not less than 60 days nor more than 80 days from the date of certification of sufficient signatures.
[Sec. 17 provides that the Lieutenant Governor will perform the Governor's duties if the Governor is the official being recalled.]
Bustamante could, so the theory goes, determine that the most "appropriate" outcome of a successful recall campaign is for Bustamante himself to become governor, from which it follows that it must be "inappropriate" to allow anyone else to run for that office.
My take on the matter is that this dog don't hunt. Setting aside the obvious conflict of interest that would occur under the current situation, I see no reason to believe that "if appropriate" was intended to grant such broad discretion to the Governor, the Secretary of State or any other individual. At most, it was intended to allow the Legislature reasonable leeway in determining which offices should involve replacement candidates, and which ones should instead be allowed to remain unfilled for the balance of the term (or, perhaps, until the next scheduled election). It strikes me as unlikely in the extreme that any court would accept that it is more "appropriate" to allow anyone to assume office by constitutional succession than by election. I realize that stranger things have happened, but I still think this one is a loser, at least in the long run. Dan Weintraub has more evidence that the 1974 addition of the terms "if appropriate" was not intended to create such a result.
Then again, a long-term victory may not be the goal, so perhaps Bustamante will pursue this as a dilatory tactic to help postpone the election until March. Stay tuned.
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BushLied (TM) Redux
One of the nice side-effects of yesterday's
Instalanche is getting referenced by tons of discussion boards and other sites you'd never heard of before. I particularly liked the first two entries in
this discussion on Netwerkin:
Continue reading "BushLied (TM) Redux"
TheWalkin'Dude
Don't Tread on Me
posted July 17, 2003 05:54 AM
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TheWalkin'Dude
Don't Tread on Me
posted July 17, 2003 09:15 AM
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c'mon, someone argue! I'm bored!
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Memo to Texas: Don't Mess With Us
Yesterday's fisk-fest seems to have spooked Justene, so she sent me
this article from the
Amarillo Globe-News just to make sure I had something to chew on other than her blog. Rest assured, I have yet to find a single fiskable item on Justene's blog, and it's unlikely I ever will (and believe me, coming from someone who who once
fisked the Bill of Rights, that's saying a lot). Even so, in the extremely unlikely event that I ever do find anything fiskworthy on her blog, I'll remember I owe her a favor and drop her a polite email instead.
This editorial is, quite frankly, even sillier than the New York Times article Justene fisked last month. Let it be a lesson to all other non-California newspapers tempted to weigh in on a question of California law: beware. Most California papers can't seem to get a grasp on this issue; are you really sure you can do better? If, like most journalists, you are a jack of all trades and master of none, you'd probably do best to shy away from this issue altogether.
Continue reading "Memo to Texas: Don't Mess With Us"
Editorial: Total recall in California forgets ballot box, voters
You know things aren't going well when you have to fisk the headline. For a paper so eager to use the phrase "total recall" (gee, where have I heard
that before?), they seem to be having a tough time recalling the fact that California recalls
involve ballot boxes and voters, just as much as regular elections do. Meanwhile, leave the old movie references to
HBO.
California has a reputation in some quarters as a place where politics - not to mention some people's lifestyles - is a tad goofy. The attempt to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis falls into that category.
Translation: we don't like it, but we don't have a coherent argument against it, so here's a broadside against the whole damned state instead. And why not? After all, all you're trying to do is persuade your fellow Texans that we're all a bunch of idiots; it's not like there's any danger of influencing any real-live Californians anyway. Better leave that to the
insiders, instead.
Golden State governors have faced 31 recall elections over the years. None of them has [sic] succeeded. Davis, on whose watch the state's economy has cratered, faces the very real prospect of being Recall Target No. 32.
Earth to Amarillo: no other recall effort has come close to gathering the requisite number of signatures. The Davis recall effort has obtained almost double that amount, quite a
gaggle of disgruntled citizens, if you ask me. So Davis does not "face a very real prospect of being Recall Target No. 32," that happened a long time ago. He does, however, face a very real prospect of becoming "Actually Recalled Governor No. 1." If recalling governors is what makes us the land of
fruits and
nuts (
i.e., the figurative ones, which tend to sprout up in L.A. and the Bay Area - not to be confused with literal fruits and nuts, which are typically grown in the
Central Valley), you'd think we might have pulled this off a little sooner.
Republican operatives say they have more than enough signatures to put the recall measure on the ballot later this year. Bless their partisan hearts. They should have their heads examined.
Well, gee, why don't you just
sling a few gratuitous
arrows at whoever disagrees with you, and act as though you've just won the argument? Geez, Louise. If you have a real argument, bring it on; we're
smrt enough to understand it. Honest.
Recall elections ought to occur only in the most egregious cases of malfeasance, if not outright corruption in office.
I hear this tired argument almost
daily, but it's a crock. All
Article 2, Section 14(a) of the California Constitution says about the reason for a recall is that it has to be stated in the petition, and that sufficiency of that reason is not reviewable. Nothing more.
Gray Davis, re-elected in 2002 with a significant majority...
This
pathetic, oft-repeated lie makes me so
angry I could ... turn into
a big, green, cartoonish guy who floats through the air with amazing grace. "Majority" means 50% + 1! That means that 47.3% is not a "significant" majority! Do I make myself
claireclear?
[Davis] ... is "guilty" of a lot of things. He's made some bad decisions, such as his plan to re-regulate the state's energy industry. He has managed to alienate just about everyone in his state, as seen by his 21 percent job approval rating. Moreover, the state budget has gone $38 billion into the red; Californians are blaming him for that, too. Still, he doesn't deserve to be booted out of office before his term expires.
Why the hell not? If I did my job as badly as he's done his, they wouldn't wait four years to fire me! Since when does any of this turn on Davis "deserving" (or not deserving) anything, anyway? This is about us, not him.
The state still has a legislature that can act as a deterrent to Davis' apparently poor political instincts.
Oh, I see. Our ultra-liberal Democrat Legislature is supposed to be our sole check on our center-left, egocentric governor of the same party. If taxes get too high, call the Legislature - which is even further to the left and even more partisan than Davis - and
Presto! - everything will be hunky dory. Sorry, Pollyanna, it just doesn't work that way. Not here in Kalifornia, anyway.
Texas, thank goodness, doesn't have a gubernatorial recall statute. However, most cities in this state do.
OK. And that has what, exactly, to do with the question of whether Californians (who, thank
God, do not read the
Amarillo Globe-News) ought to recall Governor Davis? If Houston recalls Mayor Whatisname, do we have your permission to recall Joe Davis now?
Amarillo, with a municipal charter dating back to 1913, never has had a recall election. Residents here have a wonderful way to deal with poor City Hall policy-making. It's called elections, which occur every odd-numbered year. Voters remade totally their City Commission in 1989 during a period of tremendous strife and general unhappiness.
OK, recall every four years, good. Recall at shorter intervals, bad. Now if you could just explain once again, WHY????!!!!!
Did we need a recall election then to toss out incumbents with whom voters might have been angry? No. The regular election cycle took care of that.
OK, we are not communicating at all. Let me try a different approach:
Listen up here. You do things yer way in Texas, bless your hearts, but we do things a little differently here in Californie. Wasn't too long ago, y'all useta hang horse thiefs. Well, Greedy Joe Davis done stole mah horse! Not just mah horse, mind you, every horse in the whole ding-dang California Republic. 'Course, he didn't steal it upfront - the gummit's much cleverer 'n that - instead he illegally raised the tax on owning a horse. Yeah, y'all heard right - this state actually makes y'all pay a tax just for ownin' a horse, even if y'all don't ride it on nobody else's road. We're simple folk, we was gonna let old Joe get away with that up to a point, but now Greedy Joe has gone too far.
Short story long, Greedy Joe does things his way, and I does things mah way, and the Goldin State ain't big enough for the both of us. If that there ne'er do well don't git outta here quick, I's a gonna have to git out mahself. And honest to Gawd, it wouldn't confront me none if me and the missus had to leave this God-forsaken state, but the missus would shure be cross about that. So doggone it, I's a votin' for this here recall, and if y'all don't like that, it's just damnum absque injuria. Betch'all didn't know I spoke Latin. Yee-haw!
Californians are witnessing an abuse of their state's recall statute. This recall is a joke. Except that no one is laughing.
Sure we are; it's just that we're laughing at you rather than with you. So take that, you big ... um ...
tone cluster.
OK, I give up. What the hell is a "tone cluster?"
Hide extended entry
July 17, 2003
Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?
I thought that the National Association for Advancement of Charming People had shot itself in the foot when it declared three Donks
"persona non grata" [
sic, personae non gratae] for failing to attend Monday's
gripe session. Apparently not. It seems that the old cliché about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar only applies to Republican flies. Republican flies can't stand vinegar, but Democratic flies
eat the stuff up.
Carrot Top Is Unconstitutional
Dan Weintraub quotes
an anonymous lawyer who holds himself out as an election law "expert" [can you say "Rick Hasen?" UPDATE: Don't.] whose publicist makes a series of bogus "legal" arguments against the recall [
Rick Hasen] that aren't really legal arguments at all [
Rick Hasen]. As you may recall, noted election law professor
Rick Hasen made a series of
similar arguments against the recall in the
San Diego Union-Tribune.
Anyway, Weintraub isn't telling us who the new "expert" is [Rick Hasen], but does note that whoever this guy is will be quoted tomorrow in a major unnamed newspaper [damnum absque injuria]. I look forward to finding out tomorrow who that "expert" is [Rick Hasen].
"Mr. Subliminal" references aside, I don't have any real knowledge as to who Weintraub is actually referring to in his entry [Rick Hasen]. It would sure be a funny coincidence, though, if it turned out to be ... oh, I don't know ... Rick Hasen?
UPDATE: D'oh! We still don't know who the anonymous lawyer in question is [NOT Rick Hasen], but we do know that whoever it is, it isn't Rick Hasen [NOT Rick Hasen]. Oh well, we'll know the real culprit is soon enough [NOT Rick Hasen].
Jörg Haider - Mölleman South
It's bad enough that everyone's favorite
living idiot-Aryan, Jörg Haider, gets to be governor of the Austrian province of Carinthia. In a Sunday column on Arnold Schwarzenegger, the
San Francisco Chronicle managed to
go one better by promoting him to President of the country. The paper has yet to run a correction online, although it has been promising to do so since Sunday. Thing is, the putative
"correction" they promised to run is worse than the original error, as it identifies Haider's province as "Carpathia" rather than Carinthia (or, in German, "Kärnten"). The name "Carpathia" refers not to an Austrian province, but to a
a boat which was used to rescue 705 survivors of the Titanic's first and last voyage in 1912.
The "good" news is that the Carpathia was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1918. The bad news is that Haider, at the time, was nowhere near the boat the Chronicle charged him with governing. So while an untimely death may have taken Haider's northern twin out of the gene pool, we do have Jörg Haider to kick around anymore. Can't fault the Chronicle for trying, though.
July 16, 2003
Ecosystem
I'm not sure what to make of the
Ecosystem. My linkage and hit counters have been almost perfectly steady since I got the initial BFL boost, but recently got demoted to Adorable Little Rodent. Now, all of a sudden I'm back to
Marauding Marsupial, by a whisker.
Hunting for Bambi Suckers?
FoxNews reports on
Hunting For Bambi, the latest Las Vegas outrage where men supposedly pay to shoot naked ladies with paintball guns.
Several other bloggers have picked up this story, too, though at least
one has subsequently acknowledged the possibility that it may be a hoax.
I'm reserving judgment, but for now, I lean toward "hoax." Snopes has already raised several reasons to doubt that this is anything more than a colossal leg-pull. Here's another, from the FoxNews story:
According to the site, the hunters also have the option of mounting their prey when they're done — and having sex with the women.
So the site is publicly advertising the fact that you can pay the women for sex, eh? Isn't that ... um ... illegal? [Not in Nevada!
-Ed. Not so fast! Prostitution may not be prohibited
statewide in Nevada, but it
is illegal in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. And stop calling yourself "Ed."
-Ed.]
UPDATE: This story on MSNBC makes a rather ham-handed attempt to tackle the hoax issue:
Questions were being raised about the veracity of the company’s claims. Snopes.com, which researches so-called urban legends, noted that the huntingforbambi.com Web site lacks proper contact information and stated that some readers who sent e-mail expressing interest in booking a hunt received no reply to their inquiries.
But David Krekelberg, who responded to an e-mail inquiry from MSNBC.com early Wednesday and said he was a spokesman for the company, insisted the enterprise is real.
Well, gee, it must not be a hoax, then. I mean, if it were a hoax, surely the company hoaxman ... er, spokesman ... would tell them. Did Hans Blix take a new job with MSNBC while no one was watching?
UPDATE: Whether or not the whole thing is a hoax or a ruse to sell porno tapes, this part has to be a joke.
"Taxpayers" Redux
Probably the worst kept secret about
"Taxpayers" Against the (Governor's) Recall is that the Taxpayers aren't exactly a group of concerned citizens looking out for taxpayers. Quite the opposite. According to
this article from the
Sacramento Bee (hat tip:
Daniel Weintraub), the Taxpayers consist almost entirely of tax-receivers, most notably the firefighters' union.
Continue reading ""Taxpayers" Redux"
I know, I know. "Government workers pay taxes just like teh rest of us do, blah, blah blah." Of course the state workers pay federal taxes, but federal taxes aren't at issue here. As to "paying" a small portion of the state taxes that fund their salaries, I don't think so. If I required my kid to give back a small portion of his allowance every week, all that would mean is that his allowance wasn't really quite as generous as it looks on paper. It wouldn't mean that my kid pays my salary.
It's clear why the Taxpayers, as tax-receivers with interests diametrically opposed to those of actual taxpayers, like Joe Davis and don't want to see him recalled. That's fine; that's their right. What I don't understand, though, is why the Taxpayers would pick such a transparently dishonest name. Lying serves no purpose unless the lie is believed. Did the Taxpayers really think any genuine taxpayer advocates would fall for such an obvious ruse? And if not, why even bother?
In other news, the Taxpayers and their allies are suing the state and the counties to prevent them from verifying signatures, as required by California law. "Count every vote," they used to say. On this time they aren't even challenging the validity of the signatures themselves, only the bona fides of the individuals gathering them. Imagine having your vote nullified because some guy worked at the polling place who shouldn't have been working there!
Most of the Taxpayers' "legal" arguments seem to be bogus bogus anyway. A couple of strategically placed felons were detected, but their signatures were never turned in. The voter registration requirement is clearly unconstitutional, and the residency requirement probably is, too.
Hide extended entry
July 15, 2003
Democrat Campaign Slogan
"It's the economy,
stooopid."
DBrowning in Hysteria
As with any other tool, if you are thinking of purchasing a gun, be sure to buy the right gun for the right job. Before you buy, think about what it is you want to do with the gun:
- If you want to shoot cheap ammo to your heart's content, get a .22.
- If you want to defend yourself against an intruder, get a .38 revolver or a 9 mm pistol - at least.
- If you want to impress the hell out of everybody, get an S&W; .500 if you can find one (good luck).
- If you think you are as good a shot as Assemblyman Paul Koretz and want to try your hand at shooting airplanes out of the sky, get a .50 BMG rifle. [Note: I'm being sarcastic. Contrary to Koretz's propaganda, there is no friggin' way you can do that. One can only hope that future terrorists are dumb enough to try.]
- If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, get anything made by Browning.
Continue reading "DBrowning in Hysteria"
So why am I picking on Browning? Well, the owner of this pro-gun site contacted Browning in an attempt to negotiate an advertising arrangement. The following day, he received this email from a paralegal named Jeannine C. Dameworth:
You recently contacted Browning and requested our permission to link to our internet site through your site at www.guned.com. That request was denied by our webmaster, Brady Smith. Browning seldom grants requests for permission to link to our internet site. While we appreciate your request for permission, we would ask that you appreciate our denial of such request and remove all references to Browning on your internet site. In addition, you are not an authorized user of Browning's registered trademarks which appear on your site. Please confirm the removal by reply to this email within 10 days.
Think about that for a minute, then focus on the two real zinger:
Browning seldom grants requests for permission to link to our site.
Um, yeah. Somehow, I get the wild notion that Robert Scheer and Ruth Rosen have never granted Stefan Sharkansky "permission" to link to their respective columns, either, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who reads his blog on a regular basis. So what? Does Browning really think it has to give people "permission" to link to their site, or are they just trying to position themselves to be the next company lampooned here? Maybe they figure that any publicity is good publicity; I don't know.
You are not authorized user of Browning's registered trademarks which appear on your site.
OK. I'm sure those guys suing Nike aren't authorized users of Nike's registered trademarks, either, but that doesn't mean Nike can make them stop calling them by their name. It's not as though GunEd was marketing firearms of its own under the name "Browning," or any other name likely to be confused with it. [Note: this is also why the cute joke about a guy trademarking the phrase "freedom of speech" isn't really all it's cracked up to be.]
Anyway, Mike W. Smith, the President of GunEd (also a trademark, but no, that doesn't mean I'm going to ask his permission to include the name here) wrote back to say the he would remove all links and references to Browning from his site, even though he had absolutely no legal obligation to do so. So how does that sweetheart of a paralegal, Jeannine C. Dameworth, thank him? With another nasty email, what else?
I am sorry you have chosen to be offended by my email requesting that you remove your link to Browning. Browning takes great pride in its name, products and trademarks. We rarely license the use of our name and trademarks and very rarely grant requests for links on websites. While we appreciate your support of Browning and we appreciate you removing the link to Browning, I would personally appreciate it if you would immediately remove my name and phone number from your website and also the names of Mr. Smith and Mr. Nelson.
Got that? It's not enough to claim a non-existent "right" to prevent people from linking to you or using your name in a non-trademark context. No, now Ms. Dameworth thinks she has a right to stop Mr. Smith from reporting facts at all!
What a maroon. Read the whole thing, if only for the comments.
Link via Gruntledness.
UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Nothing against Browning's products. Mrs. Xrlq's engagement gun was a Browning model, and we have no complaints. Given the current silliness, however, I plan to take my business elsewhere next time around.
Hide extended entry
BushLied (TM) for Dummies
Last night, while watching a discussion on Hannity and Colmes over the "Bush Lied" meme, Mrs. Xrlq asked me what all the fuss was all about. After explaining the basics to her, it occurred to me that many other people might have been wondering the same thing, but were afraid to ask. Here it is, in a nutshell:
Continue reading "BushLied (TM) for Dummies"
- Shortly before President Bush's State of the Union address, the British government learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
- President Bush, in his State of the Union address, uttered the infamous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- The CIA signed off on the speech, noting that the British government had indeed learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
- British intelligence still stands by its findings.
- The CIA has subsequently backed off from its position, apparently on account of some new intel showing that the average Democrat is too stupid or lazy to distinguish a statement prefaced by "the British government has learned that ..." from one prefaced by "the CIA has independently confirmed that ..."
So there you have it. Seriously. Of course there are other details to the story, but that's all they are, details, and for the most part, distracting ones to boot. Here are a couple of the more common canards:
- What about those forged documents purporting to implicate Niger? Well, what about them? The Brits didn't rely on them, and neither did Bush. He said Saddam attempted to buy the stuff from Africa, not from Niger, and certainly not from "knee-ZHAIR," as Bush's more pretentious critics like to pronounce it. [UPDATE: Notwithstanding this, Tony Blair maintains that the intel relied on by the Brits does point to Niger.]
- "If the CIA couldn't confirm it, Bush shouldn't have said it." Well, that's a question on which reasonable minds will have to differ. If we have any real reason to think American intelligence is that much more reliable than British intelligence, then I suppose it might not be such a good idea to quote British intel in any context. But I do not believe that to be teh case, and in any event, Bush's 16-word "lie" made it very clear that he was relying on the findings of the British government, not on anything the CIA had confirmed independently. If you're mad that the CIA didn't have an opportunity to review the intel in question, that anger should properly be directed at France (hat tip: Howard Veit, via Daily Pundit), not at the Bush Administration.
- "Wait a minute! Bush said outright that 'Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa!' He didn't qualify that by saying the Brits had learned that, blah blah blah..." This is because you are watching a Democrat commercial featuring a dowdified version of the statement. Try watching the original speech instead.
UPDATE: Gotta love that Instalanche.
Hide extended entry
July 14, 2003
Count Every Vote (For Me)
True to form, the Davis camp is trying to
sue to prevent a democratic election from taking place this fall. The basis for their lawsuit appears to be Section 11045 of the California Elections Code, which provides that:
Only registered voters of the electoral jurisdiction of the
officer sought to be recalled are qualified to circulate or sign a
recall petition for that officer.
Continue reading "Count Every Vote (For Me)"
Recall supporters maintain that they have complied with Section 11045 by refusing to pay any signature gatherers who did not register to vote in California. Team Davis, however, has asked the courts to order the state to scrutinize every signature gatherer to make sure this is the case. The purpose of this suit is clearly dilatory; it's not as though the status of the signature gatherers will have any bearing on the validity of the signatures themselves. In Florida, Nevada or New Jersey, maybe, but California courts aren't quite that bad. At least not yet.
To top it all off, Section 11045 is probably unconstitutional anyway. In Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation Inc., 525 U.S. 182 (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court held a similar Colorado law on constitutional grounds. That law, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-40-112(1), provided as follows:
No section of a petition for any initiative or referendum measure shall be circulated by any person who is not a registered elector and at least eighteen years of age at the time the section is circulated.
While the challenged statute applied only to initiatives and referenda, I'd be hard pressed to think of a single reason why the result should be different for recalls. Curiously, though, the
Buckley decision prompted the California Legislature to fix Election Code Section 9021, relating to intiatives and referenda, but not 11045, relating to recalls.
UPDATE: Daniel Weintraub and Rick Hasen have more.
Hide extended entry
If You're Stuck in a Hole . . .
. . . dig faster. Michael Ballou, the Petaluma, CA Political Science "professor" who recently
took academic "freedom" to a new low by asking his students to write emails threatening President's safety, has managed to do the (seemingly) impossible and made himself look even worse than before by submitting
this smug reply to my fellow Bearflagger, the Daily Pundit.
Damn, I like the sound of that. The sound of "fellow-Bearflagger, the Daily Pundit," that is. I do not at all like the sound of what hack "professor" Ballou has to say, inside or outside the classroom. I wonder if there are any bloggers who actually agree with the guy or would disagree but nonetheless defend his "right" to do it. I can only think of
one blogger whose notion of academic freedom is broad enough that I could even imagine her coming to his defense. My guess is that she won't support this guy, but then again, she has yet to weigh in on the controversy so until/unless she does, I shan't put words in her mouth.
UPDATE: Emily has more.
"Virtually All" = 0/6
It pains me to fisk the
Orange County Register, because their libertarian hearts are in the right place, for now. However, the first item under today's
"Needle Points" is as far off the mark as anything I've read in the
Daily Monopoly Los Angeles Times or the
Seattle Post-"Intelligencer." Here it is, without any deletions, dowdies, etc.:
In the July 14 Time magazine, Ann Coulter, author of the best-selling "Treason," opines, "No serious person thinks that we are in the middle of a civil-liberties crisis." This takes Republican Bush-worship to new heights. The president's badly misnamed "USA Patriot Act" violates virtually every element of the First Amendment, such as allowing widespread wiretapping without a court order.
As the only person in the blogosphere who has anything nice to say about Ann Coulter (OK, that
not quite true, but it's
pretty damned close), I guess it's up to me to call them on this one. Let's take a look at each of the
six seven elements of the
First Amendment, to see how the Patriot Act has fared.
Continue reading ""Virtually All" = 0/6"
Congress shall make no law...
The Patriot Act is a law, and Congress made it. Instant First Amendment violation! Oh wait, there's more.
...respecting an establishment of religion...
The Patriot Act, of course, declares the Presbyterian Church to be the official "Church of America." Or maybe not. So much for the Establishment Clause. So far, in our quest for a violation of "virtually every element of the First Amendment, we are 0 for 1.
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Oh yes, I almost forgot about all those mosques that the feds have shut down, invoking the Patriot Act. Make that 0 for 2.
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
I think we still have freedom of speech and the press, but then again, maybe John Ashcroft's goon squad didn't know that the
Register was going to write something critical of their pet Patriot Act. I'll reserve judgment on this one until my copy of the
Register does/doesn't show up on my driveway. If it doesn't, I'll be a little worried. Until then, I'm counting the freedom of speech and freedom of press tenets as presumptive goose eggs, bringing our score to 0 for 4.
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Like the mosques that haven't been shut down yet, I haven't heard of anyone being arrested simply for peaceably assembling or petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances. Many besides the
Register staff have criticized the Patriot Act, but as best I can tell, no one has gone to jail over it.
Ah, but wait! We're not done yet. We can't forget those lost portions of the First Amendment, known only to newspaper editors:
...nor shall Congress allow widespread wiretapping without a court order, or declare war against any nation that does not present a clear and present danger to the United States.
OK, I made that last part up. Those poor schlocks at the
Register and the
P.I. were about to come up empty-handed, so I had to throw them a bone. Unfortunately, even if this provision existed as part of the First Amendment, it bears noting that the "sneak-and-peek" warrants at issue
existed long before the Patriot Act.
Hide extended entry
More Perverse Google Action
I thought I'd gotten some weird Google hits, but Kelley has
done better. Speaking of Kelley, it's not too late to congratulate her on having
Suburban Blight named Writer's Web Site of the Week by the
Writer's Guild of America. "Site of the Week" is a very prestigious honor in the blogosphere, second only to being named
Blog of the Day by
Stefan the Shark.
July 13, 2003
Random Bits
I took a brief camping trip at Dinkey Creek this weekend. Thus, I've completely missed any current events that might otherwise be worth blogging about. I did learn a few interesting facts, however:
- Ever rent a "no smoking" room that has an ashtray? I can do one better. The Motel 6 near the Bakersfield airport has a "no-smoking" sticker attached to the ashtrays in its no-smoking rooms.
- Thought the stuff about black helicopters was delusional paranoia? Wrong! I saw a black helicopter flying over Clovis today. So there!
- On a similar note, if you thought only paranoid schizophrenics thought there was a Trilateral Commission, think no longer. [Actually, do think, just don't think that.]
- As to Jewish bankers, etc., I didn't find any, but then again, I didn't visit any banks. Of all the bankers out there, some have got to be Jewish, no?
- When I stopped at the Chevron station on the way home, I witnessed a woman watching Carrot Top on TV. Voluntarily.
That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have something more substantive during the week.
July 11, 2003
Karma
Harvard has
revoked its acceptance of
Jayson Blair Hornstine, the allegedly learning disabled co-valedictorian
plagiarist/brat who
sued her way into becoming the sole valedictorian. It couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
All the above links were "plagiarized" from Joanne Jacobs, a recent recipient of the coveted Blog of the Day award.
UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh of Reason thinks the plagiarism charges are poop.
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Cavanaugh has reviewed a text comparison of Hornstine's plagiarized works to her sources, and now concedes that the charges weren't poop after all; rather, it was Cavanaugh's poop about them being poop that was poop, not the charges themselves. After composing this update, I'm pretty pooped myself.
WMD = What Mass Destruction?
Justene's posts are usually very calm and measured, but all this
BushLied (TM) nonsense has her
angry as a
clam.
Persistently Safe Schools
One aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act that you may have heard of is a provision allowing students to transfer out of any schools that are deemed "persistently dangerous." Rather than define the term uniformly, however, the NCLBA leaves this up to the states. So California's Board of Education - the same nice guys who, only last year, attempted to "regulate" and "clarify" Proposition 227 out of existence - has
come up with a definition of their own which only a bureaucrat could love:
California officials defined the term narrowly, ruling that a school is persistently dangerous if at least one of its students has been caught with a firearm in each of the last three years. Also, it must have expelled at least 1% of its students each year for hate crimes, extortion, sexual battery or other violent acts.
[Emphasis added.]
Note the key word:
expelled. That means that no matter how crime-ridden a school may be, it won't be "legally dangerous" unless the school administrators do something about it. Doesn't that make you feel safer already?
State Information Board of Education Minister President Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf Reed Hastings non-explained this rosy picture by suggesting that rather than get too hot and bothered over semantic technicalities, "[w] should feel good that so far our districts haven't allowed persistence to occur." Let's all join together for a group hug, and no one will ever get hurt in school again, mmmkay? Sorry, this feel-good nonsense is so loopy that even the L.A. Times editorial staff isn't buying it.
As Glenn Reynold's often says, "read the whole thing," or in this case, both stories. But if you don't have time to read the articles, at least be sure to check out the list of California schools (out of approximately 8,000, total) which have thus far been deemed "persistently dangerous." I've included it in the extended area of this post for the reader's convenience:
Continue reading "Persistently Safe Schools"
July 10, 2003
If Your Right Leg Causes You to Sin . . .
... cut it off. If it doesn't, hell, cut it off anyway. Or so say the
amputee wannabes.
Copyright and Theft
Tyler Cowan of the Volokh Conspiracy asks
why millions of Americans "steal" music from the Internet but would not dream of stealing food from restaurants. He offers the four possible explantions:
- Anonymity.
- Copyright as a weaker form of property right.
- Revenge against the music companies.
- Dislike of a business model that does not provide for "test driving" before you buy.
Continue reading "Copyright and Theft"
I think #2 is by far the best answer. Whatever moral rights we have to property of the physical variety (real and personal) is closely related to the reality that physical, tangible things can't be had by more than one person at a time. If I had no right to keep you from entering my house any time you wanted, this would completely undermine my own ability to use the house myself. Similarly, eating someone else's meal without paying for it imposes a very real cost on the restaurant, which will have to be borne either by other patrons or, more likely, by the establishment itself. The same goes for those who actually steal music, i.e., people who shoplift at CD stores. Potentially, too many freeloaders will kill the business, even if business improves among paid customers at the same time.
Contrast this with copyright law, in which the owner makes the astonishing claim that he has a "right" not to have his ideas copied by others. "Stealing" another person's idea does not prevent the victim of the "theft" from using it himself, it merely enables more people to make use of the idea, too. "Stealing" tunes from the Internet imposes no costs on anyone, except to the extent that the person "stealing" them ends up forgoing a purchase. Unlike the shop owner, who may prefer to forgo some legitimate sales to reduce theft, the music industry would do just fine if both file sharing and CD purchases were to go up at the same time. It is for this reason that I fail to understand why the RIAA sees fit to focus so much of its energy on alienating music fans who download some music and buy others, and so little on promoting people's interest in music generally (which would lead to increases in both the profitable CD sales and the revenue-neutral file-sharing).
Hide extended entry
Not a Dowdy, But Misleading Nonetheless
Probably in response to a comment I left on
Justene's blog, Daniel Weintraub has updated
this entry to provide the full context of Darrell Issa's comment that "the truth is a relative term." He prefaces the update with "Lest I be accused of committing a Dowd..." but goes on to add that he does not believe the comment looks any better in its natural habitat than it does on the outside.
Continue reading "Not a Dowdy, But Misleading Nonetheless"
I agree that the short version of the Issa quote is not a dowdy, but I do not agree that the quote looks no better in context han in a vacuum. Taken by itself, the statement rings Clintonian, as if to suggest that the real answer to the reporter's question were "Yes, yes, absolutely, but I don't want to admit that now so I'm going to filibuster with some semantic hair-splitting instead." As Eugene Volokh has pointed out, however, the quote in context reveals a much more innocuous intent, namely to say "yes, it's technically true, but I can see where you're going with this, and FYI, the answer to your next question is 'no.'" Could Issa have said this more arfully than he did? Certainly. Then again, as Eugene frequently points out in his periodic fiskings of Slate's "Bushisms of the Day," so does everyone else who opens his mouth at least once or twice per day. Like the Issa quote, the Bushisms of the Day are rarely, if ever, outright dowdies. Also like the Issa quote, however, they tend to sound a lot dumber when taken out of context than they sounded to the people who originally heard these questions, in context.
Finally, lest we miss the forest for the trees, let's remember that if you are sued for defamation (i.e., libel or slander), truth is an absolute defense. I think the same should be true in a case like this one. The meaning of is may be clear, but the absolute, cut-and-dried, honest to God truth about truth is that truth is not always absolute, and is very often relative. Can you be kinda, sorta pregnant? Hell, no. Can a statement be kinda, sorta true? Hell yes! Some statements express unverifiable opinions or depend on undefined variables, e.g., reasonable minds can differ as to whether it is or isn't too cold to swim, whether McDonald's food does or doesn't taste like crap, and so on. Others are technically false, but so close to the truth that it would be misleading to label them such, e.g., Al Gore falsely claiming to have "invented" the Internet, which actually, he falsely claimed to have created it. Ooh, big difference there. And then we have statements which are technically 100% correct, but which are likely to mislead the listener if affirmed without further qualification. And that is the Issa quote, in a nutshell.
I don't know if Issa's explanation is true or not. Maybe Issa was truly "cleared," as he says he was, or maybe he was let off on some techicality. Maybe he'd make a great governor, or maybe he'd make a horrible one. I don't know. Right now, I have no clue who I will be voting for in the recall election; I only know who I will be voting against. But until I get that sorted out, at least I can sleep well at night knowing precisely what the meaning of is is, and also knowing that truth, for better or for worse, is often a relative term.
Hide extended entry
July 09, 2003
Somebody Needs To Take Out the Trash
Mikey Weiner rightly lost his show on MSNBC for telling Bob Foster, a career troll, to get AIDS and die. If WQAM 560 of Miami has any decency at all, the same will happen to its top-rated talk show host, Neil Rogers. According to
this NBC story, here's what the brainiac had to say, upon reading a story (presumably
this one - hat tip:
Susanna Cornett) reporting that Congresswoman and former Secretary of State Katherine Harris had died in a plane crash:
"Katherine Harris is dead!" reported Rogers on the air, "I've got the news story right here, it's on the Internet. A plane crash! Yes!!"
Fortunately for Harris, but unfortunately for Mr. Rogers, Congresswoman Harris is alive and well, and was actually appearing live on C-SPAN at the very moment he gloated over her non-death on the air. Let's hope Mr. Rogers's career is as dead now as his listeners thought Harris was then.
Link via Drudge.
UPDATE: The Armed Prophet and Balloon Juice have more.
They Can Dish It Out, But...
The German government is
furious with its one-time ally, Italy. First, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi recommended that German lawmaker/troll/inquisitor Martin Schulz play a Nazi concentration camp guard in an upcoming Italian movie. Nevermind that Schulz won't apologize for attacking Berlusconi in the first place (in fact, Schulz has since compounded the problem by
playing the victim and accusing Berlusconi of "incompatibility with Europe"); no, all that matters is that Berlusconi won't apologize for hitting him back.
Continue reading "They Can Dish It Out, But..."
No sooner had this issue blown over, than the Germans are up in arms over another comment by an Italian government official. This time, it's Industry Ministry undersecretary for tourism Stefano Stefani, who recently wrote in the northern Italian publication La Padania that Germany was "a country intoxicated with arrogant certainties" and added that "we know these Germans well, these stereotyped blonds with a hypernationalist pride."
Don't get me wrong - Stefani's comments were rude, undiplomatic and totally uncalled for. But how, exactly, are they worse than, or even all that different from, the crap Schröder and his minions have been spewing about the U.S. over the past couple of years? At least Berlusconi only compared Schulz to an actor capable of portraying a Nazi in a film; he didn't compare him to Der Führer himself.
On the one hand, they say that "two wrongs don't make a right." On the other, I'm sure you also know what "they" say about people who live in glass houses. I'm starting to wonder if rude and undiplomatic statements do not offend the Germans after all, unless they happen to be the ones on the receiving end.
UPDATE: Stefani has just resigned over the incident. He also now claims he loves Germany. What a maroon. If you're going to throw away your career by insulting someone, shouldn't you at least get the pleasure of insulting someone you hate?
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Democracy Redux
Continuing the discussion on direct democracy, Justene
rejects my argument that it is reasonable to allow voters to step up to the plate when legislators fail. In response to my observation that government-by-soundbite at least as bad (if not worse) among politicians who seek re-election than it is among citizens who are free to vote their conscience on a secret ballot, she replies:
Seriously, just because the legislature does an inadequate job , that doesn't justify taking the decision to yet another group of people who will do an inadequate job in the hopes that one of the groups gets it right.
Continue reading "Democracy Redux"
The whole idea of checks and balances is based on the reality that no one group is going to get it right all of the time. If it were some way we could devise a "Supreme Soviet" that could be trusted always to do a perfect job setting policy (or at least to a better job than any of its alternatives), then checks and balances would be nothing but an unnecessary nuisance. The reason we need this particular check and balance is because legislators often face a conflict of interest wherever the best interest of their constituents clashes with their personal ambitions. A citizen may not always do a perfect job of determining the right thing is, but at least he can be trusted to vote for what he thinks the right thing is, and not based on what he thinks most of his neighbors would like him to think, or worse, whether to give himself a raise, allow himself to stay on the same job indefinitely, etc.
Justene then holds out the federal system of government as a model:
So what to do? Well, that federal three-branch system of checks and balances has worked quite well for 227 years without any direct vote. Yes, the left is still smarting from the electoral college effect in 2000. Yes, the right is not too happy with a couple of Supreme Court decisions recently. Overall, though, the system's managed quite well and 100 years from now, even those things you regard as mistakes will blend into the background an the strength of the system will shine through.
The most obvious question, which I hope Justene will address in the future, is what makes two particular types of check and balance (bicameral Congress and the separation of powers) a good thing and the other (direct vote of the people) a bad one. My position is that both kinds of "check and balance" are good, and for similar reasons: both groups have their faults, but they are
different faults, which are offset by different strengths. Just as the Senate has the potential to protect small states from the ambitions of more populous states, so too has the electorate the potential to protect itself from the autocratic tendencies of an elected body which tends to favor political expediency over its constituents' best interests. So while it is certainly possible for one kind of "check" to be good and another bad, it's not immediately clear why that should be so in this case.
A less obvious question, but an important one nonetheless, is whether the 227-year old federal system (or, more precisely, the 216-year old one, the Articles of Confederation being almost universally dismissed as a failure) is really such a great model for states to follow anyway. After all, the two types of government were designed to accomplish very different purposes. For 166 of its 227 years, Congress's powers were strictly limited to those enumerated in the Constitution (in most cases, those enumerated in Article I, sec. 8). It wasn't until Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), that a very unchecked and very unbalanced President managed to strong-arm the Supreme Court into repealing the Tenth Amendment by judicial fiat. So we really only have a 63-year old history, not a 227-year one, of allowing our federal government to function like anything resembling a state government. Even that has been tempered slightly over the past eight years (see, e.g., U.S. v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), U.S. v. Morrison 529 U.S. 598 (2000)).
To the extent that we assume that the federal and state governments are similar enough that they should be structured similarly, I'm still not convinced that the 63/227 year history of the federal government is an argument against the initiative or the referendum process. It has certainly produced its share of injustices, including the internment of Americans of Japanese origin, 89 years of slavery followed by 89 more of "separate but equal," etc. Whether adding an additional "pure democracy" check and balance analogous to California's referendum system would have prevented any of these injustices or any lesser one's is anyone's guess, but I can scarcely imagine how they would have made matters worse. At least it would have provided us with one more way of reigning in a federal government which, from time to time, has shown itself to be every bit as capable of autocratic tendencies as California's.
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July 08, 2003
More Pigs Fly
Fellow Bearflagger
Justene Adamec finally gets the
Instalanche she earned
five months ago. Better late than never, I guess.
Pigs Fly
Aztlan nut and
recall veteran Larry "Nativo" Lopez
talks some sense about the current recall effort. Money quote:
No one should take the Latino voters for granted and think that they are stuck in the pockets of one or another political party. Electoral competition for our vote suits us much better.
Who better than Larry to illustrate the principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day?
Link via California Insider.
Michael Savage
Much has been written about Michael "Savage" Weiner (pronounced "whiner") over the past couple of days, in both the print media and the blogosphere. The coverage has been, unsurprisingly, almost universally negative. I've got no great love for the guy myself, but I do think it is only fair to present both sides of the issue. After all, I'm the one who thought
even racists and trolls (OK, make that
only racists and trolls) should get to use Blog*Spot. Thus, as a public service to readers of
damnum absque injuria, I have summarized below the key arguments why, in my view, MSNBC should have thought twice before kicking Mr. Weiner ... I mean, um, "Savage" ... off the air.
Continue reading "Michael Savage"
July 07, 2003
Thanks, Pollyanna
California may be losing jobs faster than the rest of the country is gaining them, but at least this is
reducing congestion on the freeways.
Link via everyone's favorite non-blogger blogger.
Recall Update
Jill Stewart thinks the recall election is
about to get even uglier.
Memo to Viacom
Not everything that
can be done, should be done. It's not too late to come up with a better name.
Prison vs. College
Liberals love to pontificate about how much cheaper it is to send a hardened criminal to college than it is to incarcerate him. Would any of you lefties care to step up to the plate and attend college with
this guy?
"Dog" Gone
Duane "Dog" Chapman and his fellow bounty hunters have
failed to appear in a Mexican "court" to face charges for the unconscionable crime of
depriving serial rapist Andrew Luster of his liberty. I wonder what will happen next? Given the inability of the Mexican "police" force to catch Luster themselves, I have to question whether their Dog catchers will do any better. Maybe it will take a group of Mr. Dog's competitors to catch him, after which they too will face criminal charges for depriving Mr. Dog of his liberty, as will the third group of bounty hunters who finally catch them, and so on.
Meanwhile, the real criminals in Mexico appear to be getting the last laugh. It must be nice knowing that the very cops who ought to be arresting you are instead working to protect you from anyone who has a prayer of pulling it off.
Just Wondering
What is the past tense of the verb
to ping? I'm torn between
pang, pung and
pought.
Teaching Math
My father, Sr. Xrlq, is a vocal proponent of real math reform, which involves gutting the phony "reforms" of the new-new math of the 1990s. His favorite argument against the status quo (not mine, obviously) is that I was once credentialed to teach math myself. Here's an argument I like better:
Continue reading "Teaching Math"
Teaching Math in 1950
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1970
A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M." The set "C," the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set "M." Represent the set "C" as subset of set "M" and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set "P" of profits?
Teaching Math in 1980
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
Teaching Math in 1990
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels "feel" as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong answers.
Teaching Math in 2002
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120. How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60? (will the volume of sales keep him in business?)
Teaching Math in 2010
Un hachero vende un camión carga por $100. La producción cuesta . . .
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A Defense of Direct Democracy
The concept of direct democracy frequently comes under fire from all sides. Often the argument boils down to the popular "We Are A Republic Not A Democracy" meme. Apart from playing fast and loose with
the meaning of the word democracy, which includes republics, the slogan does nothing to answer the more important question, to wit, "republican or unrepublican - what's
wrong with it?" Justene Adamec
tackles that question in a recent entry that sums up the most frequent anti-initiative pretty well:
Initiatives ... are fraught with problems. They sound good but legislation has developed to a point that it is difficult, and dangerous, to make law directly. I do not believe that the population as a whole has the ability or interest to analyze legislation. Most of us make decisions based on soundbites.
Continue reading "A Defense of Direct Democracy"
All well and good, but cannot the same be said of elected legislators? This is particularly important on hot-button issues such as gun control, "bilingual" education, affirmative racism action, the "three strikes" law, and countless other "wedge" issues that the Democrats don't want us debating publicly. On those issues, I think the people speak where the legislature refuses to do so. This is a good thing.
Take, for example, everyone's favorite example of government-by-sound-bite, gun control. Time was when the debate focused on the serious issue of whether widespread private gun ownership was a good thing (armed citizens deter criminals), a bad thing (armed citizens flip out and become criminals themselves), or neither (both occur, and roughly cancel each other out). Gun control advocates attempted to smuggle in a handgun ban (Proposition 15), first by peddling it as a mere registration law ([sarcasm]who but a paranoid NRA weenie could be against that?[/sarcasm]), then by attempting a hair-splitting distinction between "bans" and "freezes." This stunt failed miserably, and Prop 15 went down by roughly a 2-1 margin; this despite widespread support for the concept on which it was originally sold, i.e., gun registration.
Now, I'm sure there were a few gun-control Pollyannas who interpreted Prop 15's resounding defeat as evidence that voters didn't want to disarm themselves, they only wanted the Legislature to do it for them. Most, however, knew better, so they began lobbying the Legislature instead. Rather than attempt an outright ban on all gun ownership, they began nibbling at the edges, going after whatever could be given a nasty name and divide gun owners against each other. They hit pay dirt in 1989, when Patrick Purdy, a convicted felon with a rap sheet a mile long, murdered five schoolchildren before turning his gun on himself.
As a convicted felon, Purdy was barred by existing federal and state laws from possessing a firearm of any kind. Obviously, this was not enough. There is a gun to be had for anyone outside a prison who wants it badly enough, and who does not care about the consequences of breaking the law. Thus, the rational response to the Stockton tragedy would have been to reform California's penal system to abolish revolving-door-justice and ensure that the next Patrick Purdy was not on a schoolyard, but in prison, where he belonged. So what did the Legislature do? Enact a ban on ugly guns with ugly name, thereby ensuring that the next Patrick Purdy would use a different kind of weapon.
The next Patrick Purdy turned out to be Richard Allen Davis. Like Purdy, Davis was a convicted felon with a very long rap sheet, who should have been rotting in prison at the time of his most horrific crime. Unlike Purdy, however, Davis lacked the good sense to use a gun. This left an otherwise complaint media and Legislature with no choice but to blame Allen personally, rather than some inanimate object, for Allen's own act. Even then, the Legislature lacked the will to do anything substantive until it became clear that Proposition 184, the "Three Strikes" initiative was about to pass overwhelmingly. Then and only then did the Legislature act - and then only in hopes of preempting the voter initiative. That eleventh-hour attempt having failed, California was left with two similar, but nonidentical "three strikes" bills. One would be a better number, but given the choice I'll take 2 over 0 any day of the week.
Another "wedge" issue on which the Democratic Legislature and even "Republican" gubernatorial hopeful Dan Lungren refused to act was "bilingual" education, a system which for years managed to do the impossible and prevent kids living in the United States from learning to speak English fluently. Poll after poll suggested that even non-English-speaking immigrant parents - make that especially non-English-speaking immigrant parents - wanted their kids to be taught English rather than offered a second-rate education in Spanish. No matter, the Bilingual Ed lobby threatened to charge anyone who took up the English instruction cause as elitist, or worse, racist. Once again, our elected "representatives" utterly failed us, and it was up to the voters to act instead. [More recently, a similar bill passed overwhelmingly in another right-wing Republican state, Massachusetts.]
And don't even get me started on term limits. Love 'em or hate 'em, they are an issue that California voters have a right to determine one way or the other, and the obvious conflict of interest prevents Legislators from even pretending to deal with issue fairly or dispassionately (the worst offender being Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who tried to sue his way back into the legislature a few years ago).
Last of all, I'd like to point out a second type of "direct democracy" that often gets overlooked in the context of ballot initiatives. That is the referendum, which subjects duly enacted legislation to a popular vote. While it is often lumped together with the initiatives, it shouldn't be, as its function is quite different. At its best, the ballot initiatives provide voters with an opportunity to act when the Legislature will not. Referendums, by contrast, provide a democratic check where the Legislature does act but does so against the voters' interests. Think California's business climate is today? Imagine how much worse it would be if third parties could sue insurers for bad faith, as would be the case if Propositions 30 and 31 had not made the March, 2000 ballot (where they were rejected overwhelmingly).
None of this is to say that our experience with direct democracy has free of problems; it clearly hasn't. Something needed to be done about runaway taxes in the 1970s, but decades later, Proposition 13 has introduced problems of its own, which the Legislature is barred from fixing (whether they would fix these problems or merely exacerbate them is a separate issue). A few initiatives are just plain silly - Proposition 6, the horse meat ban, comes to mind. But on balance, I think the initiative and referendum processes have been a very important check on an often autocratic government.
Last and least, I remain steadfast in the view that the democracy vs. republic debate has zero, zip, nada to do with the recall, one way or the other. As Justene aptly pointed out:
We elect the governor directly. There's no reason to prohibit recalling him directly. The merits of the reasons to recall him are another topic.
Bingo.
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July 04, 2003
Bear Flag League
This is to announce the
Bear Flag League, a new alliance among conservative bloggers in California. Member blogs include
The Angry Clam, Justene Adamec's
Calblog, the
California Republic (which includes an excellent
non-blog component, as well),
my blog, Howard Owens's blog, Peter Sean Bradley's
Lex Communis, Molly's Musings, Pathetic Earthlings and Jeff Lewis's
Southern California Law Blog.
As you may notice upon perusing these fine blogs, all but two of us are southerners, making us a bit understaffed on the northern front. [I was tempted to invite the Shark, but he ended up moving a little too far north.]
Technical Difficulties
The announcement schedued for today has been delayed. Xrlq gave me posting rights to come in and post his announcement. Alas, he did not give me privileges to edit his posts and therefore, I have no ability to access his draft post and publish it. Keep checking back. Perhaps my hacker skills will solve the problem (note to Xrlq: I have no hacker skills so you can rest easy). Perhaps Xrlq will check his site and discover the problem.
XRLQ UPDATE: Yup, finally. Getting Internet access in this hotel was like pulling teeth, but it finally happened.
July 03, 2003
Happy Fourth
I'm off to Vegas to attend my college roommate's oddly-timed wedding. Blogging will be light, but do check back tomorrow for an announcement. Have a great Independence Day.
Now That's Dedication
Just for the record, if
I end up needing an
emergency appendectomy, I'll probably go offline for at least a day or two.
July 02, 2003
Ann Coulter - "Michael Moore of the Right?"
Andrew Sullivan links to
this article by Brendan Nyhan on Ann Coulter. Nyhan utterly misses the point of Coulter's book, and focuses primarily on an irrelevant detail: the strict legal definition of "treason." Sully argues that Coulter's tendency toward hyperbole "damages conservatism as much as Michael Moore damages liberalism."
Continue reading "Ann Coulter - "Michael Moore of the Right?""
I haven't read Treason yet, though I have ordered it on Amazon. Thus, I'll reserve judgment on the book itself for now. I will say, however, that the overall comparison between Coulter and Moore would appear to be inapt. Right or wrong, is obviously a very bright woman, and one who painstakingly documents her every allegation. The same cannot be said of Moore, who routinely fudges his data, who frankly does not appear to be all that bright (no, he isn't a "very bright woman," either, ba-dump-bam). Sure he won on Oscar, but only by passing off his propaganda piece as a "documentary," thereby eliminating all of his real competition. Had the Academy adhered to its own rules, Bowling for Columbine could only have been considered as a work of fiction, which is where all the real competition is. Bowling for Columbine as Best Picture? Moore as Best Actor? Heston as Best Supporting Actor? I don't think so.
Let's assume, though, for argument's sake, that Ann Coulter really is the right's answer to Michael Moore. Should we care? Contrary to Sully's statement, I am not convinced that Michael Moore has done any real damage to liberalism. A few liberals worship they guy, but by and large, everyone else ignores him. I am not aware of a single moderate-left or even hard-left political candidate who has lost a single election, or even a single debate, over a supposed association with Michael Moore. So if we have a few Michael Moore types of our own, so what?
In fact, I’m tempted to go one better and suggest that if Ann Coulter embodies the extreme of the Republican Party, that itself is a good thing. No matter how moderate or reasonable the party may be as whole, Democrats will always paint some of us as idiots, evil extremists, or both, and imply that the rest of us are just more muted versions of whatever they are busy railing against. When Pat Buchanan was the lightning rod, the party as a whole suffered immensely. That guy scared the crap out of a lot of people, and made even the moderates in the party look like moderate versions of Pat Buchanan. Coulter, by contrast, does not scare people like that; at worst, she annoys them. As a conservative, I can certainly think of worse things to be called than "like Ann Coulter, only a less hyperbolic and less annoying."
UPDATE: Bubba Xrlq thinks I'm wrong, but I'm sticking to my guns on the Michael Moore analogy. Aside from the crudest "I don't like X, and I don't like Y, therefore X=Y" comparison, I just don't see Michael Moore and Ann Coulter having anything in common. I will grant, however, that this analogy to Maureen Dowd might be a little closer to the mark. It's still a slight exaggeration - Ann hasn't been known to "dowdify" her opponents the way Maureen does - but it's not completely off base.
UPDATE x2: If we need to label someone as the "Michael Moore of the Right," I nominate Michael Savage.
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A New Low for Team Davis
Joe Davis hasn't found the bottom yet, though it certainly isn't for a lack of trying. First we were supposed to keep him in the governor's mansion because Darrell Issa was a
terrorist (and all other challengers, presumably, chopped liver). Now he isn't just a terrorist, he's a
Nazi. I mean, he
must be a Nazi, since he went to a gun show, right? Only Nazi would attend a gun show or support that forgotten amendment lodged in there somewhere between the First and the Third. I'm sure Hitler himself would have supported the right to bear arms, if his advisors hadn't advised him that it would be much harder to murder 6 million
armed Jews than unarmed ones. Sheesh.
Rick Hasen thinks we need to revamp our recall laws. I agree. Codifying Godwin's Law would be a great start. Next time a governor facing recall brings up Hitler, no election is necessary: he loses automatically on a TKO. This will save taxpayers millions, much to the chagrin of "Taxpayers" Against the Recall.
Link via Calblog.
July 01, 2003
Another Paper Makes Up The Law
Recently,
Stefan Sharkansky and
I tag-fisked the
Seattle Post "Intelligencer" for citing a non-existent "constitutional" standard for the war power. Now, you can add
The Guardian to the list of "news" papers
that state nonexistent laws to promote their positions. Funny-money quote:
A peculiarly Californian drama will play out over the next five months while voters decide whether to get rid of the state's current governor, Gray Davis: peculiar in that Davis was only re-elected to office last November; peculiar in that the state's electorate has the legal right - it's called a 'recall' - to dump any politician who is is [sic] deemed to be guilty of an 'egregious act'. (In effect, all election results in California can be thrown out at a time of the voters' choosing.)
In fact, there is only one law that addresses the reasons for a recall. That law is Article 2, Section 14(a) of the California Constitution, which states in relevant part:
Recall of a state officer is initiated by delivering to the Secretary of State a petition alleging reason for recall. Sufficiency of reason is not reviewable.
In other words, the only requirement as to the reason is that there be one, and that it be stated on the original petition. That's it. No "violation" need be alleged, let alone an "egregious" one. Like the
P.I.'s "clear and present" fabrication, this "egregious act" standard is itself an egregious misstatement of California law. I'm not an expert on the canons of journalism, but I have to think that such a gross misstatement of the facts would have to be an "egregious act" of journalistic malpractice. Can we recall the
Guardian, too, under its own standard?
Link via Prestopundit.