A Dissent from Hume

As part of a discussion on another subject in the company of a bunch of Villains (that post and its extensive discussion are well worth reading in their own right), Grim pointed out a David Hume claim known today as Hume's Guillotine, or the is-ought problem.  The link, provided by Grim, presents a good summary of the question; it's also laid out, of course, in Part III, Section 1, "Moral Distinctions Not Derived from Reason," of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature.  Grim asked what I thought of the matter.

The short answer is that Hume was wrong.

This post attempts to show how.

The salient parts of Hume's argument, as concerns this post, are these:

He states his problem:

Now as perceptions resolve themselves into two kinds, viz. impressions and ideas, this distinction gives rise to a question, with which we shall open up our present enquiry concerning morals. WHETHER IT IS BY MEANS OF OUR IDEAS OR IMPRESSIONS WE DISTINGUISH BETWIXT VICE AND VIRTUE, AND PRONOUNCE AN ACTION BLAMEABLE OR PRAISEWORTHY? … In order, therefore, to judge of these systems, we need only consider, whether it be possible, from reason alone, to distinguish betwixt moral good and evil, or whether there must concur some other principles to enable us to make that distinction.

Hume then makes this claim:

Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections [through opinions of injustice or through a sense of obligation], it follows, that they cannot be derived from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already proved, can never have any such influence.  Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions.  Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular.  The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.

Hume notes, of Reason:

Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood.  Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact.  Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.

with this about morals:

Now it is evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, compleat in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions.  It is impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.

An administrivium: Hume makes a distinction between Reason and moral, identifying the moral as a passion.  For this post, I'll write about rational reason(ing) for Reason and moral reason(ing) for the moral.

Hume's proposition, itself, flows from a false dichotomy.  Our reasoning and moral capacities are gifts from God—indeed, they are the same gift.  The split between them is a wholly human-originated partition, which we generate strictly for the purpose of better understanding the gift.  Thus, rational and moral reasoning begin (its) existence in us, not just inextricably intertwined, but as one and the same.  We can move between them as easily as we can move from our front yard to our back. 

With regard to a part of the second above, concerning the claimed inability for rational reasoning to motivate behavior, this also is wrong.  Consider a game of poker (which, when I was actively playing it had no relation with gambling whatsoever).  A coldly objective—rationally reasoned—assessment of my hand, of the hands of my fellow players, of their betting histories, and so on, takes me to executing a behavior: fold, call, or bet, with a subset under betting of adjusting the size of these bets.  Each of these behaviors is originally motivated by a reasoned assessment the data at hand; moral reasoning has not entered into it at all.  A couple more examples: a man has a pistol and confronts a home invader who holds a weapon to the man's wife, threatening to her unless the man complies with a demand.  This is a highly emotionally charged situation, yet the man can—and a trained man does—observe the factors, sees the wife does not cover very much of the home invader, the range is short, the invader's weapon is not an immediately lethal one (a knife, perhaps, or the finger is not on the trigger), assesses his own marksmanship, and makes a decision to take his shot—or not.  Rational reasoning has determined the shot; rational reasoning has motivated the action of shooting or holding fire.  So it is in another wholly unemotional—dispassionate—activity, like driving: an action of taking this route, or that one, based on the purpose of the trip and the relative efficiencies of the two routes.  Rational reasoning determines the action of the choosing of the route and spurs the driver to act on the choice.

In the fourth above, concerning morals, his claim is internally contradictory.  If we can say that a passion,  a moral, is originally true, originally a fact, then we have...in fact…identified it so.  While we have not identified a falsifiable alternative, we have identified a truth, a fact.  This, comports with rational reasoning: a truth has been discovered.  In this case of origin, that a falsehood is not present to be discovered in no way invalidates the rationally reasoned discovery of the original truth.  A agreement or disagreement (the third above) is simply the agreement/disagreement that this discovery is an original fact.  Of course, a first principle—an original fact—cannot be proved from within its own logical system, but if Hume is correct, rational reasoning is separate from moral reasoning, and it is this separate logical system that has discovered the original fact—from without that other system.

Moreover, if the moral is always, of origin, true—a true fact, as it were—and rational reasoning can distinguish between the true and the false, then it is eminently possible for rational reasoning to recognize the moral, when it recognizes a particular truth.  Nor does rational reasoning need to be a (the) source of good or evil, as Hume decries it for not being: it need only be able to recognize the two and distinguish between them—as it does with any truth or falsehood.

Hume also proceeds from a minor false dichotomy: that it is "possible, from reason alone..." or "…whether there must concur some other principles…."  Yet this is not an either/or proposition; both can be in play.  Moral vice and virtue—morality—can be discerned through rational reasoning, but doing so does not preclude the same distinction by moral reasoning: that is, a virtuous end can be developed by rational reason, and that same virtuous end can be developed by moral reason.  In short, we can, from rational reason alone, distinguish betwixt moral good and evil, and we can make the same distinction from moral reasoning, also.  And, just to dot the i and cross the t, rational reasoning remains fully capable of discerning non-moral truths and falsehoods, as well.  A couple of examples from our Founding will illustrate.

A rational reasoning argument for an economic exchange between free men that improves both men's well-being might go something like this.  Each man has something of value that the other wants.  The two freely and of their own volition agree on a medium of exchange and a value of the objects desired, and they execute the exchange.  As a result of that exchange, both men are better off: both have gained something of value that they did not have before, and neither has not given up anything of greater value in order to realize the gain.  But this is a free market. 

A moral reasoning argument for an economic exchange between free men (keeping in mind the free will He has imbued in us), equal in the eyes of God, might go something like this.  Each man has something of value that the other wants.  The two freely agree on a medium of exchange and a value of the objects desired, and they execute the exchange.  Neither man has gained dominion over the other as a result of the exchange, and neither man has used dominion to force the other into an exchange to which he would not otherwise have agreed.  As a result of that exchange, both men are better off: both have gained something of value that they did not have before, and neither has not given up anything of greater value in order to realize the gain.  But this is a free market.  And in both free markets, the increased well-being of the two men has facilitated their ability to satisfy other moral obligations: they have, for instance, more wherewithal with which to help those less fortunate than they. 

The other example concerns a type of government.  A rational reasoning argument for a government suited to preserving the freedom of men, vis., the freedom of exchange economy described above might go something like this.  What sort of government will best preserve that sort of free market economy?  One such is a government that leaves the people sovereign over that government, easily able to draw the government back when it becomes too overreaching.  This would include, especially for large populations, an electively-oriented representative sort of government at a local level, and groupings of these local governments into a larger, still electively-oriented, representative government at a national level, where the power of the sovereign people is preserved, and so is the power of their more-or-less local governing jurisdictions.  With another little fillip: divide the government into equal, competing sections so as to make it yet harder for that national government to accrete power to itself.  But this is, roughly, a republican government.

A moral reasoning argument for a government suited to preventing some men from gaining dominion over the rest—and so of preserving the morally-derived free economy described above—might go something like this.  What sort of government preserves the essential equality of men before God?  One sort is a government that leaves the people sovereign over that government, and so directly responsible for their own behavior, rather than surrendering that obligation to another—rather than ceding dominion to the men populating that government.  This would include, especially for large populations, an electively-oriented representative sort of government at a local level, and groupings of these local governments into a larger, still electively-oriented, representative government at a national level, where the power of the sovereign people is preserved, and so is the power of their more-or-less local governing jurisdictions.  With another little fillip: divide the government into equal, competing sections so as to make it yet harder for that national government to gain dominion.  The men of the governments at any level are thus prevented from gaining dominion over those whom they purport to represent.  But this is, roughly, a republican government.

With these two examples, we see that rational reasoning and moral reasoning arrive at the same Reason and moral truths.  Having achieved the crossover between Reason and moral at both endpoints, it's easy to see that the crossover can occur at any other place in the chain, as well.

Eric Hines 

"Selfishness as Virtue"

Such is the title of an excellent article from The American Interest, which addresses the change of focus in American society to the fulfillment of the individual.  I won't excerpt it, although I'm inclined to do so, because it's worth reading from front to back.

A question that might open the discussion is whether "selfishness" is the right word.  The author of the article prefers it; the sociologist he is critiquing prefers "the virtues of living lightly."  Is "living lightly" in this sense an actual virtue?

If you thought smokers have it bad....

Wait till the government thinks you're fat, too.

Keep telling yourself it isn't a

Police state.

Nazi Concentration Camps, After the Nazis

Via the Chronicle of Higher Education, a history lesson.

[I]t took place by order of the United States and Britain as well as the Soviet Union, nearly two years after the declaration of peace. Between 1945 and 1950, Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million and 14 million German-speaking civilians—the overwhelming majority of whom were women, old people, and children under 16—were forcibly ejected from their places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are today the western districts of Poland. As The New York Times noted in December 1945, the number of people the Allies proposed to transfer in just a few months was about the same as the total number of all the immigrants admitted to the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. They were deposited among the ruins of Allied-occupied Germany to fend for themselves as best they could. The number who died as a result of starvation, disease, beatings, or outright execution is unknown, but conservative estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people lost their lives in the course of the operation. 

Most disturbingly of all, tens of thousands perished as a result of ill treatment while being used as slave labor (or, in the Allies' cynical formulation, "reparations in kind") in a vast network of camps extending across central and southeastern Europe—many of which, like Auschwitz I and Theresienstadt, were former German concentration camps kept in operation for years after the war.

 Emphasis added.  Read the rest.  The Chronicle is a respectable publication:  you may trust, though you may not like, what you read.

Arizona immigration law mostly gutted

I'm seeing this decision described some places as one supporting "key" provisions of the state law, but as far as I can tell, the Supreme Court found that the strongest portions of it were impermissible invasions of federal prerogatives by state law.  The police can still check the immigration status of someone they're detaining on other grounds, but they can't do much about it -- that's still left to the feds, who have decided not to do anything about it.

...And At the Other End

A retired gentleman saves a lady from a mugger, just down in Athens, Georgia.  Turns out the attacker was armed, but lacked the guts to go for his gun in the face of resistance.  Like many a criminal, he armed himself to make himself even stronger against the weak -- not to face the strong.

Way to go, son

A 14-year-old takes good care of his siblings, 8, 10, and 12.  Someone in the article comments that they're not sure whether the boy had been trained in the use of his father's gun.  I don't know:  Assuming they're talking about a handgun, that's a pretty good shot under stress from the top of a staircase.

Loose Talk

Allahpundit at Hot Air loves to twig his predominantly-believer readership with periodic atheist headlines.  Here's the latest, which is nothing new for us.

"The Big Bang could've occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there," said astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley. "With the laws of physics, you can get universes."...

"The 'divine spark' was whatever produced the laws of physics," Filippenko said. "And I don't know what produced that divine spark. So let's just leave it at the laws of physics."

Just being "there"?  That's a fairly loose way of speaking.  Where exactly were the laws of physics before the creation of the universe?  What is this "there" where they were?

For that matter, where are they now?  In the same place as before the creation of the universe -- that thing that metaphysically prior to every place, as we usually use the term?

Or should we say that the laws are in every place?  That makes no sense, because they must have existed prior (again, for Joe, in the metaphysical sense) to creation:  creation was enabled by their existence.  Thus, they can't exist in 'every place' in the ordinary sense of the word -- indeed, they can't exist in any place in that sense, as the laws are prior to the places.

But what sense does it make to say that the laws exist in no place?  How do you have laws with universal effects in every place, if the laws exist in no place?

It seems you have to say that they belong to the thing.  Which thing?  The thing that is the field of action in which the universe came to be, and within which it is sustained.  That is to say that this universal container is a thing that has a nature:  a nature in exactly the terms Aristotle offered in Physics II, when he defined nature as when a thing has "within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness."  That's exactly what we want this thing to have:  a principle internal to itself that defines how motion operates.  (We tend to dispense with 'stationariness' in modern and contemporary physics).

Because this thing is the container for our universe, its internal principle is a safe location for the laws of physics to be written.  They can exercise both the creative function he wants, and the universality we seem to observe.

That's an answer to the question of where the laws are located.  It's located in a thing that has no place, because it is the container of every place.  The existence of this container is certain, as is the fact that it must have a nature.

Thus, we don't have to stop with "A" because "A" was caused by a "B" with an unknowable cause "C."  We may stop with "A" as a matter of science, but we can rely on the existence of "B" as a matter of logic.  As to C, well, that's just where I differ with the good astrophysicist.  Rather than wishing to stop at the last safe place before risking that escalation, from my perspective, that's just where it begins to get interesting.

Summer is the Angry Time

Not much to love about heat and humidity, even when things aren't hard as they are for millions of our brother and sister Americans this summer.  Good time for some angry blues.

Consent

I suspect a lot of Republicans are reading this question as, "Do you consent to what the government is doing?"  But the unaffiliated number is alarming.

Only 22% of the nation’s likely voters believe the government today has such consent.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds a wide partisan gap on the question. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether or not the government has the consent needed for legitimacy. Only eight percent (8%) Republicans and 21% of unaffiliated voters believe it does. 

A better question, maybe:  what percentage of the people do you think consents to the government?  And, by the way, what percentage does it take to make the government legitimate?

My answers would be:  if you mean consenting to continuation of highway, police and fire services, probably 90%; if you mean consenting to 'a fundamental transformation of America,' probably 22%.  As to the second question, I have an answer I'll keep back for the moment, because I don't wish to prejudice your answers.

Cancer or Heart Disease. Your Choice.

Apparently that's about it, now.

I pray I might die in a manner more fit for a warrior; on the highway, or by blade or gun.  Yet such things are for a higher power than me to decide.  Whatever comes, I shall abide; and as Lancelot said, boldly, whatever God sends shall be welcome.

Patronage

The classic way to win a Presidential election is to convince a majority of voters that you represent the vision they want to see for their country.  There's a secondary way, though, if that doesn't work:  buy off key segments in key states.

Since the normal way is out this year, we're left with route two.

Well, once you can't win their hearts, you have to bribe them.  Maybe there's enough voters left who can be bought.  That's the only road, now.  You only get away with this once:



They know you, now.

Frontiers and Privileges

Since T99 is talking about legal privileges today, I thought I would share a tidbit from some further historical research on Medieval Spain.

Apparently the greatest scholar of such history in the English-speaking world was Dr. Angus MacKay (pronounced, for the non-Scots among you, so that "Kay" rhymes with "sigh"). Born in Lima, Peru, he grew up with the Spanish language and developed a love of history.

Dr. MacKay demonstrated, among other things, that during the period when Spain was reconquering land from the Islamic states, there was a persistent population problem. Land needs to be worked, and cities need to be defended. Most of the Muslims would leave an area that became Christian -- although about one in three people in these reconquered areas continued to be Muslim -- so it was necessary to get people down there to work the land and hold the towns.

This led the kingdoms of Spain to offer legal incentives to anyone who would move to one of the frontier towns. If you could fight, you were due more; and if you could provide your own arms, still more. If you could fight, provide your own arms and a horse, you were elevated regardless of the circumstances of your birth to the status of a caballero -- that is, a knight -- although your low birth was socially recognized. However, as one of the privileges of this status was exemption from taxation, if you won much plunder by the strength of your arm, or simply could maintain the status for a few generations or ordinary income, your sons would rise to the status of hidalgo (literally 'son of something,' i.e., a child whose ancestors had amounted to something).

Additional tax incentives were offered, sometimes liberating everyone who came to a town from classes of ordinary taxes. Sometimes it freed those who participated in raids from paying back any plunder to the crown. But the most interesting one, to me, was this one promise made by King Alfonso VII to the lords and settlers of Oreja:

If someone should flee to Oreja with a woman, who is not his relation, is not married, and has not been taken by force or ravished, and he wishes to be one of the settlers, then he is to go there safely, and the lord of Oreja need not fear to accept him, and neither he nor the man who has seduced her has to answer to any of the woman's relatives.

That's an incredible waiver from the usual rules of marriage at the time.  It's also interesting that it requires only her consent, but allows the consent of her family to be defied entirely.

And yet this romantic view is not out of place in the middle ages.  It is a rule that comes, as we have seen, at the same time as the courtly love poetry of the troubadours was wildly popular among the kings of southern France, Spain, and England.  It was also the time of the idea put forward by the Church that the love of husband and wife was a reflection of the love of souls for God.

It was available to those brave enough to cast aside everything for their love, except the hope that their risk and labor might provide better than what they were casting away.  A poor man's son who could work his way to a horse and mail, and so win the heart of a girl that she would go with him even to the frontier, could find love and wealth and glory, raise himself to knighthood and his children to the nobility, and all while being devoted to the service of God.

Such times were heady indeed.

Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages:  From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500 (New York:  St. Martin's Press, 1977), 37-9, 48.

Privileges

Here's the process for withholding privileged documents if you're a reasonably principled lawyer.  You put together the entire universe of documents that appear to be responsive to the document request.  Then you examine every single document to determine whether it falls within an established privilege, usually "work product" or "attorney-client."  The first cut of "work product" documents would include anything that could possibly be said to quote or reflect advice that the client received from counsel.  For the "attorney-client" category, the first cut would include anything from the attorney to the client or vice versa, including anything cc'ed to the law firm.

If only you got to stop there, document production would be a breeze.  The next step is harder.  In the case of work product, for instance, often the main document is OK, but a line or two might say, "As you know, counsel advised us that ______," and the blank would need to be redacted.  In the case of attorney-client privilege, you're not going to get away with withholding everything that was circulated past the lawyers.  If the cc list included anyone who wasn't a client, for instance, it goes back in the pile to be produced, because the privilege requires a showing that the advice was given and held in confidence.  Even if the cc list is made up exclusively of lawyers and clients, it still has to involve the quest for or rendition of legal advice.  You can't shield ordinary business documents from production by slapping a "lawyer cc" on them, though that gambit is often tried.

Even when you finish this more rigorous secondary process, you don't simply get to keep the documents you think are privileged and tell the other side to pound sand.  You have to produce a privilege log, a little chart that identifies each document, including its date, its recipients, and enough about its general nature to explain why you claim a privilege attaches to it.  This is a critical stage, because the judge and any competent lawyers in the case can take one look at your privilege log and see whether you're serious.  The absence of a privilege log, or the absence of detail, is a big red flag that screams "My idea of screening for privileged documents to sort everything into two piles:  the documents that will embarrass me and the documents that won't."  It's a more common approach than you might think.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is making a very reasonable demand today for a privilege log of the "Fast and Furious" documents withheld by the White House on the ground of executive privilege.  He's also on solid ground with the following observations:

“Just last week, when the attorney general was in front of this committee, I asked him twice if the president could claim executive privilege to protect a certain internal Justice Department email that has been withheld,” Grassley said.  “Given the explicit opportunity, the attorney general did not indicate he would be asking the president to assert executive privilege over such documents.” 

“The attorney general repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department was making an ‘extraordinary offer’ Tuesday night,” Grassley continued.  “The only thing extraordinary is that the attorney general offered a promise to produce documents one day and then asked the president to claim executive privilege over them the next.” 

Grassley also attacked Obama for waiting until the eleventh hour to assert the privilege.  “If this were a serious claim, it should have been raised much earlier,” Grassley said.

It's very difficult to understand how an executive privilege could attach to documents about a program the President claims not to have had any knowledge of.   Nor is it easy to understand how the Attorney General can assert with a straight face that the program in question dates from the Bush administration, and that he terminated it many months before he now asserts he even became aware of it.   In a trial, this kind of thing would prompt the filing of what we used to call a "motion to get real."

Discovery disputes are boring.  Judges hate to get involved in them, so they tend to blow them off by taking a "plague on both your houses" approach, which gives crummy lawyers an incentive to abuse privileges and hide evidence.  The media is doing the same thing right now, painting the picture of yet another partisan attack based on an arcane legal theory, which voters should tune out in frustration.  I hope they don't.

Knives as "Arms"

Volokh has an interesting examination of case law regarding whether knives are "arms" for Second Amendment purposes.

A lot seems to turn on whether a class of weapon is regularly used in "civilized warfare."  That standard would seem to make it proper to carry a Kabar, since it was military issue and is still regularly carried by soldiers, sailors and Marines...

...but not a Buck knife, which is primarily for hunting.  Yet the design is substantially the same, except the Buck 119 Special is a little shorter.

It's nice to know that swords still turn up as 'weapons of civilized war.' They're not as random or clumsy as a handgun, either.

On the Need for "Home Economics" Courses in School

Via Yahoo questions:

My girlfriend cooked raw chicken in the George foreman last night. The next day i wanted to grill my sandwich but she did not clean the foreman grill. I said i would get sick if i placed the sandwich on the grill where raw chicken has been. she insisted that the raw chicken cooked so i would not get sick from raw chicken juices. Whats going on here?

R. Lee Ermey, Bus Monitor

You know how we got here?  It's because we decided we were too soft for this.  These kids obviously have not had a proper sense of shame instilled into them by someone who knows how.

Children are barbarians.  Either you are strong enough to win their hearts, or they will eat yours.

Solstice

We have two great holidays every year:  Christmas, and the Summer Solstice.  This holiday happens to encompass Father's Day, our wedding anniversary, and an important family birthday.  As a consequence, it is a day of particular importance, celebrated by feasting and fellowship.

I hope yours has been as good.  Now comes the hard part of the year:  summer, the hungry time of old.  Still in the South, it is a time of year I look forward to only with dread.  We'll get through it, but we look toward the autumn with longing most of the time.

Fusion

I can't read this woman's site, which is in Russian, but her work speaks for itself.  She is a Muscovite who has incorporated Irish Clones lace motifs into her own signature style, in full color.  Clicking through to her site will give you some closeups.

Cheer up

From Frank J. Fleming:

Everyone is so gloomy about the future these days. Polls show that most people think we’re on the wrong path, and everyone walks around looking like the president just ate their dogs. . . . [W]hat’s the worst that could happen to us if we never get a handle on our finances — if we just keep spending and spending while the economy crumbles further? I guess in the absolute worst-case scenario, we’d have a complete economic meltdown, our money would become worthless, our government would collapse, and our infrastructure would fall apart.  Basically, all of civilization would be destroyed. . . .  So even if things are as bad as we can possibly imagine, we have this nice fallback option of becoming hunter-gatherers again.  People might even enjoy their new, simpler living conditions.  People do like camping.  And the movie The Hunger Games was pretty popular.  Plus, this would pretty much end childhood obesity.  And one day, soon after we start living this way, we’ll all say, “Wow, we sure were spoiled with all that running water, electricity, and no need to fear wild animals. Weren’t we silly about that?”  And we’ll have a good laugh.  Well, not all of us — just those who make it past the first winter.  So a few of us.  A few of us will have a good laugh.

'The Law' is the Name of that Ass You Rode Over the Border

Senator Rubio, on illegal immigration:

It’s a law-and-order issue. But it’s also an issue about human dignity and common decency. And when we lose sight of either aspect of the issue, we harm ourselves as well as the people who wish to live here. Many people who come here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn’t feed our families. If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn’t give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn’t a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here. 

Well, what about you?  Would you let your children die rather than violate the laws of a country to which you owe no citizen's loyalty?  Or would you get on the ass and ride?

The Most Peaceful Place on Earth

Iceland!  Just what you'd expect from a country that was exclusively settled by Vikings!

I guess it wouldn't be here.  Funny; it was just last Christmas we were noticing with worry that Ciudad Juarez, just over the border, had seen more people killed than Afghanistan.

This year, it's Chicago.

Take the Road

Now I Understand

Stories like this one have been coming hot and heavy since the Columbia trip, undermining the idea that the Secret Service are buttoned-down professionals. It's hard to understand how an organization with such an institutional history could become so unglued.

Until, that is, you find out what else their job entails. Now it all seems clear.

Another Example

Via Reason magazine, which has done yeoman work on this issue:

As the officers made their way to the back of the house, where the Avina’s 11-year-old and 14-year-old daughters were sleeping, Rosalie Avina screamed, “Don’t hurt my babies. Don’t hurt my babies.”

The agents entered the 14-year-old girl’s room first, shouting “Get down on the fucking ground.” The girl, who was lying on her bed, rolled onto the floor, where the agents handcuffed her. Next they went to the 11-year-old’s room. The girl was sleeping. Agents woke her up by shouting “Get down on the fucking ground.” The girl’s eyes shot open, but she was, according to her own testimony, “frozen in fear.” So the agents dragged her onto the floor. While one agent handcuffed her, another held a gun to her head....

After two hours, the agents realized they had the wrong house—the product of a sloppy license plate transcription—and left. 

As the article notes, the Justice Department has decided to go to court in favor of the notion that Federal agents have a right to hold a gun to the head of 11-year-old children.  I'm pretty sure that no such right can possibly exist, though they plainly have the power at present.

Anyway, the Ninth Circuit found that this conduct was "unreasonable."  So when does someone at DEA go to jail for unreasonably deploying lethal force against an 11-year-old during a wrongful raid?  Never, that's when.

What 'People' Are We Talking About?

Bob Krumm on Obama's refusal to enforce DOMA drug laws school standards gambling laws immigration laws:

Since the very beginning of our Nation’s founding, there has been (by design) a healthy tension between the Legislative branch, which writes laws, and the Executive Branch, which executes those laws.  Laws were only de facto valid when they were both on the books and willingly enforced.  As every law is a limit upon the people, this created a very high barrier to restrictions on individual rights. 

"Every law is a limit on the people," eh?  So what the anarchists really need is just to elect a President, who can refuse to enforce any of the laws?

But which "people" are we talking about here?  The law in this case is a restriction on peoples who are not American citizens:  it restricts them from moving to America without a permit.  The restriction doesn't particularly affect the American people.

The preamble to the Constitution suggests that it is the people of the United States who ordain and establish the government, for ends of their own.  They are good ends, but they are not universal ends:  and the category of people who established and ordained the United States is not universal either.

Maybe Krumm is right in general:  maybe it's generally a good thing if the law goes unenforced.  Maybe it's fine to have a lot of laws on the books that have no force in practice.

Somehow, though, I doubt it.  That sounds to me like a vision of the law as the sword of Damocles:  a deadly thing hanging over my head, fit to fall at any time.  But -- for now -- a little string keeps it from my skull.

A Pretty Good Run

Tallulah Gorge

The Tallulah River, from atop the Gorge

Beef, Bread, and Beer

Father's Day

From Sippican:

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.  Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass."  "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply.  "We're raising boys." 

- Harmon Killebrew

Against Our Cultural Bias Towards the Adults

A recent study on parents who have had same-sex relationships purports to show that their children have measurably worse outcomes than the children of married, stable biological parents.  The study has come in for a lot of wrath, as well as some legitimate criticisms of its methodology and conclusions.

One of the critics is E. J. Graff, a writer who is an advocate of same-sex marriage.  I've generally been impressed with her writing even though she and I are on opposite sides of this issue.  She is raising a point about the methodology and conclusions that I agree with -- that the study doesn't actually prove what the author claims it proves -- but in a way that makes my head spin.

Those aren’t the children of same-sex parents. Those are the children of different-sex parents, one of whom later has some sexual relationship with someone of the same sex, however brief or sustained. The gay dads he’s writing about? Those are men who finally get an adolscence, late in life, after they’ve lied to themselves or others to try to fit in socially because people like Mark Regnerus told them being gay is bad. In our world, those men should never have married women. A healthy society would let them come out young and, if they wanted children, have children with a male partner with whom they could happily remain. 

Emphasis in the original.

I have a serious problem with this way she has framed her point here.  All children are children of different-sex parents.  There is no such thing as a man having children with a male partner.  Whatever else a healthy society may do, a healthy society does not lie to itself about reality.

What happens when a male-male couple 'has children' is that the mother of the child is somehow excluded from the child's life.  She may be involved to some degree, or she may not, but the child doesn't have the day-to-day relationship with his or her mother that a child would have in a household with married biological parents.

It seems to me that the child has a very strong interest in having a loving relationship with both of its biological parents.  They are the two people in the world who are most like the child, after all:  so much of who we are is passed genetically that knowing your parents is an advantage in and of itself.  The better you understand them, and  how they deal with the difficulties they encounter in life, the better prepared you will be to engage in the difficulties life is most likely to throw you.  Even if you don't like your parents, you benefit from knowing them well.

Thus we can see a ranking, from the perspective of the child's interests:  the ideal thing for a child is to be born into a loving, stable heterosexual family in which the child can have a good relationship with both biological parents.  Every other option is less ideal, though we can disagree about whether a family with happy gay partners -- not "parents," though one of them might be -- is better or worse for the child than living in a marriage between unhappy biological parents.  That's the kind of thing that a study might usefully inform, if one is ever done; but it will be a while before it can be done well, since right now the data set is limited.  (I would think you would need to control for a lot of other things to get useful data, though:  income levels, for example, surely affect the outcomes for a family's children.)

Now having children isn't one of those things that you shouldn't do if you can't do it perfectly.  Perfection of the end is the proper way to aim, but it's still better to partially achieve the end than to entirely fail.  Many argue that it is better for children to spend time with their parents than in day care centers, for example, but even if that were conclusively proven it wouldn't mean that no family should have children if they can't avoid using day care.  That would be absurd:  clearly the child obtains a benefit from being born, and more benefits from every day of life.  To deny the child birth is to deny the child every good it will ever have.

That would be like telling a poor family that, since they can't eat steak, they shouldn't eat at all.  It's a ridiculous and absurd notion.  It's better for the child to be born, and have the chance for some happiness.  Besides, the odds aren't everything:  maybe the child will figure out a way to do better than the odds suggest.

For a long time, though, we've been talking about this issue as if the happiness of the parents was the paramount issue in how we think about questions of marriage and divorce.  Whatever else the study did, it at least put the focus back where it belongs.  Families are about kinship bonds across generations:  the children's interest is at least as important as the parents' interests, even if the child is powerless to defend its interests.  I would argue that the interests of the earlier set of parents is also relevant -- that there is a continuing set of mutual duties between all the involved generations -- but that seems to be an unpopular position these days.  If we can get people to at least change focus to favor the interests of the next generation over the current one, I'll take that as a good start.

A Swordsman on Swordfighting

I've had the chance to train with him.  For those of you who are interested, the man knows what he's talking about.

Gremlins

We're having a bit of technical, inter-tubes related difficulties here at the Hall.  Don't mind if you don't see me on any given day.

Mostly I'm just laying in wood for the winter anyway.  The odds of me having a great insight to trouble you with at this time are fairly small.  I can tell you that chainsaws, given modern fuel conditions, work better at 50:1 than 60:1; and that you need to change your gas out before it gets a month old, no matter how good your ratio happens to be.



Since we're doing old cartoons on relevant subjects, how about a Depression-era Disney cartoon on the subject of eviction?

The Nature of the Thing

We've spoken often of views marriage, and especially of Aquinas' concept that matrimony is based in natural law:  that is, it is based on human nature.  Our nature imposes upon us certain requirements -- if we wish to survive as a species, or as a culture, these requirements take the force of duties.

Of course, it's a duty that doesn't have to be done by everyone:  there are some who reject it for themselves, which is fine so long as they support it when it is done by others.  If it is a fact of human nature -- and surely it is -- we have to sort out a way to make this work.  It's a duty that falls on us all, either to bear ourselves, or to support.

But she is wrong to say that children are poor conversationalists.  That may be true for children whose parents didn't bother to talk to them like people.  If you did, though, you probably found that they were very interesting conversationalists.  A child who has been engaged enough to have learned to speak well and properly presents quite a challenge in conversation.  If you take them seriously, and engage them seriously, you'll have few conversations as interesting in your whole life.

Restoring Faith in Government

So we're all excited to learn that the Justice Department has appointed two investigators to look into the rampant leaks, sometimes derailing critical Top Secret programs, that have recently emerged in a series of articles highly favorable to the Obama administration.  However...

Well, look on the bright side.  Only one of them has heavily donated to both the Senate and Presidential campaigns of President Obama; while holding an office to which he was appointed by President Obama; in order to take a position for which he will doubtless be paid a fine honorarium by the Justice Department that serves President Obama.

The other guy is just in the pay of the administration.  Otherwise, he appears to be independent.  Since the Justice Department is theoretically autonomous to a certain degree -- if Eric Holder can be relied upon in this regard -- there should be nothing to worry about.

How not to chat on Facebook

From PJ Media:

Here’s a thought: If you’re a liberal who feels the urge to murder kittens when someone says something nice about Sarah Palin or a conservative who thinks Obama is a mixture of Stalin and Darth Vader and you just can’t shut up about it, maybe you shouldn’t be [Facebook] friends with someone who vehemently disagrees with you. If you are going to be someone’s friend, then you should keep in mind that friends politely disagree. They don’t regularly insult each other, trash other people in the thread, and go off on angry rants. So, just remember what your mother said, “If you can’t say something nice, then shut your ignorant mouth, you loser! I can’t believe I ever had a horrible child like you! You’ll never be a success! Never!” Ok, maybe I’m just assuming that’s how the mothers of people like that talk, but you have to admit that it would explain a lot.

Thoughts on Silence

Here is an interview with a Trappist monk on the virtue he finds in what is popularly called the vow of silence.

When a man and woman meet and fall in love they begin to talk. They talk and talk and talk all day long and can't wait to meet again to talk some more. They talk for hours together, and never tire of talking and so talk late into the night, until they become intimate—and then they don't talk anymore. Neither would describe intimacy as “the sacrifice of words” and a monk is not inclined to speak about his intimacy with God in this way.

A Study in Terrible Judgment

Anyone who happens to be a pedophile should consider any and all procedures that prevent them from acting on their disorder.  If you choose to disregard this advice, however, at least don't select a horse ranch in Texas as the best place to carry on.

A Texas father caught a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter and punched him in the head repeatedly, killing him, authorities said.

Well of course he did.

West Point Looks Back

Were you aware that the United States Military Academy's Department of History teaches students to fire 1500s matchlock muskets?  Conduct WWI-style trench warfare?

These are some interesting videos.  The old lessons become relevant again surprisingly regularly:  think of the SF guys in the early days of Afghanistan having not only to ride but to pack horses.  Rigging a pack horse is an entirely separate skill set, once well known to the American cavalry.

The lessons of trench warfare can become relevant again quickly, if only for an afternoon:  but if it does, remembering the old ways is the difference between surviving the afternoon and not.

An Older View of Marriage

I was just reading Ragnhild Johnrud Zorgati's Pluralism in the Middle Ages:  Hybrid Identities, Conversion, and Mixed Marriages in Medieval Iberia.  There's an interesting passage I wanted to quote to you as it pertains to our occasional discussion of the nature of marriage.  We're familiar with Aquinas' natural law view of matrimony, i.e., that view of marriage that takes its form from the nature of humankind.

Aquinas lived in the 13th century, though, and his formulation out of the natural law didn't occur until the writings of Aristotle were restored to the West.  It is Aristotle, after all, who puts such an emphasis on "the nature of the thing" in determining questions about ethics and justice (and indeed even physics).  Those writings came to the Church out of Spain, especially following the conquest of Toledo in 1085.  When the Christians found themselves in possession of the great libraries of Toledo, rather than burn them (as the Mongols did to the libraries in Baghdad and Persia) they set up teams of translators.  Many Christians who spoke and read Arabic lived in the city, as well as Jewish scholars who could read multiple languages.  Translation from Arabic into Latin and other languages accessible in Europe became a focus of the Crown of Castille, which provided the funding for the efforts led by the Church.

Before that, marriage did not have the natural law reading in the West.  It still had a unique character in Christian civilization, though, opposed to the contractual reading.  Marriage was a contract in Islam.  Dr. Zorgati explains (p. 102):

According to Charles Donahue, “the most frequently made comparative statement about the Christian law of marriage, on the one hand, and the Islamic [ . . . ] or the Jewish [ . . . ], on the other, is that marriage is a sacrament in Christianity but it is not in Islam or Judaism” (Donahue, 2008, 46). In studies dedicated to Muslim marriages, it is often its contractual nature which is at the forefront. 6 However, the opposition between marriage as contract and marriage as sacrament has to be nuanced. First, there is not one Islamic marriage contract, but many, since different legal schools developed different requirements for the marriage contract, and because people could add individual stipulations to their contracts. Second, although the idea of marriage as a sacrament has roots back to Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, it was first translated into legal doctrine in the twelfth century (Donahue, 2008, 47). According to Islamic law, “marriage is a contract (ʿaqd), established by bilateral agreement” (Ali, 2008, 11). It is a mundane transaction (muʿāmala) which some jurists also saw as an act of worship (ʿibāda) since according to one ḥadīth a married person has fulfilled half of his or her religion (Ali, 2008, 11). Moreover, one of the essential features of the contract is the offer (ījāb) made by the bride’s family and the acceptance (qabūl) of the groom’s family (Ali, 2008, 11– 13). Other important elements are the dower (ṣadāq) and the role played by the guardian and the witnesses, as well as the consent of the contracting parties.

The Church's idea ran in contrast to the actual practice of the Christian people:  before the 12th century, Christians tended to prefer arranged marriages based on social class and the preservation of the stability of the family.  As the Church developed the idea of marriage as a sacrament, though, the sacred character of the bond tended to undermine family authority (Zorgati p. 104):

The insistence of the free consent of the parties must be understood in relation to the developing view that marriage constituted a sacrament. Canonists writing in the decades before Alexander III insisted on the sacramental character of marriage. For example, Peter Lombard established that marriage was one of the seven sacraments of the Church, whereas Hugh of Saint Victor explored the etymology of ‘sacrament’ that he thought corresponded to ‘holy sign’ (sacrum signum). 10 Hence, in addition to the received idea that the relationship between husband and wife was analogous to the relationship between Christ and the Church— a mystery, or sacrament, according to Saint Paul— he saw marriage as a sign of the mutual love between the soul and God. This new idea had, according to Donahue, an impact on the doctrine of free consent in marriage which developed at the same time: “A theology that sees in marriage a sign of the mutual yearning of the soul for God and of God for the soul would tend to emphasize, as Hugh does, the element of choice in marriage, and would tend to exclude the choice of anyone else as being relevant to the question of the formation of marriage” (Donahue, 2008, 54). 

That's an interesting view, and one that is in contrast with the view that Aquinas came to in the next century.  The principal end of matrimony in that view, derived from "the nature of the thing," is filling the need for humanity to reproduce itself across generations:  not only to procreate, but to educate and develop children so they are able to sustain themselves and support the greater society of which they are part.

Unlike the Islamic and Jewish contractual view, the Christian view permitted the two parties who loved each other to come together regardless of their rank in society, but only by their own free choice.  Also unlike the contractual views, however, divorce was forbidden.  The Love that could unify a man and a woman of different ranks into one flesh was a miracle.  None should dare to live in defiance of such a miracle.

No idle hands

This pattern is absorbing me as thoroughly as the golden Ring in Frodo's head:  day or night, all I want to do lately is crochet it.  When I finish a length sufficient for a bedskirt in this thick "bedspread weight" thread, I think I'll start a new one in a very fine thread, to edge the pillowcases with.

With All Due Respect, Have You Gentlemen Lost Your Minds?

InstaPundit approvingly cites Walter Russell Mead:

Air conditioning in warm regions uses far less energy than heating in cold regions. 

So if you want to help save the planet, move out of Vermont and get yourself to Alabama where people know how to live in harmony with Mother Gaia. Moving out of New England could be the purest form of environmental activism; your selfish, earth destroying choice of living in Massachusetts in killing us all. And as for Canada, Gaia’s message is clear: shut it down, now. The Germans for their part could help the planet by moving to Spain and Greece; this might also help with Europe’s financial woes. 

Perhaps the blue model politicians whose tax and spend policies are driving businesses and residents out of their states are smarter than they look. They could be green activists, steadily working to save the earth by driving people out of the northeast. We look forward to green activists introducing legislation in Congress to levy new taxes on those whose choice to live in cold states imposes costs on the more virtuous and eco-friendly inhabitants of Texas and South Carolina.

It only seems fair. You do care about the planet, don’t you?

Am I seriously reading a professor from South Carolina and another from Tennessee suggesting that what we need is for more Yankees to move down South?  Is this what you want for the good people of Alabama?

(I haven't forgotten you, Raven!  But still:  Bernie Sanders voters moving to Alabama?  Madness.)

RIchard Feynman is my hero

This is from a oft-quoted speech, Feynman's 1974 commencement speech at Cal Tech, but I never can get enough of it:

This long history of learning how not to fool ourselves — of having utter scientific integrity — is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis. 

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I far as I can tell, everything Feynman ever wrote is worth reading, especially "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", "What Do You Care What Other People Think?", and "Q.E.D."  The first two are reminiscences; the third is one of the best pieces of popularized science I've ever read.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

Instructions from the Bench

The judge in A.W.'s case advocates for how he thinks the matter should be settled.

THE COURT: –You’ve decided to battle, and he comes back. And see, you’re — you — you’re the kind of guy, you don’t want to get into this to settle this, mano y mano. You want to get all these friends who got nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion, because — my God, I’m a little bit older than you are, and I haven’t got enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do. And I thought by retirement, I would have less to do. I got more! Because everybody knows I’m free! So they all come to me. But you, you are starting a — a conflagration, for lack of a better word, and you’re just letting the thing go recklessly no matter where it goes. I mean, you get some — and I’m going to use word I (ph) — freak somewhere up Oklahoma, got nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things in the world he can do to this poor gentleman. What right has that guy got to do it? 

WALKER: He has no right to do that, Your Honor. 

THE COURT: Well, he’s — you incited him. 

WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though. 

THE COURT: Forget Bradenburg [sic]. Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world. But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly. 

WALKER: I’m not sure what that means, your honor. 

THE COURT: –Very quickly. And I’m not going to talk about those ways, but boy, it ended fast. I even can tell you, when I grew up in my community, you wanted to date an Italian girl, you had to get the Italian boy’s permission. But that was the old neighborhoods back in the city. And it was really fair. When someone did something up there to you, your sister, your girlfriend, you got some friends to take them for a ride in the back of the truck. 

WALKER: Well, Your Honor, what– 

THE COURT: –That ended it. You guys have got this new mechanical stuff out here, the electronic stuff, that you can just ruin somebody without doing anything. But you started it.

So, you know, I guess you know what the court in Maryland thinks you should do next.   If anyone complains, tell them the judge so instructed you from the bench.

Considering the President's Economic Vision

The ads are already out:  President Obama said at a press conference that "the private sector is doing fine."  Republicans are playing the clip of those few words, merry in the sense that it demonstrates that the President is out of touch.

Let's consider the remark in context, though, because it's a revealing description of how he thinks about the economy.

The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone.  

The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government  and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.

What's really interesting about this set of remarks is not the factual claim, but the interpretation of the facts.  The facts cited are roughly correct:  for example, government jobs really have declined rapidly during the Obama administration.  The reason is roughly what he says it is:  lots of state and local governments operate under balanced budget amendments, and aren't free to deficit-spend past their eyeballs, hair, and ten-gallon hat.

What we're left with, then, is the interpretation of the facts.  It's pretty clear that the recovery is unusually anemic by historic standards.  It's also true that the 4.3 million jobs 'created' haven't made up for the number of jobs lost:  when you take account of the number of people who have left the workforce entirely, things look different.

Also, we can see that the private jobs that do exist are objectively worse than the jobs that used to exist.  Consider the movement from full-time to part-time jobs by employers -- a way of avoiding having to provide the benefits that have become an expected part of full-time labor in America, and thus a way of paying workers lower total compensation for each hour of work.  Or consider the increasing classification of lower-wage jobs as "seasonal" rather than "part-time."  A seasonal worker can be paid below minimum wage.  And of course, raises and bonuses for lucky workers who do still have full-time jobs are not much forthcoming, while the costs of energy and food are spiking.

All this means that workers are being pinched horribly:  many can't find work, and if they can it pays less than it used to pay, especially relative to the costs they encounter.  They may now  have to buy benefits on the open market, where they are also more expensive.  Companies are finding people will take these jobs in spite of the vastly reduced compensation, though, because there are so many people who have no work that the market value of your work is just less than it used to be.  Presumably you aren't a worse worker, but you're not worth as much anymore.

This is interpreted as "fine."  OK; that's the Republicans' point.

What I find as interesting, though, is the complaint about the shrinking of government.  What the President really finds to be out of order is that state and local governments are having to respond to the economic crisis by tightening belts.  The main thing he wants to fix is to achieve higher levels of government employment.

The thing is, though, this was a policy decision by the electorates of these states and localities.  They can change the laws themselves, if they want to do so.  What they decided was that, during hard times when tax revenues are lower, government should spend less.  That means cutting some of the nice things that we enjoy government doing -- parks and recreation services, librarians, and so forth -- as well as being more careful with essential services.  Perhaps taxes or fees can be raised to pay for these, but if not, services must be more carefully allocated so as to do with less.

If people get tired of this, they can vote to rescind balanced budget amendments.  They want it this way; and at various times, 32 states have passed resolutions asking for a Constitutional Convention to require the Federal government to act this way as well.

So what we have here is a stark difference of opinion, among broad sections of the public, about how government should respond to fiscal crises.  The President is painting this as a government failure, but in fact it's the state and local governments acting exactly the way their citizens want them to act.

There's another issue behind the decline in government jobs.  The failure of Congress to pass a budget for years now has led to tremendous uncertainty; combined with the failure of the so-called "super-committee," even many Federal departments are going to get cut and nobody can be quite sure how big the cuts will be, or whether Congress will finally move to avoid them.  Thus, even some Federal departments -- certainly this is true for DOD -- have great uncertainty that is keeping them from starting new projects or hiring new people.

This last is a much clearer case of government failure.  Congress has failed as an institution, but not in failing to provide extra goodies for state and local governments to use in dodging the will of their constituents.  Congress has failed to do its most basic duty for the good order of the Federal government.

That's the one aspect of the situation the President didn't talk about.  He sees a problem where state and local governments are acting appropriately according to the mandate they have received from their citizens; he sees no problem where Congress is blatantly failing to perform its most basic function.

The private sector?  Well, whether or not you agree that it's "fine," it should be obvious that it's not of particular interest to him.

Let Me Just Say...

...that I am always surprised by how much energy there is in a big white oak hitting the ground.

Venus transit

My husband found me this spectacular shot of the transit. I forgot to mention in my prior post why people went to such trouble to view the transit every century or so from as many spots on the globe as they could manage. (Captain Cook, for instance, arranged to watch it from the South Pacific.) The purpose was to use the parallax effect to estimate the distance of Venus from the Sun. Astronomers already had a pretty good idea of the relative size of various planetary orbits, but hadn't figured out a way to put an absolute measurement on any of them. Accurate measurements of the timing of the Venus transit from distant spots on Earth permitted a triangulation that yielded not only the distance of Venus from the Sun but also, by extension, the distance of the other planets.

The stages of grief

I can't find a direct link to this video on YouTube, so you just have to click through to the HotAir article, which also has another amusing clip, but it's the Jon Stewart routine that really cracked me up.

Something tells me these guys may not enjoy the rest of 2012.

The Soque

This clip will never get old.



Heh.

Authorized. Lock it Down.

"Siri, kill that guy:  Drones might get voice controls."

Once again, Shlock Mercenary is ahead of the curve.

Sen. Chambliss on SWATting

One of my Senators, Saxby Chambliss, has taken a hand in the SWATting business.  I particularly appreciate this part of his letter to Attorney General Holder:

I appreciate your attention to this matter, and I look forward to your response no later than June 29, 2012. 

What was it they used to say about a mailed fist in a velvet glove?

Trying to Sort out the Numbers on Wisconsin

One of the claims being made about Wisconsin is that it represents a lesson about how money, post Citizens United, is now purchasing elections.  That seems like a potentially serious concern no matter where you sit:  even if you're entirely sanguine about the effect of money on elections (taking fundraising capacity as a sort of proxy for competence), it makes it hard to draw lessons for the November race because the Romney/Obama contest likely will be on fairly even terms.

However, looking around at the numbers being floated today, I'm not sure what lesson to draw.  Here are some things being reported:

1)  $63.5M total was spent on the elections, with $22M coming from outside superPACs.  Union money amounted to around $5.5M, although the wording of the story makes the precise figure a little unclear.  There was an eight-to-one advantage for the Republican candidate for governor over the Democrat.

2)   Big Labor spent $21M on the elections.  Democrats and their backers spent $23.4M, with "outside groups" who were against Republicans spending $18.6M.  I'm not clear from the wording here whether that 18.6M is out of the $23.4, or additional.

3)  $44M total was spent on the elections, with Democrats outspending Republicans $23.4M to $20.5M.  There was a Democratic advantage even on outside spending, with outside Democrat-leaning money coming to $18.6M to Republican outsiders $15.9M.

There's a big difference in the lessons to learn here, depending on whether story 1 is correct, or story 3 is correct.  Story 2 shares some figures with story 3, but that may be simply because they are sharing sources.  Until we know what number set is correct, it's hard to judge what the lesson is.  It could vary from "having more money is the main thing" to "having more money didn't help."

Sweet Mental Revenge

In honor of the Wisconsin recall, a little song by our own Waylon Jennings.  There are some lessons in the analogy.  Once we were all on the side of the firefighter's unions; once we loved them.  Why not?  They fought to defend the principle that the firemen who protected us all deserved the best we could give them.  Now, well... like the teacher's unions, we find ourselves paying so much for retired members that we can no longer afford to continue the function that originally earned our gratitude and honor.

So here we are.



Here is another version, a little more recent.  It makes a nice contrast.  Waylon Jennings always wanted the style to change and update with the times; he would have been pleased, I think.

Wisconsin blowout

Wisconsin voters spanked big labor today in its efforts to oust Governor Scott Walker and his lieutenant.  In the 2010 race between the same candidates, Walker beat Barrett by 5%.  Tonight, according to both Fox and MSNBC, the advantage looks to be about 20%, though the L.A. Times is still predicting a "photo finish."

Anno Domini 774

A mysterious source of radiation was captured in tree rings sometime from 774 to 775.  Scientists say it wasn't solar flares or supernovae; it's some mystery what it might have been.

I'd just like to note the entry from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for that year.

This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons.

Now, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a pretty sober document.  Most of the entries were made by monks, recording the chief events of the year.  However, once in a while one does get a surprising claim -- for example, see the entry for the year A.D. 793, the year the Vikings first appeared in England and plundered the holy island of Lindisfarne.

Still, in spite of the occasional entry that contemporary readers are inclined to reject, it's generally a reliable source for information.  If they say a red crucifix appeared in the heavens that year, I'd be inclined to consider that as a possible physical description of whatever it is that caused the strangeness in the tree rings.

Point of Parliamentary Procedure, Lileks:

James Lileks is not happy with the soda ban in NYC.  He's also a little irritable about people who refer to sodas as "poison."  He has a few examples of the difference between things like d-CON and things like Coca-Cola, and then adds:

Oh but she has a six ounce glass bottle, and now we have redonkulous sizes! Yes. That's true. And I apologize for reviving the word Redonkulous. But if soda is poison, then portion size is irrelevant. The Mr Yuk stickers don’t say “call 911 but only if you drank a lot of bleach. A little is okey-doke, though." So it's not a poison unless you drink huge amounts all the time, which is also true of shampoo and vodka and sugary lemonade little kids sell at card tables on the corner in summer, and motor oil. Right? So it's not poison.

Actually, the way d-CON works is through an anticoagulant that my grandmother used to take by prescription for her heart condition.  Also, a little chlorine bleach -- two drops per quart of water according to this government-issued pamphlet -- is a useful disinfectant for drinking water in many situations.

The distinction between "poison" and "not poison" is actually pretty hard to draw.  Plain water can kill you if you drink too much of it.

Catching Bank Robbers in Colorado

So, on the one hand, they did catch the guy.

On the other hand, the reporter has a good point.  What happens if the bank robber decides to open fire, now that you've handcuffed every single adult in the area?

For that matter, what justifies putting chains on free men and women when you know that almost none of them are guilty?  The assumption that it is OK to chain people up at the convenience of the state is the sort of thing that strikes me as fundamentally wrong in a free country.