The death toll from the Najaf bombing now stands at 125. Included: Arguably the best cleric ally the United States had.

Critical consensus says that Masked and Anonymous, the new movie starring Bob Dylan, is dreadful.

The soundtrack, however, is getting more mixed reviews. It's mostly an album of Dylan covers, though some sound freakishly compelling, such as "If You See Her, Say Hello" in French, a cover of "My Back Pages" in Japanese, and "Like a Rolling Stone," rapped. In Italian.

The Washington Post points out that if we actually had the constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration that our president and his party support, he could have been arrested for violating it.

Sign I saw in an office at my health club this morning:

"Any sexual harassment in this office will not be reported. It will, however, be graded."

A while back, co-Agitator Bryan Westhoff uploaded this post, about a weird spam email he got from a would-be time traveler seeking assistance.

Turns out, there's an interesting and sadly disturbing story behind the message.

American foreign policy.

Don't tell the kids.

Rolling Stone ranks the 100 greatest guitarists.

No time for a real critique. But I'd put Mark Knopfler higher. And where's Rich Robinson? Yngwie Malsteem?

Let me add to the blogosphere kudos.

NationMaster is the coolest addition to the Internet in a long, long time.

This blogging thing is fun, I'm so giddy I hardly know where to begin. Most amusing is that 90% of the knocks on my death tax post can be easily dismissed simply by pointing out things I actually said.

I understand the original post is long. And I know it can be tough to continue reading when you are blinded by tears of rage, but had a few "libertarians" taken some deep breaths and read the actual post they might have realized that what I suggest is far from a socialist plot.

Let's start with my favorites: Multiple commentators (the Toms, James Bowman, Matt, Glenn, etc...) take me to task for not wanting to do away with taxes entirely, while others (Nicholas Weininger, Michael Yuri) seem upset that my proposal will not raise enough revenue. How deliciously contradictory. The general conscientious is that my suggestion will generate the government less revenue it gets now, but that I am somehow a socialist because I have not cut the feds off entirely. I say straight-up "Government spending should be lowered and taxes overall should be cut" and "better yet, set [the income tax] at something like 3%-4% and tell Congress to live within those means." I hate to break it to these math wizards but just because one tax rate goes up, it does not mean that taxes will rise. We can raise the death tax and still cut the amount that each individual pays through out his life, at death included.

This leads me to my second point, lost on oh so many: Loopholes. Nicholas again, roger, aaron, tom again, William Utley, and Michael again all attempt to attack the system as full of loopholes, which to quote one the best I can from memory, "will need to be plugged up with litigation and legislation." These fellows miss the simple solution, the ability to easily move wealth while amongst the living is not a loophole, it is the plan's design. People should be able to move wealth all they want while they are alive. The transaction cost should be low and should not favor spending on anything over anything else. People who have earned their money should be able to spend it however they want. Garth, while genuinely upset at my arguments, brings up the consumption tax - generally a very libertarian supported tax plan. I hate to tell you this guys, but my whole thing is designed to be a consumption tax with the incentive to spend. Granted, I have no love loss for people getting money they didn't earn (whether it be from the forced charity of the government tit, or from their "luck" of having a rich loved one die) but I fully admit that what is probably going to drive this tax program is consumption.

This leads me to the first quality point made against the plan. Congratulations Michael, you take a quality shot near the end of your often misguided and sometimes idiotic "fisking." When you say:

"A sufficient level of savings is also essential to a solid economy. It provides the backing for loans and mortgages that are especially important to small businesses. It also acts as a buffer to lessen the effects of economic downturns. Increasing spending primarily by draining savings is not necessarily a good thing for the economy. Keep in mind also, that it won't just be savings, but all investments that suffer from the same disincentive. I find it hard to believe that that will be good for the economy." I must admit, it has some substance. I disagree with you, but it is an intelligent and informed viewpoint.

My thoughts on the plans effects on the economy are this: No matter how much people want to avoid giving their money over to "Bryan the tax man," they are going to keep some amount of savings just in case. Most people think the risk of losing their job or other income source is a little higher than their risk of death. Not only that, but selfishly, if I run out of money and I am still alive - that hurts me. If I die having something in savings - that only hurts the person I was going to give it to. I'm picking me over the recipient of my money any day of the week. So, savings will still be maintained, but not as much. Instead people will spend, buying things, creating more jobs, paying people higher salaries. Those getting higher salaries will, in turn, buy things to avoid saving too much, create jobs, paying people higher salaries. Not only are jobs created and salaries raised, but the people spending money get something to show for it. Everyone wins. As for the incentive in that system to invest - Investing is still where you are likely to receive your highest return. The promise of getting even richer will entice all the necessary capital out of people. And you know what, with everyone earning higher salaries, there will be more capital to go around, and there will be more markets for all the new products.

I'll take a quick diversion from the quality points for a second and mention what I believe might take the cake for the most ignorant. Congratulations James Bowman, you win in what was, at risk of an understatement, a very crowded field. When you say: "[The death tax] is immoral because it attempts to deprive an individual of his right to his property. Ayn Rand stated the following "The Virtue of Selfishness"

'The right to life is the source of all rights and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.'"

you leave me with confidence that hypocrisy is not dead (and even if it was, no tax plan of mine could take it away from you). Read your statement. Now read Rynd's quote. Now read your statement. Now back to Rynd's quote. See the problem? Probably not so I'll explain: Ayn speaks of sustaining one's life through "his own efforts." What of the inheritance rewards the heir's efforts? Ah, I know, you will argue that it is the person who earns the money who is being deprived of his efforts. How ludicrous that argument is when you consider that keeping the death tax lower necessarily means that a tax on the living is higher. Your income tax is depriving the individual of his right to his own property. You are simply taking the individual's property away from him before it gets into his hands. (I will quickly add that number 2 on the stupidest post also comes from Mr. Bowman when he says "Why wait until we die to seize our property? As soon as someone raises their head and dares to make a better life for themselves or their heirs, maybe you and the government should just swoop in and loot their property." Hey James, I hate to tell you this, that's what's going on right now buddy. Its called the income tax. For those building something, it takes it while they are living.)

This has already gone on too long, but I will answer some quick questions before I stop:

1) Why is taxing cash better than taxing capital? (Mark S.)
A) My opinion is this, capital is better because capital creates jobs. Capital pays salaries. Granted, cash is the bank does that to some small extent, but not like capital. That is the sole reason I have for allowing business to skate through the system untouched while an equal amount of money would be "confiscated" by the government.

2) Why do you call it a death tax when you are in favor of it? (Bones)
A) Bones was actually much harsher on me for my word choice but I'll let him slide because I like his name. Dude, its just words. It doesn't matter what I call it, I could call it the Mr. T tax plan (no disrespect to Mr. T). It doesn't change what is actually going on. If people get it, they'll be down no matter what I call it. If they don't get it, they are going to be pissed and say I am "hiding behind tricky, slick language." I would rather embrace their obvious miscatagorization of the plan and point out that taxing the dead is really not that bad a concept. Its the same reason I'll use the word "confiscated" when I talk about the government collecting its blood money. The government is no less confiscating money under my plan than it does under the income tax. I'm not arguing in favor of raising tax revenue. If people want to get pissed that I'm encouraging government confiscation under the death tax, while they are allowing some sort of benign transfer under the income tax, they are only showing their ignorance. That and I think its funny.

3) Won't this lead to higher poverty levels/lower standard of living? (I'm too lazy to check who said this)
A)This person is basically supporting nannyism. "The federal government should take more of our money when we are living so that we don't spend ourselves in to the poorhouse trying to keep them from getting it when we are dead." Are we so against the federal government getting any money that will will lower our own standard of living just so it doesn't get money after we are dead? Keep in mind, this intense hatred of the very notion of the government getting anything comes after we have lived our entire lives with a reduced tax burden on the promise that the revenue we would have paid while alive, the government will simply collect when we are no longer living to spend it ourselves. Seems like you assume that the population as a whole will cut off its nose to spite the government's face. "Please government, protect us from our hatred of you."

Okay, truth be told, there are some other good points in the comment section. I am too tired tonight to address them tonight but I may come back at them sometime soon. Check back if you think you "burned me good" or better yet post it again and I will try and respond. I've been out of the office today and will be tomorrow so internet has been scarce. Still, I am always happy to show misguided libertarians where they are supporting the raping of the freedoms of the living by supporting a vehical that they can never take advantage of becuase they will be dead when it finally pays off.

"This is one of those problems that can be solved with enough money."

-- William Kristol and Robert Kagan, writing in the Weekly Standard.

Remind me again why these guys are called "conservative"?

Gene finds a very enlightening and sober interview of Holy War, Inc. author Peter Bergen, conducted by Josh Marhsall. Bergen's as close to the Islamiist action as a western white boy can comfortaby get, and was the last westerner to interview bin Laden.

Gene has aready excerpted the potent passages, but you should read the whole thing. Part one is here. Part two is here.

In response to the Fox column, someone wrote to inform me of the "House of Terror" anti-communist museum in Budapest. She mentioned in the email that Hungary's newly elected "communist" government was threatening to shut down the museum. Intrigued, I did a Google search, and found this fascinating article. It seems that there are all kinds of interests, intepretations of history, and ethnic rivalries at stake in the idea, location and symbolism of this museum:

The museum's prominent location at 60 Andrassy Street was chosen not because it sits among the elegant, fin-de-siecle mansions of Andrassy -- known to some as "the Champs-Elysees of Budapest" -- but because it was headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis between 1944 and 1945, then was taken over by the Communist secret police once Soviet troops liberated, then occupied, Hungary.

The country suffered under both Nazism and communism, "but Hungarian society has never confronted the crimes of these terror systems, or had a memorial to its victims," said Maria Schmidt, the museum's director.

Hungary's Jews, though, are deeply troubled by the museum....

Following the war, of the couple hundred thousand Jews who survived and remained in Hungary -- many others had emigrated to Palestine or to the West -- a substantial number joined the Communist Party. Historians estimate that anywhere from one-fourth to one-half of the remaining Jews -- especially young people -- flocked to the movement.

Their reasons for joining were myriad: gratitude to the Soviet communists who had liberated them from ghettos, forced labor and concentration camps; idealism fueled by pervasive communist propaganda that promised a society with no distinction between rich and poor, Christian and Jew; revenge, as it was clear that some of the Hungarian perpetrators of genocide roamed freely afterward; and opportunism and survivalism, as the communist purge of fascists from power created many new job opportunities for Jews, who were viewed as reliably anti-fascist and, thus, trustworthy.

One detail Hungarian anti-Semites conveniently overlook, however, is the fact that at its peak in the early 1950s, the Communist Party numbered some 800,000 members, which underscores the fact that legions of workers and peasants also embraced the system. By the early 1960s, the party had purged virtually all Jews from prominent positions.

What's sad (and what this article is guilty of) is that many on the left equate any comparison of the atrocities of Nazism to the atrocities of communism as anti-Semitic.

I've gotten about a half dozen emails so far accusing me of Jew-hating for merely pointing out that communism killed significantly more people than Nazism. That doesn't mean that one was more or less evil than the other. It merely means that we ought to guard against one's return as vigilantly as we guard against the other's.

The worst thing about the Holocaust wasn't that it was this anomalous blip in human history. The worst thing is that, at least in the toll it took on human life, it wasn't that particularly unique at all.

Alina sends this Justin Raimondo piece formally severing anti-war libertarian flirtation with Howard Dean. I'm not the biggest Raimondo fan, but he's far more anti-war than I, and if he's out of Dean's tent, it's a pretty safe bet I lost interest a while ago.

My interest in Dean was never serious flirtation. It was more along the lines of "sleeping with the first girl you meet at the bar to get back at the girl who just screwed you over."

But even then, even drunk on disappointment with W., even desperate for something, anything worthwhile to cast my vote for, even as the lights come on, and I pay my tab, and the bouncer announces it's last call -- even then -- Dean has proven that his policy positions are, in the end, just too damned ugly too go home with.

His opposition to the war, taken with W.'s growth of government, was all Dean had going for him. Now that he sees Iraq as just another welfare program (read the Raimondo piece), he's given libertarians no reason to support him.

Opportunity lost.

Christopher Hitchens slays the ten commandments. We'll pick up his piece at "Thou Shalt Not Covet..."

To insist that people not annex their neighbor's cattle or wife "or anything that is his" might be reasonable, even if it does place the wife in the same category as the cattle, and presumably to that extent diminishes the offense of adultery. But to demand "don't even think about it" is absurd and totalitarian, and furthermore inhibiting to the Protestant spirit of entrepreneurship and competition.

One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded ("in his own image," yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers.

It's obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time.

In line with the "libertarianism's allies: left or right?" discussions we've been having lately, Colby Cosh has a nice piece making a case for the right. His basic argument is: conservatives view their favored varieties of social engineering as exceptional-- they believe that usually people should be left alone-- whereas leftists are just fine with social engineering from the get-go, and will pursue it without qualms in any and all areas of life.

This is certainly true of many conservatives and many leftists. But there are plenty of strains of conservatism that endorse the state as a general-purpose social engineer. The High Tory conservatism of George "Statecraft as Soulcraft" Will is one example. Theocratic conservatism of the Christian Coalition variety is another (though not all Christian social conservatives are theocrats; some, like Joe Sobran, are principled anti-statists). And there's the neoconservatism of many converts from Communism; the "temporary" need for big government to fight the latest round in the never-ending Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace reeks to me of the "temporary dictatorship of the proletariat".

Then, too, there are leftist traditions that start from a general principle that people should be left alone and go off the rails only when discussing "exploitation of the workers" and the like. The left-anarchism of Emma Goldman and Paul Goodman comes to mind. Among modern left-wing pundits, I would say that Lewis Lapham and Alexander Cockburn fit this mold.

It is possible to frame the case for individual liberty either as a defense of ancient tradition or as a revolutionary struggle on behalf of the oppressed. The American Revolution saw plenty of both-- compare the Declaration of Independence to Paine's "The Rights of Man". Each has significant dangers. But I don't see that one is necessarily more inclined than the other to the kind of puritanical control-freakism that Cosh's piece so rightly denounces.

Someone responded to the Fox column today with this link, an interesting web compendium of the known remaining statutes of Lenin in the world, which once adorned nearly every hamlet, village, town and city in the Soviet Block. Among the more interesting finds:

1) There's a park in Grutas, Lithuania that is home to nothing but Lenin statues and communist paraphernalia. After the fall of the Soviet empire, many of the towns in Lithuania brought the statues of Lenin that were thrust upon them to this park, where they're now permanently on display.

2) This one, which adorns the entrance to a bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

3) A rare "fat" sculpture of Vlad.

4) Dallas, Texas. Placed strategically in front of a billboard and burger stand. The inscripton on the plaque reads: "America Won."

5) Vilnius, Latvia. Two statues, both now headless.

6) Freedom Park, Arlington, Virginia. Headless. Imported from St. Petersburg.

7) Seattle, Washington. This one in Seattle's Fremont Park apparently triggered some controversy. I'm not sure I agree with the statue's detractors. If it is indeed the only authentic, Soviet-issued statue of him in the U.S., it certainly has some historical value. It's interesting, if nothing else. And if put in the proper context, it needn't be a tribute.

When Radley introduced me to the blog, he mentioned that I have a few opinions that, for him, call into question my libertarian leanings. The fact that I am pro-death tax was foremost on his list, but I can explain.

I've found that when I tell people that I'm pro-death tax, their first reaction is generally one of shock and outrage. "Its double taxation." "People should be able to do what they want with their money." "Leaving money to your kids is why people work." While these statements sound persuasive, and admittedly have varying levels of truth to them, they still do nothing to address my main argument in favor of the estate tax: lower income taxes.

My general position is this: When you raise the death-tax you can lower the income tax on the working and the living. Granted, there are a number of modifications I would make to the current system, some changes in other tax rates and some exceptions as to what is part of the "taxable estate" but overall I think it would be a better system if we took as much as we could from the deceased.

Let me state for the record, I'm a selfish person. It really burns me up when I get my bimonthly pay stub and see that the government has taken a huge chunk out of the money that I have earned from long nights at the office and years of hard work and sacrifice. Government spending should be lowered and taxes overall should be cut, agreed, but even I will admit that the federal government does need a certain amount of revenue to fund the most basic functions. The common defense must be provided for and that money has to come from somewhere. Enter the death tax.

Before I begin addressing the wide variety of beneficial reasons for a larger death-tax, I should probably outline what exactly it is that I am talking about when I say "death-tax." As I see it, the tax system would be adjusted as follows:

1) Lower the income tax rate as low as possible. Unfortunately I'm not an economist, so I'm not sure how low a rate we could get. (To be honest though, I'm not sure any economist would know either.) Still, the goal of this whole modification to our tax code is to get more money into the pockets of those of us who are out there earning it everyday. We can play around with varying rates to see what revenues look like, or better yet, set it at something like 3%-4% and tell Congress to live within those means. Of course cutting income taxes that low immediately would probably lead to some fairly catastrophic results, so revenue would have to be made up somewhere;

2) Raise the estate tax as high as possible. I have no problem with this being at 100% with some notable exception. Family farms and small businesses should be excluded entirely. As would bequests to spouses and minor children. Taxes could be deferred or amortized on the family home for a certain number of years. There may even be room for a fixed exemption amount for family heirlooms and the like. The goal here is not to force the heirs to sell items with personal significance simply to pay taxes;

3) Combine the sales tax and gift tax into one "Transaction Tax" and lower that rate. There is no reason that $500,000 spent on a house is any different than $500,000 spent on a boat. And there is no reason that $500,000 given to your children is any different than $500,000 spent on a house. In every case, you are the one who has earned the $500,000 and you are the one who knows what use of that $500,000 will bring you the most happiness. The government should not be trying to influence you by taxing any of these decisions at different rates.

Now that we have settled what it is that we are talking about, the question then becomes, why? Why change the tax system so much? Let me reiterate: I'm selfish. I'm selfish and it really burns me up when the government takes more of my money, money that I have worked hard for, instead of taking money from someone who has done nothing for it. Contrary to its name, the death tax is not a tax on dying, nor is it a tax on the person who has just died. Kick a dead person sometime. They don't feel it. They don't even know that you kicked them. They also don't know that you taxed their estate.

Instead, the "death tax" is a tax on those who would otherwise be the beneficiary of a death. Its a tax on those who are getting money because someone died. While I feel sorry for their loss, from a tax perspective I'm more inclined to want to help those working and producing than those benefiting from death. People might say I'm punishing those who die suddenly, I would say I am eliminating the punishment on those who are working. There are a lot more people who are working than those who die suddenly.

While I'm sure there will be cries from some that raising the death tax eliminates choice from the wage earner, nothing could be further from the truth. Raising the death tax is the way we give more choice to the wage earner. By raising the death tax we can give the those working more of their income from the beginning. With income in hand, the choice of where to spend it is entirely that individual's. If he wants to give it to his adult son, he can. He just can't wait until he dies to do so. Why should we value the choice of the dead at the expense of the choices of the living? (Furthermore, I would argue that leaving something to someone after you die is hardly a choice at all. Choice involves some sort of sacrifice. It involves choosing something you want over something else you want. Once you're dead and can't spend the money yourself, giving it to someone you love is pretty much a no-brainer.)

Another complaint voiced by many is that of "double taxation." This argument, however, is misguided for 2 reasons. First, there are multiple examples of double taxation in our system. Almost all of us pay income tax and sales tax. Corporations are taxed on their earnings and investors are taxed again when they receive dividends. While these other examples don't make double taxation right or just, they do show that it is not an unprecedented concept and it calls into question why we should get up in arms over this example of double taxation while allowing others to stand. If we are going to fight double taxation, lets go after the corporate tax first. Those corporations and their investors are employing people; dead people aren't.

The second knock on the "double taxation" argument is fairly simple: if you're against double taxation, let's lessen it on the front end. If we eliminate the income tax, no more double taxation when we take it from the dead. Heck, even if we can't eliminate it, we can substantially reduce it, thereby lessening the amount of double taxes we are forced to pay.

One final argument against the death-tax is the claim the amassing a fortune for their children is the reason people work. I would not only disagree, but would also add - so what. I don't think giving money to their children is the reason people work. People work so they can buy food, clothing and shelter. Once they have children, yes they want their children to have good lives, but if questioned I think most parents would want their children to have high paying jobs rather than live an extravagant lifestyle on the sweat of the parents. If people want to give a good life to their children, they can afford to send their children to all the right schools. Most parents are concerned with giving their children the tools to succeed, not an outright fortune.

But even if most people do work with the purpose of leaving a fortune to others, I repeat: so what. Take that away and they might retire earlier. Not only do you give them more of their life to enjoy, but you create job openings for younger workers. You create an even greater opportunity for mobility that rewards hard work and good decisions. These are the principles America was founded on.

In closing, I state that one of the added benefits to this system would be the increased consumer spending that helps drive our economy. The decreased incentive to save large fortunes would lead to more spending, which in turn creates more jobs, raises salaries and improves the standard of living for everyone. Truth be told, I imagine most of the revenue under this plan would be generated by the transaction tax and increased spending. Still, increasing the death tax provides the incentive for that spending which makes the system possible.

So there's the plan. Have at it you jackals.

My new Fox column is up.

It's on why we need a privately funded memorial museum to communism similar to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

On a side note, is anyone else bothered by those (search) tags thrown into the text? Maybe it's just becuase I don't like how they break up my own copy. But I'm really not sure why Fox does it.

UPDATE: Pshaw. Two corrections already. Hitler and Nazism killed just under 21 million in his twelve years, not 31 million. And that communism 100 million dead equals almost five times the Nazism number, not nine times. The first mistake was a typo. The second resulted from my looking at a different number when I made the computation. Again with the math.

I sent Fox the corrections. Hopefully they'll make them before the next dozen or so emails I'll get pointing out the errors.

OK, all of you in Agityland, get your creative juices stirring.

I've asked you this once before, but I'm told that this time they're serious.

FoxNews.com has agreed to give my own brand for my column, complete with a graphic and my name. This is good news for two reasons:

1) It will really help me to build a regular readership,

and,

2) I'm vain.

But I need a title. Last time we did this (and for whatever reason, Fox balked the last time around), "Taking Liberties" seemed to have won out. But my editor isn't keen on it, and a variation on the phrase has been reserved for another columnist they have coming aboard.

So I'm asking you for suggestions. Agitator-themed titles might work, as would anything related to freedom, liberty, etc.

Nothing too esoteric or insider, though. My feelings thus far:

"The Agitator" : May as well take the brand thing all the way.

"Radley Balko" : Or I coud just stick with my name. Maybe a grahpic with something liberty-themed.

"Contramundum" : The title of this blog (whereas "The Agitator" I guess is the title of the site). It was the name of the first column I ever wrote, for a little web rag called JournalX. It's bastardized Latin for "against the world." Drawback: thousands of emails asking what "contramundum" means.

That's all I've got at the moment.

In a move that's both bizarre and hard for me to formulate an opinion about, France is considering cancelling a national holiday, perhaps Christmas, to generate more tax revenue to fund health care for its elderly. The idea's being floated as a response to the thousands who died in this month's heat wave.

On the one hand, I suppose one less government-mandated holiday can be seen as a step in the right direction. On the other, the whole endeavor is designed to generate more revenue for a socialized system of medicine, the very nature of which is largely responsible for a good chunk of those heat wave deaths to begin with.

Is this a net gain or a net loss for French freedom? I have no answer.

But here's the money quote:

Jean-Claude Mailly, a leader of the Workers' Force trade union, said a wealthy country like France should not have to make workers labor longer to finance health care. The union, he warned, would not take kindly to the abolition of the May 1 Labor Day holiday.

"It's enforced charity, totally unacceptable," he said in an interview.

Does irony get any tastier?

To the mailbag. Click the "more" to read your questions, and my answers.

First up:

I hope you take this as constructive criticism, since as I've told you before, your blog is fast becoming my favorite.

So here goes: your spelling is AWFUL. It's so distracting. I know you're a deep thinker, but every time I run into a spelling error, which is often, I just think: why couldn't he have checked this? It's such a credibility crusher. Like recently you mention a "connundrum" you had and discuss zillionaire "Warren Buffet". Cringe, brother. Why not use a spell-check if you're not sure? Your blog is really moving into the top tier, and I think this extra bit of professionalism would help put it there.

I wouldn't write if I didn't care!

When I was in grade/high school, I was in all of those geeky math league competitions, and usually did very well, mainly because the questions were often theoretical, and didn't require any actual computation. But my grades in math? Lousy. Again, no eye for detail. I'd forget to carry the two. Or divide instead of multiply. Whatever.

Anyway, my point is that I apologize for the typos, misspellings and other absent-minded errors on this site. Until I can afford my own personal editor, they'll continue to happen from time to time. As for the errors in logic, reason and argument? Those are fully intended.

The two other reasons for the particularly egregious errors of late are that I've been doing lots of posting from home, and my laptop doesn't have Word or Outlook, so I don't have a spellcheck feature. That will change soon.

The third reason is that I've been busy with other projects lately, so proofing posts a third or fourth time doesn't survive a quick cost-benefit analysis of my time.

Besides, occasionally, an error I make might give you an insightful window to my psyche, like when I'm posting about pregnancy tests for high school girls, and I type "pubic" instead of "public."

OK, enough with rationalizing my absent-mindedness. Next email:

Hey Radley. I'm a gay rights lawyer in Dallas (which I guess makes more sense than being a gay rights lawyer in San Francisco -- they really need me down here) -- and I'm a huge fan.

But, being a jerk, I'm writing you with a complaint rather than a compliment. In today's missive you state:

"The wealthy shoulder more of the tax burden, and therefore pay for more of the highway to begin with."

Oh, horse hockey. Gas taxes are totally regressive. Twenty cents per gallon is the same whether you are rich or poor, and there is no reason to think that the rich burn more gas (unless they own Hummers). The rich don't pay a higher share of gas taxes and, as a percentage of income, the rich pay far, far, far, far, far less for roads than the poor do.

And, b/t/w -- my problem with HOT lanes is the same as my problem with HOV lanes. It's a great idea so long as they build NEW lanes -- but you know government -- once they realize that establishing HOT lanes is a revenue-generator, they'll start converting old lanes to HOT lanes.

Anyway, sorry to gripe. Love the blog.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I have my doubts that the federal gasoline tax -- or even state gasoline taxes -- go directly to the maintenance of highways. My guess is that revenue from gas taxes gets lumped into a general fund, from which highway funds are later extracted. But I could be wrong.

You're right that the driving poor pay a far greater percentage of their income on gasoline than do the driving rich. But I'd still guess that the rich pay for more of the highways on whole. The rich also tend to drive bigger, faster, and, therefore, less fuel-efficient cars than the poor. So they probably buy more gas.

Again, all pure speculation.

Next, we go back to DNC lists:

I figured I'd put this in e-mail to avoid setting off a probably unproductive feeding frenzy. Feel free to ignore it, of course. :)

I'm curious whether you find similar constitutional and/or ethical issues with individual states' do-not-call lists, and if you look at them differently, where the boundaries in judgment lie. I have a strong feeling that there are issues on all sides of that question that I'm unaware of, and would be very interested in reading a follow-up post that pointed at some of them.

In any event, thanks for the consideration, and thanks for a consistently engaging and routinely enjoyable weblog.

Again, I'll plead a touch of ignorance here. I'm basing my opinion on one semester of Civ Pro. If any lawyers out there want to correct me, please do.

And I'd still prefer private remedies to state remedies. But if we must have government-enforced DNC lists, it's best if they're done at the state level.

Finally:

I've been a reader of your blog for damn near a year now. I have found myself agreeing with you on many points, but there's one point we disagree upon, and I was hoping you could help me understand why.

You and I distrust (or is it mistrust? who knows) the government-- we hate and fear the idea of power being centralized, and the obvious ramifications there of. I really don't understand how anyone could disagree with this position.

But I take it a step further than you. I also mistrust the centralization of power in the hands of corporations.

The difference here that pops into my mind is that the government has the power of enforcement, while corporations don't. But is that really true? Take the credit reporting agencies, for example. If the people running any one of
the credit agencies decide they don't like you, for whatever reason, they can make it impossible for you to do business. Period. No recourse. It's not like we can count on the free market to fix it either-- what leverage do we, the people, have? The fact is, the companies in that space don't compete, they cooperate, making it impossible for any new businesses enter.

That's just one example, and may be a poor one for reasons I don't know, but in my mind, the principle of power centralization being generally bad stands in both the public and private sectors. At least, in theory, we can de-elect our government.

What are your thoughts on this? I have a number of other concerns relating to this, but I'm not sure how much time you're willing to invest in an email debate.

Thanks.

ps-- Thanks also for the blog. glad there are still people thinking out there.

I'm not all that familiar with what's going on with the credit agencies, but I'd guess that it's a field that's heavily regulated and, therefore, heavily distorted by state involvement. If a credit bureau decides it doesn't like you and purposely distorts your credit record, then it's guilty of fraud, and you have a cause of action, if not a criminal complaint.

But to address your general point, no, I don't trust corporations, particularly really big ones. They're run by human beings, just as government is, and I can't see how private sector power wouldn't be subject to the same failings and corruptive influences public sector power is.

The difference is that if government doesn't interfere, the private sector is self-correcting. Yes, people who make bad decisions (like investing all of their 401(k)s in one company) might have to take some licks. But punishing poor decisions is one way markets encourage others to make better decisions.

The public sector, however, is not self-correcting. There's no alternate EPA or DOJ or DOE we can turn to when the ones we're using now fail us. Yes, we can vote the bums out next election. But taking corrective action every two or four years just doesn't have the same effect as taking your money to a rival business, particularly in a two-party system where there's not much difference between the parties.

Isiah's gone!

And the easy money says Rick Carlisle will be named head coach within a week.

I am so looking forward to November. Also, since I'm sport-blogging for the first time in months, look for TheAgitator.com's annual (for the last two years, anyway) NFL predictions, coming soon. I guarantee only that most of them will be wrong.

That said, my Colts looked pretty good Monday night, too.

There's reason for optimism in Hoosierland.

You're about to "contribute" billions of dollars to help put Iraq back together again, according to US occupation coordinator L. Paul Bremer. The American and Iraqi governments thank you for your contribution, and in anticipation of next year's contribution, they want you to know that your money has already been well spent.

We already know that the Medicare drug benefit is bad news for those of us who will end up paying for it. The Heritage Foundation has a list of reasons why it’s a bum deal even for those who are supposed to benefit from the benefit. Among the reasons:

Millions of seniors will lose their existing employer-provided drug coverage

Millions of seniors have foregone thousands of dollars in compensation for employer-provided drug coverage that may never materialize.

Millions of seniors will lose tens of thousands of dollars worth of superior private drug coverage in the future.

The conclusion:

Policymakers should focus on providing prescription drug coverage to the minority of Medicare beneficiaries who really need it rather than on creating perverse incentives for employers to drop the health benefits promised to current and future retirees.

It's a common theme in libertarianism, and it's frustrating as hell. When you favor limited government, it's always hard to argue that not only is more government involvement not the answer, it's the cause of the problem. Inevitably, the forces we're arguing with have spun themselves into a whirlpool of tunnel-vision and small thinking: They spot a problem. They bring in government to address the problem. The problem gets worse because of government involvement. Seeing the problem getting worse, they bring in more government to address the worsening of the problem. Which of course only makes the problem worse.

You see how it works.

So domestically, when welfare outlays intended to alleviate poverty began to exacerbate it, the left's first response was, "More people are poor, so we're obviously not spending enough." Same with the public schools. "They're failing. Obviously we need to spend more on them. Smaller class sizes. More dollars per pupil." Same with the drug war, which comes from both the left and the right. "We're losing the drug war. We need more cops, more money, more pressure on Colombia."

Well, no.

The solution to all of those problems is less spending, not more. What we need to do is top giving poor, single women perverse incentives with the welfare check. What we need to do is stop rewarding public school officials who fail with more funding, and start holding them accountable through competition. What we need to do is put an end to the black market we've created that makes the drug trade so damned lucrative in the first place.

This is all a long introduction to this post from the InstaMan, which excerpts the following quote from David Warren:

The question on my mind is thus, will the Americans funk out? And the only thing I can say for sure, is that if they do, it will be an unparalleled disaster. For 9/11 itself was the payback for the last U.S. funk-out from its responsibilities as a superpower.
I fear, friends, that the pro-war right, and increasingly the anti-war left ,have now prescribed our problem as the solution to our problems.

September 11 wasn't "payback" for our failure to be adequately imperialist. September 11 happened because Osama bin Laden wasn't happy with our presence in Saudi Arabia in and after Gulf War I. In other words, if you're going to use the word "payback" (and funny how when anti-war folks use the word, we're accused of intimating that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself), it was payback for our imperialism, not for a foreign policy too "humble."

U.S. foreign policy is about to spin into that cycle I described above, the whirlpool we've become so familiar with on the domestic front. It is our very presence in places we don't belong that fosters international resentment of us. People simply don't like to look out their windows and see foreigners marching across their streets with guns and uniforms and authority.

And so our continuing occupation of Iraq, now estimated by pro-war advocates in terms of years instead of months, will continue to foster resentment and attacks against Americans. The sad thing is, every attack against Americans only reinforces pro-war advocates' fortitude that we need to stay in Iraq.

So our presence triggers attacks. But the attacks only reinforce our presence.

A guy like Sen. John McCain looks at the attacks in Iraq, sees the jihadists streaming across the borders from Iran, Syria, and Jordan, and concludes not that we've taken on a fruitless, thankless, untenable obligation, but that we haven't embraced it enough, and therefore calls for more troops, more money, and more commitment. Which of course will only spur more jihadists.

And when bin Laden, or the next bin Laden, manages to recruit 19 new suicide martyrs with propaganda about how we've invaded and occupied an Arab country, and the next 9/11 happens, we'll likely respond, of course, by occupying another Arab country.

Our solution to Islamic terrorism has always been what inspires Islamic terrorism to begin with. As we continue to apply the solution, expect the see nothing but more of the problem.

Here's hoping some politician steps forward with some perspective before the consequences of both solution and problem grow calamitous.

But given the right's obsessive militarism and imperialism, and the left's obsessive do-goodism and characterization of post-war Iraq as a giant experiment in social planning, and the good big government can do, it doesn't look like anyone who can make a difference will be stepping forward for a long, long time.

ADDENDUM: Some of you criticized my post critical of U.S plans to pump Iraqi oil into Israel as appeasement. "Why should we change our policies to please people who want to kill us," you asked.

We shouldn't. But we shouldn't deliberately make policy to antagonize them, either. When you've just invaded and conquered an Arab country -- over the universal objections of the rest of the Arab world -- then immediately make plans to pump said Arab country's oil to Israel, that strikes me as deliberately and needlessly antagonistic.

We know these people have no qualms about killing us, about killing thousands of us, and about exploiting the very openness and freedom that makes us different from them to do it. We also know that the Arab street believes the U.S. to be a puppet of Israel, and that they buy into old lies about Jews, wealth and power.

So why lend credence to those lies by taking the first oil fields we've got flowing in Iraq, and pumping them into Israel?

Why deliberately provoke the people who want to kill us?

That's not appeasement. It's common sense.

This Hit and Run item reports on the political resurrection of Bob Torricelli. Dammit, where is the virtual oak stake we need to make these creatures go away?

The story immediately brought to my mind a stanza from Kipling's great poem "Mesopotamia":

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

James Antle has written another thoughtful piece on the conservative/libertarian split.

There's much, much more on this in the works.

The apparent "Success" of the FTC's national "do-not-call" registry had led some to speculate that e-mail spam may be next. Regular readers of The Agitator are already aware of many of the arguments against the do-not-call registry, and it's logical to conclude that many of the same arguments could easily be applied to spam.

Congressional lawmakers will consider several bills intended to curb spam when they reconvene next month, but the FTC is now balking at the idea of a "do-not-spam" list. Regulators insist that it would be ineffective.

“It is not apparent, however, that any regulatory solution exists for spam. Spam is one of the most daunting consumer protection problems that the Commission has ever faced,” Muris said. “Parts of these proposals can help, but no one should expect any new law to make a substantial difference by itself.”

The state of Maryland is again considering HOT lanes -- luxury traffic lanes where, for a fee, you can buy yourself a quicker commute, with less traffic.

As happened when the subject came up last year, the left has gone ballistic, insisting that the wealthy should have to sit in traffic just like all the common folk do. How wonderfully egalitarian of them.

The argument is just plain silly. The wealthy shoulder more of the tax burden, and therefore pay for more of the highway to begin with. Second, so what? There are lots of things the wealthy get to do that the less wealthy don't. That's part of being wealthy.

Furthermore, one line of argument says that if rich folks pay up and move from the proletariat to the aristocratic lanes, the regular lanes will become less congested, which means the common folk end up with a quicker commute at no cost at all. So where's the injustice? The rich people pay up, but everyone gets a quicker ride.

The alternate theory says, "if you build it, they will drive." That is, there will always be a set amount of congestion, no matter how many roads you build, or how many lanes you open. As soon as traffic eases up, carpoolers will take the opportunity to drive solo, or more peope will jump off of public transportation -- and that will continue until traffic's pretty much just as bad as it was before.

My own intution is that HOT lanes aren't a terrible idea, but I'd still rather see all the roads opened up to everyone. We all pay for them, don't we? If gridlock gets bad enough, we'll start finding other ways to get to work. We'll carpool. Or we'll take the subway. Or we'll telecommute.

Me, I'll always drive to work, no matter the commute time. It's cathartic for me. I sip my coffee. I listen to morning mood music. It's when I turn my brain on.

Whatever the case, it's time to nix the grand HOV lane scheme. They just don't work.

More reasons why globalization and the Americanization of other cultures (if such thing even exists) isn't such a bad thing:

The Arab world is going ga-ga over an "American Idol" imitator. In the final, fully half the country of Jordan cast votes for the Jordanian finalist. When the Lebanese finalist was voted it off, the audience broke into riots, and the two female co-finalists fainted.

A total of 4.8 million votes were cast, most all of them from countries that don't hold elections.

And while it appears the show sparked some ugly fits of nationalism, I think it's a healthy thing that a TV show -- partiucularly one that features pop performances -- can trigger such fervor in an area of the world allegedly averse to pop culture.

The more pressing question: When can we expect the Fox lawsuit?

Wow. The talking points for this report come fast and furious:

U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located.

Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.

Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in tomorrow's new weekly edition.

1) We knew Saddam had WMDs. But we knew where they were. We knew we could largely contain them within Iraq. And we knew that Saddam was largely deterrable (we deterred him from using them in Gulf War I, and he didn't use them in the ten years hence).

2) We invade Iraq. But before we get there, Saddam moves all the weapons to Lebanon, where they're now heavily guarded by a mishmash of terrorist groups, Iraqi loyalists and Syrians who a) are more aggressively anti-American than Saddam was, b) are not containable, and c) are not deterrable.

Tell me, which scenario is more beneficial to the safety and security of the United States?

But that's not even the best part of the article. That comes here:

U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebaon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time.

So we know that the Arab world hates Israel. And we know that much of the terrorism directed against the United States is due to our support for Israel. We can debate whether or not the U.S. should be supporting Israel, and to what extent.

But if the purpose of our invasion of Iraq was to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States, can anyone explain to me how conquering an Arab country, seizing its oil fields, then pumping that formerly Arab-owned oil to Israel will do anything but give propoganda bullet points to every Islamic terrorist group the world over?

I'll throw in a caveat, here. Ha'aretz is so far the only news outlet on this story. So take it for what it's worth.

But if it's true, it's abominable. I can't think of any worse way to exacerbate Arab animosity toward the United States, or to give credence to every lunatic Arab conspiracy theory about how the Jews run the world. The U.S. invades Iraq, takes its oil, then gives it to Israel?

The story's been out for almost a day now, with no rebuttal yet from the Pentagon.

In college I wanted to be in a band. Problem was, I didn't really know how to play any instruments. I did own a bass though. Near the end of my freshman year I found someone who was willing to be in a band with me but I was going home for summer and he was staying in Kirksville. Not willing to let the dream die, I got the idea that we could have a mail order band. I would lay down bass tracks on a tape at home in St. Louis and send them to my buddy in Kirksville. He could then take that bass track and write the rest of the song around it. As long as we did this over summer, we would have the beginnings to a number of songs by the time I got back to school the next year. I think I recorded 1/2 of a bass track. It was never sent.

The band the Postal Service had the same idea with slightly more follow through and lots more talent. Give Up is the album I have been giving to everyone and their brother for the last 6 months. Consider this me giving it to you. Its full of great beats, catchy melodies and thoughtful lyrics. While not I'm admittedly not as familiar with Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Gibbard's primary band, I would disagree with All Music's assessment and say that the songs on this album are at least as good as anything I've heard by that band. Check it out now and I will almost guarantee that you'll hear these songs in various car commercials in less than a year.

I hold the opinion that electronic books will not replace "real" books until they can be read like a "real" book. Looks like HP is getting very close.

For those of you like me that typically have yourself wrapped around four or five books at once, there's great potential here. A device that reads like a book, yet can store many at once has great possibilities.

If anyone at HP is reading this, there are a couple of features that would guarantee this product's success (by which I mean that I would buy one). Internet capabilities so that authors can hyperlink references, and a built in dictionary that allows you to instantly get the definition of any word on the page. The success of the e-book will depend on allowing people to use books rather than just read them.

A couple of projects kept me out of the loop over the weekend, so you can imagine my reaction when I stopped for gas this morning. I'm glad I recently abandoned my gas-guzzling SUV in favor of a Focus, a decision made following the surge in fuel prices awhile back. I'm also glad I leave the city regularly, as I can avoid the Chicago city tax on gas.

Hang onto your peanuts though Jimmy, I only see this as evidence that markets do actually work to utilize resources most efficiently. Perhaps high (market determined) gas prices will encourage more people to conserve. This would be a great solution to the problem in the Northeast too, but we can address that later.

However, I'll admit that fluctuations like this really put one's libertarian ideals to the test... kind of like telemarketers, eh Radley?

Dave Barry has a pretty funny take this week on the recall effort. He rips on Florida, Cali, Gray, Arianna, and Ahnuld.

For those of you who aren't yet bored to do death with the subject, I'm taking an absolute beating in the ol' blogosphere over my position on telemarketing. Daniel Drezner responds here. And you can read the pissed off responses to the original piece by scrolling down to the "Feedback" section here (one guy attempted to post my home address and telephone number. Classy. Both are wrong, incidentally). And more from Julian here.

I do get a nice defense from Joanne McNeil here.

A few more points, then I'll shut up:

1) I'm still not sure how libertarians can justify invoking the federal government to force someone else to use their own property (those who actually own the phone lines, poles, switchboards, etc.) to deliver telephone service to you on your terms. Seems like a significant interference with freedom of contract to me. It also sounds like the libertarian right has just ascribed to a federal right (for a fee) to commercial-free telephone service, to be provided by private telephone service companies.

2) I'm still not sure why libertarians think this will actually work. Joanne points out even more loopholes in the law than I found. And we all know the track record of federal bureaucracies. Why does anyone think the FTC will run the federal list any better than the private do not call lists are run?

3) Lots of people pointed out to me that the reason I don't get telemarketing calls on my cell phone is because there's a federal regulation against it. True. Sort of. There's a federal law against using automated dialing systems to call cell phone numbers. But there's no law against your cell service provider selling your number to telemarketers. And there shouldn't be.

Why not?

Because these are terms you should negotiate into your contract for service.

What if, for example, your cell service provider (or your land service provider, for that matter) offered a plan in which you paid lower rates for phone service in exchange for allowing your number to be sold from time to time, and thus enduring a few telemarketing calls per week?

Shouldn't you and your provider be free to negotiate such a contract? Might this be a way to allow folks on tight budgets to get cell service?

I'm guessing this is why the regulation applied only to automated dialers, but from the tone of the messages I got, lots of people out there would be happy to apply the law across the board -- no telemarketing calls to cell numbers, ever.

This of course is beside the original point. But many wrote to point out that telemarketers are prohibited from calling cell phone numbers, which isn't entirely true.

One other thing: Even the regulation against automated number-dialing of cell numbers is going to get mucked up. A recent federal "portability" law now forces phone service providers -- cell phone and land line -- to allow you to keep your phone number if you switch cell service companies, or if you switch from a land line to a cell phone. In the past, telemarketers had two distinct libraries of numbers -- land line numbers, which they could call; and cell phone numbers, which they couldn't.

After the portability law, lots of numbers that were formerly land lines will soon become cell numbers, making the two regulations almost impossible to comply with simultaneously.

UPDATE: Will Baude is on my side. Robert Tagorda is not. And Tyler Cowen was kind enough to draw attention to the piece, but doesn't take an explicit position.

So tomorrow I will again enter the "induction" phase of Atkins. I've actually been off the diet for about six weeks now. By "off," I mean I've generally been eating whatever I crave. But I guess once you've done Atkins, you're never completely "off" it. I have no desire, for example, to eat pasta or rice or bread. I have been eating potatoes again (you can take the boy out of the Midwest...), and I've been indulging my sweet tooth.

But the good news is, my weight has pretty much stayed between 190 and 195 -- about 30-35 pounds lighter than when I started the diet, and almost exactly where it was when I allowed myself to eat carbs regularly again. Even when I get lazy about going to the gym, my weight basically stays unchanged. I think this is partly because I started a pretty vigorous weight program for the ten weeks I was on the diet. Muscle burns fat all day, every day, so once you've put a little extra on, you can afford a few extra calories, or a few more nights in front of the TV instead of the treadmill.

So why go back on? Well, my original target weight was 180. And now that I'm closer to that, I'm thinking it should probably be more like 170 to 175. My waist is still at 36 inches, and I'd like to be at about a 34. If, as has been the case so far, you can figure about 10 pounds equals one inch off the waist, well, even I can do that math.

Two cautions I've discovered that I'd throw out to anyone thinking of trying the diet:

1) My hair is thinning. This could be entirely genetic, though at 28, it seems a little early. I've read recently that high-protein diets can cause thinning hair, though that seems really odd to me. Isn't hair made of protein? Starvation diets I could understand. But Atkins is anything but a starvation diet. At any rate, make of that information what you will.

2) Be sure to eat your daily alotment of greens. And, if you'll pardon the "too much information," I'd also recommend either buying a fiber supplement, or some over the counter stool softeners. My colo-rectal doctor (yes, I have one -- colon cancer runs in my family) told me Atkins has sent him loads of plugged-up customers over the last couple of years.

Or you could buy one of those sugar-free ice creams they have at the grocery store. They are sugar free and entirely Atkins friendly and quite delicious. But they're usually sweetened with sorbitol or malitol, ingredients which the label says "may have a mild laxative effect."

Mild, my ass (pun fully intended). One bowl of that stuff and you'll be celebrating your own private 4th of July, alone, in the bathroom. Again, I'm sure that's far more than you wanted to know.

So it's back to steak, chicken, cheese and eggs. Back to wine and booze instead of beer.

Once I hit my target, I think I'll start training for the 2004 Marine Corps Marathon. I didn't get in to this year's (it's a lottery system), so I'm guaranteed a spot next year. I ran the thing in 2001, but my time was pretty disappointing. It's hard to do 26+ miles when you're carrying an extra 40 pounds or so. It's also not that bright. I'm still not sure how I managed to train all summer without popping a tendon.

And I had planned to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2002 unti my appendix decided to thwart my plans by, well, exploding.

So while I can say "I've run a marathon," I'd like to do at least one more, this time for time, not merely to finish.

I'll keep the three of you who are still reading this post updated on my progress.

There's an old joke about a guy who comes home and says to his wife:

"Honey, back your bags, I just won the lottery!"

"Wonderful!" she says, "Should I pack for warm or cool weather?"

"Doesn't matter to me," he says, "so long as you're out by tomorrow."

And so it goes. Many truths are revealed in jest.

So what about this story other than the improbable coincidence strikes you funny?

Contrary to Davis' cold image, he's quite "a good kisser," according to none other than Cybil Shepherd. The Hollywood actress says they had a passionate tumble on a beach in Hawaii some 36 years ago, when she was 16 and he was 24. "We were covered in sand, but we were never lovers," Shepherd told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald, who last week defended pubic school administrators who force female students to take pregnancy tests (and suggested they ought to forcibly make male students get tested for STDs), is defending the PATRIOT Act in today's Washington Post.

Glen Whitman has more insight on the predicaments rape presents for the justice system, and points to this interesting op-ed from the LA Times.

The main connundrum as I see it is this:

Even discounting silly feminist theories about what constitutes rape (it's rape when she was drunk, it's rape if she regrets the act the next morning, it's rape if you had to talk her into it, etc.), I'd wager that rape is still the most underreported crime in our society (I'm too lazy to find any study to back this up, but it seems rather intuitive, doesn't it?). This is of course because of the shame associated with being a rape victim, and the inevitable fact that defenders of the accused are going to raise questions about the accuser's character. It's also the result of the plethora of misinformation out there.

Wrong as the radical feminists are, and much as they inflate the rape statistics, there are still serious miscperceptions about rape on the other side, too.

I've had male acquaintances brag about sexual conquests that, when they revealed the circumstances to me, were clearly cases of rape. Just last year, a male acquaintance told me he had forcible anal sex with a woman with whom he wanted to break things off, but didn't want to deal with the emotional drama. So he engaged anal sex with her, against her will, at which time she ran out of the house in tears.

Maybe many of these guys fully realized they'd just commited a sex crime (the guy above clearly did). But I suspect lots of others don't. I of course told the guy above and the others that what they'd done wasn't acceptabe, and flat told more than a couple that they'd just commited rape.

But here we again find that the nuances of rape make it a crime different from all the others. If a male acquaintance told me he'd just killed someone and dumped the body in a field, or just mugged someone and taken his wallet, I'd of course have turned him in. But when he told me he'd just anally-raped his then-girlfriend, the thought of turning him in never entered my mind. Why? Because I didn't feel it was my decision to make. Reporting a rape you weren't party to not only casts a shadow over the accused, it also puts a huge burden on the alleged victim (if you're wondering, anal-rapist and his victim were dating again in a month).

When making policy, we of course want to set rules that encourage rape victims to come forward. We want to catch and punish rapists -- we want to prevent them from raping again. But the only way to encourage accusers to come forward is to tilt the scales of justice in favor of the accusers, at the expense of the excused. And poltically incorrect as it is to say, false reports of rape happen all the time. As Whitman notes, laws that allow juries to look into the past of the accused but not the accuser simply aren't acceptable, particularly when dealing with a crime where getting to justice relies so heavily on the motivations of the parties involved, and so little on physical evidence.

If you're looking for my answer to all of this, I don't have one. Just lots of questions.

MSNBC's O'Reilly-lite Joe Scarborough (whom Don Imus in a nod to Deliverance calls "The Banjo Boy") managed to put presidential wanna-be Gen. Wesley Clark on the defensive last week.

Clark was decrying Bush's preemptive strike against Iraq, expaining that first-strike wars are only justified when a nation faces an imminent threat.

"So how imminent was the threat in Kosovo?" Scarborough asked.

Clark, of course, commanded the war in Kosovo.

The general staggered a bit, then mumbled something about regional instability (bogus) and genocide (which not only isn't a reason for war, but has been thoroughly debunked, and in fact it's been shown that retribution against the Serbs after the war was far more brutal than what the Serbs were doing before the war).

If Clark's going to save the Democrats with an anti-war message, he's going to have to come up with a better answer for the Kosovo question.

Wrong as the war with Iraq was, it was far more justifiable than the bombing of Kosovo.

Thanks to "equal time" provisions, lawyers for late night television shows aren't allowing writers and hosts to use material denigrating the grid of candidates -- most notably Der Ah-Nold -- because doing so might force them to grant air time to the remaining 130+ candidates.

I've also read that local broadcasters in California aren't permitted to show Arnold's movies in the run-up to the campaign, also due to "equal time" concerns.

Evidently not content with the extent to which the FEC tells broadcasters how to run their businesses, the good Sen. John McCain also wants to mandate that broadcasters grant significant time to "candidate-centered" or "issue-centered" programming, and that in the days leading up to an election, he wants to force broadcasters to sell ads to politicians at the lowest rates they sell to any other advertiser.

In effect, it's an effort to make sure that the John McCains of the world get on TV more often, and that when they're forced to pay to get on TV, they're given the cheapest rates in town.

The funny thing is, McCain and his partner in censorship -- Sen. Russ Feingold -- had to find a new third co-sponsor for this bill to clean up politics after the original third author, Sen. Robert Toricelli, resigned in disgrace.

Need some excitement in your life? Tired of dating "Mr. Nice Guy" or "the Good Girl?" Maybe its time you started looking in a different place. Jail.

That's right, at Write A Prisoner.com you can look for your soulmate behind bars. You'll always know where they are and, my guess is, your competition will be limited.

Sorry guys, Susan Smith is no longer accepting letters. But fear not, you can still write to Melissa aka Brown Sugar or Brandy, who is willing to relocate.

Most unintentionally funny sentence in Melissa's profile "I have a very high self-esteem, I know what I want in life and how to go about getting it!" While I have no doubt Melissa knows what she wants in life, I would dispute that she knows "how to go about getting it!" In case you have forgotten Brown Sugar, you are in jail.

My prediction:

Chief Justice Roy Moore will retire soon, and then establish himself as a fixture on the conservative lecture circuit, garnering high-five-figures honoraria. He'll probably write a bestseller for Regnery, get a punditry gig with Fox (unless MSNBC give him his own show first), and generally become a darling of the Paul Weyrich crowd.

If he plays his cards right, this alleged bold stand that jeopardized his judicial career will make Chief Justice Moore a rich man, and bring him far more fame and fortune than he could possibly have attained wasting his retirement years lingering on the bench in Montgomery, Alabama.

Unlike the present, however, history will be quite a bit harsher on him.

Skip Oliva writes:

I'm not entirely surprised that your attack on the Do Not Call list has produced a backlash even among libertarians. It's not just this issue that produces a blind spot among normally intelligent people, but the agency maintaining the list as well, the Federal Trade Commission.

I study the FTC for a living, so I know where they bury all the bodies, but nobody in the media, even the libertarian outlets, seem to pay attention. Under the Bush administration, the FTC has actually become more adamant in opposing free trade and individual rights, yet whatever press coverage the agency receives is uniformly positive, especially since the Do Not Call list came around.

Here's one example of how the FTC operates: Last year they sued a small California software company to undo a merger that they had completed *three years* earlier. The FTC said the company unfairly monopolized the market for a particular software product--specifically a software product invented by the company! What makes this case noteworthy is that three of the company's competitors opposed the case, saying the market worked fine without FTC intervention. The FTC however is composed of antitrust lawyers, and one can't be an antitrust lawyer unless they know how to govern every sector of the U.S. economy. Needless to say, the pleas fell on deaf ears.

And I have plenty more horror stories where that came from...

Turns out that the rabid leftists who decry globalization's effects on the poor forgot to, well, actually talk to the poor:

Developing nations also had a more positive view of the institutions of globalization. In Sub-Saharan Africa 75% of households thought that multinational corporations had a positive influence on their country, compared to only 54% in rich countries. Views of the effects of the WTO, World Bank, and IMF on their country were nearly as positive in Africa (72%). On the other hand, only 28% of respondents in Africa thought that anti-globalization protestors had a positive effect on their country. Protesters were viewed more positively in the U.S. and West Europe (35%).

An Israeli literary/science team claims to have written an algorithm that can predict the gender of the author of any significant bit of copy with 80% accuracy.

A less sophisticated version of the program, found here, doesn't seem to do much better than 50%.

I put ten of my blog entries to the test and the program thought me to be female about half the time.

I like to think this shows that even while calling John Aschroft an "asshat," I still have a sensitive side.

Those of you familiar with my ghetto-blogging here, here, here, and here will know that I'm particularly concerned with what officials are calling a "spike" in violent crime in DC this summer, on acount of most of it happening in my neighborhood. So you can imagine how I felt today when I found that the police union leaders don't think this "spike" warrants the suspension of scheduling rules, which is allowed when there is a "crisis."

I agree with Chief Ramsey that a 58% rise in homicide perhaps deserves to be called an emergency. But union leaders disagree:

The police department's union leaders contend that a spate of summer violence doesn't count as a state of emergency in a post-Sept. 11 world. "In our opinion, an emergency is 9/11, the . . . [International Monetary Fund protests], a dirty bomb. Not 12 shootings in one weekend," said Sgt. Darrick Ross, vice chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police Labor Committee for D.C. police.

Not 12 shootings. Okay. What about 20? 25? When does it become a "crisis"?

Violence in Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, and Adams Morgan has been going on all summer; within the past week, the transgender community has been rocked by three unrelated shootings; and last week in one night 14 people were shot in 5 shootings in DC, one fatally. Police choppers are on nightly surveillance in Columbia Heights. There is a noticeable increase in the number of officers on patrol in central NW. How can DC police keep up the patrols that make citizens feel safer without a 24 hour workforce?

Chief Ramsey says that "violence in our city shows signs of approaching levels not seen here for several years." So why haven't I heard anyone in DC talking about this? And why does the police union refuse to recognize the problem?

Excellent, excellent piece on one of my favorite libertarain icons -- the late Julian Simon -- by Herbert Inhanber. Simon's life and work epitomize what I've come to love about libertarianism (and what many people wrongly assume it lacks) -- its optimism.

And there's a neat bit of history in the article about how Simon was the brains behind the incentives airlines give you to step off when they've overbooked a flight.

It matters not. You could put me in a room with the Pope, Albert Einstein, Jennifer Eccleston, my first grade teacher Mrs. McMahon, and all living members of the Mont Pelerin Society.

And yet, still, when the song hits that long sustained, Queen-like high note, and Jack White then releases with that really wicked riff, I will -- in front of all of them -- I will still whip out my air guitar, and I will mimick Jack White's riff, and I will do so vigorously, spiritedly, and determinedly.

I will do this every time the song is played, and I will not be ashamed.

Also, on the song "The Hardest Button to Button," when Jack White sings "Now we're a family..." and Meg kicks in with the snare and pedal-bass, I will play my "air drums" in a like manner.

They're thinking of taxing coffee in Seattle. But fret not, Emerald City residents, it's for the children, as this strictly objective, just-the-facts report from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer details:

For espresso addicts, the latte tax on the Sept. 16 ballot would mean an extra 10 cents per drink.

But for children at the Tiny Tots Development Center, it might mean keeping teachers such as Karen Carpenter.

For Karen Carpenter, a teacher at the Tiny Tots Development Center, the latte tax could make the difference between staying or leaving.
The South Seattle center, which provides day care and education to mostly low-income children, cobbles together public money to pay salaries and buy equipment and supplies for its students.

It's never enough...

"If someone can pay $3 for a latte, they can pay 10 cents for early learning and child care," said John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, which sponsored the measure.

Somebody stop me.

Wade Jones works for a company called BlockaCall. He sent along a white paper for prospective investors for a new product called InTeleScreener. From the introduction:

The InTeleScreenerTM is an innovative new product from BlockACall that uses Caller ID to automatically filter incoming calls, allowing the consumer to take control of their telephone privacy. The InTeleScreenerTM is much more than just another anti-telemarketing tool. By utilizing Caller ID, the consumer can program the InTeleScreenerTM to filter all incoming calls, both personal and telemarketer, and allow the privacy conscious consumer to create their own personal “Do Not Call” list.

As part of our ongoing effort to present the best product available on the market, it is our desire to educate the public at-large that we are not just another “want to be”, that in fact the InTeleScreenerTM represents a new paradigm in telephone control devices. This paper describes why the InTeleScreenerTM is a superior product in the fight to control your telephone privacy and deserves to be placed in a category of its own.

In conclusion, I want to end with comment that we recently received from one of our customers. We received a call from this customer who had been researching the telephone privacy market and stumbled across our website. When he called, he asked the usual questions about the InTeleScreenerTM operating modes. He seemed reluctant to actually make the purchase because he was afraid that we were just another product like the TeleZapper®, making promises that we could not keep. After we described the operation, he went ahead and placed an order for an InTeleScreenerTM. A few days later, he called us back and during this conversation, he could not tell us enough of how pleased he was with his purchase. We were struck in particular by one comment that he made. His words were “When I saw the price of the InTeleScreenerTM, I was concerned that that price was too high, especially when compared to the other products on the market, but once I was able to block that first unwanted call, I realized that this thing is priceless”. We couldn’t agree more.

I knew that most people favor the do not call list, but I'm surprised just how vehement opposition to my Tech Central piece has been. Frankly, it's pretty disappointing, particularly when coming from libertarians.

For most of us, it's pretty easy to be libertarian. It's easy for us to rail against the welfare state because few of us are on welfare. It's easy for us to rail against sex laws, or smoking bans, or the drug war because lots of us have sex, smoke, or use drugs -- or know people who do. It's easy for us to rail against agricultural subsidies because few of us work for huge ag corporations. In short, most of us benefit directly from most all of the positions we take.

I'd like to think that's because most of us both value freedom and revel in it.

What's disappointing is that along comes one issue -- just one -- in which laissez faire capitalism imposes just a bit of discomfort on us, and the first reaction from 90% of us is to ask the federal government to come get these awful telemarketers off our backs. What a burden! We're tested just a tiny bit -- with unwanted phone calls, no less -- and our first reaction is to buckle and ask Congress to come to our rescue.

How can a libertarian seriously claim he has any more a right to "privacy" from private telemarketing firms that's enforced by the federal government at taxpayer expense, then say, for example, some destitute kid with cancer has a right to taxpayer-funded chemotherapy treatments?

No, I'm not arguing for the latter. But taking the former position certainly makes it more difficult to argue the latter. I've always thought most libertarians came to the philosophy out of principle, not mere self-interest. And it's disappointing to see them all turn to the state the first time they're tested.

Addressing a few of the objections:

1) You don't have a right to telephone service any more than you have a right to any other utility. Therefore, once you agree to accept telephone service, you can't invoke your "right" to get that service on your own terms. Unless you own the utility wires, the telephone poles and the switchboards, someone else made the initial investment to put all of that infratstructure in place. When you buy a phone and plug into a system someone else owns, you subject yourself to that persons rules -- be it the "public," or a private utility company. Sorry, but you're a consumer, and you're at the whim of the corporation that's providing you the service.

In this case, you don't have "rights," because you aren't a citizen demanding accountability from your government.

2) Local monopolies. Yes, local phone companies monopolize your phone service, if you own a land line. Get a cell phone. If you pay by the minute for cell phone service and telemarketers call without your permission (and without the permission of your service provider), then they're robbing you of resources. Sounds like a class action suit. But it doesn't call for an act of Congress not authorized by the Constitution. If you must, work to get laws passed at the state level.

3) The "right to privacy." If there is one, it is from the federal government, not from your phone company. The Bill of Rights protects you from the federal government, it does not enlist the help of the federal government to protect from private corporations. When you enter into a contract with your local phone company, you submit to the terms of the contract you sign with them. If those terms allow that company to sell your phone number to telemarketers, don't contract with them, or tell them you don't want those terms included. Don't agree to their terms, hook up your phone, then claim you wuz robbed because they sold your number to Fraternal Order of Police. You didn't have to sign on to service.

Yes, telemarketers can come "right into your home," at least in some ways. But in buying a phone, in paying for phone service, in hooking that phone up, in agreeing to the contract that allowed your number to be sold in the first place, you invited them.

If you want to keep them out, you'll have to disinvite them. Get call screening. Get caller ID. Find another way to communicate. Someone else made the initial investment to make your telephone service possible.

You don't have any more of a "right" to force them to deliver that service on your terms than that poor kid with cancer has a right to make you pay for his chemotherapy.

In an attempt to pull my weight around the Agitator compound, I am going to start posting some of my favorite bands and albums of any given moment. While probably not a daily occurrence, hopefully these posts will appear somewhat regularly.

My first album of choice is "All Your Summer Songs" by the band Saturday Looks Good to Me.

The album is basically a modern tribute to 1960's AM pop radio. It is recorded almost entirely on 4-track but the lo-fi sound only enhances the authentic feel to most of the songs. Think Brian Wilson/Pet Sounds era Beach Boys. The whole record is incredibly catchy but because of its density its not something you get sick of after only a few listens. I've had the thing for 4-5 months now and I'm still hearing new instruments and different parts every time.

I actually saw the band last Friday, although I suppose I use the term band loosely. While the album is layered and dense, only three of the band members played the show in Chicago (rather than the normal 8-9). What I got was punked up/fast versions of some of my favorite pop songs. I didn't mind too much because its always nice to hear new interpretations of familiar songs, but I did feel a little badly for the friends I brought along. When you appreciate a band for the intricacies and catchiness of the tunes, you notice when the live show is not as accessible as the album for the uninitiated. Still, on the chance that the full band might be there, I would still definitely check them out if they are coming to your town.

Times Square reclaimed.

Blaire Hornstine, the overworked valedictorian who sued when her school tried to name a co-valedictorian - drawing just enough attention to herself to shed light on her penchant for plagiarism and get her Harvard acceptance revoked - has been awarded $60,000 for her troubles. Hornstine is one of those people the blogosphere loves to hate, but I've always rather appreciated the extent of her nerve and the fact that she inspired this Hit and Run post.

The hottest tour of the summer continues with a recent stop in Detroit. (Could your city be next??) While his collaborators work on new material back home (as co-agitator Nick reports below), Ashcroft is busy hyping old faves. Detroit Now reports:

Ashcroft concluded his speech with the notion that, had officials known then what they know now, the tragedy of September 11 might have never happened.

According to Hit and Run, we are about to get hit with another giant piece of liberty-destroying, badly-acronymed crap from Ashcroft. This one is called the VICTORY act-- only it's actually the VICTO act, they couldn't come up with words beginning with R and Y to shoehorn into the title.

Aggh. I know it's gotten really bad when I'm so inured to the idiotic and dangerous content of these laws that all I can do is make fun of the acronyms. I swear, there must be a building in Washington housing the Bureau of Stupid Acronyms for the Nanny State. How else could they keep churning these things out?

Maybe that's where you apply to when you get fired from the Bureau of Incredibly Apropos Musical Accompaniments to NPR Investigative Reports.

If this were a joke, it would be funny. It's about the Bush recall website, sponsored by the uber-progressive Fair and Balanced PAC. Here's a nice letter posted on the site to Rep Darrell Issa (R), who spearheaded the California recall effort:

Dear Rep. Issa,

Congratulations on achieving your goal of putting the recall on the ballot! You have once again proved that, with enough determination, willpower, and cold hard cash, anything is possible. Kudos to you sir.
During the early days of the recall effort, you blamed Gray Davis for California’s $38 billion deficit, and compared him to a CEO that needed to be ousted from a failing company. President Bush, meanwhile, has created a $455 billion deficit. Your dedication to a balanced budget, and your willingness to hold those who violate this principle publicly accountable, makes you a natural ally in our drive to help recall George W. Bush from office.

In your August 10 appearance on “Meet the Press,” you stated, “Working with Gray Davis is an inconsistent art because he doesn't do what he says he will do, at least consistently and reliably.” Like you, we share a scorn for government officials who mislead the public and pursue goals that blatantly oppose their stated agenda, like when President Bush unveiled his “No Child Left Behind” Act, his AIDS initiative in Africa, and the expansion of AmeriCorps – and then promptly denied funding to all three.

Your fabulously produced radio ad, asserts that Gov. Davis has ruined California’s economy, leading to “thousands of jobs lost.” Your devotion to the plight of the unemployed means that you probably already know that almost three million people have lost their jobs since Bush took office.

In conclusion, Rep. Issa, we look forward to your support on this issue. Having a hardened recall veteran with millions to spend on our side would give an invaluable boost to our cause. The parallels between these two situations are uncanny, and surely your high-minded commitment to your ideals will not allow you to turn your back on this pressing political situation.

Sincerely,
The Bush Recall Team

It's recall mania. But I think Gene is right: for any recall to be legit, there must be at least one Where-Are-They-Now celebrity candidate in the election. And these Bush recall people seem to be taking this much too seriously to provide the entertainment necessary to make people care.

Superb gallery of the cable news networks' tastiest anchors and reporters.

While normally a brunette man, your humble Agitator cast an enthusiastic vote for Jennifer Eccleston. I'm particularly fond of the shot in the bottom right-hand corner.

And lest you think this to be a crass excercise in piggish sexism, they have a male anchor section, too.

I have no horse in that race.

Biggest surprise: Jack Cafferty polling at a sturdy 4%.

The BBC reports that the UK has the answer to the RIAA's problem.

The great thing is that the technology is readily available now, and no new laws are required.

Not exactly. But probably the best choice, given the options.

Which Dostoyevsky protagonist are you?

Link via Eve Tushnet.

The blogosphere exposes more lies from one who would be governor.

I have a piece on Tech Central this morning addressing the "Do Not Call" registry.

It's a response to this piece by fellow blogospherian Pejman Yousefzadeh, which ran last week.

I was just spammed by the Howard Dean campaign, and it looks like I'm not the only one. If he calls me during dinner, I'm going to be really upset.

National Review is selling a "Best of GWB" collection. Yes, it's the best of our articulate leader's political speeches, post-9/11.

Expect to read Churchillian turns of phrase like, "we're gonna' get the folks who did this," said of the 9/11 perps on 9/11; and, "we'll bring that gentleman to justice," said of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Order today and they'll throw in -- free of charge -- a "Best of Spandau Ballet" CD, which makes every bit as much sense.

Gene Healy (who is not recessive) sends an article from last month's American Enterprise magazine, posted at Free Republic. It's about the late Rep. Howard Buffet, father of tycoon and emerging socialist Warren Buffet, now a senior advisor to Der Arnold's campaign for California.

Seems that Buffet, Sr. was that rarest of breeds: an elected official who truly gave a damn about liberty. Excerpt:

Buffett was elected to Congress in 1942 with a pledge to keep FDR from "fasten [ing] the chains of political servitude around America's neck." He marked himself an oddball by returning a pay raise to the Treasury and by subjecting each piece of legislation to a simple test: "Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?"

Very few House bills passed Howard Buffett's test.

In four non-consecutive terms representing Omaha in the U.S. House of Representatives, the radical backbench Republican compiled an almost purely libertarian record. He opposed whatever New Deal alphabet-soup agencies and Fair Deal bureaucracies emerged from the black lagoon of the Potomac. As the historian Joseph Stromberg has written, "the only [current] member of Congress who bears comparison with Buffett is Ron Paul," the Texas Republican and courageous naysayer.

Buffett was also a strict isolationist, denouncing NATO, conscription, the Marshall Plan ("Operation Rathole"), and the incipient Cold War, which he believed would enchain Americans in "the shackles of regimentation and coercion...in the name of stopping communism."

Foreign aid was a Buffett bugaboo. The story is told that as the family drove past the British Embassy late one night, Howard, seeing the lights still on, quipped, "They even stay up late to think of ways to get our money."

Buffett summed up his views of America and the world in a speech on the House floor condemning the Truman Doctrine: "Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by tyranny and coercion at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics."

So imagine, if after doing this, and this, and especially this, you found out that the entire time, this was going on.

Geez. I feel like I should go home and get drunk, out of fraternity with the poor guy.

Jason's a longtime reader, inasmuch as an eighteen month-old site can have lontime readers.

Hang in there.

Don't miss the outstanding editorial series from the New York Times: "Harvesting Poverty."

....you hear is created by the vacuous logic coming from trade protectionists. In the Washington Times this week, Dan Griswold took on righty protectionist Paul Craig Roberts, and with devastating results.

Roberts posited in an earlier op-ed that the Internet and emerging technology are erasing "comparative advantage" theories, and instead are merely creating new means by which U.S. industry can ship increasingly white collar jobs overseas for cheap wages. This, Roberts argues, is something knee-jerk free-traders ought to worry about.

Griswold writes:

According to Mr. Roberts' novel theories, massive amounts of U.S. capital should be flowing to low-wage countries, especially China and India. His theory utterly fails to explain why most capital leaving the United States, including manufacturing investment, flows to other high-wage countries, such as Canada and Europe. According to a study by Deloitte and Touche Consulting, 94 percent of outward U.S. foreign direct manufacturing investment in 2001 flowed to other rich countries. If low wages drive investment, how does Mr. Roberts explain the fact that, during the past decade, the United States has been a net recipient of an annual average of $20 billion in foreign manufacturing investment?

As many American companies can attest, investing profitably in China and India remains a challenge—because of their underdeveloped infrastructure and legal systems, undereducated workforces, remaining trade barriers, and limited consumer markets. American companies invest less than $2 billion a year in China, and far less in India. That compares to the nearly $200 billion invested each year in our own domestic manufacturing capacity, and $100 billion a year invested by American companies in the rest of the world (and most of that in other rich countries). At the end of 2001, American companies owned more than 10 times as much direct investment in the tiny, high-wage Netherlands ($132 billion) than they did in China ($10.5 billion) and India ($1.7 billion) combined. Obviously, wages are not the only, or even the main, driver of foreign investment.

Mr. Roberts' theory also fails to explain America's continued export success in world markets. Americans remain the world's leading exporters of manufactured goods. The United States today accounts for a steady 12 percent of global exports, the same share as two decades ago, and three times China's share. Chinese exports to the United States have indeed grown rapidly in recent years, but at $125 billion last year, they represent just above 1 percent of America's gross domestic product of almost $10.4 trillion. There is nothing alarming about the fact that Americans spend 1 percent of our income on products made by the one-fifth of mankind that lives in Mainland China.

From Liberty & Power:

One of the most noteworthy events of the last decade in general and the last two years in particular has been the sudden reappearance of ideological imperialism. In other words as well as the thing itself we now have an elaborate body of argument that seeks to justify and defend it. Until about the time of the bombing of Kossovo historical imperialism had almost no defenders or apologists among historians, and none among political commentators and journalists. To actually make the argument that it was a good thing today and a suitable policy for the United States to pursue would lead to a rapid appearance of the men in white coats.

How things have changed! Now you cannot open certain journals without coming across articles in praise of the British Empire or suggesting that it really is time for the U.S. to “take up the white man’s burden” that those enfeebled cousins let go all those years ago. (A particularly delicious variant is articles by Brits offering the advice of experienced empire-runners to those newbies in DC). The crucial point is this: these arguments are not only or even primarily made on pragmatic or prudential grounds. Instead they are defended on an ideological basis, specifically that an imperial hegemon (once the British, now the U.S.) is needed to provide international order and to take forward the process of modernization. In other words it is the responsibility and duty of certain powers to rule and govern other peoples on a tutelary basis, until they are fit to enjoy the benefits of civilization.

This all sounds very familiar to anyone acquainted with the debates over imperialism that raged in Britain and the U.S. in the 1890s and 1900s. Max Boot reads like J. L. Garvin reborn, but with a less elegant prose style. Another interesting similarity is the sudden appearance of “liberal” or “left” imperialists such as T. Blair. This should not surprise us. Most socialists and progressives from the earlier period were ardent imperialists and saw ‘benign’ imperialism abroad as the natural counterpart to the welfare state at home, just as Blair does now. The really interesting question is why so many libertarians are persuaded by this sanctimonious guff.

Julian Sanchez reports on Hit and Run that there's now another installment in the debate among notable libertarians over prescription drug reimportation. Richard Epstein, who favors keeping the federal reimportation ban, responds to his critics at Cato. He basically argues that pharmaceutical patents are a special case, where allowing price discrimination by the patent-holding monopolist is a big boon to economic efficiency, and that indirect enforcement of contractual non-resale agreements by the federal government is justified to enable this discrimination to occur.

I'm a little timid about going up against a colossus like Epstein. But I think he's answering the wrong question. He's arguing that allowing the federal government to indirectly enforce contracts in this instance is a good idea. But he doesn't address whether it's a good idea to give the government the general power to perform such indirect enforcement.

The problem is that when the government enforces by statute what would ordinarily be enforced by private civil action, it socializes the enforcement costs-- and those costs may be considerable. The parties making the contractual arrangement therefore have a strong incentive to lobby for socialization whether or not it is efficient; it lets them derive a private benefit while the rest of us pay the costs.

Public choice theory, if I understand it correctly, would thus say that decisions about socialization will be made not on a realistic calculation of efficiency, but on whether the industries involved have sufficient political clout. It may well be that, in the particular case of pharmaceuticals, the benefits to the public from enforcing price discrimination really do outweigh the costs. But it's hard to tell for sure, and the government's involvement makes it even harder.

Are you familiar with the Lake Woebegon Effect? The term "tornado bait?" Do you park in a Garage Mahal?

These terms and more are all from Wordspy:

The Web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words and phrases, old words that are being used in new ways, and existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance. These aren't "stunt words" or "sniglets," but new words and phrases that have appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, press releases, and Web sites.

I'm on the Wordspy mailing list, which allows me to throw around words like "glocalization" and "chickenability." I feel smarter every day.

I was listening to NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me this week and they had a short bit with one of the Recall candidates, Brooke Adams. They may have chosen her by throwing a dart at the master list, but if I lived in California, I know who I'd support.

- She's for individual freedom, personal responsibility, and smaller government.

- She knocks the 'Me First' Generation.

- She's for the flat tax.

No other reasons. Seriously.

The new virus is absolutely socking my email account for this site.

Anyone know how I can stem the tide?

I've gotten about 4,000 messages in the last 24 hours.

Three cheers for The Guardian's anti-agricultural subsidies weblog. Big and bad as our hog-troughs are, Europe's and Japan's are worse. Foreign aid be damned. Until we stop enabling first-world farm corporations to sell crops at a fraction of what it costs to grow them, the third world will remain third world.

Here at least is one issue where free traders and anti-globos can come together.

50 years ago today, Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was released, launching both a media frenzy and a cultural revolution.

Here's a little web encyclopedia-type entry on the report. Take special note of what the Concerned Women for America have to say.

More unintended consequences of standardized testing conservatives might want to take note of:

In New York, teachers, administrators and principals are pushing pregnant teens out of the school system. Why? Studies show that pregnant students often do poorly on standardized tests. Shunt them off to learning disabled programs, or find a reason to banish them from attending school altogether, and administrators don't have to worry about them dragging down the school's aggregate test scores, which of course affect how much money the schools get from the state and federal government.

The practice came to light after one school caught two girls playing hooky and forced each of them to take a pregnancy test before allowing them back into classes. Both tested negative and were readmitted, but the school's actions brought media attention to an issue the NYCLU has been on for years now.

From the Village Voice:

Many female students are pressured to leave the schools they attend when their pregnancies become known, according to the civil liberties group, which, over the past three years, has intervened on behalf of nine such students. Among them were a seventh grader at I.S. 49 in Brooklyn, who was told it was best for her to stay home from school because her pregnancy was a "distraction" to other students, and an 11th grader who was suddenly informed she couldn't continue attending the high school where she had been enrolled since ninth grade because she was from outside the district.

Partly as a result of this nasty nudging, catastrophic numbers of girls disappear from the school system. An estimated 20,000 mothers under 21 in New York City have yet to complete high school, according to a June report put out by City Comptroller William Thompson...

...Pregnant girls have had the legal right to remain in city public schools since 1968. But, in a system obsessed with performance and test scores, there are real incentives to drop these academically challenged and challenging kids who could bring down averages. The pressure takes many forms. Pregnant students are often unable to obtain homework assignments or schedule makeup exams; they report widespread hostility from teachers and administrators.

Many times, teens are also wrongly instructed that they must enroll in one of the five programs specifically designed for pregnant teens, which are academically inferior and do not confer diplomas.

But on the O'Reilly Factor tonight, there was the conservative Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald, not only defending the public schools' right to administer pregnancy tests to female students, but also asserting that male students ought to be forcibly tested for STDs. You know, for gender and equity and all.

MacDonald went on, incredulously, to assert that the practice of pushing pregnant teens out of the classroom and onto the streets isn't caused by national testing, but, of course, by sex education.

Because, see, if high schools didn't teach teenagers about condoms, well golly, then they'd never have sex in the first place. So they'd never get pregnant. And then there'd be no need to shame them out of the classroom.

Perhaps allegedly "pro-life" conservatives should stop to think about how many women they've coerced into having abortions with their incessant, obssessive and often hypocritical habit of shaming single mothers.

Some creepy sex-offender "treatment" for felons in Colorado. Sports Illustrated reports what awaits Kobe Bryant if he's found guilty:

He will be instantly taken by two deputy sheriffs to a life of degradation, humiliation and loneliness. "Colorado sex-offense statutes are probably the harshest in the country," says Denver trial attorney Bob McAllister. "There's no worse place to commit a sex crime."

If he isn't eligible for bond, Bryant will spend around 60 days simmering in a county cell. Either way, while he is awaiting sentencing, he will likely be given a penile plethysmograph test, in which an electric measuring band connected to a computer will be placed around his penis. He will then be shown pornographic, deviant and sex-abuse images, and the device will record his level of arousal. The results of the test will be used to determine the course of his rehabilitation treatment.

I'm lost on rape law. One conviction, and thanks to Megan's Law, your life is over. If you're indeed a rapist, well, maybe that's not such a bad thing. But the consequences of the either/or are so drastic, and the line of demarcation for what is and isn't rape is so thin, the whole subject gives me the heebie-jeebies.

A friend remarked the other night that she doesn't think our criminal justice system is capable of handling rape, given that it's so often a he said/she said thing, and that the results for both parties are so damning.

I think she's right.

So surely someone is coming up with a faux concert t-shirt to mock John Ashcroft's muti-state PATRIOT Act tour, right?

If not, someone should. I'd buy one. I submitted the idea to FARK for a Photoshop contest.

Matthew Yglesias disparagingly links to a Tyler Cowen piece making a case for total laissez-faire deregulation of the electricity industry.

Sadly, I think Cowen's case is weak. This disappoints me not only because I'm a radical anarchist, but because I think the case could be quite a bit stronger. Here are some points I would make:

1. Cowen says that there would only be one or two power grids in any given region, since transmission networks are hard to build and not worth duplicating. I'm not so sure. In rural areas, yes, but mightn't a large city be able to support three or more competing grids?

2. Even if you had a monopoly or duopoly in most places, it does not follow that there would be no effective competition. Railroads are surely subject to the same natural monopoly problems as power grids, yet there was real competition in British and American railroads in the 19th and early 20th centuries under a relatively laissez-faire regulatory regime. I'm not claiming that that competition was free from corruption and price-gouging, but it was a lot better than the ultra-monopolistic nightmare people might envision.

3. It is not clear from the historical record that utility regulation really produces a huge price drop compared to laissez-faire prices. At least one study, done in 1962 by George Stigler and Claire Friedland, suggested that there was little effect. That study is cited on p.252 of David Friedman's Law's Order, which has a nice discussion of the reasons why regulation of natural monopolies might not make such a big difference.

4. Advocating laissez-faire as an end goal is not the same as advocating it immediately. I would eventually like the State to be abolished altogether, but I realize that violent revolution tomorrow would be a bad idea. It is at least plausible that a phased decontrol could provide the benefits of freedom while reducing the short-term cost, but Cowen doesn't even mention this option.

What was the first thing you reached for when the lights went out? Was it powdered milk? If so, you’re in good hands. The federal government has stockpiled $1 billion of the stuff in caves. Pioneer Press reports:

In caves and giant warehouses, the U.S. government is storing mountains of powdered milk that taxpayers were required to buy, even though nobody is sure what to do with it all.

The dry-milk stockpile has hit a record 1.28 billion pounds, and it's still growing — a side effect of U.S. dairy policies that critics say encourage overproduction of milk, increase taxpayer costs and force a reluctant U.S. Department of Agriculture to buy powdered milk to bolster dairy prices.

Every pound of nonfat dry milk in storage cost taxpayers 80 cents, so it's a $1 billion mountain. And that doesn't count storage costs, from renting space in caves around Kansas City to leasing warehouses around the nation.

Props to Heretical Ideas

Not yet. Right now it's just Zsa Zsa Saddam, Elvis Saddam, Billy Idol Saddam, and Rita Hayworth Saddam.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this development. Is enraging dangerous men with big guns really the best idea?

Did you know that the Constitution provides you the right to be stress-free? Like an idiot, I've just been trying to avoid high-stress activities to remain stress-free. But Jeff Peckman of Denver, Colorado has pointed out that the implementation of stress reduction measures is the duty of the government:

Peckman said the council members should favor his proposal because it supports their duty under the U.S. Constitution to provide for the common defense and ensure domestic tranquility.

Peckman has introduced a petition that would make Denver responsible for promoting "permanent peace;" suggestions have included better school lunches, soothing music played in public, a tongue-in-cheek proposal to put sedatives in the water, and the eradication of terrorism worldwide. What? Yes, the petition reads almost as though Denver will be assuming responsibility for the war on terror. More power to 'em. Peckman got slightly over the requisite number of signatures to send the measure along to Denver voters.

So does this mean that all things that stress me out are unconstitutional? Because that would be awesome.

So I was channel-surfing last night and ran across the TBS Superstation Family Movie Night.

The movie? Victor/Victoria.

I rest my case.

Per Kerry's post below on Dr. Lester Grinspoon, longtime readers may remember that Mr. Grinspoon had his own run-in with Cavlina Fay, Mel and Betty Sembler, and the Drug Free America Foundation. Dr. Grinspoon was kind of enough to send along his correspondence with the Massachussetts Board of Medicine, to whom Ms. Fay had written seeking the revocation of Dr. Grinspoon's license to practice medicine.

The reason? Because he's an advocate of medicinal marijuana.

Read all about it here (scroll down a bit).

Matt Welch finds more dirt and deceit from Arianna.

Be sure to read the comments.

BTW, some of you asked if, despite her dearth of income tax pay, Arianna gave to charity -- if she puts her money where her mouth is. From the LA Times:

Huffington's tax form lists $46,763 in contributions to charity in 2002. Those were not deductible because she had no taxable income.

The contributions include payments to three prominent private schools on Los Angeles' Westside — the Archer School, Crossroads and New Roads. They also include payments of $6,675 to the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness and a related foundation.

Other news accounts report that the three schools and the CMSIA made up nearly all of Arianna's charitable giving. The schools are private, posh, exclusive, and where Arianna's kids happen to attend.

So I ask again: Arianna, where's the love for the working man?

In today's WaPo:

The dossier on which British Prime Minister Tony Blair justified war against Iraq contained no proof of any threat from Baghdad, according to an e-mail from a top Blair aide released on Monday.

The e-mail is the first public sign of debate within Blair's inner circle about the strength of intelligence used to justify a war that most Britons opposed.

"The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from (Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein)," Blair's chief of staff and long-time confidant Jonathan Powell wrote to a senior intelligence official.

"It shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbors, let alone the West," Powell wrote in an e-mail one week before the controversial dossier was published on September 24, 2002, six months ahead of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

Co-agitator Kerry Howley tells a tale of how (sniff) Big Porn is snuffing the all-American, mom-n-pop porn shops out of business:

Down the street from the Penthouse emporium is Vinny's Adult Video, a dingy, blacked out hole of a store. A curmudgeonly clerk describes the new boutique as "our arch enemy" and expresses resentment at the anti-smut backlash it has provoked. Cohen suspects that such reactions show rivals fear Penthouse "will probably put them out of business." The mom and pop porn shops of suburbia, in other words, have reason to fear....

...Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced that fighting obscenity is a high priority, and legislating against internet porn is a favorite pastime of family values activists. But the biggest challenge to porn's worst incarnations is less likely to come from Washington than from the quiet enclaves of suburban America. Once the Penthouse Boutique resolves its zoning woes, it just may drive its seedy competitors out of business—and leave Milford a more traditional town than ever.

I submit: When greedy, imperialistic porn mavens can price the plucky, go-get-'em entrepeneurial upstarts like Vinny's Adult Video right out of the dildo trade, then, friends, the American Dream.....

......is dead.

Read the hole thing.

Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard professor and huge supporter of the legalization of marijuana, has a piece in the Boston Globe on the wrongheaded attempts to distill the medicinal properties of marijuana into pill form rather than simply legalize the weed. Marinol is the “pharmaceuticalized” version of marijuana, but Grinspoon writes:

[Marinol] is less effective than marijuana for several reasons. Because it must be taken orally, the effect appears only after an hour or more. That eliminates one of the main advantages of smoked or vaporized inhaled cannabis, which works so quickly that the patient can adjust the dose with remarkable precision. Furthermore, Marinol is more expensive than marijuana, even with the prohibition tariff that raises the price of illicit cannabis. Several other products, including extracts of marijuana, are in the pipeline, but they are unlikely to be any more useful or less expensive than plant marijuana.

I don't usually follow this debate because I think it's a mistake to justify legalization on purely medicinal grounds, but Grinspoon goes on:

The realities of human need are incompatible with the demand for a legally enforceable distinction between medicine and all other uses of cannabis.

Read the whole thing.

One last thought on the blackout. It may sound a little goody-goody and boosterish to say so, but I think not nearly enough recognition has been given to the rank-and-file folks who got the power back on this past weekend, from linemen to systems engineers. These are people who help keep the thin veneer of civilization from breaking down utterly. In all the squabbling over Canada and Enron and deregulation that I've seen on the blogosphere, there's been too little simple gratitude toward them.

So: thanks, guys.

I am reminded of something the great libertarian Rose Wilder Lane said in her inexpressibly brilliant little book, The Discovery of Freedom:

The energy of heat, cold, storms, floods, drought, is the deadly enemy of every human being... Everyone must constantly be defended against these enemies. Farmers and sailors and doctors always know this. Linemen know it, and engineers, chemists, truck drivers and railroad men and oil drillers and sand-hogs and construction workers and airplane pilots and weather forecasters-- all the fighters who protect human lives in modern civilization, and keep this civilization in existence. These men, who know the human situation on this earth and stand the brunt of it, enable others to forget it.

I went to dinner at a friend's house last night. In discussing a mutual acquaintance who had been somewhat of a Phishy geek-chic hipster in high school (insomuch as anyone is a hipster in high school), I was introduced to the word "Bobo," which I had never come across before. So I looked it up. From an Amazon list called "So You'd Like to Become a Bobo:"

What is a Bobo? Author David Brooks defines them as Bourgeois Bohemians (a.k.a Bobos) in his book 'Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There'. The first order of business in understanding the Bobo (and in becoming one if you so desire) is to read Brooks' book and related literature and immerse yourself in the lifestyle and politics of the Bobo. Become one with the Bobo: Drive around town by yourself in your Lexus SUV. Become frustrated when Trader Joe's is out of wheat-free, organic fiber flakes. Take your Segway Human Transporter to work. Whip yourself up a faux Jamba Juice smoothie in your Bosch MUM 7400UC 700-Watt Stand Mixer Kitchen Machine. Stroll around REI until you feel at home.

I consider myself a fairly culturally literate person, in terms of current popular culture at the very least. How did the presence of the Bourgeois Bohemians totally escape me? Is it as simple as my having been in Ohio for four years? Is there a discernable difference between a Bobo and a hipster? Is Bobo the same as credit-card-hippie? I'm afraid I've been using hipster when I should have been using Bobo. Very embarrassing, I assure you.

First step in the fight against AIDS in Africa: get this man some Trojans.

He's always the first one in line for the village feast, tucking into a buffet carefully prepared by the women of the village like he's diving into the ocean, no restraint. He's too skinny and has, as the women point out, terrible taste in clothes. His latest hat is a visor styled from shabby paper stolen off a local cigarette billboard.

But for all of his undesirable traits, Akacha has a surprisingly desirable job: He's paid to have sexual relations with the widows and unmarried women of this village. He's known as "the cleanser," one of hundreds of thousands of men in rural villages across Africa who sleep with women after their husbands die to dispel what villagers believe are evil spirits.

The story is fascinating and well worth a read. It's like an African version of an old George Strait tune called "The Fireman."

They call me the fireman, that's my name. Making my rounds all over town, putting out old flames. Well, everybody'd like to have what I got: I can cool 'em down when they're smouldering hot. I'm the fireman, that's my name.

Hat tip to Gene.

My softball team, the Information Ministers, had the final game of our 1-9 season last night, and it was by far our best effort. We were shorthanded, but with the help of a last minute acquisition before the trade deadline we were able to avoid forfeit.

Things started off uncharacteristically well for us with four runs in the first inning, then giving up only one run in the bottom. The second inning went our way as well with a couple of runs.

Our first injury occurred in the bottom of the second when our pitcher (me) took a hard-hit line drive to the shin. The opposing team also managed to take the lead.

We regained the lead in the third with a grand slam by yours truly. Later in the inning, a tight play at second resulted in the second injury of the day and one of our best hitters was left with a dislocated shoulder. Realizing we were short on players, he insisted on staying in the game, and we moved him to catcher.

Inning five brought our player with the dislocated shoulder to bat with runners at first and second. With the bat clenched tightly in the hand of his good arm, he stepped to the plate. It was pretty damn heroic, despite being a B league softball game. The first pitch was swung on and missed. He made contact and hit into a double play on the second.

We gave back the lead in the bottom of the fifth, and I’m pretty sure I saw every batter at least twice.

At the top of the seventh with two outs and runners at first and second, it was again dislocated shoulder’s turn at bat. He looked at the first pitch for ball two, and watched the next pitch right down the middle for strike two. He swung on and hit the third pitch, a slow roller to short. The shortstop opted for first, but the throw tied… at least that was the call.

Top of the seventh, bases loaded with two outs and needing four runs to stay alive, the next batter stepped to the plate. It’s was like the fantasy situation that every ten-year-old acts out in the park on a warm, summer Sunday afternoon…

…short fly ball hit to shallow left field. Game over. Better luck next year.

Longtime lefties Doris Kearns Goodwin and Joe Klein on Meet the Press this morning were, nearly in unison, decrying the perils of "too much democracy," of "direct democracy," and insisting that the framers desired for ours to be not a democracy, but a "constitutional republic."

Shucks! Welcome aboard! Funny how quickly leftists become republicans (small "r") when the object of the fickle mob of democracy's wrath happens to be a Democrat (big "D").

Dr. Goodwin, I'll be waiting for that New York Times op-ed calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Mr. Klein, I'll look for your Newsweek cover story on why it's important that we keep the Electoral College exactly as it is.

So here's the conclusion to this post:

And kudos to fellow Hoosier Paul Musgrave, who pretty much nailed it.

"Dephlogisticated air" is basically oxygen. The term was invented by the scientist G.C. Stahl who theorized that all combustible material had an inflammable ingredient called "phlogiston." When something burns, he theorized (incorrectly, of course), it allows its phlogiston to escape.

In the 1770s, a scientist named Joseph Priestly heated mercuric oxide in a sealed container and studied the gas he trapped that had escaped (which was oxygen). Because the gas he'd isolated was so incredibly flammable, he concluded it must be devoid of phlogiston, and therefore called it "dephlogisticated air."

At this point, Priestly explained his experiment to another scientist, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, which is where our "lessons in liberty" comes into play.

Lavoisier expounded on the experiments of Priestly, Stahl and others and eventually concluded that "phlogisten" was bunk. He deduced that all matter is made up of basic building blocks of material called "elements," which can't be broken down. He even charted an early periodic table, and concluded that a goal of chemistry ought to be to chart the elements he'd yet to discover. He also came to the important conclusion that nothing can be created or ultimately destroyed in nature -- that an equal amount of matter exists before and after every chemical reaction.

Lavoisier was also an economist, a philosopher, and a farmer. He fought against trade barriers and excessive taxation (though he wasn't perfect -- he also advocated a public school system, and was himself a tax collector).

He was also a good friend of Benjamin Franklin.

After the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences was abolished, and Lavoisier was arrested in 1793. During Lavoisier's trial, the judge said, directly addressing him, "This Republic has no need for scientists." With that, Lavoisier was beheaded, making him one of the most prominent and tragic martyrs of science and knowledge.

The mathamatician Lagrange supposedly said the day following: "It took just an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it."

Source: Great Thinkers of the Western World, edited by Ian P. McGreal.

This is the weekend of Chicago's Air and Water Show, and this year's headliners are the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. I love that I live in a country where the average citizen will experience an F-16C Fighting Facon only as a form of entertainment.

I'm always reminded of the moment, a couple of years ago, when a boy standing near me complained to his father about the noise from the jets. The father smiled and replied, "Son, that's the sound of freedom."

Leftovers from the boomer piece:

What a bunch of crap!

You are talking about Liberals asshole! I don't want anything from you or anyone else and there are a lot of me out here!

So---Eat Shit! No on second thought --Eat Bill Clinton's shit--You more than likely voted for him.

Conservative Boomer,

Craig Miller
Publisher
CCN

Really enjoyed the article on foxnews.com.

As a boomer myself (dob 1947) I have been concerned about many of the issues you raise. I expect the AARP to become one of the principle organizations pushing our 'right' to feed at the government trough.
It is time for Gen X'rs to get involved. You can't stop us but perhaps you can mitigate the damage my compatriots inflict.

I must disagree with one point. We do not have an inferiority complex. We are the smartest, most enlightened, most caring and most deserving generation ever. If you don't believe us just ask us!

Have fun and keep up the good work.

Ron

Balko,

I would of laughed at you Baby Boomer article until I realized you wrote it.

On a different level I am looking for knowledge on politics and human behavior, could you answer me one question. How much POT did you smoke in college?

Being the libertarian that you are I am sure you will say not enough, but humor me any way.

Thank You,
Mike Nickel (AGE 35)

Mr. Balko,

The best thing about you ran down your daddy's leg.

I'll get to the Bush = Clinton mail in a bit. First, some odds and ends from my inbox I haven't had a chance to get to.

I've checked theagitor all morning -- still nothing on Arnold in california yet. don't leave your fans hanging!

Frankly, I'm not even sure what I think of the recall process in general. On the one hand it strikes me as democracy run amock. On the other, it is giving third party candidates more of a platform than they'd get from a normal election (though none of them stands a chance of winning).

The Prince of England scored a D on his Geography A-Levels. Please, somebody tell Mark Engels.

This article from the New York Times attempts to connect the dots on the power outage in the northeast.

Bush, Deregulation, Enron, and Congressional Republicans are to blame for the outdated electrical grid, they say.

Mentioned but underplayed in the article is the effect that introduction of competition without elimination of price caps has had.

Power companies are forced to compete for business and show a return to investors, yet still charge somewhat arbitrarily set prices to their customers. Naturally the net effect is decreased capital expendetures. Additionally, regulations and public sentiment over construction of new infrastructure results in prohibitive costs of improvement.

The article also fails to mention the most likely cause of the blackouts. Sometimes, shit happens.

A week ago in Slate, Professor Mark Kleiman blasted Chuck Colson’s Christian prisoner rehabilitation program for falsifying results. Colson responds here. Kleiman counter-responds here.

I wrote on Colson’s program a while back, and I think there are more disturbing aspects of the program than the clearly fudged results. But Kleiman’s analysis is a good response to those who will go with anything that works.

Call it self-centered, but here is the running tally of ways this black-out has affected me, in Chicago:

1. A settlement conference scheduled for this afternoon will be rescheduled;
2. There is concern that we may be missing one person from a fantasy football draft scheduled for this Sunday.

Currently those are the only ways, but its still early. What I am curious about is the ripple effect that this whole thing will have. Despite my limited inconvenience, I imagine its effects are far more reaching than most people realize. For those not in the blacked-out cities, aside from something to talk about, how has the power outage personally affected you?

Also, on the grammar tip, is this the proper use of the words "affect" and "effect." I am never quite sure about that.

Why on earth are we sharing power with Canada? Does this bother anyone else?

UPDATE: Them Canadians are being awfully defensive. I'm not saying I blame them, I'm just pointing it out.

"Canadians aren't doing too well with Americans this year," mused Rebecca Eckler, 30. "We have SARS, we opposed the war, and now we've blown out their lights."

[sarcasm]That sounds like a tacit admission of guilt to me. [/sarcasm]

So just as the hate mail rolls in on the last Fox column from the right ("you're just a shill for Clinton"), the folks over at Metafilter seem to think the column was a commercial for Bush.

Both crowds ought to peruse this site a bit.

I'll roll out the hate mail this weekend.

Not really. Power's back! Scrappleface has the right idea.

Mine: Gray Davis announces he will do "whatever it takes" to get Californians to vote no on the recall.

When the lights. Go out. In the city...

Just when I'd given up on finding a summer tour I wanted to see... I hope he plays the 9:30 Club.

And I wonder who's opening.

So several months ago, I asked all of you to give me free money, so as to buy a laptop. Lots of you did (thanks again!). And I have a laptop, though it just got infected with that crazy new virus (wouldn't you know I'd pick out a slutty computer). So today, for example, I can still deliver you delicious bloggy goodness, despite the fact that I'm at home, feeling as if I've just woken up after a night of partying with MC5.

(Note to my boss -- I was not up partying all night with MC5, though whatever it is that has invaded my body could certainly hold its own with them.)

Anyway, to my point. During my bleg-a-thon, one of you said you regretted that you couldn't afford to give me money, but that you worked for Adobe, and would be happy to send me some free Adobe software. I thanked you at the time, but decined your offer, mainly because I'm not technically competent enough to use anything Adobe makes other than Acrobat, which comes with the computer.

Now that I have a digital camera, I'm thinking Photoshop woud be fun.

So if you're still reading, Mr. Adobe Guy, and the offer still stands (and this post hasn't gotten you fired), please email me.

As for the rest of you, I might gently remind you that the tip jar over there at left beckons.

Link from Drudge:

TV commentator and author Arianna Huffington, who launched her campaign for governor with criticism of "fat cats" who fail to shoulder a fair share of taxes, paid no individual state income tax and just $771 in federal taxes during the last two years, her tax returns show.

Huffington, who released her tax returns for the last two years to The Times, lives in an 8,000-square-foot home in Brentwood above Sunset Boulevard that is valued at about $7 million.

Tell me, Arianna, how much public housing will that $385.50 you paid in taxes each of the last two years buy? How many rooms in that $7 million mansion do you offer up to the "working poor?"

Here's more, from the LA Times. And here's one more from Arianna.

Bloomberg news reports that SCO Group execs are dumping shares. According to CNET news the company has just scored it's first licencing deal.

Why would executives in what appears to be a growing company be selling off shares?

For those unfamiliar with the situation, I will summarize. The SCO Group has claimed that proprietary code that it purchased is wrapped up in nearly every Linux distribution available, and have filed lawsuits. They have declined to identify any of the code.

They then set the price for a Linux licence at $1400. According to SCO, every Linux user would be subject to this licencing fee, or would be infringing on SCO's intellectual property.

Now SCO claims that they have secured their first licencing deal with a Fortune 500 company. Details of the agreement have not been released, and SCO has declined to identify the company.

In an effort to be "fair and balanced", this link attempts to explain why the shares are being sold.

My wife sent me this story about a guy whose homeowners' association wouldn't let him fly a UN flag in protest against the Iraq war. Seems to be tailor-made for a leftist critic of libertarianism: here is a private organization infringing on this poor guy's free speech, right?

Well, yes and no. I react to this story in about the same way I'd react to a story of a private business engaging in racial discrimination: with a mixture of disgust and resignation. Disgust, because I strongly disapprove of the business's behavior and would not patronize a business that acted this way. Resignation, because I know that they have a legitimate property right to do what they're doing, and it's wrong to legislate away their private choice.

There are two major reasons why letting this sort of thing go unchecked is a lesser evil than overruling it by statute:

1. Freedom of contract is an important part of liberty, too. People buying in to an association like this sign away some of their rights explicitly and voluntarily. They can't really claim that they haven't read the fine print-- if buying a house isn't an occasion when people should know to read the fine print, what the heck is?

Also, they accept these restrictions individually, not by majority vote. And they do so in exchange for living in an environment they like better than the alternatives. If we don't respect the terms of these contracts, we interfere with everyone's ability to make voluntary arrangements to improve their lives.

2. A homeowner's association is a local institution, and as such is much easier to change than a state or federal government. If the association you live in makes a bad rule, you can go knock on the doors of the people on the association board and express your displeasure personally. You can organize your neighbors to do the same, and it doesn't take very many to have an impact.

This actually happened in the association I live in. When the board decided to change from dumpster-based trash collection to individual cans outside each home, they decreed that people would not be allowed to store the cans out front between pickup days. They further decreed that people who didn't want to lug the cans back and forth all the time could just put their trash out in bags.

This is idiotic, because trash left out in bags is a health hazard, it attracts animals, and it's much more unsightly than cans sitting out front all the time. So a bunch of my neighbors went to the board and got them to stop implementation of the new rules. Simple, easy, not time-consuming at all.

Try doing that with, say, some idiotic state environmental regulation. Maybe you can make a change if you're really motivated, know a lot about political activism, and are willing to devote yourself full-time to making an outcry. But the level of involvement required is much higher and the chance of success much lower.

I hope this guy can do the same in his association. I'd be out there helping him if I were his neighbor. But I wouldn't support him going to the state legislature to get him out of a contract he freely signed.

UPDATE: The left-wing blogger Ampersand has a different take on this same story, with links to others. Will Baude has a particularly good response.

The roots of the disagreement are, I think, pretty typical lefty/libertarian philosophical differences. We libs are more likely to believe that negative liberty is more important than positive entitlement, and private property more legitimate than majoritarian collectivism. There are interesting and nuanced debates to be had about these differences, but they ought at least to be pointed out more explicitly.

Is it wrong that this picture gives me the warm and fuzzies?

Reader Tim Gillin writes from Australia with this story. Apparently one of the Bali bombers quoted favorably from Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men in making his defense.

Of course, it's rather silly to think that Michael Moore is in any way morally culpable for the Bali bombings simply because one of their perpetrators happens to be an admirer.

But then, didn't we hear cries from the left that right-wing talk radio made people like Tim McVeigh possible?

My new Fox column, now live, suggests that Presidents Bush and Clinton are pretty much the same guy.

Nice find by Mr. Sanchez over at Hit & Run. Messsage from the White House: Tell our version of the facts, or risk reprisal.

Call it one more reason for Radley to believe I'm not really a libertarian, but I have recently started reconsidering my previous stance on "moral wars." For those unfamiliar, I use the term moral war to describe American involvement to stop genocide, brutal dictatorships and general bad things from going on, even when there is no direct threat to America's safety. Libertarians are normally opposed to moral wars, and until recently, I very much was too. Now I'm not so sure.

My main problem with being anti-moral wars is this, where does your average American concerned with these problems go to stop them? I've always been a libertarian because of my overriding belief that, if left alone, the market will work out most problems. But there is no market solution that stops a Charles Taylor or even a Robert Mugabe. Where can a foreigner with a conscious turn to affect change in these countries? Certainly we don't want to encourage a privately funded army of liberators taking care of the world's injustices. Nor do we want this. I give both about two weeks before they go horribly awry. The military though is one of the few government monopolies that we want and as a public monopoly it has a duty to respond to the will of the majority.

Granted, I may be blogging before thinking this through, but lately I have been of the mind that the best system is one where America is free to get involved in moral wars, provided that our action has the support of a true majority of the people. I still believe that these types of conflicts should be entered into very hesitantly, and with a clear purpose and exit strategy. I also believe that our service people should be aware before they join that such missions are a possibility. If these criteria are met, however, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with our involvement.

But would anyone else rather just have cancer?

For those of us who still haven't gotten our fill of "summer music" here are the hot summer singles from this year and from 1936.

The GW Bush Libertymeter drops two points today, one for President Bush's outrageous federal spending, and one for failing to rein in the regulatory state.

It'll drop at least one, maybe two more if and when he signs the prescription drug benefit.

Why only two points? Mostly for practical reasons. Remember, we're dealing with a 100-point scale here, where one extreme is totalitarianism, and the other is stateless Hobbesian wild.

I was temtped to give the president a point when he signed the tax cut, but it was really rather negilgible, and most of the cuts were only temporary. Not a significant increase in our freedom. Certainly not enough to offset the increase in spending that's gone on under Bush's watch.

So the Volokh Conspiracy is asking people to plug their blog. I was planning to anyway (no, really! I swear!), so this seems like a good time.

The series of posts I was planning to direct you to was that dealing with the Abbas Kadhim/Susanna Klein affair (scroll down a bit from the top till you see these names). The great thing about these is not so much their subject matter, but their method.

The issue under discussion is one of the big Hot Buttons (tm): allegations of anti-Semitism in academe. Yet their posts are even-handed, attentive to nuance, humble, skeptical. Prof. Volokh and David Bernstein scrupulously refrain from jumping to conclusions or twisting the facts to suit their preconceived ideas.

I very often disagree with these guys on related issues-- Bernstein's posts on Israeli policy especially-- but I admire their intellectual integrity immensely. Here is honest thought set down the way it ought to be. Here is an antidote to the LGF's and Democratic Undergrounds of the world. Go thou, read the whole thing, and do likewise.

From the New York Times' wedding announcements:

The couple met during the summer of 2001 while chaperoning a field trip for a children's literacy program in Washington.

"We spent most of the time talking about Pokémon and Harry Potter," Ms. Pasachoff said.

A couple of days later, she sent Mr. Glaisyer an e-mail message inviting him to a 4:30 p.m. screening of "Himalaya," a drama about Yak herding in Tibet.

Mr. Glaisyer called to say yes to the film, but hung up wondering if it was a date or just a friendly outing.

"I thought, 4:30? Yak herding? Maybe she is just being nice," he remembered. Just to be sure, he called a couple of platonic girlfriends. "They weren't that confident," he said...

...After the movie, they went to dinner, then to another place for dessert, then to two used bookstores and finally a tea shop, where they began composing haiku.

Hat tip to the still-recovering Broken Spirit.

So a proposal to force every American to buy health insurance has been getting some notice in the blogosphere. It started at the New America Foundation and has since gotten picked up by Matthew Yglesias, among others. The surprising thing is that Ronald Bailey wrote an article in Reason defending the proposal as a palatable compromise for libertarians, a way to stave off outright socialism. Interesting discussions have ensued, at Yglesias and at Hit and Run when it linked to Bailey's piece.

I have several thoughts inspired by these discussions. Let's start with my reaction to the proposal itself. I find Bailey's arguments tempting, but unconvincing. Read on to find out why.

The basic problem with health care in this country is that much of the voting public has an unsatisfiable set of expectations. People want health care to be a commodity-- provided efficiently, with high quality and lots of consumer choice. And they want it to be a welfare benefit-- accessible to all at roughly the same price, with a guarantee that no one will be denied care because of inability to pay.

Until you resolve that contradiction, you'll never get a reasonable health-insurance reform plan through Congress intact. Efficient provision of a commodity in a market requires the ability to exclude nonpayers. Efficient provision of insurance, in particular, requires letting insurers charge different prices for people at different levels of risk. The unwillingness of the voting populace to accept this reality will cause the best-laid plans of mice and policy wonks to gang aft agley.

In an ideal implementation of the NAF plan, the tax code would be simplified to remove the advantage large employers have in providing health insurance. This would mean most people would now buy insurance for themselves, a vast improvement on the current employer-dependent system. The mandatory basic coverage would be (as commentator "nvram" on Yglesias suggests) minimal, covering catastrophes only and bearing a high deductible. The few who could not afford even this little bit would get a relatively inexpensive, voucher-like subsidy.

In the real world, it is unlikely any of this will happen. The regulatory structure will probably be skewed to suit the interests of whichever large employers and HMO's give the most money to the re-election campaigns of swing-vote congressmen. Pressure from a thousand interest groups will expand the scope of "basic" until it covers more than most low-income people, or middle-class people with pre-existing conditions, can afford. That will make the subsidies grow ever larger, or make the price controls on the insurers ever tighter, or both. So taxes will go up and insurance companies will go out of business.

Furthermore, if libertarians or semi-libertarians support this sort of plan, it will get pegged as a "free market" policy, and free-market advocates will get the blame when it fails. Think of what happened to other unfree pseudo-market schemes that got this false tag: energy in California, railroads in Britain. This will accelerate, not slow down, the march toward socialism. "We've tried free-market reform", the usual batch of demagogues will cry, "and what did it get us?"

So the inevitability argument-- that a large majority is going to demand some sort of universal-coverage plan anyway, and we'd best offer them something that isn't Canadian collectivized health-- doesn't fly in my book. Arguing for what we know is right, namely total deregulation and unsubsidized personal responsibility, may or may not be successful, but it's better than giving the game away and then getting blamed for the failure of what we know is wrong.

If the majority is just flat-out wrong (and it often is, and it sure is here), the least bad thing to do is to try and change the majority through persuasion and education. If you can't sway the muddled masses, you can at least try to reach the saving remnant.

Accordingly, here are a couple of calm, non-doctrinaire, uncompromisingly libertarian articles that everyone interested in this issue should read.

Glen Whitman had an analysis of the (more conventional) Gephardt health care plan on Agoraphilia awhile back; go here and scroll down. A lot of what he says applies to the NAF plan as well. Whitman, like Bailey, is eager to decouple health insurance from employment. But he also discusses the fundamental problems in the political market for health care, and the reasons why there is no substitute for real freedom.

David Friedman's
Should Medicine Be a Commodity? makes a thorough case for the affirmative. It's pretty long and econo-geeky, but well worth the time and effort.

Looks like I'm not the only one who's had lunch with Ann Coulter.

A good piece debunking the myth that smaller class sizes make for better learning.

So I'm off the summer pop stuff. For whatever reason, I'm finding myself in a melancholy mood more and more of late, and so I of course need to find the appropriate music to accompany life's more somber moments.

You know the feeling:

If it's afternoon, it's probably raining. Likely, there's thick brume on the windows, some of which condenses into water droplets, which streak down the glass. Likely, you're staring blankly through the panes, likely something has grip of your deepest attention.

If it's night, you're probably driving. And though cars accompany you on whatever particular stretch of road you're on, you still feel like it's just you for days. Miles pass by without notice.

And if it's morning, you're probably reeling, nursing the effects of the medicine you took the night before to numb whatever it was that put you in a mood to brood in the first place.

As a writer, it's crucial that I get my brooding time. I think that anyone who fancies himself a writer -- be it a blogger, a journalist, a pundit -- is also a frustrated novelist, screenwriter, and poet. I use "and" because it's usually all three. I've gotten fairly decent at fiction. I've never tried screenwriting. I'm an awful poet.

My point is that anyone who writes regularly, also regularly gets that creative itch, and I'm most fit to scratch it when I'm pensive and reflective. And setting the proper mood is crucial to proper brooding.

My favorites of late:

Tom Waits -- Closing Time and Heart of Saturday Night

The early stuff, when his voice was still handsome and cunning. It's apparent that Tom Waits has closed quite a few bars in his life, has probably taken quite a few long drives to think things over, and -- dozens of times -- has probably done the latter after the former.

Bob Dylan -- Oh, Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and Blood on the Tracks

"Most of the Time" might be my favorite Bob Dylan song. And Blood is easily my favorite album. Great brooding cuts: "Simple Twist of Fate," "You're Gonna' Make Me Lonesome When You Go," and "Buckets of Rain." Time is front-to-back depressing -- but wonderfully so.

Alice in Chains -- Jar of Flies

While I'm handing out superlatives, I'll go ahead and call this the best EP ever. If it weren't for the last cut "Swing on This," which pretty much kills the mood, it'd be perfect. The instrumental "Whale and Wasp" is wrenching. The other cuts are AIC at its finest -- brilliant minor-key harmonies, both sad and beautiful. "Don't Follow" is breakup gold.

Joe Henry -- Scar, Fuse and Shuffletown

In order of preference. Longtime readers know of my affinity for this guy, an underappreciated genius. Scar is the masterpiece of the three. Put it on, and it's instantly 3am, and you're walking down an abandoned strip. Everything is wet. And everything's closed. Be sure to stay around for the hidden gem at the end -- a legnthy sax solo by the great Ornette Coleman.

Lucinda Williams -- World Without Tears

A fantastic output by the alt.country favorite. Lyrics like "if we lived in a world without tears/ how would bruises know what faces to lap on to?/How would scars find skin to etch themselves into?/ How would broken find the bone?" Other worthy cuts: "Righteousy" and "Three Days."

The Verve -- Urban Hymns

Richard Ashcroft is the master brooder. He has variations on the theme of "you're born into this world alone, and you leave it alone" peppered throughout his Verve and solo stuff. And if there's a more depressing song title than "The Drugs Don't Work," I can't think of what it would be.

Chris Isaac -- Forever Blue

A whole album of heartbreak. Sad, desperate lines like "If you come back/I'll fix the place up/Oh baby, please/don't leave me on my own."

Miles Davis -- Round About Midnight

Slowed-down contemplative renditions of standards by Cole Porter, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Thelonius Monk. Recorded with Coltrane, and Red Garland on piano.

And, of course, virtually everything Leonard Cohen has ever done.

Your suggestions welcome.

I know it's old news, but Emily Cochran, over at AFF's Brainwash, congratulates Ann Coulter on Treason outselling Hillary Clinton's Living History a couple of weeks back (no longer the case according to the NY Times Best-Seller List). So was it a slim victory or a slim loss? Shrill Blonde Harpy or Old Pursed-Lipped Harpy?

The bigger question: why is either of these books listed as "Nonfiction?"

Also, let it not go unnoticed that the market value of Hillary's wisdom is $1.05 more than Ann's.

Lunchroom discussion yesterday led me to wonder what would happen in California if Gray Davis were to simply resign. I honestly don't know, nor have I come across anyone who definitively does. The ensuing chaos would be nothing short of spectacular though.

Would Bustamante simply take over?

Are there rules included in the recall process that would put Bustamante in the recall hotseat in Davis' place?

Once the recall process has started, can it be stopped, or like taxes and my smoking, is it just something I should learn to live with?

Would Arnold squash Gary Coleman in a furious rage? Would Gallagher?

We just don't know. And there's little discussion or consensus in the bloggosphere.

I'm reminded of Jeff Greenfield's The People's Choice, the story of what might happen when a president-elect dies four days after the general election, before the electoral college meets. Good quick read that makes the electoral college seem way cooler than it ever has.

UPDATE: Reader Sean points out that Kevin Drum at Calpundit has pretty spectacular coverage of the California recall, among other things.

If this Guardian article is correct, the thesis of Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book can be summarized as follows:

Middle-class families who hire cleaners and nannies so women are free to go out to work are contributing towards a new exploitative "servant economy" . . . the new "servant culture" is destroying families in the developing world and inculcating racism in children in the west . . . many of the benefits feminism had brought to middle-class women in the west have been paid for by the enslavement of poor migrant women.

I haven’t read Nickel and Dimed, but if the arguments therein are half as silly as these, I’m not missing much. Ehrenreich is essentially assuming that kids with nannies necessarily become racist brats. But growing up with servants, foreign or otherwise, almost always forces a kid to interact with other races - and at the very least interact with other classes. All the people I know who grew up with nannies have immense respect for them today; many picked up Spanish from their caretakers, and it’s much harder to dehumanize another person when you speak the same language. And in this country, if you come from enough money to grow up with a nanny, chances are you’ll end up in a small New England college where you’ll be pumped full of white guilt from orientation onward.

There's more:

If you look at countries like Sri Lanka or the Philippines that these women have left behind, it has had a calamitous effect. Children are left to be looked after by the men, such that they do, who are mostly unemployed.

Apparently, these kids would be better off being raised by two unemployed parents. Shame on western women for providing mothers with steady work.

Is it time to sell short? This guy seems to think so.

Personally, I think that democratized channels of communication are here to stay. Even if it is just to talk about monkey butlers.

If you had any doubts as to why boomers are suddenly so keen on health care entitlements, this press release from HHS ought to erase them.

Check out this telling graphic of President Bush's poll numbers since taking office. You really don't even need the dates at the bottom to find a) September 11, and, b) when we invaded Iraq.

As Glen Whitman notes, if I were North Korea, I'd be wary come fall 2004 if polls show a close election.

The great Berkeley Breathed has a new children's book coming out in October.

Today, I celebrate yet another sucessful trip around the Sun. I'd like to take a moment and reflect on some other notable events in history that coincidentally share the anniversary of my birth, and in which I had no involvement whatsoever.

On this day:

• 1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine


• 1867 – Andrew Johnson suspends Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton


• 1877 – Birth of the phonograph record


• 1934 – Babe Ruth’s final game at Fenway


• 1953 – The Soviet Union tests it’s first Hydrogen Bomb (which you can no longer do in Chicago)


• 1966 – John Lennon apologizes for claiming that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus


• 1972 – The last American ground troops leave Vietnam.

Fun city ordinance of the day:

Section 1-16-020 of the Chicago Municipal Code makes nuclear weapon work within in city of Chicago illegal.

a) No persons shall knowingly, within the City of Chicago, design, produce, deploy, launch, maintain, or store nuclear weapons or components of nuclear weapons. This prohibition shall take effect two years after the adoption and publication of this ordinance.
(b) No Person who is not, as of the effective date of this ordinance engaged in the design, production, deployment, launching, maintenance or storage of nuclear weapons or components of nuclear weapons, shall, within the city limits of Chicago commence any such activities after the effective date of this ordinance.
(c) Exclusions. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit:
(i) Any activity not specifically described in this section;
(ii) Basic research;
(iii) Any writing or speech devoted to public commentary or debate or other speech protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution;
(iv) The research and application of nuclear medicine;
(v) Uses of fissionable materials for smoke detectors, light-emitting watches and clocks and other consumer products; or
(vi) Direct activates of the federal government.

I feel safer already.

So do you remember this?

Turns out that Roger Ebert really does have cancer -- of the salivary gland -- and the movie director who wished cancer upon him (Vincent Gallo) is taking credit for Ebert's illness.

And while some might say that Gallo's reaching here, I'm not so sure. With Roger Ebert, after all, colon and mouth often emit the same product.

UPDATE: Er, some of you -- including my dad -- think I'm wishing cancer on Roger Ebert.

Though I can certainly be nasty on this site, I'd of course never wish cancer on anyone. Gallo did. I'm making fun of both of them -- Gallo because he was callous enough to revel in Ebert's cancer, and Ebert because when he isn't talking about movies, what comes out of his mouth is similar to what might come out of a colon. That is, I don't particularly like his politics.

Ebert's salivary gland tumor was removed, and isn't considered life-threateaning, else I wouldn't have made light of the whole situation.

Speaking of J-Lo, I'd like to plug another glamorous, multi-talented actor with huge crossover appeal, and whose stage talents may be exceeded only by his musical acumen.

I'm talking, of course, about Billy Bob Thornton, currently on tour, hocking his forthcoming CD, and coming September 2nd to the Birchmere here in Virginia. Bizarrely, he'll be in Atlanta, Georgia on August 19th with....Huey Lewis and the News.

(Sarcasm aside, I am a huge fan of Billy Bob, the actor.)

If you go see him, one rule: you must leave all of your antique furniture at home. Nothing BBT hates more than antique furniture.

I went to see Gigli this weekend (pronounced gee-lee, as in "rhymes with really," for those of you who had been wondering). Let me assure you that I went purely for the irony of having willfully gone to see The Worst Movie Ever Made. I'm now among an elite few who can say, "Sure, I saw Gigli in the theater."

It was every bit as bad as I'd hoped it would be. It was so bad, I'll go ahead and confess to having fallen asleep and not really feeling that bad about it. I'm told I missed most of Al Pacino's cameo, which appeared a bit too late, I'm afraid, to have had any effect on my judgment of the film. I can say that it almost certainly wouldn't have been horrible to an enjoyable extreme were it not for the presence of Brian, the loveable retarded character who brings Ben and J-Lo together, despite Ben's character having no discernable human characteristics and Jen's being a lesbian.

People have complained about J-Lo's performance in the film, but I can honestly say that she acted circles around Ben. It was as though he thought the best way to get at his mobster character was to act like someone acting like someone doing a horrible impersonation of a mobster, to ridiculous and often painful effect. The Onion has a few suggestions that might have made the film a bit better.

As for Jersey Girl, I would personally prefer to see Ben die in the first fifteen minutes, but that's just me. But I'll keep my Jersey Girl comments to myself until I see the film, lest Kevin Smith compare me to the Columbine killers.

In light of a certain box office catastrophe, the producers of J-Lo's latest flick are now hyping the fact that she dies in the first 15 minutes.

In my last piece at Reason I argued that J-Lo had a propensity to drag lesser talent with her from the block to the bank. I think this still holds, despite the recent debacle. Exhibit A: Jenny's proposed talk show, which would feature her little sister. Maybe it's cultural. Last week on Charlie Rose John Leguizamo plugged Undefeated and complained about the pressure Latinos feel to bring the whole family in on the game.

Speaking of time travel, here's a freaky short film that touches on the subject.

Well-worth twenty minutes of your time.

So a little while ago, I received this email to my work account:

Greetings,

We need a vendor who can offer immediate supply. I'm offering $5,000 US dollars just for referring a vender which is (Actually RELIABLE in providing the below equipment) Contact details of vendor required, including name and phone #. If they turn out to be reliable in supplying the below equipment I'll immediately pay you $5,000. We prefer to work with vendor in the Boston/New York area.

1. The mind warper generation 4 Dimensional Warp Generator # 52 4350a series wrist watch with z60 or better memory adapter. If in stock the AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor, two I80200 warp stabilizers, 256GB of SRAM, and two Analog Devices isolinear modules, This unit also has a menu driven GUI accessible on the front panel XID display. All in 1 units would be great if reliable models are available.

2. The special 23200 or Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built in temporal displacement. Needed with complete jumper/auxiliary system

3. A reliable crystal Ionizor with unlimited memory backup.

If your vendor turns out to be reliable, I owe you $5,000.

Email his details to me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com

Please do not reply directly back to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

What I could not figure out was how this scam was supposed to make this guy any money. After I got the following e-mail, however, I realized it was not a scam at all, but a man desperately in need of some help:

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me. I am going to need a new DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers, 512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display.

I will take whatever model you have in stock, as long as its received certification for being safe on carbon based life forms.

In terms of payment:

I dont have any Galactic Credits left. Payment can be made in platinum gold or 2003 currency upon safe delivery of unit.

Please transport unit in either a brown paper bag or box to below coordinates on Monday August 4th at (exactly 3:00pm) Eastern Standard Time on the dot. A few minutes prior will be ok, but it cannot be after. If you miss this timeframe please email me.

Latitude N 42.47935 & Longitude W 071.17355 and the Elevation is 119. WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT ITEM BY REGULAR MEANS OF TELEPORTATION. THEY ARE MONITORING AND WILL REDIRECT THE SIGNAL!! I DO NOT CARE HOW YOU HAVE TO GET IT HERE, JUST DO IT IN A WAY THAT NO SPYING EYES WILL POSSIBLY BE ABLE TO REDIRECT THE TRANSFERENCE. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE ABLE TO MONITOR THE TRANSFER.

Although those coordinates are a secure guarded area, these channels through email are never secure. Unfortunately it is the only form of communication I have right now.

After unit has been sent please email me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com with payment instructions. Do not reply directly back to this email.

Thank You.

Tyler Cowen, with some intriguing analysis.

Lengthy article in the Washington Post this morning that in a just world would prove devastating to the Bush administration.

(extended post -- click "more" for the rest...)

Bullet-point analysis on an intricate propoganda campaign designed on scaring the American public and the world of a Saddam nuclear weapons program that, the evidence shows, simply did not exist:

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied:

• Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign. Iraq's three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center at Rashidiya.

• The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 cited new construction at facilities once associated with Iraq's nuclear program, but analysts had no reliable information at the time about what was happening under the roofs. By February, a month before the war, U.S. government specialists on the ground in Iraq had seen for themselves that there were no forbidden activities at the sites.

• Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment. By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government's assertion. The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible.

• In the weeks and months following Joe's Vienna briefing, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others continued to describe the use of such tubes for rockets as an implausible hypothesis, even after U.S. analysts collected and photographed in Iraq a virtually identical tube marked with the logo of the Medusa's Italian manufacturer and the words, in English, "81mm rocket."

• The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

Let's also clear up another misconception. The criticism of the Bush administration that I'm making here is not that "Saddam didn't have WMDs, so we shouldn't have invaded."

My opposition to the war always rested on the assumption that Saddam did have WMDs, but that he still wasn't a threat to our safety and security -- and that as a CIA report at the time concluded, he'd be more of a threat when cornered, and given no other option but to use every weapon in his arsenal.

Bush's defenders are couching anti-war arguments right now as "see, Saddam didn't have WMDs, so he was never a threat." Our argument is more complicated than that, of course. But that's the most convenient way for Bush's defenders to couch it. Because they can then come back with quotes from Democrats, Hans Blix and the UN -- all of whom likewise thought Saddam had WMDs -- in an attempt to silence the war's opponents. "See? Everyone assumed he had the weapons. So you can't criticize Bush for assuming the same thing."

It also sets the stage for Bush's defenders to declare victory if and when, as Robert Novak reports, they dump a mountain of WMD evidence on their critics next month.

But that evidence merely takes us back to the argument we were having before the war began: Yes, Saddam has (had) WMDs. But will he use them? Would he sell them to terrorists? Is he deterable?

And then there's the more important issue, here: the deception. It's remarkable to me to see otherwise principled, hugely intelligent libertarians (Randy Barnett comes to mind) defend the idea that it's acceptable for a president to knowingly deceive the American people into supporting the invasion of another country (Also, see Gene Heal's excellent rebuke of the concept of "libertarian interventionism").

If the above article is true, the Bush administration allowed to stand statements, reports and public pronouncements it knew to be false -- or at the very least, unlikely. The White House allowed the American public to be duped into thinking Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear weapons -- the only WMDs really, when most everyone in the know inside the administration knew that assumption to be false.

Feeding us false information so we'll support a war we may not have otherwise bought into simply isn't acceptable behavior from the public officials who serve at our consent and discretion.

Hi, guys. Brian, don't worry about looking like the uptight one.

I'll start off with a polemic cunningly disguised as a book recommendation. David Fromkin's book A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East is a meticulously and brilliantly told tale, a great work of popular history. It is also a primer on a historical episode with which everyone in the Iraq debate should be familiar: the period following the First World War during which the British Empire redrew the map of the Arab world.

If you're already a First World War buff, you'll love the whole thing. If talk of Gallipoli and the Sublime Porte bores you, skip to Part X, on the British colonial experience in the Middle East. The story Fromkin tells there is a smashing rebuke to the pundits who pine for jodhpurs and pith helmets.

This is the story: a great empire, the strongest military power in the world following the defeat of its principal competitor, decides to take over the Middle East and modernize it by force. The empire's motivations are complex: grand dreams of altruistic uplift, long-term security concerns, and craven resource-grabbing all mixed together. Hopeful speeches are given about democratization, reconciliation, liberation. Pious assurances are made about respecting the interests of all ethnic groups and creating an environment in which all can live in peace. At the same time, there is condescending talk about the failure of Islamic culture, the inability of Arabs to govern themselves, the need for friendly rulers who will keep their countries on the approved path.

The overthrow of the tyrannical rulers of Mesopotamia turns into a costly and bitterly resented occupation. Tribal revolts wear down the occupiers; they respond with brutality that only creates more resentment. The empire grows exhausted. For all its wealth and power, it is stretched thin; it has too many overseas commitments for its shrinking army and shaky treasury to support. The traditional liberties the homeland once enjoyed are worn down by the demands of war. The empire slides toward socialism at home even as it struggles to hold on abroad. In the end, it leaves the Arabs fractured and downtrodden, ruled by puppet kings, and thereby lays the foundation for even more hatred of the West.

Sound familiar?

It appears that the solution to California's budget crunch may be to smash the deficits.... with a giant mallet.

Glum about recent crackdowns on internet copyright piracy? Can't get your dowload fix? No worries, my friends.

For the first time, Internet users can download, edit and swap many of the U.S. Supreme Court's greatest hits.

Oral arguments available include those for the Roe v. Wade abortion rights case and the disputed 2000 presidential election.

You can download your favorites from about 2000 hours of oral arguments dating back to 1955, according to the WaPo. And why not? Nothing sets the mood on a mix CD like a bit of oration from Roe v. Wade spliced into to Marvin Gaye's soulful delivery of "Let's Get It On." Or perhaps some Lawrence v. Texas placed tastefully as the intro to a mix CD of Eminem favorites.

I see endless possibility.

Thanks for keeping it light, Bryan. Now I'm going to look like the uptight one!

I attended the wedding of a good friend over the weekend, and was honored that he asked me to give one of the readings. I should mention that while I am not religious, I do consider myself spiritual and saw no reason to decline my friend’s request. For this reason, it was necessary for me to attend the rehearsal, and also arrive early at the church on the big day.

At the rehearsal, one of the first things the Sister asked was, “Do we have a copy of your marriage licence?” My friend had to think about it for a minute and discuss it with the bride. They both agreed that they had provided a copy of their marriage licence to the church.

The following day, the priest asked the same question. It may have been the stress of the day or that they were asked for a second time, but my friend and his bride again had to think about whether or not they had furnished a copy of the licence to the church. This time the Sister was sent to make sure.

It was at this point that I began to consider the role that the state plays in marriage. We were standing in a church wondering if the proper state paperwork had been filed in order to commence a religious ceremony, and it seemed to me there was a definite line being crossed.

Why should a young couple have anything more to worry about on their wedding day than spending their life together, or whether the band will respect their request to scratch “Celebration” from the reception playlist? Shouldn’t the state’s role exist only in the enforcement of the contract if one party fails to live up to their agreement? In fact, the controversy over state sanctioned marriages of gay couples would be eliminated if the state were out of the business of sanctioning marriages altogether.

Appropriately my reading was Tobit 7:9c-10, 11c-17: The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah, it’s one of the Old Testament readings that is quite popular for weddings. For those unfamiliar with the reading, it’s here.

The reading describes marriage as a simple contract.

Let's kick this guest blogging thing off with something light hearted.

I think this guy has already stated his position on more issues than Schwarzenegger. If you want to go in the opposite direction though, here is your candidate.

Gene Healy's site is now hosted over at AFF, complete with unflattering caricature.

And Alina Stefanescu has moved to an MT template, which means she (finally!) has permalinks.

So over the next few months, blogging from yours truly will taper off a bit. Several reasons for this. One, I have a few other projects I need to get rolling, including getting a final draft of a book proposal together, and, after that, the book. I also anticipate needing some time here and there to tend to personal goings-on. I'll still be blogging, just less frequently. And I'll still be writing for Fox and Tech Central.

But fear not. I've made arrangements for you to get your daily fill of Agitydom, and then some. For at least the next couple of months -- perhaps longer if it's successful -- your favorite blogsite will be doing the group thing.

I've invited five co-bloggers aboard. They'll be blogging on this page alongside me. I've chosen them because I think they each bring something unique to the site. All are generally libertarian. Below, a quick introduction to each. As of this morning, then, they're officially turned loose. And please let me know (via email) how you think our little experiment is going.

Cheers.

Your New Co-Blogging Crew

Bryan M. Westhoff

26-year old attorney living in Chicago, IL. I'm a first year litigation associate doing general commercial litigation. I went to Washington University in St. Louis for law school and Truman State University for undergrad, where I was a political science major.

Am I suppose to write something funny now? I have a problem knowing if bios are suppose to have funny stuff in them or be completely serious. If everyone else puts something funny in theirs, pretend I did too. If there is some mix of people putting funny stuff and those not putting funny stuff, go with the
majority - although a tie goes to funny. Thanks.

Why I Invited Him: A law school chum with lots of crazy opinions. Eclectic, far-ranging taste in music. Is for campaign finance reform, the estate tax and environmental regulation, yet still claims to be a libertarian.

Kerry Howley

Kerry Howley is a "freelance writer," which her parents call "unemployed." Recent stints include a summer at The Charlie Rose Show and a few months at Reason Magazine; you may know her from sporadic posts at Hit & Run. She just graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in Philosophy and English - proof that she never intended on having a job, anyway. She lives on New York City's Upper East Side.

Why I Invited Her: Reason's just-expired super-intern (the internship expired -- Kerry's still with us). Beat Slate to the scoop on false success rates in Chuck Colson's prison fellowship program. Also wrote screamers on the prescription drug benefit and J-Lo.

Nicholas Weininger

I'm a Ph.D. student in mathematics at Rutgers, and generally a
math/computer science geek type. I'm 25 years old; I grew up in upstate
NY, went to college in Minnesota, and am now back East for grad school.

Politically, I guess I'm a David Friedman-ish consequentialist gradualist anarcho-capitalist. I have a personal homepage.

Why I Invited Him: Consistently articulate voice in the comments section here and around the libertarian blogosphere. Re: His description of his politics: Treats words the same way he treats numbers.

Brooke Oberwetter

DC-area aspiring writer posing as undervalued secretary at the Cato Institute, so as to be better situated after the revolution.

Why I Invited Her: Read her website. Wry, clever, insightful. She cracks me up.

Brian Kieffer

Twenty-Seven-years-old on Chicago’s northwest side. When I’m not freelancing web design or writing music for my band, I keep busy at my job with a telecommunications company. Computers and technology fascinate me. Not only the ones and zeros, but also how people interact with them and their impact on our quality of life. I have a website.

At the University of Illinois, I studied Art & Design and Economics. Why? While I enjoy them immensely, drawing and painting don’t pay the bills. As it turns out econ doesn’t either, but guidance counselors don’t like to mention that. After college I went to work on telephone switches, and have been toeing the bleeding edge of circuit and packet switched human interaction ever since.

I describe myself as libertarian. It’s the only label I’ve worn that, despite constant picking and scratching, hasn’t yet peeled off. I also refer to myself as a “classical liberal”, but most people don’t get it and I usually don’t have the energy to explain.

I want to be an astronaut.

Why I Invited Him: Another pull from the comments section. He's been here since pretty much the beginning. Odd obsession with monkeys. Politics are stone-solid (by that I mean, he usually agrees with me). He also designed our logo, and the GW Bush Libertymeter (see link at left).

That's all of them.

Robert Saumelson on media "consolidation:"

THE PAST 30 years, media power has splintered dramatically; people have more choices than ever. Travel back to 1970. There were only three major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC); now, there’s a fourth (Fox). Then, there was virtually no cable TV; now, 68 percent of households have it. Then, FM radio was a backwater; now there are 5,892 FM stations, up from 2,196 in 1970. Then, there was only one national newspaper (The Wall Street Journal); now, there are two more (USA Today and The New York Times).

If you don’t like radio, you can listen to a Walkman or pop a CD in your car player; in 1970, people had only bulky stereo systems. The alternative to TV is the VCR (85 percent of households) or, increasingly, the DVD player. Then there’s the Internet: everything from foreign news sites to chess to pornography.

The idea that “big media” has dangerously increased its control over our choices is absurd. Yet much of the public, including journalists and politicians, believe religiously in this myth. They confuse size with power. It’s true that some gigantic media companies are getting even bigger at the expense of other media companies. But it’s not true that their power is increasing at the public’s expense.

Samuelson also correctly points out that the left/right alliance against the new ownership rules stems from three disgruntled sectors: leftists who fear the ClearChannel/Rupert Murdoch/talk radio conservative assaut on the airwaves, rightists (like Brent Bozell) unhappy with the sex and violence on cable and network television, and journalists who don't like the fact that, with more competition, there's now actually a profit motive in media. The purists hate business-model journalism.

In truth, I think the biggest critics of the FCC rules want more consolidation, not less. On NPR last week, media critic Jon Katz lamented that media today is too splintered, that we can today pick and choose news outlets most in line with our own ideology. Katz longed for the days when Walter Cronkite could in and of himmself put issues into the public debate, because all of America watched him.

Of course, that's a cry for more conslidation, not less.

I think the FCC critics from the left aren't worried about consumers, they're worried about the left. Murdoch and tak radio have caught on because there is, obviously, an audience for Fox and for Rush Limbaugh. Gone are the days when Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow monopolized the information flow.

I was doing some vain Google searches just for kicks, and decided to enter the phrase "Senator Handsome."

The first four entries are, of course, posts from your humble Agitator.

But #5? Yep, the official website of the object of our scorn, Sen. Johnathan Edwards.

And longtime readers will be happy to know, this site is still the top listing for "ghetto aromatic."

A new sporadic feature here at TheAgitator.com, where we explore some of the more interesting tales in the history of liberty.

Today, I'm going to give you a phrase, and see if any of you can tell me what it means. Bonus points for context. Double bonus points if one of you knows how it all relates to liberty.

The phrase is:

dephlogisticated air

Answer next week, if no one gets it in the comments section. And no fair using Google.

Longtime leftist activist Leo Terrel has resigned from the NAACP, after the organization asked him to either end his affiliation with them, or renounce his endorsement of Carolyn Kuhl, whom President Bush just nominated to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. From FoxNews.com:

"How dare the NAACP tell me who I can or cannot endorse on an individual basis. That is the part that makes this so outrageous," Terrell told Foxnews.com. "I am going to tell the whole world what the NAACP did to me."

Check this quote from the same article. It's from Mississippi Democratic Rep. Tom Wallace, chastising Mississipi Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Phillip West for supporting another Bush nominee, Judge Charles Pickering:

"Our strength is in the pack. I don't think it's healthy for a bunch of us to go out individually. We need to ride with what the group stands for."

Methinks said white legislator would soon be handing in his resignation.

"In the audio links below, I treat you to my analysis of pollster Dr. David Hill's column headlined "Bloggers Won't Match Limbaugh." A blogger is a citizen who gets a website and just opines on various topics unrealted [sic] to politics. A friend of mine defined the term, derived from "web log," as "a nerd with a journalist degree and no social life who spends most days and all nights writing e-mails to himself and his friends in hopes of attracting attention from traditional media outlets." Andrew Sullivan is perhaps the best-known political blogger."

-- The Great Bloviator, on blogging.

Link via The Blogfather.

...then we take Berlin.

My quest for world media domination continues.

Wednesday night was Eugene, Oregon. This Saturday morning, Missoula, Montana!

10 am eastern on KGEZ ("The Edge"), which has a rockin' website.

You can listen live, if you like.

And whilst listening, be sure to check out The Edge's "Daily Z-Babe" or the station's playlist.

Hank Steuver on California and its politics:

California is behaving badly, like a disheveled celebrity gone off her meds. Broke and bipolar, babbling incoherently into an invisible phone; toothless and trespassing and asking for help. Orange jumpsuit; darkened roots. Dumped by both her agent and her publicist. The state is as obsessed as ever with fresh starts and extreme makeovers.

Link props to Brooke Oberwetter.

P.T. Barnum would be proud. Gene sends this, from Wired:

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire -- A security flaw at a website operated by the purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a spammer?

An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle...

Among the people who responded in July to Amazing's spam, which bore the subject line, "Make your penis HUGE," was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.

Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers.

But records on file with the New Hampshire secretary of state show that Braden Bournival, a 19-year-old high-school dropout who is also listed as vice president of the New Hampshire Chess Association, owns Amazing Internet Products.

Bournival refused repeated requests for interviews about his business. When approached for comment at a chess tournament in Merrimack, New Hampshire, last month, Bournival, who is a national-master-caliber player, ran away from a Wired News reporter...

An investigation (registration to Salon.com required) last month revealed that Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it became public that his father was Jewish.

Reader Brian Hipp sends this story from Kansas City:

Singer Oleta Adams has been hired for $15,000 to perform at a back-to-school rally for Kansas City School District educators and administrators...

District officials said the event was intended to show appreciation to educators and encourage a positive attitude going into a new school year in which the district faces many challenges.

One big challenge is dealing with a smaller budget that will mean fewer teachers and librarians. At least one Board of Education member is skeptical about the entertainment cost for the convocation.

"Fifteen thousand dollars would buy 600 books at $25 apiece," said Duane Kelly, a former teacher in the district. "There's about 75 schools. That's about eight books per school in the library. There are different ways of doing things. I'm more inclined to go with books that will last for years than this sort of thing."

But Edwin Birch, spokesman for the district and organizer of the convocation, said tough financial times would make an inspirational gathering for the staff even more important.

"We have to make sure we keep people's morale up," he said. "I think Oleta Adams is classy. Having her sing for our teachers speaks volumes."

Anonymous lefty blogger/media critic (and why are so many lefty bloggers anonymous?) Barney Gumble reaches real deep, and manages some backhanded, reluctant praise for your humble Agitator:

I've called Radley a "pissant" before, but frankly, while his politics are naive, he's a better writer than I am.

It's the third anniversary of Betty Sembler Day in Florida!

To celebrate, go seriously fuck up the life of your favorite teenager!

Last week, the FBI drained a 1.45 million gallon Maryland pond in search of evidence that might implicate long time antrhax investigation "person of interest" Steven J. Hatfill.

No germs.

I have a fairly niched piece up at Tech Central.

It's on new FCC regulations that ban solicitous faxes. Actually, it's not that niched at all. It affects pretty much anyone who sends a fax to someone else who isn't expecting it.

And I use it to, again, decry the lawmaking powers Congress has delegated to regulatory agencies.

So when a fellow libertarian friend told me she had an extra ticket she couldn’t use to an event featuring Ann Coulter, my first thought was to de-friend the friend. Attending a Coulter event with any intent other than to openly mock her, it seems to me, is the mark of a traitorous libertarian, a turncoat who ought to be ousted from the movement and hung by her….

Aw, hell. I can’t even pretend to be as polemical as Ass-Kickin’ Ann.

Actually, I was excited to use the ticket. Who could ask for better blog fodder?

(click on the "more" link to the right...)

I already have one great Ann Coulter story:

I’ve seen her cry.

It was about five years ago at a C-PAC convention (C-PAC, for you right-wing neophytes, is short for Conservative Political Action Conference an annual gathering of family values types, blue blazers, and neatly pantsuited ladies -- the kind of crowd to whom Alan Keyes really does make sense).

At any rate, Ann was on a panel that also featured conservative codger Reed Irvine and someone else who escapes me, but for some reason I want to think was Terence Jeffrey, opiner, scribe and talking head who makes his home at the very conservative Human Events.

What I do remember is that Ann’s two male co-panelists wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise -- mean boy-bullies that they were -- and the panel concluded with Ann struggling to choke back tears. I snuck back behind the panel after the session, of course, hoping to witness more drama. And that’s when I saw Cold-Blooded Coulter in sobbing hysterics. She’d been bullied. And now she was crying.

I’ve never taken her seriously since. Not that I would have otherwise.

The first thing I learned about the luncheon I’d be attending was that it was primarily an event for conservative women. It was sponsored by the Clare Boothe Luce Institute, and put on in conjunction with the Heritage Foundation as part of a summer luncheon series for D.C.’s society of high-collared gals.

Even when I called to RSVP, I was initially told there was a long waitlist, and that only women would be considered. I persisted, and within a few hours was told that the waitlist had in fact been satisfied, and that, yes, I could attend. I had actually considered using the event as material for a Fox column (though I’ve since concluded it’s best for the blog), so when asked, I described myself to luncheon attendees as “a columnist for FoxNews.com.”

Appropriately, in the cab ride over, my cabby had tuned his radio to the “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger Show. I say “appropriately” for a couple of reasons. First, because Dr. Laura is to “psychologist” what Ann Coulter is to “serious public intellectual.” That is, both make their living under the guise of being one, but neither actually is one. I’d also learn later that Dr. Laura was the Clare Boothe Luce Institute’s 2002 “Woman of the Year.” And Ann of course was today’s Clare Boothe Luce Institute speaker.

I’m not exactly sure what to make of this Coulter/Schlessinger synergy. On the one hand, Dr. Laura and Ann Coulter annoy me in similar ways. Both are grating, shrill, and speak in uncompromising blacks and whites. The world of Ann Coulter and Dr. Laura is one of good or evil, of sluts or saints, of patriots or treacherists, and never the in-between. Both suffer from raging fits of hypocrisy. Coulter, for all her talk of conservative values, leads a fairly swingin’ social life, and for awhile dated Bob Guccione, Jr., publisher of the decidedly unconservative Spin magazine, and son of legendary pornographer Bob Guccione, Sr. (publisher of Penthouse, among others). As for Dr. Laura, you may remember a few years ago that the woman who regularly scolds women for making poor decisions has evidence of her own poor decisions still plastered all about the Internet (warning: not only is the previous not a work-safe click, it really isn’t safe for anyone).

I wonder what would happen if a young Dr. Laura -- or a contemporary Ann Coulter -- called Dr. Laura for counsel?

I digress.

The event apparently was so well-RSVPed and highly anticipated that it had to be moved from the Heritage Foundation to the Capitol Hill Club. You’d think John Mayer were opening. Or with this crowd, Johnny Mathis.

The CHC, by the way, is young Republican central, home to many a neat scotch, wing-tipped shoe, and pocket hanky. Spit, and you’ll hit an Adam Smith tie. If you’re not driving a Grand Cherokee, prepare to sit at the losers’ table.

Fortunately, it was casual Friday, so I was wearing a polo…er…I mean Polo. Yes, the real thing. With the horse and the guy and the mallet and everything. Still, I worried, I might have problems getting in. This, after all, was an event for conservative women. I’m a libertarian man. What if I giggled when someone suggested we put Ronald Reagan on the ten-dollar bill? What if I failed to bow my head with sufficient reverence upon hearing the name “Jeanne Kirkpatrick?” And that’s just ideology. This event was for women. I wouldn’t have passed for a lesbian, much less an Eagle Forum poster girl. I hadn’t shaved. I have close-cropped hair. I wore slacks.

Also I have, you know, the penis.

I decided I’d humor my way in. Woo them. Win them over. So upon approaching the most senior-looking woman behind the registration table, I smiled, put the best twinkle in my eye, and pushed the charm full-throttle.

“I’m a man,” I said. “See? No breasts. I suppose you’ll want to see my papers?”

Icy stare. Okay, so I’m no Mitch Hedberg. But come on -- not even a courtesy laugh?

“Your name?”

“Radley Balko.”

No eye contact. No smile.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re fine.”

Geez. Tough crowd.

The dining room looked like it might seat 200 people. I was fifteen minutes early. It was about half full -- probably eighty or so ladies, most of them young, most clutching a copy of Treason to a well-wrapped, tightly-packed, decidedly unjiggly bosom.

And lapel pins. Lots and lots of lapel pins. All stars and stripes. Small flags. Big flags. Flag broaches. Bejeweled flags. Surely the highest concentration of American flag lapel pins this side of the Talladega infield.

I decided it might be best if I were inconspicuous. So I sat at a table in the far corner, next to the black person. Okay, maybe that’s not fair. There were other black people in the room. The waitstaff, for example. And I think one of the cameramen might have been mixed.

Our lunch menu featured a Ceasar salad with a few rubbery cuts of chicken breast, some crust of bread, and fruit for desert -- Roman gluttony by Coulter standards.

Still, I thought the whole thing was an appetizer -- it’s a salad. It’s a first course, right?. I spent most of the lunch waiting for the main course. Where was the red meat? Would there be gravy?

Protein? Please?

Never came.

Of course, even what I got would feed Ann Coulter for a month. I couldn’t see her plate, but rumor had it our star speaker dined on half a cigarette and a quick tongue swipe across the backs of two postage stamps. Even then, I hear, she had the post-lunch groggies.

(Yes, I made the entire previous paragraph up.)

The room décor featured oil paintings around the exterior of gallant men in military fatigues, one of a woman I recognized as Barbara Bush, and several others I didn’t recognize, but each of whom wore pearls, and a haircut contemporary for her time -- but stylish and sensible, of course. It was like an homage to Betty Crocker through the decades.

In her short story “Revelation,” Flannery O’Connor aptly describes ladies of a certain age and conservative demeanor as “pleasant.” In fact, the plight of the “pleasant” woman is a recurring theme O’Connor’s work.

She doesn’t use the word as a compliment.

O’Connor’s “pleasant” southernly women are outwardly cordial, inwardly hostile, backwardly-thinking, and terribly gifted passive-aggressives. I thought of O’Connor when I was soon joined at my table by three decidedly “pleasant” Republicanly women.

One worked on the Hill, but wouldn’t tell me which office; one declined to tell me where she worked at all (after I told her I was a writer); and the third worked for an agency that facilitates overseas adoptions. They blended so well with the rest of the room, I remember just a few things about them. But here is what I do remember:

I remember that the lady who worked for the overseas adoption agency was the friendliest of the three. In fact, it might not even be fair to call her “pleasant”. She was downright enjoyable. A real person. When I mentioned I sometimes write for Fox, she asked if I knew “E.D.” or “Hannity” or “Alan.”

I told her I’d once done a radio interview with Alan Colmes (which is true), and that Sean Hannity and I sometimes hit the strip bars together (which isn’t). She laughed -- and I’m pretty sure it was genuine. I liked her.

I remember the woman who wouldn’t tell me where she works was the most outwardly but least inwardly friendly of the three -- the most “pleasant,” you might say. “So how did you get in here, anyway,” she asked, with a probing stare and a prosthetic smile.

“I’m a writer,” I said.

With that, she shot me a piercing, contemptuous look. Like I’d just stepped out of a polished Iroc with flame decals, wearing leather chaps and a spiked collar, to pick up her daughter for a date. She also offered this bit of commentary just before Ann walked in:

“You know, I always thought that after September 11, we should have closed off the borders to all foreigners for a year, and done a head count of every Muslim.”

The others, I remember, nodded in knowing approval.

The third of the pleasant ladies would’ve been virtually unmemorable except that she wore this trippy, powerfully and horizontally striped blouse featuring more shades of pink than a year’s subscription to Hustler. It looked like one of those optical illusions where your mind makes you think stuff is moving, but it really isn’t. It was the kind of blouse you might think she had to recharge at night.

Soon our little gathering had hit the room’s capacity. It struck me that I was squeezed into a room with a couple hundred women -- a few of them attractive -- and I had yet to mentally undress a single one of them. This struck me odd. I guess country clubbers just don’t do it for me. I suppose I like a woman who isn’t afraid to eat off a paper plate from time to time. Or it could have been the fact that, despite it being late July in Washington, there just wasn’t a lot of skin around.

That would soon change, of course. Because Ann’s entrance was near. And what we all love about Ann is that though she thinks like Phyllis Schlafly, she dresses like Ally McBeal.

We heard a tap-tap-tap on the microphone (which later went out), and just as the ladies all about us were whispering “C-SPAN!, C-SPAN!” yes, indeed, the C-SPAN cameras flickered red lights. Just near the back, I spotted two others from my gender. Two men, with ties. They dressed like Congressmen might, though I didn’t recognize them if that’s what they were (unlike a Senator, it’s rough being Congressman. Because you are pretty damned important, but most people can’t tell just by looking. Must be frustrating for the poor fellows).

They took seats near the cameras, naturally.

Most ladies had by now pushed away their plates. The air hang heavy with an electric cocktail of estrogen, anticipation, and rock-star idolatry. The conservative movement’s Mick Jagger was about to take the stage -- only skinnier, cockier, and a touch less sophisticated (Mick attended the London School of Economics, after all). And if you believe rock lore, Mick’s probably better at pleasing a man, too.

“First Libel, then Treason,’” one woman whispered. “I can’t imagine what she’ll call her next book! What could be worse than Treason?!?”

“She’s so beautiful,” another said. “No one should get such beauty and brains.”

By this time, two of my libertarian friends -- Joanne and Kate -- had joined me at the apostacists’ table. Or at least at our little corner of the apostacists’ table.

Kate reminded me that Ann had actually once flirted with the idea of running for Congress from Connecticut -- and under the Libertarian Party banner, no less. The reason? Coulter didn’t like the moderate, RINO ways of Rep. Chris Shays, whom she thought should be kicked out of office for being a “pantywaist” of a Republican (on this issue she’s right, by the way. Shays is a pantywaist). Unfortunately for Ann, the Connecticut State Libertarian Party rejected her as a candidate. This caused Coulter to fire off a nasty screed about how Libertarians care only about the drug issue, and thus, she could never be a Libertarian, and didn’t really want to be one, anyway -- much like the girl who doesn’t make the cheerleading squad, then becomes editor of the school newspaper, and writes about how empty-headed and shrill cheerleaders can be.

“What’s that say about you,” Kate mused, “when the party of the blue people, the druids and the tin-foil hats rejects you as a candidate?”

Indeed.

And then, like that, she entered. A wisp of a thing.

The exaltation bubbled first from the middle of the room, near the door. It then spread like dengue, and enveloped the whole of us in rapturous applause.

A quick read of the room’s faces:

Our star is here! Among us! Gooseneck, dammit! Get a peek! Move, so I may see! What would she say? Would she be feisty? Funny? Sexy? Would she slay those dastardly liberals with her daggered wit and incisive invective?

You bet she would!

But we’d have to wait.

First to the microphone would be Michelle Easton, President of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Hazards of getting to the show early: You get good seats, but there’s always the chance that the opening band’s gonna’ suck.

Easton first asked all the interns and college students in the room to raise their hands, a move I can only guess was requested by our two Congressmen friends sitting in the back. I looked to see if either of them took notes, but couldn’t catch enough of a glimpse to say. Ah, it was late July, anyway -- much too late into the summer intern season to fire up a fling.

Easton next made a pitch for her organization, then launched into a lengthy, glowing, rhetorical cunnilingus of an introduction for Coulter -- one that had to have killed at least three thesauri in the making.

I have written in my notepad:

“Strong, articulate, courageous and witty, despite vicious attacks from her detractors.”

A line that really needs no ridicule. Coulter of course has made an entire career of vicious attacks, none of them strong, articulate, courageous, or witty (though I admit, she can be funny from time to time).

I scribbled a note to Joanne.

“No mention of getting fired from National Review?”

Easton went on. And on. And on.

Once Coulter finally took the podium, visibly moved at the introduction, she noted how nice it was to be in front of a friendly crowd, none of whom were waving “placards.” She must have had a bad experience with placards, because she mentioned them four times in the next several minutes.

Coulter spoke fast, so my notes from her speech are largely excerpts, a few quotables, and my own summaries of some choice lines of argument. I guess the best way to do this is to relay what I’ve written to you, then provide my own analysis.

So here we go…

Coulter started with an odd series of one-liners and quips about how liberals “do nothing” when it comes to America’s national security, how they’ve been “doing nothing” for years, and how they’ll continue to “do nothing” until we’re reduced to a pile of smoldering mushroom-cloud-caused coals. A few lines from my notes:

“Liberals doing nothing is what caused 9/11.”

Of course, we had a Republican in office in the eight months leading up to 9/11. And if we take the man responsible for 9/11 at his word -- the at-large Osama bin Laden -- it wasn’t doing nothing that caused 9/11, it was doing something. Specifically, our presence in Saudi Arabia, our bombing and imposition of sanctions on Iraq, and our involvement in Gulf War I. The sanctions and sporadic bombings of Iraq were done by both Republicans and Democrats.

You could make the case that all of these things were necessary (though I wouldn’t), but you certainly can’t argue that any of them could be defined as “doing nothing,” or that they were done by particularly liberal or conservative parties. Some we might lay at Clinton’s feet. Others at Bush the Elder’s.

But the United States “doing nothing” certainly isn’t what inspired the perpetrators of 9/11.

“Terrorists don’t respect doing nothing. They respect a show of force.”

Only if you kill every last one of them. Otherwise, it just makes them more determined.

Look at Israel.

When are people most likely to lash out at you -- when you've left them alone, or when you've put your stuff in their backyard?

“Liberals have been doing nothing when it comes to defending America for the last century.”

Hmm. Seems Ann might want to brush up on her history. We entered the first World War when Woodrow Wilson was in office. He was a liberal Democrat. We entered World War II when FDR was in office. He was liberal a Democrat. Korea? Truman. Democrat. Vietnam? Kennedy. Democrat.

Those would be your four big wars from the last century. And Ann’s wrong on every one of them.

You can also credit Clinton for Kosovo, Bosnia, and bombing raids on the Sudan, Afghanistan (including al-Qaeda training camps), and Iraq.

With the crowd in her palm, Ann then moved to patriotism, treason and censorship:

“Dissent isn’t proof of patriotism.”

Actually, a pretty good point.

The anti-war left I think too often is unwilling to keep its own house in order. Criticizing U.S. foreign policy and offering reasoned, constructive alternatives is perfectly patriotic. So too I think is a little dignified outrage when things get out of hand. Lengthy screeds about how America is the root cause of all the world’s suffering simply can’t be disguised as patriotism.

You can be a patriot while criticizing your country. It’s tough to be a patriot while hating it.

Coulter of course is incapable of such nuance. Actually, she’s probably capable of it, but it doesn’t suit her purpose, which is selling books. And so she lumps all criticism of Bush, of war, of empire, of inattention to civil liberties -- all of it -- as treacherous, traitorous and contemptible. If Coulter had stopped at “dissent isn’t proof of patriotism,” she’d have come dangerously close to making a point. But she didn’t. She of course went too far the other way: Dissent isn’t proof patriotism, it’s proof of treachery.

Next, Ann went the catfight route, and took on Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks.

She made the somewhat wry (but hardy original) observation that the Dixie Chicks “went on the cover of Rolling Stone, and Time, on Larry King and the front page of the New York Times to tell everyone ‘they’ve been censored.’ When you’re griping all over the media, Natalie, let me tell you something: you’re not being censored.”

Cute. But isn’t this the same Ann Coulter who goes on Larry King, MSNBC, Fox and CNN to complain about how conservatives never get to have their say in the media?

Isn’t this the same Ann Coulter who’s been profiled in Slate, Time and who I’ve seen pitching her book on every major news outlet (and this from a guy who generally changes the channel the moment her famished mug pops on screen), but then later said in the same speech that “liberals are responding to my book the way Muslim clerics did to The Satanic Verses?”

Isn’t this the same Ann Coulter who whined in the speech that Time magazine was biased for choosing an unflattering photo of her for its profile of her -- obviously overlooking the fact that Time Magazine was doing a profile of her?

Seems to me that Ann Coulter has met the Dixie Chicks, and she is they.

Actually, there’s one small difference between the two. Natalie Means let slip one small example of stupid (if not politically stupid, at least stupid in that it caused her grief) in front of a foreign audience during wartime. Ann Coulter wrote 200+ pages of semi-researched, revised, premeditated stupid.

Ann next focused on the steak and mutton of any effective conservative screed: Democrats and liberals. She said of the Democratic Party “if they’re not working for al-Qaeda, then they’re being cheated out of a paycheck.”

Again, a cute line, but hardly backed by facts. The Democrats have been just as willing to buckle on Iraq, on civil liberties, and on submitting to yet another vast, bureaucratic mess called “Homeland Security” -- in which actual intelligence on al-Qaeda can again get lost in the morass of red tape, infighting and turf wars -- as the Republicans have been willing to engage this crap. In fact, Democrats have led the charge on many of them.

I think it’d be great if there was some actual dissent on Capitol Hill -- or as Coulter might put it, some treason. There’s been far too little.

But Coulter’s favorite trick is to intersperse the labels “Democrat” and “liberal” when each or the other suits her purpose.

When describing opposition to the Cold War, for example, she uses “liberal,” enabling her to charge her ideological opponents with treachery (and to conveniently overlook examples of Republican detante (Nixon going to China) or Democrat confrontation (the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy's camraderie with McCarthy). But later, in the speech, she threw in a line about how the “Democrats” were also the party of “white supremacists,” and opposed to civil rights, which I guess was a reference to the fact that most of the segregationists and vocal opponents of the Civil Rights Act were Democrats.

True.

Of course, it was those Democrats’ ideological offspring that are today Ann Coulter’s allies. The whole “southern strategy” revolved around capitalizing on the bigotry of southern, blue-collar Democrats to bring them around to the other side of the aisle. And while rhetorical bomb-throwers like Ann Coulter are quick to point out, for example, that Al Gore’s dad voted against the Civil Rights Act, or that more Republicans than Democrats favored it, they fail to point out that the kinds of Republicans who did support it were the very kinds of “pantywaist” Republicans like Chris Shays that Ann Coulter wants out of the party -- liberal, Northeastern Republicans.

From there, we went to the question and answer session, which was far more saccharine than the fruit and dollop of whipped cream we got for desert. Most every question began with:

“I just want to say how much I admire you,”

or,

“I just want to say I love your spunk,”

or,

“Not only are you beautiful, but you also have guts.”

My favorite:

“Do you find it hard to be taken seriously when you’re so beautiful?”

To which Coulter responded,

“I love it! You know, when I tour college campuses, I always find that the prettiest girls in the room are the ones in the College Republicans.”

Before I left, there was one reasonably substantive question, which came from a young lady who asked what Coulter thought of the prescription drug benefit. Her answer was preposterous.

“As president,” she said, “you can really only hold your ground on about three public policy areas. For Bush, it’s terrorism, the judiciary and tax cuts. You can’t ask him to stay consistent on any thing more than that.”

“You can’t put all your hopes in a Republican president,” she said.

She then went on to blame, yes, the media, for President Bush’s lavish spending habit, and added this particularly baffling line:

“You can’t hold Republicans responsible for every bill that crosses the president’s desk.”

You can’t? Don’t Republicans have the votes to shoot down any piece of legislation in either house of Congress? Doesn’t President Bush have the power to veto any bill he sees? Doesn’t Coulter, who fancies herself a “constitutional lawyer” know this?

Of course she does. Her point of course is that the media pushes the policy agenda, and that Republicans risk political capital if they take on too much at once. But if her president can only hold the line on three policy areas, and is forced to utterly and completely capitulate on all the others, then her president is, frankly, weak, inept and impotent as a leader. Wasn’t this the president who promised “not to govern with polls?” Is it asking too much to take him at his word? Vowing to sign the biggest entitlement program in 40 years is not practical compromise -- strageric or otherwise. If you’re a legitimate proponent of limited government, it’s called “grabbing your ankles,” particularly when your party controls the White House and the Congress.

I went to see Ann Coulter expecting to see a vapid, intellectually dishonest example of someone forgoing all desire to be taken seriously in the interest of a quick route to TV gigs and million-dollar book deals.

Ann Coulter just signed a $3 million book deal.

As for “forgoing all desire to be taken seriously,” well, let’s just say I didn’t leave disappointed.

If you happen to live in Oregon, I'll be on KUGN AM-590 at about 4:15pm Pacific to discuss the boomer column. I'll be on for about an hour.

In an article about youth anti-war activism, The Nation runs this quote by poor, disillusioned youth and anti-war organizer Franz Hartl:

The evenings combine political speeches with appearances by alternative icons in an effort to engage alienated sophisticates. At one June event, political hip-hoppers Arrested Development gave a reunion performance, and indie literary icon Neal Pollack has promised his support. "We're hip, ironic," laughs Hartl. "We're using culture to show that Karl Rove and the Cato Institute are dorks and losers."

But Arrested Development? So 1992, dude.

By the way, the entire Cato foreign policy team was and is against the war, of course.

Print it out, take it to your local trendy neighborhood bar, and have at it.

Let me just say that "Balko" is Prussian. More Russian, really, than German.

Hat tip: Hit & Run.

There's an old Steven Wright joke that goes like this:

"I bought a package of powdered water the other day. I didn't know what to add."

This cool story nearly brings the joke to life.

Hat tip to Eve Tushnet.

Stats are up. A pretty good month, considering how much Net use drops off in the summer.

Some changes coming soon to your favorite blogsite. Details to come.

Back in 1977 -- when I was just a wee tike -- Atari introduced its 2600 game system. The system was generations ahead of the pong-set -- color graphics, games with plot, several levels, etc. I was too young to remember, but I'm guessing that adolescent boys sat for hours at the screen, just like men well into their twenties do with Playstation today. It also launched the video arcade, a wonderfully smoky, dingy, dirty place filled with unmet potential that, when you're 13, is about the closest you can get to a real-life bar.

Shockwave has just introduced a game called Arcadia, and there's some keen social commentary lurking in this game that I'm sure is present, but that, frankly, I can't seem to wrap my brain around.

Arcadia is basically a reproduction of four different Atari 2600 games -- an adventure game, a pong-ish game, a strategy Connect-4 style game, and a game that imitates Poll Position. The interesting twist? You play all four of them at the same time.

Here's where I'm looking to extract commentary from a video game. Is this the product of a "multi-tasking" culture? What does it mean that a game that entertained us for hours in 1977 now only entertains us if we're playing three others like it, and at the same time? Does it mean we're smarter, dumber, or merely more dexterous? Is it the product of our MTV-induced gnat-ish attention spans? What's the relationship between technology, entertainment, and our collective intelligence?

Or am I high to think there's anything significant to this at all?

Tom Spencer makes the preposterous claim that Bill Clinton would never have misleadingly taken us to war for political reasons, and David Beito rightly rebukes him. Beito's new group blog doesn't have permanlinks, so I'll just "excerpt" the whole thing:

When Clinton and his advisors took us to war in Kosovo, it is hard to escape the conclusion that it was in great part to divert attention from his scandal-ridden administration. In justifying this crusade which had nothing to do with national defense, they relied on hysterical claims that the Serbs in Kosovo were engaging in atrocities on a Hitlerian scale. Journalists and investigators have shown that most of these claims were false. The Serbs could be a brutal lot but the "Hitler comparison" (later used by Dubya) was a disingenuous excuse to get us into a needless and ultimately counterproductive war.

Did Clinton know the truth behind these lies? He was incompetent if he didn't. The most tangible result of the war (which has been ignored by Clinton) was the massive reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo which occurred under his watch and continues to occur.

Overrated TV critic Tom Shales blasts the new Fox series O.C., but check this graph, which makes me wonder who on the writing staff should get some Cato literature:

What's his problem? He has a drunken mother and an abusive stepfather, but what's really bothering him, according to an unlikely burst of dialogue early in the show, is that Social Security funds are going to run out in 2025, thereby forcing people to work into their eighties. Ah yes, the typical 16-year-old's lament. After making that statement, he pretty much clams up for the rest of the hour.

Neal Pollack connects the sordid dots.

Incidentally, I recently (finally) bought Pollack's first book The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature. The odd thing is, Barnes & Noble actually had it shelved in the "Literature Anthologies" section.

I unfortunately left it in a friends' car, and have yet to retrieve it. But thirty pages in, I was in tears. It's like Pollack's website, only in a book. I need to get it back.

From the comments section:

Here in Burlington, Vermont, widely touted as Americore city by our "progresive" government, a lovely trick played by these folks is to not count the ~$5,000 grant these kids get at the end as income. This lets them claim that they earn so little that they qualify, and get, low income housing.

Of course most low income housing managers (often "non profit' arms of the govt.) prefer rich yuppie college kids taking a year off to "volunteer", than actual poor people and the problems they bring with them. Better still, many federally funded low- income housing programs only check the income on the first year. When the program ends and they get jobs, they stay in the subisidized housing.

More bitching (I've been waiting years to bitch about this stupid program):

I managed a job for a private company that was contracted to supervise Americore workers. If you sent one of these brats to get a tool at the other end of the jobsite, ~200 yds away, they would not return. If you went there they would just be sitting on the grass in the shade. This was when they bothered to show up at all. This was also the only time they didn't bitch and whine constantly. When I called the program to complain they said that I was the manager. A manager who would have fired them, but couldn't, isn't really a manager at all, is he?

Our management fee, after all the babysitting, was almost as much as it would have cost to hire us to do the job in the first place. These 12 kids were the most worthless bunch of employees I have ever managed. If Americore were eliminated tommow it would not be soon enough. This experience was the begining of my turn to the libertarian side of politics.

Thanks for letting me vent.

There's a ton of it. Sorry about the formatting. But I'm way too lazy to go through and delete all the hidden returns.

The more colorful and representative samples:

Listen you snot-nosed kid; the boomers also gave you the Freedom of Information Act, an end to involuntary draft and civil rights. Now you want to whine about doing what other countries have done for centuries: Take care of their aging citizens? Let me tell you; the years are going to fly by and soon, it will be you facing the "Golden Years". You want to stand on your soapbox and cry about something important? How about the fact that manufacturing has left this country with that "giant sucking sound" crazy Ross Perot talked about and we are now headed into a major recession.

Right On!...
It's good to know that the generation behind can see the self serving, Narcissistic, pansy-assed whining of the Boomer Generation.

Good luck,

John
Cincinnati (age 44)

More Gen-X moaning.

When are you spoiled, self-absorbed little babies going to grow up and realize that the world owes you nothing and that you—yes, even you--might have to take it in the shorts occasionally (The Injustice!!!). I’m sure that in thirty years or so, you’ll be whining out of the other side of your mouth.

If you’d get jobs instead of tattoos, this would become much more clear to you.

David Pilot

Great job on the article about Boomers discovering rights and entitlements!

As a Boomer myself, I have to admit that we are probably, pound for pound
and inch for inch, the most destructive, narcissistic demographic group
around. (You do have to realize, after all, that the best of our generation
is lying stiff under white marble in Arlington National cemetery.)

Pete Stimes
Altadena, California

Primordial thoughts are ruining your brain. Your anti-baby boomer diatribe is just another form of racism, sexism or xenophobia. You castigate a heterogeneous group for all social evils - and, more likely, as a means of self-aggrandizement...

...When it is finally your turn to confront mortality and become your ageist stereotypes, you will live in a society that is kinder and gentler for its eldest citizens. Boomers will leave greater social justice in their wake, just as they have since Kent State.

I hope you do not die before you get old, as you lament in the final paragraph of your harangue. I hope you get a full measure of old age so you can learn the most important lesson that life tries to teach: maturity.

Brent Green
Author of Marketing to Leading-edge Baby Boomers

I am 62 years old and, having witnessed the witless activism of the 60's and 70's, I thought that I would never see a generation as stupid as my own. Now I am not so sure. If your generation buys into the collectivist and victimist thinking so prevelant now, they will cop that dubious honor.

Regards,
Mike Hanson

When you have paid Social Security taxes as long as I have--then you, too,
will see it as an entitlement. I suspect that most of us conservative baby
boomers that don't believe that government can solve everything would be
happy just to have the government give us our "contributions" back with
interest. I am paying for those that don't need social security to have a
monthly check and you must take your turn to make sure I get a monthly check
from the government that I don't need. The choice you get to make concerns
your attitude. If whining makes you feel better --do it--that's the
philosophy of the Gen Xers. I prefer to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's
like a man--realizing that I am funding all kinds of nonsense that I can do
nothing about. I suspect that, with maturity, even the Gen Xers will come
to understand that the game is rigged.

Since I am a "boomer" I think that qualifies me as a legitimate responder to your article. I agree with virtually everything you have to say except when it comes to your comments concerning President Bush. What most of you "journalists" seem to always get wrong when comparing our current president to the former, is that unlike Slick Willie, President Bush actually means what he says. He doesn't do things simply for political purposes as was done before him. But I guess you guys up East always see things through liberal tinted glasses so if something is said or done it must have political advantages otherwise it would not occur. When President Bush says we are going to get out of Iran soon, he means it. And I actually believe that things will be good enough over there soon that we can get out. That is, of course, unless those around you elect Hillary of something as stupid as that. Then all bets are off.

Sounds to me like you have not been paying close attention. The broad brush with which you paint the "boomers" as leeches seeking to suck your generation dry of all monetary resources must have been picked up when the lights were out. May I suggest you turn on the lights and try a different, narrower brush? You might also open the windows and let in a little fresh air. Your rhetoric is a bit stale.

The word you are searching for is "liberal", not "boomer".

Well written and humorous as your article may be I must argue that some of us
in the boomer group are not pushing for (or yet needing) viagra supplementary
aid. I also recall speaking the same way as a young college student. I have
since planned to live without Soc Sec. If it's there it will be icing for the
cake. If it's any consolation many of us plan to work as long as we can. This
will make up for the miriad of busters who tell me staying in one job does not
appeal to them. It will also allow us to contribute longer than those
now-retired whiners who think 30 years and out is a God-given right.

Thanks,
Mike Whitesell

Don’t blame the baby boomers for wanting to collect what was promised to them. We have planned for retirement based on the rules that business and government leaders created. Is it our fault that the systems put in place are not financially sound? I am among a large segment of older workers who must rethink retirement and lower expectations of a comfortable twilight because of uncertainty over expected income and fear of take-aways at a time when there are not enough working years remaining to make up for lost benefits.

Tom Hayes

There's an old Italian saying, "E stato cosi", which means roughly, "T'was ever thus!" And you can bet that Cain and Abel started the whole damned thing about complaining that their parents left them a mess.

Get over it pal. It ain't goin' away.

Jerry McConnell

Your article posted on the Fox News channel was an entertaining read. I
read it at 11:20 am, and had not yet had my fill of whining and bitching
from pissed-off "Gen-X'ers". Of course, I hadn't seen MTV2 yet today, so
I'd missed my daily dose of snarling, angry tunes from young people with
loads of complaints and absolutely no solutions.

Sonny, any fool can piss and moan. It takes talent and intelligence to
supply solutions. "Gen-X'ers" love to whine about how the "boomers" have
messed up their world, yet we've not seen any better from the "Gen-X'ers".
We "boomers" have no time for complaints and problems; we have plenty of
those already. Let us know when you have something positive to say,
something useful and productive. Until then, shut the hell up.

Scott Scoville

If you are so smart and know all this, why aren't you president?

Guy Ulven

Very good article. As an aging Baby Boomer and fiscal conservative I'm very
upset with the rampant spending and entitlement-giving going on by elected
officials on the federal, state and local level. Keep speaking on the
issue. Your voice needs to be heard before my generation leaves yours with
a tremendous burden. So much for Republicans being the party of small
government.

Sincerely,

Jeff Rempfer
Portland, OR

Spoken like the whiney, spoiled, gimme gimme, GenXer you are. Just because your parents were dope smoking hippies doesn't mean that all Boomers fit that mold. Most of us work hard, pay way too many taxes, and to our discredit, had the audacity to spoil the hell out of our kids. The same whiners you purport to represent.

Well guess what kid, the free ride is over. Get a job, work your ass off, and get ready to pay more than your share of the tax burden. Got a problem with that? Tough. Vote the big spenders out of office. Ha, gotcha! They're all big spenders. And apologists, panderers, and hypocrites as well. So buck up, take your lumps, and get in the game. In the mean time ... have a little cheese with your whine.

Frank Marinelli
Marlton, NJ

What Bullshit! Did you conveniently happen to forget that the Boomers have worked hard during their lives to support the programs that you just noted?!? All of a sudden GenXers are carrying everyone around!?! What Bullshit!

Terry Snyder,
Alexandria, Virginia

Dear selfish one,

Don't forget that those aging boomers worked to sustain the economy you grew up in and let's not forget that they raised you and funded your sorry, ungrateful life until you could be employed and respond with a resounding "up yours" of thankfulness through your irresponsible commentary.

You may someday grow old yourself and wonder about the regretful comments you made in your past about an aging generation in which you will suddenly find yourself a member.

If your commentary is sincere, and not just written to irritate others, you most definitely have quite a bit of maturing to do before you are qualified to make comments on the actions and well intentions of those in your life that cared for you and allowed you to become the ungrateful person you now find yourself to be.

Should you wonder if I am a part of the generation you have targeted with your thoughtless comments, FYI I am only in my thirties and in no way share your feelings about our elders.

We are smarter than you and we out number you. It will be easy to take your money when we need it. (assuming you have any money) Now move out of mom and dads house (for the umpteenth time) and get a JOB!

Sincerely,

Rick,

NYC, NY

So, Radley, I suppose after paying into the Social Security system all your life and you are in your late 60’s and no longer able to work like you did when you were younger, you will just say: “Aw, that’s OK guys, I really don’t want anything back, you can just keep all of my money.” We can count on you for that, right?

There is so much wrong with your comments that I can't begin to refute them all. You are right about one thing, I am very proud of my Father's generation. I'd love to here your comments 30 years from now when you've matured, or better yet, the comments of your children's generation when they have no respect for you.

Sincerely,
Ken Romeo

Great piece, Radley, you impudent kid. How dare you expose us for what we
are: A generally self-centered, inwardly-focused bunch of whiners with an
inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement.

You're like the kid in "The Emperor Wears No Clothes," except (as you
pointed out) you and your fellow kids are going to be the ones wearing no
clothes.

Your only hope is to actively work for the reestablishment in this country
of republicanism... the governance system upon which our country is based,
"democracy" propaganda to the contrary.

We are a republic -- a government ruled by law based on a set of
principles -- not a democracy, which is majority rule, as in MOB rule, and
mobs, of course, do nothing except freak out and act in ways contrary to
their long-term health and survival.

Today, of course, "Republicans" are not republicans; they are just democrats
with a marginally different agenda from "Democrats," who are just communists
with patience.

True republicans are best represented by the Libertarian Party, which is
something you impudent kids should explore if you don't want to end up being
"The Kids Whose Parents Stole All Their Clothes By Voting Themselves Huge
Entitlement Programs."

Interesting fact: The death knell for America came in 1996 (if I remember
the date correctly): That is the year more people began living off tax
revenues than generating them... more people receiving government
entitlements and government paychecks than working real jobs that create the
wealth that supports those entitlements and government paychecks.

So you're not just facing a demographic problem; you're facing a
philosophical problem related thereto by the drumbeat for "democracy around
the world."

Personally, I would excommuicate from the "Republican" Party anyone who
advocates democracy instead of republicanism (based on our Constitution, not
on the principles of Kommunism or the Koran).

But I digress, kid. I've never heard of you before, but I sure do hope to
hear from you more, and if you'd like to start an e-discussion about some of
these points (and others, like the "war on a couple of plants and the people
who grow and use them" - which is the largest government price support
system and violence generator in human history, supporting everything from
9/11 to lunch money robberies in elementary schools), I'm game.

And please... keep that impudence front and center.

robin heid

From me (God forbid, a Baby-boomer), to you (do you even know who you are?), I can only say your opinions are laughable.

I would like to tell you that you are an idiot, but that would be a promotion you don’t deserve… and a bit like telling a mule he’s a jack-ass… he can’t possibly understand what the hell you’re talking about… so here’s hoping that one day you will grow up and mature into someone who will recognize for himself what I couldn’t possibly explain to you now.

Signed,

Human Being Born in 1955 Who Has A Real Name, Lives A Real Life and Rejects All Lables and the Ignorance of Those Who Lean On Them (Lables) to Substitute for Their Lack of Wisdom and Understanding

Mr. Balko,

Just a correction, Your next to last sentence is in error, while Roger Daltry sang those words they were authored by Pete Townsend. Who authored 99% of The Who's music.

The Boomer revolt is inevitable.

Thank you very much for the effort to save America, or shall I say, delay its process of destrucution? It is doomed.

I admire people with sharp and perceptive minds. I will forward your article to all my friends--unfortunately I have only one:-)

Dorian

Remeber the King of France between Louis XIV (the Grand Monarch) and Louis XVII (who got his head cut off)?

I think it was Louis XVI. They told him (Louis XVI) that France was bankrupt. He responded the "France will last as long as I will"

To para-phrase:

America will last as long as I will. Then it is your problem.

I was really pissed when I read this article, but once I saw that you were
only 28 years old, I figured why bother. Your just too stupid to know
better.

Hi,

How old are you? You seem to be very cynical at a young age. Time will soften your anger. Someday a youngster will write something that you will laugh at too.

Susan Tooley
Indiana

Mr. Balko, as I look around the country today I see us "BABY BOOMERS" still supporting snot noised spoiled brats like yourself who still depend on MOMMY AND DADDY to pay for your education, take you out to dinner and a movie and pay your bills while you wait to get on your feet. If the baby boomer generation is guilty of anything it is guilty of raising a bunch of lazy worthless kids who without mommy and daddy's help and money would still be sucking on mommy's tit! If we had not spent so much money buying you brats everything you wanted we would have enough money to live like Kings the rest of our life. As for the war in Iraq, sure lets stay home and mind our own business, and when the middle East decides to raise the price of oil to $500.00 per barrel will just park our cars, close down our factories, lay everyone off and live on the wealth the baby boomers have built up for us.

You Sir don't have the brains God gave a piss ant!!!

I'm 61, born just before the boom -- in fact, just before the Big War -- and I couldn't agree with you more. The "Greatest Generation" spoiled the shit out of their kids, who rode an unprecedented boom all the way to the top, and who gave their own kids unlimited liability for unfunded financial promises by governments. You are screwed, buddy, of that there is no doubt.

Cordially,
Ron Smith WBAL (Baltimore) Radio Talk Show Host

I didn't think anyone in your generation had the brains to realize what's going on. Nor do I believe that anyone in your generation or mine will deal with the problems you mention. Good luck.

As an official "boomer"(born 1947) I am very dissapointed in many of the "boomers" who made poor decisions,spent freely, kept up with the Jonses, had to have it all, refused to let thier wife work, took wild chances in the stock market,and bought expensive "toys". Let em suffer. Some of us saved and are retired comfortably.

It's a week old, but it's devastating. Applebaum, remember, is the author of Gulag, a roundly well-received and thorough documentation of the most brutal and inhumane secrets of communism. And she writes of Coulter:

To anyone who ever tried to understand why the political left has played such a large role in American intellectual life, or why the term "anti-communist" ever became an insult, or why so many allegedly clear-thinking people feared Joe McCarthy more than Josef Stalin, Ann Coulter's new book will certainly prove thought-provoking. I should reveal here that I have spent a great deal of time -- perhaps the better part of the last 10 years -- writing about communism, Stalinism and the West's relationship to both. Yet about halfway through Treason, an extended rant on these subjects, I felt a strong urge to get up, throw the book across the room, and join up with whatever Leninist-Trotskyite-Marxist political parties still exist in America. Even the company of Maoist insurgents would be more intellectually invigorating than that of Ann Coulter. More to the point, whatever side this woman is on, I don't want to be on it.

My long trashing of Coulter is in the final phases of production. Should be up tomorrow or Thursday.

Maybe there's some benefit to nepotism after all.

Joanne find that Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was appointed to her dad's senate seat by...her dad -- who left the seat to run for governor, won, and got to appoint his own replacement (breathe) -- is attempting to roll back PATRIOT I.

Good for her.

This is disturbing.

If it's illegal to sell an adult comic book to an adult because comic books are "intended for children," what are we to do about Hello Kitty vibrators?

Mundane Penthouse letter....

Sen. Ernest Hollings, luddite, enemy of progress, enemy of trade, friend of protectionism, puppet of the entertainment industry, and governor when the Confederate flag was originally (er...for the second time) raised over the South Carolina statehouse is, thankfully, finally, mercifully -- retiring.

You know the saying, Senator.

Door, ass, way out.

Julian weighs in on the silliness that is the Americorps debate.

Good. That Dave Eggers op-ed made me ill.

Zoiks!

If it weren't for Sheila Jackson Lee, this would be the most unintentionally funny item of the day. There's no single passage that's more worth excerpting than the body, though the "origin" of "Scooby Doo" gets "Santorum"-esque plaudits for sheer creativity.

Thanks, oddly, to my little brother for the link.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee never fails to out-parody herself. Eugene Volokh finds this terrifc item from The Hill:

The 2003 hurricane season is here, and that means a whole new list of names such as Larry, Sam and Wanda ready to make tropical-storm history.

Although Spanish and French names are included in this year’s lineup, among them Juan and Claudette, which struck Texas last week, popular African American names, like Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn, are nowhere to be found.

Some black lawmakers don’t seem to mind, but Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) does. “All racial groups should be represented,” said Lee.

The World Meteorological Organization began naming tropical storms after women in 1953. That made sense to scientists at the time who thought women and storms were both unpredictable. After feminist groups protested, men’s names were added in 1979.

The National Weather Service says hurricane names are derived from languages spoken in areas that border the Atlantic Ocean, where such storms occur. Yet that doesn’t explain why Gaston, Ernesto and Cindy were chosen and Antwon, Destiny and Latonya were passed over.

Lee said she hoped in the future the weather establishment “would try to be inclusive of African American names.”

That could take a while. The current roster of hurricane names isn’t due to be updated until 2007.

BTW, where are the gay names? How come "Hugo" can wreak death, destruction and devastation, but not "Blaine?"

Tech Central asked me to conduct an interview with University of Maryland trade economist Arvind Panagariya.

It's available here.

Wow.

Few things exemplify the chaos of Liberia more than the sight of doped-up, AK-47-wielding 15-year-olds roaming the streets decked out in fright wigs and tattered wedding gowns. Indeed, some of the more fully accessorized soldiers in Charles Taylor's militia even tote dainty purses and don feather boas. Why did this practice begin and what is the logic behind it?

According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals. It also makes the soldiers feel more invincible. This belief is founded on a regional superstition which holds that soldiers can "confuse the enemy's bullets" by assuming two identities simultaneously. Though the accoutrements and garb look bizarre to Western eyes, they are, in a sense, variations on the camouflage uniforms and face paint American soldiers use to bolster their sense of invisibility (and, therefore, immunity) during combat. Since flak jackets or infrared goggles aren't available to the destitute Liberian fighters, they opt for evening gowns and frilly blouses.

Eep.

Alina finds this interesting piece by Thomas Lynch which advocates a kind of abortion rights for men in which would-be dads can sign away all paternity rights (and responsilities) during the same phase of pregnancy a woman is allowed to abort -- generally the first trimester.

It's an intriguing idea, and one that at least take some steps toward gender equity in the abortion wars. So long as abortion is legal, I don't think fathers will ever have the same rights as women -- I don't ever see a father being able to demand a woman take a pregnancy to term, for example, even if he agrees to assume all responsibility after birth. Biology itself sort of takes that idea off the table.

But if a woman can abort a fetus the father wants to keep, it seems only fair to allow a father to opt out of responsibility for a fetus the woman wants to keep.

Yes, I realize such a policy would probably lead to more abortions (a woman who knows she'll be getting no finanical support from the father might be less likely to carry a pregnancy to term). And so perhaps my gender is trumping my generally icky feelings toward abortion, here.

But there are advantages in such a policy for women, too. A woman would know early on in pregnancy what expectation she could have of the father. Less hemming. Less hawing. And if a biological father is little more than a paycheck for the kid, anyway, perhaps it's best to just sever the ties altogether.

As you can see, I'm not sold on the idea, just intrigued.

Eric McErlain sends this NY Times article about TheAgitator.com favorites The Fountains of Wayne.

I'm still perplexed as to why this band isn't all over the radio.

Damned ClearChannel! It's Michael Powell's fault.

Tasty tidbit: The band is named after an upscale yard and garden shop in New Jersey that's been frequently featured in The Sopranos. Only, the band existed before the show.

Stuff I hope to have for you this week:

1) An opus on my visit to a conservative ladies' luncheon featuring Ann Coulter. It's up to five pages now in Microsoft Word. Lots of material to work with. It's almost unfair. To borrow from a comedian I once saw and whose name I can't remember to give proper credit to:

Making fun of Ann Coulter is like shooting fish in a barrel.

No. It's easier than that.

It's like shooting the actual barrel.

No. It's easier than that.

It's like standing somewhere near a barrel.

2) Music to brood by.

3) A response and final post on this whole Little Green Footballs thing.

4) Reader mail from the Baby Boomers column. I've lost track of how much email I got on the piece. Well over 500 messages. My best guess on the positive/negative breakdown: an even split between "Amen!" and "you're a whiny Gen-X piece of dung." Of course, messages bearing the latter theme are much more interesting.

I figure if I advertise this stuff as upcoming, I'll put more pressure on myself to actually post it. One advance music recommendation: get the new CD from Lucinda Williams. It's dark, and painful, and raw and wonderful.

So I caught a rerun of Hardball this afternoon on MSNBC and, in it, an excerpt from President Bush's press conference last week that I found really, really bizarre.

When questioned about the economy, President Bush in part blamed the slow turnaround on cable news. He complained that "one network in particular" had since last fall been warning about "the march to war, the march to war, the march to war," which, the President said "made investors afraid to take risks."

You gotta' think that the communicator-in-chief was ad-libbing here. No way Karl Rove signed off such an idiotic talking point. The reason the cable news media have been hyping the march to war since last fall is because, duh, the friggin' Bush administration has been marching to war since last fall.

Our President is correct. Investors do hold back when there's geo-political uncertainty. But Ashleigh Banfield wasn't the one who sold us on the Iraqi-Niger-al-Qaeda connection. That was you, Mr. President. Brian Williams go on Sunday talk TV and say "when get a smoking gun, it just may be a mushroom cloud." That would be your NSA, Condi Rice.

It's fine to say that war slowed down the economy. But, geez, Mr. President, at least take responsibility for the fact that you launched this war, and then make the case that it was necessary, despite short-term damage to the recovery. Pinning it on the news media might play to the Ann Coulter crowd, but for most of us, it rings awfully lame.

Coulter, BTW, was a guest on Hardball. And, predictably, she defended the President. It wasn't the war that slowed down the recovery, Coulter intoned, it was the fact that the news media -- horrors! -- covered it.

I've been waiting for the ever-reliable critics over at All Music to intstitute a feature like this -- they're now issuing weekly recommendations. Old, new, whatever they're spinning that week.

Item from last week's picks I'm going to check out:

The Pooh Sticks.

Courtesy of Hit & Run, here's an example from the local level, and another from the federal level.

Kinda' makes you sympathize with this guy, doesn't it?

Also, check this helpful post from Julian on anti-RIAA music-enjoying strategy.

A man with a taste for the finer things in life.

Two great pieces on TCS today. The first from Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven on the Bush administration's embrace of the welfare state. Lengthy excerpts:

The Bush administration has weighed in on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriation bill being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, the administration's Statement of Policy on the bill shows how deeply it has embraced expansion of the welfare state.

The Statement is riddled with complaints about "underfunded" programs and demands for "full funding" of new "initiatives." It requests that Congress increase funding on social programs with trite names, such as Parent Drug Corps, Compassion Capital Fund, and Steps to a Healthier U.S. The administration has rapidly expanded domestic spending, and this Statement reveals the mushy liberal mindset at work behind the increases with little regard to taxpayer costs....

The Statement says that the administration is "disappointed" that the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will get only $1.8 billion, and that the Access to Recovery Treatment Voucher Program will get "only" $100 million. The Statement demands that the Corporation for National and Community Service be "fully funded," else Congress "would deny thousands of Americans the opportunity to participate in national service." This sounds like the sort of liberal carping that one would expect from Ted Kennedy.

The other piece you should read is this one by Pete Geddes, an articulate, broad-viewed defense of global capitalism.

The Washington Times excerpts my Six Feet Under column in it's "Culture, Etc." feature today.