There have been several responses to the Kelo verdict, of which this is my favorite. Here is mine.
Last summer, the county commission of Forsyth County, Georgia -- which is, in my long experience, just as corrupt a body of public officials as you are likely to find outside of a major city with a well-established political machine -- decided to exercise this same formal power to lay claim to a portion of my boyhood home. This is forested country, down by a pretty little creek named Settendown, which is named after a Cherokee chief. The government decided to take the section by the creek and bulldoze it, in order to lay a large sewer pipe. Why did they need a large sewer pipe? Well, in order to ease the development of a massive subdivision down the way.
It happens that "a few" of the commission members are land developers; and if you add in the ones who have "friends" and family who are land developers, well, you get the idea. Anyway, this was one step from Kelo: they weren't actually bulldozing my family's house to put up a subdivision, just bulldozing part of my family's land in order to put in a sewer pipe so that the subdivision could be built. The part I always liked best; the part where I spent my boyhood with my dogs, where I learned to shoot, and where I spent many hours sitting and watching the water flow by.
The locals tried to fight it, going to the commission meetings, pointing out irrelevant details that ultimately had no bearing at all on the decision ("You know, we're the ones who elected you people, not these developers," for example). In the end, the county issued a decision which was described to me as this: take the money under eminent domain without filing a suit, or else we'll just condemn the land, bulldoze it anyway, and pay you nothing.
So the bulldozers came, and plowed it under.
My father's response to all this was to videotape it and send me a copy. He did this based on his understanding that his-grandson-my-son would enjoy watching the tractors and bulldozers at work. This was, of course, perfectly true.
My own reaction to watching it done was rather different.
Kim du Toit says that we shouldn't be surprised when somebody kills one of these construction workers. I think he's right. I had the impulse myself, and I'm a reasonably nice fellow, kind to children and puppies. It passed quickly: of course, it's not the bulldozer operator's fault that the county is ordering this done. Now, those commissioners... and the developers...
See, there you go. One minute I'm a man who's spent his life in the service of the Republic, and the government that is meant to watch over it. I'm probably more law-abiding than most, at least since I became a father; I even obey speed limits to the letter. But then, one second later, I'm seriously considering setting aside the laws once and for all, and putting things right in despite of the government.
And they weren't even bulldozing the house. Just a corner of the property.
Local governments are corrupt. They've just been handed a tool to line their pockets, and to batter their constituents into submission. The only threat at all, the one at which the commissioners laughed -- "I'll vote against you next time" -- even that is now lost. You think you'll vote me out? I'll bulldoze your house, put up a nonresidential zone instead, and you won't even be eligible to vote in the election.
Thanks for your land, though. Here's a "fair" price for it. Take it, or else.
Here's my pledge: for the good of the public order, I will never -- should I be asked to serve on a jury dealing with such a case -- vote to convict any man for any lawbreaking done to protect his property against predations of this sort. I suggest you each resolve the same. Whether he puts sugar in the gas tanks of the bulldozer, "trespasses" on his property, or shoots some mayor or developer, the worst he'll face from me is a mistrial. He'll walk, if I have anything to say about it. As far as I'm concerned, it's justified. He's just doing what he has to do to protect one of the cornerstones of our civilization against a governing class that has decided to override it.
Has decided to try, I should say. Molon labe.
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical#111957134205191629
Fun
Grim's Hall, virtual, is remaining put, but Grim's Hall, physical, is undergoing its pretty-much-annual move. And what a move it's been.
Today alone I've:
(a) discovered that I've lost $400 buying an internet system that, once installed, proved to be useless because of its (undocumented) inability to access secure sites -- kind of a necessity for someone like me. I'll therefore be back to using dial up, as that's the only other option where we will be.
(b) got stung by a swarm of wasps while trying to install the useless internet system, so that my arm has swollen up to look rather like Popeye's.
(c) found out at 4:30 this afternoon that the moving van promised to us for tomorrow at 8 AM will not, in fact, be available at all, even though,
(d) the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow at 10, so that all the furniture has to be moved out before then, which coupled with the internet situation means that:
(e) until I can get the dial up account working at the new place, I'll be sitting on the floor in an empty room doing my work.
And, of course, I still have to move the furniture tomorrow. Without a moving van. Hm.
I was supposed to be spending the evening with my wife and Sovay: dear Sovay had gotten tickets to Serenity, a sneak preview down in Norfolk. I've been looking forward to it for a month.
Instead, I spent the evening and night lashing furniture to my vehicles at improbable angles, then unloading it into storage units as the new house -- I think I failed to mention this -- turns out to have been used by the previous tenet, in direct violation of the lease, as a shelter for fully twelve stray cats. Until the carpets and pads are replaced, therefore, I don't actually have a place for my furniture there, either.
Poor Sovay. She went out of her way to do something nice for me, and I let her down. And she didn't even get the fun of laughing at the sight of me, arm swollen to the size of a grapefruit, trying to load a heavy old walnut desk on top of a Chevy.
Milb. Down
But not all the way down, thank goodness. Chuck AKA TCOverride has had a too-close encounter with an IED. You might drop by and give his family a kind word -- his wife is watching the blog while he's in the hospital.
Mudville, BlackFive, Smash, and The Gun Line all have posts, as does Kim du Toit and doubtless many others.
Militia
The last few days, as mentioned, I've had my father up to visit. He left yesterday morning after breakfast, but not before telling me a story I hadn't heard before. It dates to the Forsyth County, Georgia of my youth: back when the local volunteer Fire Department, of which my father was a member, was still getting started.
In those days, Forsyth County was entirely rural. In the southern and eastern parts, it was cattle country, with green and rolling pastures being the main feature of the land. In the northwestern part of the county, it was timberland, and forestry was the main industry. A modestly large county, nevertheless there were often only two deputy sheriffs on duty at any shift. There was no other law, and not much need for any, but on the rare occasion that anything bad happened -- whether a fire or a car wreck or whatever -- they called out the volunteer Firemen to lend some extra, uniformed hands.
So this one day, just about six miles from my own childhood house, a couple of fifth grade kids were returning from their afternoon's sport: shooting their .22 rifles. It was probably target shooting rather than squirrel hunting, but either was a common passtime. They came out of the backcountry and onto their red-dirt road, and started walking home.
Passing a neighbor's house, they saw a couple of men they didn't recognize taking things out of it and loading it into a strange car. The two boys -- fifth graders, now -- yelled at the strangers to demand an answer as to why they were taking their neighbors' stuff. One of the men pulled a gun, and shot at them.
Well, he missed. They didn't, returning the fire with their rifles and getting him through the stomach. He and his friend panicked, but found themselves cut off from their car by the fusilade. One of the boys ran down a powerline cut to get to a bigger road, to flag help. The other tried to keep the strangers pinned.
The two strangers managed to break into a truck that was at the house they were robbing, and they went barreling down the road. However, the kid who went for help found some, and soon the Volunteer Fire Department had cut off all the local roads. By the time the deputy got there, Volunteers were standing in the middle of the roads with shotguns. Nobody had to go get one -- they were in the truck gun rack, in case they were needed.
After the two men drove off in the stolen truck, meanwhile, the other kid went home and informed his family of the robbery. They, along with their other neighbors, got into their trucks and went hunting. They recognized the stolen truck easily -- it belonged to their neighbor, after all -- and ran it off the road. The wounded man gave in at once, but the other one tried to escape into the woods. They chased him down and beat him with sticks until he surrendered.
Eventually, word of this got back to the deputy, who headed over to collect the prisoners. He, poor fellow, missed all the excitement but still got to write the report.
I'm told that was the last robbery in that end of the county for quite a little while.
Tactics II
The emphasis on Chapter 2 is on Achieving a Decision. For the layman, its likely best to put it this way: ‘Achieving an Intelligent-Decision, Quickly!’
The first few pages illustrate the Marine adoption of a flexible, imaginative, and effective war-fighting approach called maneuver warfare. This is contrasted to the incrementalist view-point best understood throughout WWI trench-warfare or attrition warfare.
Really, American’s should have learned our lessons prior to WWI back in the 1860’s as some of the battles fought in the War Between the States showed rudimentary examples of maneuver warfare. Notably the mobility demonstrated by General Stonewall Jackson… but as the organizational structure of the commands became larger; they adopted an attrition style modeled on the Napoleonic Wars of half a century earlier.
The battlefield geometry created by a Blitzkrieg can be used to explain what I’m talking about. Simplistically, imagine on the opposing side that you have a static line of battle composed of a trench. You on the other hand have a line of battle, but you punch a column composed of tanks and infantry directly through the center of the enemy. Imagine that half of your column turns right, the other half left, and they flank the enemy from the rear. You’ve just completed a double-envelopment. Or, you’ve created two artificial (non-terrain dictated) salients which have ‘pocketed’ the enemy and allow you to eliminate them.
As one Time’s Reporter wrote in 1939:
The battlefront disappeared, and with it the illusion that there had ever been a battlefront. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration—Blitzkrieg, lightning war. Swift columns of tanks and armored trucks had plunged through Poland while bombs raining from the sky heralded their coming. They had sawed off communications, destroyed stores, scattered civilians, spread terror. Working sometimes 30 miles ahead of infantry and artillery, they had broken down the Polish defenses before they had time to organize. Then, while the infantry mopped up, they had moved on, to strike again far behind what had been called the front.
Time Vol. XXXIV 1939
During World War II, German studies of operations on the Eastern Front led to the conclusion that small and coordinated forces possessed more combat worth than large and uncoordinated forces. Hopefully, we can now understand that in today’s modern, fast-moving, battlefield, he who makes the most intelligent decision quickly will likely prevail.
This theme is demonstrated by the chapter’s two battlefield examples:
Anzio 1943
Major General Lucas failed to take the opportunity to quickly advance on Rome and cut-off the German’s in Southern Italy. For those interested, a semi-successful (Monty screwed the pooch) example can be seen in the Falaise Pocket in which the German Seventh Army was destroyed. Had General Lucas not waited seven days in order to build up his logistics, he likely would have placed the Germans in a similar situation.
Cannae 216 BCE
Hannibal made excellent use of his opponents attempt to crush his center; he had his strong left flank composed of cavalry smash the enemies right and envelop the enemy… this newly formed salient led to a pincer movement as Hannibal rolled up his flanks.
‘Understanding Decisiveness’
Hopefully the previous pages have illustrated the importance behind achieving a decision and that making a decision is not always easy. What I thought important in this section is the concept that a battle must lead to a result beyond itself. This again marks the marriage of Tactics and Strategy.
‘Military Judgment’
“Military judgment is a developed skill that is honed by the wisdom gained through experience.” Training and experience cannot be stressed enough. The later sections ‘Understanding the Situation’, ‘Critical Vulnerabilities’, ‘Shaping the Operating Area’, ‘Main Effort’, ‘Boldness and Ruthlessness’, will be best understood by the laymen by reading the given text paragraphs.
Many people believe that brilliant commanders pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat regarding operational planning; indeed, many of the quotes from famous Generals discuss how reliance on dogmatic doctrine is a sure way to defeat. This is true to a certain extent… but what the arm-chair General fails to realize is that every brilliant commander was schooled in the basics. Much like poetry, where the emphasis is on inspiration and artistic license… there are many years learning the basics. Intuition only applies to Military Judgment because it appears to be that way to the uninitiated, what they fail to see are the years spent learning the basics which allow the brilliant mind to reach lightening fast decisions.
IRAQ THE MODEL
I was astonished to be informed that Iraq The Model has taken note of a post I wrote over at the 4th Rail. I've had the honor of meeting these gentlemen. Their bravery in the face of the insurgency remains a tremendous inspiration. I've not forgotten the lesson I learned from meeting them, and I hope others will not forget their example either.
Grim's Hall
I had a great gift for Father's Day: my father came to visit.
He wanted to see his grandson, whose birthday, as it happens, is today -- as is my wedding anniversary. Some years, they all happen on the same day, as they did the year I was married. I told my father-in-law that my first Father's Day gift to him was taking his troublesome daughter off his hands.
Or maybe he told me that. I think we both thought of the joke.
This year, my own father trekked up here from Georgia, along with my mother. We went yesterday morning to the Warrenton Father's Day Auto Show, which is a neat little event. They close off main street, and park antique cars all up and down it. I meant to take pictures, but forgot to bring the camera. They had some good looking Galaxies, a number of Corvettes (parked in a row, so you could see the development), some 30's and 40's era Fords, plenty of 50's era Chevys, quite a few hot rods of various types, and one Vega -- a car that both my father and I found surprising to discover in a car show.
It's interesting going to these things with my father, who grew up working in his father's auto shop in Knoxville. He would glance at a vehicle up the line and say, "Oh, look, a X Y Z," where (X) was the make, (Y) was the model, and (Z) was the year. He was never wrong, not even about the year. He could tell you about the particulars of the engines' construction, as well as amusing stories about famous cars of that type he had known in the past.
It was a great way to spend the morning. We finished off with lunch at a trailer serving barbecue. It was labeled "Blue Ridge BBQ."
"Do you reckon it'll be Virginia style barbecue," my father asked, "or Appalachian style?" For those who don't eat barbecue, or haven't traveled in the South much, the difference is mostly this: Virginia style sauce is vinegar based, whereas in the southern Appalachians, it's usually ketchup-based.
Turns out the folks at Blue Ridge BBQ had decided to split the difference. They served pork, and let you add the sauce you wanted: either a ketchup based sauce, or the vinegar based sauce. It's not quite as good as having it cooked in, but it was pretty tasty. Naturally, I had the Appalachian style sauce.
Well, that's how we spent Father's Day here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare gifts for the boy. Beowulf is three today.
anarchy
I came across an article by that title from a 2003 copy of The Atlantic. It's a fascinating story, which turns out to be available here. JHD will appreciate it, if he hasn't read it already. It's the story of ships at sea, merchants under false flags, and the perils they often meet:
The Flare was a dry-bulk carrier, flagged in Cyprus, and it had a multinational crew of twenty-five. The voyage was extremely rough, with waves exceeding fifty feet. For two weeks the Flare slammed and whipped, flexing so wildly that, according to one survivor, the deck cranes appeared at times to be touching. As it was approaching the Canadian coast late one night, the Flare broke cleanly in two. The entire crew was on the stern section, which listed to the side and began to sink. Strangely, the engine continued to turn, slowly driving the hulk on an erratic course through the night. The crew managed to launch one lifeboat, but it broke away before anyone could climb aboard. The men were panicked, and ultimately twenty-one of them died. But before the end on the sinking stern, there was a moment of savage euphoria when a ship floating in the opposite direction suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead, as if it were coming to rescue them. The terrified men cheered. To their horror they then saw the name FLARE written on the side. It was of course their own detached bow section, and it passed them by.There's quite a bit more, for the interested.
HOT STOCKS: Revolutionary Rifle Ball Stock
Military.com has a fascinating article today on a new type of rifle stock -- one that would be modular, with a major part of it permanently mounted on your body armor. It would connect to the part remaining on your rifle via a ball-and-socket system. And, it would tie into an "augmented reality" system, serving to connect you and your rifle without the need for a tether cord.
This is the kind of thing I'd really like to try out sometime. It sounds good -- but will it work, or will that extra data become confusing? Only one way to find out.
Galley Slaves: Liberal Blog Ascendancy
Galley Slaves cites super-liberal blog MyDD (also cited today by Southern Appeal). The argument is that the liberal blogosphere is outpacing the conservative blogosphere, because right-wing blogs don't allow comments:
Unless right-wing blogs decide to open up and allow their readers to have a greater voice, I expect that the liberal and progressive blogosphere will continue its unbroken twenty-month rise in relative traffic. Conservative bloggers continue to act as though they are simply a supplement to the existing pundit class, without any need to converse with those operating outside of a small social bubble or any need to engage people within the new structure of the public sphere.I've always thought of Grim's Hall as a "virtual mead hall" for warriors -- not just fighting men, but people with the fighting spirit. The comments have always meant more to me than the posts, and I'm glad to talk to any of you. As I noted, I pass out "keys" to military men sometimes. Perhaps I should be doing more of that. I prefer to do it with folks who've hung around and commented for a while, so we know you and know you'll be a good mead-bench companion. If you think you'd like one, though, email me.
However, my initial reaction to this story is the one that Mr. Last gets around to after a while: as important as blogs are, unless they translate into physical reality at some point, they don't mean much. If you spend two hours a day reading blogs, but you take the information and put it to practical use in the world, it's an extraordinary and powerful tool for you.
On the other hand, if you spend five hours a day reading blogs, commenting, arguing, refining positions, etc., with people who more or less agree with you already, you're wasting a lot of energy and time. It's distracting you from achieving anything in reality. You'd be doing more for your cause if you took a second job, and donated the money to a charity that supports your interests.
So, you know, it's nice to have big blog hits. On the other hand, does it impact the world in which you live -- or does it become the world in which you live? If the latter, it's hurting rather than helping you.
John Wayne - The Early Years Collection | RowdysDVDs.com - Movies, Music and Television on DVD
I rented a copy of "John Wayne - The Early Years Collection" the other day. It consists of a number of movies made from 1934-1936. These were "early" years for John Wayne, but not all that early for movie making: a whole generation of earlier stars and directors had come and gone, whose names we have already almost forgotten.
Wyatt Earp had come to know several after 1901, when he returned to California from the Alaska gold rush. At that time, he was telling them stories and tales of the West that were already not fresh. The shootout at the O.K. Corral had happened in 1881, twenty years earlier. In the interval, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show had fixed the popular image of the West. Earp helped them make movies that had the right feel.
Tom Mix starred in over 300 such movies, most of them made before sound came to film. Most of his films do not exist any more. By the time John Wayne's early movies were being made, the Western was thirty years old, with well-established forms. These changed little until the 1950s.
What we today think of as "the classic Western" is probably High Noon. But High Noon was almost a complete rejection of all the Western's standard modes. The lawman, who wears a black rather than a white hat, enjoys no support from the people; in the end, though he has done what they dared not, he has lost their respect and has lost respect for them. He leaves the town in disgust, rather than riding into the sunset. John Wayne, by then a veteran star of twenty years' experience, called the movie "un-American."
But Wayne made a similar movie himself ten years afterwards -- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It is in some respects even darker than High Noon. The upstanding Western hero of the film, played by Wayne, is a white-hat wearing cattleman of the classic mold. But when he shoots Liberty Valance, it is from ambush with a rifle; and doing so is the ruin of his life, as he loses his girl, burns his home in drunken misery, and dies in poverty. Meanwhile, a good-hearted lawyer from the East gets the credit, wins elected office, and gets the girl as well.
We today would probably think of these as classic Westerns, because we have even more radical changes to compare with them: the Clint Eastwood Italian westerns, for example, in which the hero is largely amoral. If you were going to say two things about Westerns that made them Westerns, it would be these: 1) The movie is set at least partially in the American West, and 2) it is a film about morality. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a film about morality -- sort of. A Fistful of Dollars isn't even that. The success of these movies inspired a score or more of (mostly lousy) Westerns about amoral or immoral "heroes," including what must be the least probable portrayal ever of Doc Holliday, by Stacy Keach (later to do a pretty good Mike Hammer, though he was limited by the need for his scriptwriters to write for pre-cable television).
Clint Eastwood came around to making Unforgiven, which he designed to say "everything I've always felt about the Western." It turned out to be the best Western in a generation, because it returned the moral structure that underlies the Western. This was not, exactly, what Eastwood intended to do -- if anything, he wanted to show how that moral structure gave itself over to barbarism. Nevertheless, because his characters were interested in morality, aspiring to it or rejecting it, Unforgiven is powerful as no Western had been in a long time.
There have been several more recent Westerns, and they've been good by and large. They've also been a return to roots. In some respects, Open Range is almost a reversal of High Noon: the entire town comes out with rifles, unasked, to defend strangers they really aren't sure about; and in the end, the ability of one of those strangers to do violence for justice is enough to win him a place in their hearts. Where Gary Cooper left in disgust, Kevin Costner found a home and the respect of a people.
Tombstone, of course, returned the Wyatt Earp legend to its traditional form.
Meanwhile, Tom Selleck has made some great Westerns lately. Though his first -- Quigley Down Under -- was unusual for being set in Australia, it was a solid Western. His later ones are a complete return to roots, usually including even the white hat, and being based on long-beloved stories by famous writers. Crossfire Trail, Last Stand at Sabre River, and Monte Walsh, the last one an ode to cowboying.
I think this underlines a great truth about art. The changes in the Western are similar to the changes in the wider art world, except that they started later and ended quicker. It was not until the 1950s that the structure of the Western felt so stale that directors set out to shake it up, in ways that were shocking at the time ("unAmerican"), but now seem like a classic part of the genre. Like visual artists, the makers of Westerns became excited by the idea of playing with the structure, and they did some great things by thinking new thoughts about the old modes.
But then came a generation of artists who knew little about the classics, and had only studied the rejectionists. They did not understand that the power lay in the eternal form -- the great truth that was being explored by the art. The rejectionists had been able to achieve great things because they involved the audience in thinking about that great truth in new ways. The later generation, never knowing what the truth was, never having learned the basics of the art, made spirtually empty garbage.
It was only through a return to the traditional forms that we could escape that, and recover the meaning and power of the art. This is a lesson that the Western seems to have learned quickly -- perhaps because it was lucky to have Eastwood, one of the first rejectionists, still around to remember what the genre had originally been about. Unforgiven did a lot to set the Western back on track.
The remaining arts must learn the same lesson if they are to survive. If poetry and orchestral music, painting and sculpture cannot learn these things, fewer will study them, and fewer will care to hear or see the works of those who do. The Western points the way for them.
It does that for us, too. That's why it survives, after Tom Mix, after John Wayne, after the 'Old Chisholm trail is covered in concrete,' and "cowboy" is considered an insult in lands that once sent them forth.
It is entertaining, if nothing else, but like the guy says. "Shooting stuf is fun".
I hadn't ever given the properties of dry-wall much thought.
Knife Review : commentary on knives, sharpening equipment and related products.
For those interested, it turns out that the Physics department of Newfoundland's Memorial University has a page devoted to knife reviews. I have to say that I'm impressed:
Graduate programmes are offered at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. level in Atomic and Molecular physics, Condensed Matter Physics, and Physical Oceanography. Experimental, theoretical and computational research topics include non-linear dynamics, membrane biophysics, polymer physics, magnetism, strongly correlated electron systems, optical and vibrational spectroscopy, atomic collision, ocean acoustics, and ocean circulation.And yet they still found time to test fighting knives to see how well they penetrate phone books.
I do love a practical scientist.
eBay item 6539278490 (Ends Jun-15-05 11:51:03 PDT) - Stek Damascus Cowboy Fighting Knife
Yeah, I know. I've got a lot of knives. But if I had the "buy it now" price for this in my wallet, I'd snap up this beautiful knife. This guy really knows what he's doing. It's not only top quality pattern-forged steel, it's exactly the optimum length: eight inch blade, four inch backstrap, thirteen and a half inches overall.
Now that's a fighting knife.
Immigration Law as Anti-Terrorism Tool
Perhaps you saw today's front-page article in the Washington Post:
Whereas terrorism charges can be difficult to prosecute, Homeland Security officials say immigration laws can provide a quick, easy way to detain people who could be planning attacks. Authorities have also used routine charges such as overstaying a visa to deport suspected supporters of terrorist groups.Once everybody gets finished muttering, "Well, so the Bush administration is finally doing something right," I should point out that this paragraph isn't the lead, though it is the lede. It's actually paragraph number six.
Paragraphs one through five are a sympathetic portrayal of a poor Lebanese fellow who was arrested by a vicious, arrogant, masked Federal agent in a surprise raid on his home. Grim's Hall hates that: police should neither be allowed to wear masks, nor conduct military-style raids. Nevertheless, they do.
Paragraphs eight through ten are given over to "Muslim civil liberties activists" who charge the following: "They argue that authorities are enforcing minor violations by Muslims and Arabs, while ignoring millions of other immigrants who flout the same laws."
Paragraphs eleven through sixteen point out that Muslims were rarely the focus of immigration law before 9/11. Ahem. You don't say. (There is also a note to the effect that certain roundups have been "controversial," and there is a gratuitous description of our intelligence and law-enforcement services as inhabiting a "murky" world.)
There follows then a long series of paragraphs providing another sympathetic portrayal of a poor Muslim immigrant who came under Federal scrutiny for donating to one of bin Laden's charities. She claims she is innocent, and perhaps she is; but the government, heavy-handed thugs that they are, decided after watching a few jetliners slam into our buildings that they wanted to be sure.
Finally, toward the bottom of page three, someone from DHS is actually allowed to respond to the charge: "Are you thugs targeting Muslims?"
In the interest of balance, they are permitted to cite two success stories to go with the two examples proposed by the Post at the beginning. Here we are:
For example, Nuradin Abdi, a Somali immigrant living in Ohio, was locked up on an asylum-fraud charge in November 2003. He was subsequently charged with plotting with an al Qaeda member to blow up a shopping mall. He has pleaded not guilty.That's all that is said about these cases, after two and a half pages of intense beating on DHS for the two cases the Post didn't like.ICE officials also point to cases in which they have deported active supporters of terrorist groups, including at least two men who had attended guerrilla training camps in Pakistan.
There are two more pages in the article. The first one is devoted to the government's case, which is presented thus: 'It's hard to charge people with terrorism, but we can easily deport them if they've violated immigration law. National security is "guesswork," so we're doing our best with what we've got; and anyway, we ignored counterterrorism in the 1990s, and look how that worked out!'
The last page, to bring the article to a circle, is devoted to another sympathetic portrayal of a Muslim immigrant.
I am left drawing these conclusions:
1) The Post is opposed to using immigration law to address counterterrorism issues, on the grounds that it might not be completely fair to all parties involved.
2) The Post, while willing to conceed that these national security issues exist, weighs the whole mess of those issues as being somewhat less important than the handful of cases anti-enforcement advocates pointed out to them. The Post dwells on those cases for three and a half pages of the five page article. It gives less than two paragraphs to the cases cited as successes by DHS, plus another paragraph to a third case later on.
3) Neither the Post, nor the anti-enforcement advocates for whom it is carrying water, actually intend this claim to be taken seriously: "They argue that authorities are enforcing minor violations by Muslims and Arabs, while ignoring millions of other immigrants who flout the same laws." This is not a call to enforce immigration law in an evenhanded fashion.
It is a call to stop enforcing immigration law at all.
Via American Digest, I came across this post by the Anchoress, "Wealth Porn and Cognitive Dissonance at Grey Lady" where she discusses this article by Dick Meyers.
A money quote from the article:
"Bill Clinton didn't bash the rich a lot, but he could have; Johns Kerry and Edwards did bash the rich a lot, and it flopped. It flopped partly because Americans who are not rich simply do not have a European-style, class base resentment. Americans aspire to being rich. That's the American way. But the '04 Democratic rhetoric also flopped because the guys spewing looked like such phonies; they weren't just rich, they were richer than the Republicans: they were hyper-rich."
And its this that strikes both Meyers and the Anchoress about the NY Times. Blathering on about class in a Red sort of way, while advertising to the Hyper-rich (Not that I really like that term, hyper, as it smacks of Braulliard), but still.
I saw more of this 'wealth porn' this very morning while waiting for my car's oil to be changed--the TV had on the morning news of ABC's New York Affiliate, where apparently one of the important stories this morning (along with the Michael Jackson trial, and that lost girl in Aruba) was one on the British Royal Family, and I thought to myself, "Why on Earth is this important at all to Americans?" For some strange reason, there was also a copy of a recent Conde Nast Traveller magazine, which, frankly, is just chock full of the stuff.
It used to be, I think, that people really weren't so aware of this. I can't say why exactly, although I think the monopoly that media had on information distribution had something to do with it.
That has changed. It can only be a good thing it has.
Differences Between Men and Women
Cassandra recommends this guide to female psychology. Normally I'm opposed to psychology, but this one appears to be pretty solid, if my own experience is any guide.
At least, the parts about Roger are right on.