The Sword in the Stone

King Arthur is supposed to have lived in or around AD 500. However, the legend of the sword in the stone does not originate with him. It was attached to the Arthurian tradition perhaps in the 12th century -- this site credits Robert de Boron, and Wikipedia seems to agree -- some decades after Geoffrey of Monmouth's famous history revived Arthur as a figure explaining why a set of kings from the continent could reasonably claim to be the legitimate royalty over the British Isles. Arthur had ruled both in Brittany and in Britain, by tradition, and the Norman kings would go on to claim the right to rule over the whole territory comprising his legendary kingdom.

The sword in the stone is usually supposed to be related to the Volsung saga in Norse. In that saga, Odin drives a magic sword into a tree as a gift for the man who can remove it. Only Sigmund is able to free it. This sword later breaks, and its shards are re-forged by his son (with assistance from a magic dwarf). The resulting sword, Gram, is the sword Sigurd uses to kill the dragon. This sword is the clear predecessor for Tolkien's Narsil/Anduril, the sword that was broken. The story of Gram is not completely unlike the Arthurian story, with a divinely-given sword, the freeing of which results in a test, and which later breaks and must be replaced. In Malory, the sword in the stone breaks in a fight with king Pellinore, from which Arthur is only rescued by Merlin's intervention. Merlin then takes Arthur and introduces him to the Lady of the Lake, who grants him Excalibur. However, in earlier versions of the story, Excalibur and the sword in the stone are the same sword.

I remind you of all of this to pass on another possible origin for the sword in the stone story, via D29. The timing is just about right. It will have happened some decades before Robert de Boron's poetry.

The legendary sword in the stone still stands in Italy. While connected to Arthurian legend and British history, this Sword in the Stone is associated with a Catholic saint. Visitors can see it in the Montesiepi chapel, near Saint Galgano Abbey in Chiusdino, in Tuscany.

The legend surrounds the story of brave knight Galgano Guidotti, who was born in 1148 near Chiusdino. After spending his youth as a brave knight, Galgano decided to follow the words of Jesus in 1180 and retired as a hermit near his hometown.

Galgano is said to have stuck his sword onto a rock in order to use it as a cross for his prayers. One year later Galgano died, and in 1185 Pope Lucius the 3rd declared him a saint.

After Galgano's death, according to legend, countless people have tried to steal the sword. In the chapel you can see what are said to be the mummified hands of a thief that tried to remove the sword and was then suddenly slaughtered by wild wolves.

The sword was believed to be a fake for years. However, recent studies examined the sword and the hands, and the dating results as well as metal and style of the sword all are consistent with the late 1100s, early 1200s. This lends credence that the story on which the English sword and the stone is based on originated with Guidotti in Italy.

A video of the sword and the stone, around which was later built an abbey, can be seen here.

Michael Bay Is Making A Movie About Benghazi

It will be very interesting to see how this is portrayed, and what repercussions it might have for the Clinton campaign. Will it shy away from the question of her responsibility? Will it try to make it look like she couldn't have done anything? That's my suspicion, but if not, then it could be explosive.

Here's the movie's website, but there's not much but the trailer there now.

Jurisdiction Stripping

Sounds kinda dirty, but Adam Freedman over at National Review claims it's the answer to the USSC overstepping itself on the same sex marriage issue, and federal courts, too, for that matter. What is it?

... it involves nothing more than Congress’s exercising its constitutional authority to define the limits of federal judicial power. The idea of using Congress to rein in activist judges is not new; in fact, it was once advocated by a young lawyer in the Reagan administration named John Roberts. ... 

Congress should listen to the young John Roberts and abolish the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court — and all federal courts — over cases involving state laws defining marriage. At the moment, such legislation would require a two-thirds majority to overcome President Obama’s inevitable veto. But come January 20, 2017, if there is a Republican in the White House, jurisdiction-stripping legislation could become a reality. Every GOP presidential candidate should commit to signing such a bill the moment it crosses his or her desk. The jurisdiction of federal courts is almost entirely a matter of congressional discretion. The Constitution creates only one court — the Supreme Court — and then gives Congress the power to “ordain and establish” lower federal courts as it sees fit. Since Congress has no obligation to create lower federal courts in the first place, it has every right to limit the jurisdiction of those courts it chooses to create.

As for the Supreme Court, its appellate jurisdiction — that is, its ability to review lower-court decisions — is subject to “such Exceptions, and . . . such Regulations as Congress shall make.” ...

Historically, Supreme Court jurisdiction was far more limited than it is today. Until 1889, the Supreme Court could not hear appeals in federal criminal cases. Until 1914, the Court had no right to review state-court decisions striking down state laws or upholding federal law. Essentially, state courts had the last word unless they struck down a federal law or denied the applicability of a federal right.

In the end, it only throws the ball back into the states' court, but it's an interesting idea. Is it a realistic one?

Well, That's Interesting

Among reasons not to drink Mountain Dew:

11. It’ll Dissolve a Mouse
Recently there was a law suit involving a mouse that was found in a can of mountain dew, and PepsiCo’s legal defense suggested that the consumer planter the mouse. They did this by admitting that a mouse left in a can of mountain dew for the period of time that the mouse was supposedly in the can the consumer purchased would have completely dissolved.

This claim appears to check out. Of course, your stomach lining is strong.

Greetings, Denizens of the European Union!

I am informed by our generous hosts at Blogger/Google that you have passed a law mandating that we inform you about our use of cookies, and possibly obtain your consent. If you are coming in from an EU country (or visit an EU-hosted version of this site) you should see an appropriate notice automatically courtesy of our hosts.

I'm not actually sure what cookies Google and or Blogger use on this site. You can consent to them or not, as you prefer. Be aware, however, that as an American I reject any suggestion that I have a duty to obey your laws.

We are a free people. We make our own laws. Keep yours to yourselves.

If this notice constitutes a hate crime in your jurisdiction, please note that this is just too bad.

You Can't Mock This Stuff

If this was a joke, what would you say differently?

The guide also discourages the use of “mothering” or “fathering,” so as to “avoid gendering a non-gendered activity.”

It's amazing. Instead of saying "healthy," say "non-disabled," but don't then say "disabled"!

What on earth are they trying to teach our children?

Strange I've Not Heard Of This Before

Washington state has a law called "mutual combat," which allows people to engage in freely engaged fisticuffs if supervised by a police officer. This sounds like just the sort of thing I've long advocated. I can't seem to find much data on how it's worked out, though, which probably means that it hasn't been a total disaster.

An Old Folk Song About That Coward Robert Ford

From The Long Riders, a traditional folk song about Jesse James. Outlaw songs tend to romanticize the hero, but Robert Ford deserves his infamy.

Vote for the Socialist?

I'm certainly not planning on it, but I'll say this for Sen. Sanders: he has a refreshing habit deflating rather than hiding behind buzzwords.

Ezra Klein
I want to make a turn to foreign policy. Is there a particular foreign policy school of thought you ascribe to? Do you describe yourself as a realist or a democratic socialist?

Bernie Sanders
I don't know what that means. I trust we're all realists.

Ezra Klein
I'm not sure we are.

Bernie Sanders
I don't know what that word means.

...

Ezra Klein
Do you view yourself as a Zionist?

Bernie Sanders
A Zionist? What does that mean? Want to define what the word is?

I think it's fair to say that, having read this interview, you will know what Bernie Sanders really thinks about everything. I applaud him for that, even where I think he is badly wrong in his thinking. Honesty and directness are the hallmarks of a healthy democracy. We ought to share out views openly and clearly, debate them vigorously, and then choose. Lies and deceit are not befitting in the leadership of a free people. Indeed, it becomes questionable how free any democratic choice can be when its leadership habitually deceives about their intentions.

Incunabula

The Vatican Library has been digitizing its collection, making many beautiful works from throughout the 2000 year history of the Church available to view. Among these are incunabula, that is, printed works from the earliest period of printing. Given our recent discussion of the early history of printing, I thought some of you might enjoy looking at them.

You can visit that section directly through this link.

The Third Planned Parenthood Video

An interview with one of their doctors, who fainted the first time she was asked to do what they had hired her to do. “I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” she says.

Beware if you aren't ready for similar sights. "Toward the end, though, an undercover camera catches the horrifying reality of organ harvesting. The hands and feat of dismembered fetuses are clearly visible."

Impossible thrust

That EM propulsion system  that appears to defy the law of conservation of momentum doesn't seem to be going away.  I'm hoping someone (James?) can chime in.

Huckabee: No, Really, Genocide

'You're talking about killing the Jews in Israel. Or, at least, the Iranians are sure talking about it.'

He could be wrong, but there's the very great danger that he might be right. I mean, we all saw the thing the Supreme Leader sent out that has a silhouette of Obama holding a gun to his own head. What's suicidal about war with Iran? Nothing, unless they have access to nuclear weapons.

By the way, we don't know what we promised as a condition of this deal, as no American was allowed to see it. And since neither the main deal nor the side deals treat the Bushehr heavy water reactor, we still haven't seen the terms. We have absolutely no idea what we're agreeing to.

Down

Let's throw this one down for tonight. Freddie King.

Planning to Carry More Often?

Instapundit has a good reason to direct you to Amazon, and if you like those holsters by all means buy through him.

But if you want something a little better, allow me to recommend Mernickle. They can hook you up with an heirloom.

Famous Men and Their Motorcycles

A meditation from the Art of Manliness.

Those IGs Are the Heroes of this Story

I'm beginning to understand why the administration is so concerned to cut them off at the knees.



Analysis from Hot Air. An IRS love song from Remy.

Tour de France

Congratulations to the winner, in what one news source is calling "the single most dominant performance in the 112-year history of the event."

The World is Upside Down

The President has given the green light to Turkey's bombing of the Kurds, the only effective resistance to ISIS in Iraq except for the Iranian-backed Shia militias. US and British veteran volunteers are fighting alongside the Kurds, and will now be at risk of being killed by NATO bombs.

Why? Turkey was just struck by a major ISIS bombing attack this week. Of course, it struck the secular opposition party, not the ruling Islamist party.

"The Most Important Battle You've Probably Never Heard Of"

Well, the headline was written for the general public, not denizens of the Hall! The date was eight hundred years ago today, and the battle was Bouvines:

"Without Bouvines there is no Magna Carta, and all the British and American law that stems from that. It's a muddy field, the armies are small, but everything depends on the struggle. It's one of the climactic moments of European history."

Cowboy Mounted Shooting

Ed Driscoll at InstaPundit has published a couple of photos of a mounted shooting competition. This is a fun sport, although you should take it with a grain of salt. The .45s in this competition are loaded with wax for safety reasons, and it disintegrates under the pressure of the explosive gas created by the cartridge going off. That's why, in the second shot, you see what appear to be rays of light going off in many directions: they are bits of burning wax flying through the air. As you can see, they don't go all that far before burning up and falling out of the air. That means it's safe to shoot guns in the arena with spectators all around you -- as long as they are more than a few feet away, there's no danger to them.

However, it also means that the revolver is acting more like a shotgun than like a revolver being fed traditional solid bullets. The accuracy of the riders is thus somewhat difficult to judge. Would they have hit the balloon if they'd been firing lead flat nose rounds? Maybe! It's still a lot of fun.

What's the Worst Problem in Human Thought?

Overconfidence, says Daniel Kahneman. Stereotyping is unavoidable in spite of its tragic nature:

“Think of it this way. A form of stereotyping is involved in understanding the world. So I have a stereotype of a table, I have a stereotype of chairs. Now when you start having stereotypes of social groups, it’s the human mind at work. It’s not a different mind. It’s what you need to get around in the world.” You can slow down and become aware of this, Kahneman believes, but the underlying mechanism isn’t going to change.

Not that he's in favor of it: the article goes on to relate his experience as a victim of the Holocaust. But compared to overconfidence, stereotyping is at least mostly useful most of the time. It's absolutely necessary to understanding the world, even though it leads us to error now and then.

It's an issue we discuss here from time to time. It's what I mean when I talk about physical reality being analogical rather than logical. If "human" was a logical object, you could make claims about a human that would be absolutely certain to hold for any human. It turns out that you can't do this with logical certainty: even claims that hold almost all the time ("a human being has two eyes," "a human being is either male or female," "a human being will have exactly one parent of each sex") turn out to admit of exceptions. We are blindsided by the exceptions because we think of the category as logical, but it's really a stereotype -- or, as I prefer to explain it, the members of the category are members by a relationship of analogy. It's not that they really belong to a hard, logical category. It's that we've found ways in which they seem to be alike, and have made analogies between them in our minds.

Recognizing that should do something to undermine the problem of overconfidence, as you suddenly become aware that much of your understanding of the world is built on shaky ground. It is characteristic of analogies that they always fail. Sooner or later, your analogies will break.

By the way, his examples are interesting because tables and chairs are artifacts rather than naturally occurring things like human beings. With artifacts, you really can make at least some logical claims because they were created by a human mind for a particular purpose. You can say with certainty that "any artifact that is a table will be potentially be capable of holding objects up off the floor or ground" because that's what a table is. These are actually the best case scenario for stereotypes about physical objects that hold universally.

In Fairness, the Evidence Strongly Supports Their Belief

Rand Paul: "Clintons think they live above the law."

Filial Piety

For reasons I won't go into, I was looking back at some old posts about my father and grandfather. There's one in particular I'd like to bring forward.

The Ides of March.

Much of this was written way back in 2004. I was a better writer, then. Things have become clouded that were once clear. It is good to revisit the old days when skies were bright.

Against Genocide

Mike Huckabee apparently thinks he's found the unifying characteristic of foreign and domestic policy.

"This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal.

...

"The fact that [Planned Parenthood is] getting between $500-540 million of taxpayer money is really a disgrace. It is disgusting to fund an organization like Planned Parenthood that chops up babies and sells the parts like parts to a Buick. America needs to come to grips with a 42-year nightmare of taking babies from their mother’s womb. This needs to come to an end."

An Evangelical mother I know sent me a graphic the other day that asserts that, if you kept a moment of silence for every American baby killed by abortion since Roe, you would be silent for over a hundred years. If "moment" means "minute," that's true even with the five year old data from the link. America's population would not necessarily be fifty-seven million greater since we could easily have cut into that by not opening the floodgates of immigration. It would be substantially more black and less Latino, though, as without abortion the black population would be 36% larger than it is. Around a third of black babies are aborted at their mothers' own choice, albeit a choice frequently made under the duress of poverty.

Justice Ginsburg said that "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion." The author didn't follow up to ask which populations those were, but we can see the results fairly plainly. Huckabee's language is explosive, but there's a valid point buried where he's digging.

UPDATE: Huckabee says he really means it on the dangers of genocide in Israel.

You Might As Well

Headline: "CIA Mulls Pulling US Spies Out Of China After Massive OPM Hack Likely Compromised American Identities."

Sexual Orientation and Free Will

In "How Choice and Emotion Can Influence Sexual Orientation," Ronald Pisaturo argues against biological and social determinism and for free will as the determiner of sexual orientation. He takes a position that bears some resemblance to an argument I've seen here before, one of Grim's, I think, that we express free will not always in the moment, but in habits. That is, there is no moment when someone makes a conscious decision to be homosexual or heterosexual, but that these orientations are the culminations of many decisions over many years.

It is particularly interesting to me because he argues that heterosexuality is also a choice (or, a long series of choices). In the past, I have simply assumed heterosexuality was the norm and there was no need for a choice, but Pisaturo's argument here intrigues me and I will have to think about it.

In any case, it is an argument I am highly susceptible to, so I invite anyone who is interested to read and poke holes in it, or say whatever else you'd like to say about it.

That's Exactly the Problem

“Planned Parenthood has broken no laws," Cecile Richards, the president of the non-profit, said on "This Week."

UPDATE: Wonderful.

Near Miss in Austin

Apparently your immigration from California is posing the same kind of problem for Texas that migration to Atlanta has posed for Georgia these last thirty years. The Austin city council almost voted to ban... barbecue smoke.

Austin City Council members passed a preliminary plan in April to put restrictions on smoke from barbeque restaurants. Some Austin residents complain of the barbecue smoke saying they can’t enjoy their homes they purchased before some of these restaurants moved in.

The city council’s current proposal will require... at least $100,000 in extra investments for most barbecue restaurants as they will be forced to buy extra smokers along with severely expensive diffusers, and in some cases will have to lease or purchase more property.

...

It is effectively a ban on barbecue restaurants in a town known for its barbecue.

How do you ban barbecue in Texas, any more than in the South? And what kind of person complains about the smell of barbecue smoke? I'm not sure there's a more wonderful smell on God's green earth than barbecue smoke.

The Great American Road in Fiction

Something we learn in perusing this beautiful map of the great American travel fiction: no one has ever written a great road novel about passing through Arkansas. That's an artifact of how the genre is constructed: Lonesome Dove has a story arc that starts there, but it was excluded as apparently too much a work of fiction and too little a fictionalized account of an actual journey that the author took (e.g. On the Road, which was included and certainly could not be omitted from the genre).

Also, apropos of the last post, it doesn't appear that any of them are about Route 66, "The Mother Road." The iconic "Chicago to Los Angeles" route has apparently never prompted a great travel novel of this particular genre. The Grapes of Wrath is, I suppose, like Lonesome Dove too removed from the parameters of the genre. But I'd have expected one from the glory years of the Mother Road, when Bugs Bunny could joke about 'taking a left turn at Albuquerque' and Snoopy could have a brother in Needles and everyone reading a newspaper from coast to coast would know what they were talking about.

A Honky Tonk Band Blocking the Door of a Route 66 Barbecue Joint

If you're planning a trip, they're the "Pulled Pork Pickers" and the joint is Pappy's Place in Springfield, Missouri.



I love how they take charge of making sure the door gets closed as people pass in and out.

"Cheer up, boys!"

I wish I could find this on YouTube, but all I have is a transcript from a 1976 SNL skit with Kris Kristofferson and Chevy Chase, "Waiting for Pardo":

Bill: Is he comin'? 

Bob: I don't think so. 

Bill: Have you ever seen him? 

Bob: No. Nobody has. 

Bill: Well, how do you know he exists? 

Bob: What? 

Bill: How do you know he exists? 

Bob: I've heard him. 

Bill: Where? On game shows? 

Bob: Yes. "Jeopardy." 

Bill: We can't wait much longer. 

Bob: We don't have much time. 

Don Pardo: Yes, you do, boys! 'Cause here's good news! [iris to an image of wristwatches in deep space - the brand of watch is IMMANUEL KANT OF GERMANY] Space and time are empirically real but transcendentally ideal, Bill! Yours from Immanuel Kant -- where Time and Space work hand-in-hand for you! [dissolve back to the tramps] 

Bill: What's it like? 

Bob: What? 

Bill: The face of Pardo. 

Bob: It's been said that it's very beautiful. 

Bill: Yes. 

Bob: Though no one's ever seen it. 

Bill: Let's look for it. [Bob looks inside a boot that he carries while Bill looks skyward at the sound of Don Pardo's Olympian voice] 

Don Pardo: Keep looking, boys! [iris to an image of luggage - brand name: Spinoza] 'Cause all things which are, are in themselves, or in another thing, Bill! Another quality idea from Spinoza! [dissolve back to the tramps] 

Bob: [off his boot] Well, he's not in here. 

Bill: [off his shoe] Not in here either. 

Bob: [tries to put on Bill's shoe] It's a struggle. 

Bill: Puttin' on your shoe? 

Bob: No, puttin' on yours. 

Bill: [puts his hat on his foot] I think we're losing this game. 

Don Pardo: No way, big fella! [iris to an image of fine jewelry - brand name: MARX OF LONDON] The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains! Workers of the world unite, Bob! From "Das Kapital" by Marx! Back to you, Bill! [dissolve back to the tramps]  

Bob: Tell me ... you like my T-shirt? 

Bill: I have one. 

Bob: Bloomingdale's? 

Bill: Macy's. 

Bob: Let's just ... keep waiting. 

Don Pardo: And you'll be glad you did, you lucky devils, you! [iris to image of cruise ships with the words 5 DAYS 6 NIGHTS - I CHING TO HONG KONG] Because, from the fabulous Book of Changes, comes success! It furthers one to cross the great water! Perseverance furthers, Bill! From the good folks at I Ching! 

Bill: He must be very smart. 

Don Pardo: I think, therefore I am, Bill! [dissolve to image of men's designer slacks and the Eiffel Tower - brand name: René Descartes of Paris] Something to think about from René Descartes of Paris! [dissolve back to the tramps] 

Bob: Knock knock. 

Bill: Who's there? 

Bob: Bob. 

Bill: Knock knock. 

Bob: Who's there? 

Bill: Bill. 

Bob: One hundred bottles of beer on the wall ... 

Bill: One hundred bottles of beer ... 

Bob: If one of those bottles should happen to fall ... 

Bill and Bob: Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall ... 

Don Pardo: And while you're waiting for Pardo, have a nice day, Bill! [dissolve to image of a smiley face underneath which is the name of Rod McKuen] Loosely based on a concept by Rod McKuen. 

Bob: Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall ... 

Bill: Ninety-eight bottles of beer ... 

Bob: If one of those bottles should happen to fall ... [stage darkens]

Counterculture

We've had great music all week, but very secular and sometimes hard hitting stuff. Now, on Friday night when the rest of the world is going wild, let's have Bach.



Inspired by a discussion at AVI's.

Availability Heuristic

So, a lot of people I know (almost universally white, millennial, left-leaning) are following the Black Lives Matter movement with some real intensity. I don't object to that. It's raising some serious questions that we ought to address. I wonder, though, if there isn't a distortion beginning to appear arising from the intense focus on black people killed by police to the exclusion of other data.

According to USA Today, police kill black Americans about twice a week, which is to say around 100 times a year. But last year, 68 police died in the line of duty. Now there were about 38,929,319 blacks in America last year, whereas the United States has about 120,000 police. So even if you eliminate deaths of police from non-violent causes, the death rate of police from violence is much higher than the death rate of black Americans from police.

But the point is that we're not paying attention to the same information. Everyone who is concerned about the Black Lives Matter movement are focused on the one data set, rather intensely to the exclusion of others. You can be reasonably sure that most police officers hear about it when a brother officer is shot or killed in the line of duty. The world looks very different to these two sets of people who keep coming into violent conflict.

I've talked in the past about how the police treat me as a threat, but they're not wrong to do so. I'm a very dangerous man. I bear them no ill will, and so in point of fact they are not in peril with me, but they have no way of knowing that until I show it to them. Given what they do know -- the availability heuristic operating on all those stories of officer deaths in the line of duty -- their actions are not irrational. Once they've had the benefit of seeing how I interact with them, they've almost always been very helpful (sometimes even when I was really at fault).

We have to get over this hump to fix the problem. Officers are probably being overly aggressive because they are thinking about a subset of information that suggests that interactions with the public (and perhaps especially with black members of the public) are more dangerous than they really are. But members of the public are also overreacting, because they don't see the degree to which peace officers are bearing a substantially higher cost in loss of life and exposure to violence. Both perspectives make sense on their terms, but neither one is complete.

Just a thought.

The Challenge of Equal Female Success Absolutely Requires...

...treating women like women and not men, says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in the Harvard Business Review. Who is Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, you might ask? HBR will be happy to tell you. "Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO of 20-first, one of the world’s leading gender consulting firms, and author of Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business."

Given how extremely vague the suggestions in the article are, I take it that she wrote the piece largely to scare up business for herself. Businesses (like everyone) are scrambling to show that they are taking positive steps to promote diversity, especially on matters of sex and race (though not East Asian races). Here she's telling you that everything the industry's been doing is wrong, and that if you want to show you're really serious, you should take her unspecified advice. She doesn't even have a position on whether the differences she's promising to help you transcend are innate or not. Good luck applying what you learned in this article.

If you'd like specified advice, no problem: she has a "leading gender consulting firm" ready to sell you as much consulting as you can pay for. You'll learn how to treat women differently, so as to encourage them to be successful. Her standard of measure is zero-sum -- the percentage of partners by sex in major firms -- so presumably the changes brought about by this consulting are going to come at the expense of the men you employ. So how do you avoid sex discrimination lawsuits? Insisting on disparate impact standards as the measure of fairness? You're going to have explicitly different treatment by sex designed to discriminate in favor of one sex.

"Like St. Peter, he said it three times."

Inspectors General at Work

So those IGs that the Obama administration officially moved to handicap yesterday seem to be moving on then-Secretary Clinton's illegal use of email. The inspector general for the intelligence community has found four instances of improperly marked, classified information transmitted on her private server.

Now, the IG only got to review a "limited selection" of her emails because, as you know, she destroyed the rest of them before turning the 'archive' over to State. (In a hard copy format that is difficult to search, at that.) So what we have here are the ones that her team didn't find and filter out -- presumably because the information wasn't properly marked as classified, which means they didn't know to pull it.

We know that she will pay no political price for this within the party, which is still moving to nominate her with all reckless speed. How unexpected and hopeful to think that the law might actually be enforced upon this most well-connected of persons. It would have the effect of a miracle, restoring faith in a system of law that has for so long been incapable of restraining the politically connected.

UPDATE: Hope fades quickly. The Department of Justice denies that it received any requests for a criminal inquiry, and is merely entertaining a request to look into what damage may have been caused by the disclosure of classified information.

Why Don't We Just Ship Them Some Nuclear Weapons?

A guy with some relevant experience writes about yesterday's new information.

The hearing produced a new bombshell: In its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons-related work, the IAEA will rely on Iran to collect samples at its Parchin military base and other locations. As a former intelligence analyst experienced in the collection of environmental samples for investigations of weapons of mass destruction, I found this allegation impossible to believe when I heard Senator James Risch (R., Idaho) make it yesterday morning.

I like Sen. Risch's take: "Even the NFL wouldn’t go along with this."

Snicker

The good old boys in Jackson Hole are rooting for the bison.

Interesting Proposition

A self described "traditional right" critic of Gen. Dunford's says that non-state actors are the real threat, and that we should seek alliance with any tyranny who will help us control them.

Russia has no troops in Mexico or Canada, nor is she considering sending arms to the Taliban, ISIS, Mexican drug cartels, or anyone else we are fighting. Just who is the threat to whom here? Most fundamentally–and I am going to write this in big letters–THE WORLD HAS CHANGED!

The main threat to the United States is not any other state. The main threat is spreading statelessness and the Fourth Generation elements that fill the resulting space. What the U.S. and the international sate system need is an alliance of all states against non-state forces. The two allies we need most, the only two strong enough to do us some good, are China and Russia. The only way Russia would be likely to become a threat to us is if the Russian state were to disintegrate. That was a real possibility under President Yeltsin. President Putin’s great achievement has been strengthening the Russian state. For that, we should thank him.

What about Iran, which has been assisting non-state actors to fight us in Afghanistan and, especially, in Iraq? Maybe our new Russian and Chinese friends can help pressure them to play nice? Not apparently:

We may be able to destroy most Iranian nuclear facilities. But we cannot destroy the knowledge Iran has, knowledge which would enable them to rebuild quickly. After such an attack, Iran would unquestionalbly move to build a bomb, something it is not doing now. And Iran would respond on the ground using allied Shiite militias to round up all the American troops in Iraq and probably attacking those in Afghanistan as well, with plenty of help from Afghans.

I suppose this leaves us with isolationism, and yet he seems very concerned about preparing for threats from non-state actors. If non-state actors like Mexican cartels are the real danger, shouldn't we deal harshly with states like Iran that empower those actors and use them as proxies?

I Really Like This Concept

The Buzzfeed videos where people eat foods from the other side of the world are funny. Even funnier are the videos where people eat commercial versions of the food they have made their whole lives. Here are some soft-spoken women who do their best to hide their disappointment with the food.

IAEA to Trust Iran. Really, Really Trust Iran.

In other words, if nuclear inspectors get a hot tip that Iran is conducting (or conducted in the past) atomic-bomb work at a secret site, they don’t get to go to the site themselves and take samples from the soil, the walls, etc, to see if there’s uranium present. They get their samples … from Iran. That’s like drug-testing a junkie by asking him to bring a sample from home.

Is that what this deal commits us to?

Kerry's answer: It's classified.

Fraud Investigations are the Enemy of All That's Good & Right

So I intuit.

The Obama administration formally announced inspectors general will have to be granted permission by their agency heads to gain access to grand jury, wiretap and fair credit information – an action that severely limits the watchdogs oversight capabilities, independence, and power to uncover fraud.

Well, it's not as if fraud or corruption of Federal government agencies is a problem.

What is a Citizen?

The Obama administration has decided to alter the oath of citizenship.

Effective July 21, 2015, new guidance (PA-2015-001) in the USCIS Policy Manual clarifies the eligibility requirements for modifications to the Oath of Allegiance. Reciting the Oath is part of the naturalization process. Candidates for citizenship normally declare that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” and “perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States” when required by the law. A candidate may be eligible to exclude these two clauses based on religious training and belief or a conscientious objection.

Conscientious objectors are still required to perform noncombatant service, and they are still subject to the duty to bear arms when required by law -- it's just that the law doesn't require them to bear arms so long as they serve in other capacities. Presumably that is going to be true for newly arrived immigrants as well.

But this is to ask, again, what is going on with citizenship? Citizenship is ultimately a mutual defense pact. We maintain our liberty by defending the liberty of our fellows, who defend ours in return. That's how we hold a space in the world in which to make real our vision of a just society.

Someone who won't participate in that is not properly a citizen. Under the 14th Amendment, if they were born here they have a legal right to be considered a citizen and treated as one. Yet they are violating the more basic nature of the bargain. Before there was a 14th Amendment, before there was a Constitution, before there could be a country needing a Constitution, people had to come together and pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the mutual defense of each other and their liberties.

That's what it is really all about. If you have an objection to defending America's vision of liberty, don't apply for citizenship.

How to Make a Medieval Crossbow

You'll watch the first part, and think, "Oh, sure, chisel, chisel, stock removal from a piece of wood." But hang with it, and enjoy the metal forging and assembly.



The thing is a monster. A hundred seventy-five pound draw. With the right bolt and angle of impact, that thing will punch through modern steel.

Husky

In keeping with the blues theme from last night, a contemporary band called Husky Burnette rockin' out hard enough to make the PBR signs tremble.



That pump reminds me of one of my favorite bands ever, the Humpabillies, here doing a blend of Johnny Cash and Motörhead. It's far from their best -- they did a slamming version of Waylon Jennings' "Mental Revenge" -- but it's what I can find online.

Totally Bi-Partisan

Huge rally in NYC against the Iran deal. Jimbo is there.

The Stop Iran Rally Coalition — which claims to be a bi-partisan group — is also calling out Sen. Charles Schumer, saying he “has the votes as presumptive leader to override this deal….If this deal is not stopped, New York voters will know whom to blame.”

Sen. Schumer said in a statement Wednesday that he wasn’t ready to make a decision on the deal yet.

“I’ve read the agreement and I’m seeking answers to the many questions I have. Before I make a decision, I’m going to speak at length with experts on both sides,” the lawmaker said.

I can personally vouch for the bipartisan nature of the Stop Iran Rally Coalition. Jimbo is a Republican, and I'm a Southern Democrat. There's your bipartisan right there. This is an insanely bad deal, and we need to stop it dead.

I'm with the furry guy

Via Ace via Maggie's Farm:

Uh-oh

Headline: "BREAKING: Obama Made Side-Deal on Iran’s Military Site, Hid Details From Congress."

UPDATE: State Department refuses to comment.

Tangled webs of privilege

Does using the term "PC" make you a reactionary?  Can minority groups engage in systematic oppression, and is that more reprehensible than other kinds of oppression?  These are the quandaries explored in the comments sections of a series of articles (via a Daily Caller link) about recent movement to stem the tide of culture-appropriative costumes in the drag-queen context.  If I understand correctly, it's OK to put on a drag performance in a gay-pride parade if you're trans-gay but not if you're cis-gay (cis- meaning that you continue to perform socially in the gender you were "assigned" at birth, and as you know, all gender is performance).  But not so fast--it's not clear it's OK for parade organizers to ask whether a performer is trans- or cis-.  It boils down to who is being most safe and inclusive.  One group's rule of thumb is that all doubts must be resolved in favor of "the most marginalised groups within our community."

Another deep concern is practices that make one or more of these groups into a joke, which would be bad.

The National Union of Students Women's Conference explains that "drag “as an expression or exploration of queer identity is to be encouraged”, and that this can be “easily distinguished” from other forms." In addition, the NUS LGBT Committee wants "to eradicate the appropriation of black women by white gay men," as in drag performers who claim they are "strong black women."

I lost track of some of the competing interests after reading the following explanation posted on Free Pride's Facebook page:

People appeared to understand that we attempted to communicate that trans drag performers' rights are secondary to other trans people's rights. We did not mean to send this message and apologise to trans drag performers for unintentionally doing so. Unfortunately this also appears to have offended trans drag performers. We did not in any way mean to equate cis (who are often seen as transmisogynistic by some portions of the Trans community) drag performers with trans drag performers. . . . 

We would like to reaffirm that this is not to say that we do not want gender expression, which we do encourage, at our event. We encourage everyone to wear what they want and express their gender however they please! There will be no policing of peoples gender identity. We will be re-inforcing our safer spaces policy at the event and asking that no-one assume anyone else gender and remember to always ask pronouns.

I have noted a deplorable failure to ask pronouns here at the Hall lately, and would ask you all to police your privilege.

Congress Should Say No

A piece by two scholars finds that the Iran deal is unacceptably permissive.

The Mysterious Case of The Disappearing Car

...and the reappearing tow-truck driver.

The Texas Department of Public Safety released almost an hour of dash cam video. But in several parts of the footage, the video is looped while the officer's audio continues uninterrupted.

For example, there are moments when a car or wrecker driver appears in the frame, suddenly disappears, and then appears once again.

It's not clear whether the video was deliberately edited, or if the looped video over the audio track is the result of an equipment problem.

Also unclear is why the woman was found dead in her cell the next morning. You can be sure this case isn't going away anytime soon.

What seems clear is that the officer was just going to give her a warning until she got argumentative and, eventually, combative. She decided to assert her independence, and it got her a trip to jail. Somehow, she was hanged that night in her cell. A suicide? A lynching? We may never know. But now that the video tape shows signs of either editing or an equipment failure, expect gasoline on the fire.

Walking Blues

For tonight's selection, forty-one minutes of bad blues.



It's got a contemporary sound, this album, but the singer was born in the '20s. Hang out for Hitler talking to Tojo, if you've got nothing much against profanity.

Western Civilization

Mozart, as played closer to Mozart's day.

Umm, Roger...

Fox News owes Donald Trump a bazillion dollars. He has single-handedly transformed their broadcast of the first Republican presidential debate on August 6 — normally a routine event almost a year and a half out from an election and of significant interest only to political junkies – into a coup de television equivalent to Caitlyn Jenner appearing nude on Sixty Minutes. Who wouldn’t want to watch?

What?

I'd pay money for the privilege of being excluded, as I'm sure would many.

"Life is Short. Have an Affair."

I assume I don't need to persuade anyone here about the awfulness of this advice, but I would like to offer a counter-point. Some months ago, my priest offered the following story during his homily. He had just been to visit an old friend and fellow priest and, getting quite old himself, he asked his friend how he was doing. "I am very happy," he was told, "because I am about to achieve a lifelong goal: to die a Franciscan."

Life is short, though there are stretches when it does not seem so. But it is always falling away, and there always comes the last day when you wake up in the house you will never live in any longer. There comes the last time you will ever pick up your child, because they are just too big. There comes the last time you will ever see an old friend. And when it's over, what do you want to have to say for yourself?

Many people today seem to think that what they will want at that hour is to have a list of pleasures they've experienced. But how much finer -- is it not? -- to have kept an oath.

OAF Does Analytic Philosophy

"Why do we fight?" is the question. The answer he gives is not the one you usually hear, after he's given an account of why he thinks the usual accounts don't measure up. They are, as he explains, inadequate motivation. Yet we lack a cultural context to support the true answers.

John F Kerry 'very Disturbed' to Learn Iran Still Hates Us

Maybe that’s why Kerry’s “disturbed.” Maybe it just dawned on him that he and Obama greenlit the idea of a terror state run by Shiite fanatics going nuclear with no assurances whatsoever that that fanaticism would abate. We’re in good hands, my friends.

Those of you who are interested in this deal might want to read IranTruth, a website focused on opposition to the deal.

UPDATE: Canada refuses to lift sanctions until it sees credible signs of Iranian reform.

UPDATE: Another good argument against the Iran deal.

"I believe in miracles, Marquet. It's part of my job."

Headline: "Why is Pope Francis so obsessed with the devil?"

Half-Mast Update

The University of Tennessee's Chattanooga campus is flying flags at half-mast, but because of the governor's order only: no Federal order to honor the slain Marines and sailor in this way has been given. An acquaintance at Dover Air Force Base, where their bodies were transported today, reports that flags are at full staff there.

This didn't happen after the FT Hood shootings, when the President issued the following proclamation. The generous spirit of the mayor mentioned below notwithstanding, if this were an oversight by now someone has had time to bring it up.

A message is being sent by this silence and inaction, but what is the message? And for whom is it intended?

UPDATE: Marcus Luttrell seems to agree.

UPDATE: The President relents to the "mounting pressure" and issues the order.

Cooling down

After our record-breaking 35 inches of rain during the first six months of the year, we've had next to no rain in July, and is it hot out there.  We've both just come in from all the yardwork we could stand.  The cistern being above-ground, it's at Gulf-of-Mexico temperatures, which is to say high 80's, so the water out of the hoses and faucets is not much cooler than I am.  I took the almost unheard-of step of putting ice cubes in my water glass.

Luckily there's just the thing in the frig:  leftover chilled cucumber-and-yogurt soup.

4 cucumbers, peeled and seeded
1 small or 1/2 large clove garlic
1 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
1/4 cup water
4 scallions, white and green parts, cut into 1-inch pieces
3/4 cup fresh mint leaves, loosely packed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut 1 cucumber into small dice, and set aside for garnish. Cut others into large chunks. Combine cucumber chunks, garlic, yogurt, lemon juice, and water in a blender, and puree until smooth. Add scallions and mint leaves, reserving some of the mint for garnish, and puree briefly. Season with salt and pepper, and add more lemon juice if a tarter flavor is desired. Chill until ready to serve. Stir well before serving, and ladle into bowls or mugs, garnishing each serving with a big spoonful of diced cucumber and a sprig of mint.

Getting Older? The Government Wants Your Guns

There came a time when my grandfather needed to surrender his pistol. He'd carried it for years, operating a service station that mostly catered to long haul truckers, but that was occasionally the target for criminals -- never successfully that I heard. It was a time of much greater violence than today, the late '70s and early '80s, as is explored in the context of NYC in this short film. This pistol was mostly to protect them at the shop, which had expensive tools as well as cash. Sometimes when he left he'd hand it off to my uncle, who once used it to repel a carload of robbers.

In time, though, he grew old. He had a series of strokes, and began to lose his mental focus. His judgment became questionable. He had always had a fearsome temper, but we began to wonder if he would restrain it as reliably as in the past. Finally, the day came when it was necessary that he stop carrying a pistol.

What happened to it? Well, for a while my grandmother kept it -- she had not had the strokes, and was still mentally in the clear. After he died, it passed to my uncle. After that, I'm not sure. Possibly he still has it. Possibly he sold it or gave it to someone. It was inherited, in other words, like any other property.

The Obama administration wants to keep people collecting Social Security benefits from owning guns if it is determined they are unable to manage their own affairs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The push, which could potentially affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others, is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws that prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the United States illegally, and others, according to the paper.

The language of federal gun laws restricts ownership to people who are unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease” – which could potentially affect a large group within Social Security, the LA Times reported.

So what happens if the government determines you are no longer fit to carry, or even to own, a firearm? It's not clear to me that the government is the right choice for this responsibility: in fact, no government bureaucrat would have had knowledge of my grandfather's mental acuity, and certainly not the granular knowledge that we his family had.

More to the point, though, what happens to the property if the government determines that you aren't fit to own it anymore? Transferring it from one family member to another doesn't require any government involvement. The government has no similar rights. We are talking about property that doesn't belong to them.

They're getting right on it

After the murder of four Marines and a U.S. sailor at a recruiting station, the smart people immediately got to work thinking about  how to improve security.  I know the first thing that came to all of our minds was not the knee-jerk "Hey, these guys have been trained in weapons, right; suppose they carried some?" but the much more sensible proposal to close some recruiting stations and advise recruiters not to wear their uniforms at others.

Via Maggie's Farm, which is experiencing technical difficulties this week.

Veterans Exempt T-Shirts

I would not normally post advertisements here, but this evening I found that Gadsden and Culpeper has these shirts on sale for $13. They're calling them the "War of 1812 Battle of Plattsburgh" shirts, and the flag is a little different than the one Grim has up top now, but close enough for my tastes.

They also carry the flag itself, though it's a bit ... well, you can see for yourself.

There's a lot of other Tea Party and generally patriotic shirts, etc., on sale as well.

UPDATE: Does anyone have a picture of this flag? A painting in a book or something? Or do we just have a description? I'd really like to see one.

I'm Confused

Protesters Greet Obama in Oklahoma Waving Confederate Flags — and Demonstration Organizer Is Black

Local Oklahoma coverage: Oklahoma black man leads presidential protest by waving Confederate flag 

"To the Fallen in Chattanooga"

A beautiful tribute by Lars Walker's comrade at Brandywine Books.

Who Are You Calling "White," White Boy?

To me, this is just a funny little bit of inside-baseball commentary. Following an article in Haaretz called "Jews, White Privilege, and the fight against racism in America," there's been a tug of war going on about whether Jews are, or are not, white. A blogger at the Times of Israel says definitely not. Another blogger who writes at a place called "Jewnited Nations" says that, actually, Ashkenazi Jews are totally white.

This is obviously not my fight, and I don't care about the outcome of the argument. I'm just amused by the fact that they're having an argument over it. Personally, I don't care whether Jews want to think of themselves as white, not-white, white but Jewish first, Jewish and not anything else, or what have you. If they want to be white, I'm fine with that. If they don't, I'm happy to accept their desire to be left out.

It's not an easy question to answer anyway. The word means almost nothing. The underlying concept -- a "white race" or a set of "white races" -- was believed to exist in the 19th century, but now we don't believe there is anything real to which the term refers. In America, we use it very loosely compared to the way it was used a hundred years ago when people thought it meant something important.

In any case, there's probably no better marker for whiteness today than to be concerned about whether you have "white privilege."

Civil Disobedience by a Small-Town Mayor

"It was the right thing to do," Panto said Saturday afternoon. "Sometimes the inappropriate thing is the right thing. I'm sure the president just forgot."

According to flag code, only the president and governor can order flags be flown at half-staff.

Panto freely admitted he overstepped his authority.

"I'm fully aware I don't have the authority to do this but I feel I just had to remind the president," he said. "He just needed a little reminder and I'm happy to do that. There's so many other things going on. I don't think he realized that this was something that he should do."

That's a very generous sentiment, Your Honor.

Ranger School Update, And An Alternative View

Havok Journal tells us that the three women who were recycled yet again did manage to complete the Darby phase on the third try.  They will now go on to the Mountain Warfare phase in north Georgia.

The author posits that the reason women have been failing so badly at Ranger school is that the Army is doing it wrong.  The lesson to be learned is the Marine Corps':

A three-week pre-Ranger course or Ranger Training Assessment Course... is designed to ensure prospective Ranger students can meet the week 1 Ranger Assessment Phase standards, and to hone the patrolling and fieldcraft techniques they already know. Notice I did not say, ‘learn the patrolling and fieldcraft techniques,’ I said ‘hone.’

Pre-Ranger courses are designed to improve the knowledge of basic infantry tasks, patrolling techniques, and troop leading procedures a Ranger student already possesses, not to learn them for the first time. The women who entered the Ranger School did not have this baseline knowledge, and were thus set up for failure.... The Marines sent their female enlisted to the Marine Infantry Training Battalion (ITB) course at Camp Lejeune, NC and their officer volunteers to the Infantry Officer’s Course (IOC). 122 of the 358 women who entered ITB graduated (34%), while all 29 female Marine officers failed to complete IOC.

You cannot be successful at advanced training unless you demonstrate proficiency in the fundamentals. If the Army wants women to be successful at its premier combat arms course, they must send women through foundational combat arms training.

It is true that the USMC experienced a much higher pass rate with female enlisted than the 0% rate for female officers. On the other hand, the enlisted course is also easier -- easier than either IOC or Ranger School -- and it appears that the USMC lowered upper body strength standards for the women at ITB but not IOC.

IOC is also longer, as is Ranger school, and a lot of the difficulties for women with these standards show up over time through higher injury rates.

In any case, congratulations to the three women at Mountain Warfare school. They've done more than any of their peers before them, and those who do best at the hardest things deserve the greatest respect.

Hypocrisy Is Better Than This

I told the wife, when we were first married and discussing such things, that if she ever met another man who really sparked a special love in her heart she'd better stay away from him just as she loved him.  She understood, and appreciated the sense of commitment implied by the willingness to deal harshly with any man who thought to trouble our union.  Apparently they do things differently in New York.

Old Merle tried to hit the middle ground, where 'Friendly Henrys' could exist as long as they knew the right time to scram. But I saw a lot of guys in Iraq have their spirit broken by a woman -- admittedly young, with their men admittedly gone for 15 months at a time -- who betrayed their trust, and often their wedding vows.



Here's Ranger UP on Jodie, with the usual warnings about their videos.

Saturday Night on the Slide Guitar

The Whiskey Daredevils show us the way.



UPDATE: H-Bombs rollin' through the night. If I read the Iran deal right, we might as well get used to the idea.

What An Ass

I assume none of you were even remotely considering supporting this character anyway, but good night.

Texas & the Gold Standard

Texas is apparently launching a gold-backed bank, much to the scorn of its enemies.

Texas lawyers are so unbelievably stupid.

...

Though this does bring us to the actual reason for the bill: a symbolic gesture to convince morons that Texas is an independent realm instead of a wasteful drain on U.S. tax dollars. Having their own money bin and currency system — writing checks based off stockpiled metals creates, for all intents and purposes, an independent, gold-backed currency — goes a long way toward fluffing the illusion that Texas holds sway over the rest of America. It’s also why the law includes this provision:

And in case the Fed or Obama wants to confiscate Texas’s gold, nice try Fed and Obama! In keeping with this suspicion of the Fed and Washington, the new law also explicitly declares that no “governmental or quasi-governmental authority other than an authority of [Texas]” will be allowed to confiscate or freeze an account inside the depository. Gold that’s entrusted to Texas will stay in Texas.

Nope. Not how it works. “Don’t Mess With Texas” does not supersede the “Supremacy Clause.”

The Tenth Amendment Center doesn't agree with this analysis, nor does the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Tenth Amendment Center chief Michael Boldin, whose organization promotes states’ rights to rein in the feds under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, called the law “an important first step towards gold and silver as commonly-used legal tender in the state.” He said the move has the potential to open the market to sound money, even in day-to-day transactions. “By making gold and silver available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, the new law has the potential for wide-reaching effect,” Boldin added.

The Tenth Amendment Center also highlighted the constitutional implications. Noting that Article I, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution prohibits state governments from making anything other than gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, Boldin said the bill takes Texas a step toward fulfilling that long-ignored constitutional obligation. “Such a tactic would undermine the monopoly the Federal Reserve system by introducing competition into the monetary system,” he said.

Other experts also highlighted those effects. “Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a ‘reverse Gresham’s Law’ effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes),” explained constitutional-tender expert William Greene in a paper for the market-oriented Ludwig von Mises Institute.

“As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state — as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money — and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions,” added Greene, who also testified in favor of the law in his capacity as a private citizen.

It does look as if there is an explicit Constitutional warrant for gold and silver tender, as long as Texas does not undertake to "coin money." In any case, the advantages of a gold-backed system in an age of soaring national debts are explored by Forbes magazine. If we're looking for an exit from the Greece problem that the USA is definitely going to face sooner or later, maybe this is one.

Folsom Prison Blues

All right, I'm out. Here's a introduction to the weekend by the Reverend Horton Heat, once again stepping off their rockabilly platform.

Allahpundit on the Deal

By cutting Congress out of the agreement and running to the UN, Obama has heaped even more pressure on congressional Democrats not to defy him on this by making them guilty of breaching international law if they do. He’s crushed Congress at every turn — first in refusing to submit this deal to the Senate as a treaty, as the Constitution requires, then in negotiating that horrible deal with Bob Corker that would let the Senate effectively ratify the deal with just 34 votes, and now by ignoring Congress’s authority in the text of the final agreement itself and moving quickly to get this passed in the Security Council before Congress has even considered it. In a saner world, where the American public gave a wet fart about ridiculous power grabs by the executive, the House would be threatening him credibly with impeachment at this point.

So is this a high crime, or a misdemeanor? Neither one, obviously, unless you want to go all out and call it 'aid and comfort to the enemy.' The Islamic Republic of Iran certainly has been our enemy, its whole existence.

Instead they’re gearing up for another performance of failure theater, where the Senate pretends to try really hard to stop Obama and almost musters the votes needed to do so, but falls just a bit short. The whole thing is a simulacrum of democracy, designed to put Shiite fanatics on track to build a nuclear weapon in 10 years because rapprochement with Iran will look really cool on Obama’s and Kerry’s CVs.

Up The Militia

The morning after a deadly attack on two military centers in Chattanooga, residents in Hiram are standing watch outside the local recruiting office with their personal firearms. It is their unique way of honoring the fallen Marines and they said to protect the lives of those who serve in the military.

“I teared up. I think any human being would be touched by what happened yesterday. Any U.S. citizen that has a heart and a soul to hear what had happened,” said Crystal Tewellow, who organized the watch.

Recruiting offices are designated as being “gun-free zones” which means officers working there cannot carry their sidearm into the building. Tewellow, whose son just enlisted and the army and has a brother who is a recruiter, felt compelled to organize the watch.

“To think the people who are supposed to protect and serve us are unable to protect and serve… protect themselves,” said Tewellow. “So if us, the citizens, who carry permits, are able to help protect them that’s, that’s what we’re gonna be able to do.”

News Radio 106.7′s Nathalie Pozo was at the recruitment center on Friday morning and reported that about 30 people answered the call to arms.

Good. And the idea of having lots of armed citizens everywhere makes sense. When you face a diffuse, widely-distributed threat, you need a diffuse, widely-distributed defense. You can’t do that with police and military because there aren’t enough of them. But you can do it with ordinary citizens. And there’s one group of responders that will always be on the scene of any attack — the citizens who are already there. If they’re able to respond, things are much better than if they’re not.

I suppose I'll start carrying a revolver again. I haven't regularly carried a gun for years, not since I came back from Iraq in 2009. But he's right. We need to be prepared at all times in all places. We need to harden the society again, as we did after 9/11. We have to show that these acts are without profit, that America is always and everywhere ready to respond. You don't see skyjacking attempts on American airliners anymore.

Yeah, Probably Not

Headline: "Loch Ness Monster 'Most Likely Large Catfish.'"

Greatly Appreciated, Dr. Sugrue

A good piece, and an honest one, by a professor at New York University.

Economic segregation is most severe in America’s Northern metropolitan areas, as well, with Milwaukee; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; and Detroit leading large cities nationwide, according to an analysis of 2010 census data by the Atlantic. White suburbanites across the North — even in Bill and Hillary Clinton’s adopted home town, Chappaqua, N.Y. — have fought the construction of affordable housing in their neighborhoods, trying to keep out “undesirables” who might threaten their children and undermine their property values. The effects of that segregation are devastating.

Chesterton in America

Via AVI, a letter on America.

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just....

Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow about theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard.... might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox....

[America is] a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship.

It's interesting that he found in the creed "that governments exist to give them justice" and not, as the Declaration actually says, that government exists to protect their rights. In a sense that is giving justice, but it is largely a project of abstention rather than provision. Mostly, on the original American ideal, the government 'gives justice' by refraining from doing anything to you, or for you, at all.

The "John Doe" Proceedings

Or, "How The IRS, FBI and Justice Departments are Agents of Modern American Tyranny."

Imagine having a vision for your country.

You worked hard to start an organization to promote the ideas and values that you believe can fix our nation.

When you apply for tax-exempt status, which should be a simple matter of paperwork, you face repeated delays and demands from the government that stretch the process across months and years.

Then you learn—not from the government, but from an outside source—that your private information was shared with multiple government agencies, all of whom wanted to “piece together” criminal charges against you.

Imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by a gang of police, shouting and waving their weapons at you. They turn your house inside-out, steal your laptop and phone, then order you not to tell anyone they were there.

All this happened because your political beliefs landed on the wrong side of those officials in power.

We have still the freedom to write about it. At least, we do if we haven't been placed under a gag order.

Jonah’s father may have been the target of the raid on his home, but according to the family, investigators went well beyond the scope of the warrant to seize business records in his mother’s possession, including confidential donor and financial information for two conservative Wisconsin nonprofits, which were paralyzed for weeks as a result. Yet despite the overly expansive search, to this day, no one in Jonah’s family has been charged with a crime. The damage to the family’s reputation was immense. Soon after the raid, and despite court orders mandating confidentiality (orders that prevented the family from publicly defending themselves), their names leaked to the press.

Heh.

Shapiro’s point is that Zoey Tur, formerly Bob Tur, is male genetically and therefore a man in fact, however he/she may identify. Tur’s reply is to grab him by the neck and threaten to knock him into the middle of next week, which is … about as cartoonishly masculine a response to an insult as I can imagine.

It's true. A woman would have slapped him.

"The Little Sisters of the Poor v. the Big Sisters of the Rich"

Excerpt:

While Planned Parenthood does not call itself a religious order, it clearly has many of the trappings of a passionate and serious cult.... Our President, as the unofficial high priest, has asked God’s blessing to come upon them, making them too big to fail with even more business directed their way through Obamacare regulations.

The love and faith of the Little Sisters is perhaps most evident at the end of the lives of the residents they care for. The sisters bring them joy through socializing and even a little dancing, no matter what their physical limitations. And then when they are very close to dying, a sister is assigned around the clock so that no one will die alone.

As for the Big Sisters of the Rich, who have a government allowance of $528 million—nearly 100 times the annual budget of the Sisters of the Poor—their end of life story is slightly different.

Some Positive Eid al-Fitr News

American Muslim groups have raised $90,000 to help rebuild the black churches that have recently burned.

“In the time of the prophet (Muhammed), peace be upon him, there was a really strong history of Muslims working with Christians very closely — some of the first Muslims were sent to seek shelter under a Christian king in Ethiopia,” Islam said. “That connection has always been there.”

To Defend The Weak

``Deny it not, Sir Knight---you are he who decided
the victory to the advantage of the English
against the strangers on the second day of the
tournament at Ashby.''

``And what follows if you guess truly, good
yeoman?'' replied the knight.

``I should in that case hold you,'' replied the
yeoman, ``a friend to the weaker party.''

``Such is the duty of a true knight at least,'' replied
the Black Champion; ``and I would not willingly
that there were reason to think otherwise of
me.''

A meditation on that duty from the National Review. I agree: it is the foremost duty of a man to defend the weak. It is why God sent you strength. You will answer for how you used that strength.

Happy Eid Al-Fitr

Six things to know about today's terrorist attack on US Marines.

UPDATE:

'Brothers and sisters don't be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by.... Take his (Allah's) word as your light and code and do not let other prisoners, whether they are so called "Scholars" or even your family members, divert you from the truth. If you make the intention to follow allahs way 100 per cent and put your desires to the side, allah will guide you to what is right.'

All Right, My Turn

From their CD "Liquor in the Front," the Reverend Horton Heat skipped off their usual rockabilly and surf-rock to do a honky tonk piece. It's completely over the top.

The scoop on Pluto

From xkcd.

Charlie Nagatani and the Cannonballs

Eric reminded me of these cultural juxtapositions.

I'll start out with a Brad Paisley video which features shots at Charlie Nagatani's place in Kumamoto, Japan. It's a good song, if you like Paisley's kind of country, but mostly I want to show you the visuals at Charlie's.

Now, here's Charlie himself, doing foreign culture in a very characteristic Japanese style.

A Helpful Article

I've never heard this allegedly Southern expression, "acting brand new." I can't vouch for anyone ever having said that. However, I find this article very helpful.

He's spoken off the cuff about race relations on a widely circulated podcast (even using the n-word) and then eloquently followed that with what can only be described as a sermon on race relations in America before breaking into song. He's challenged America to go deeper in its support of equality than retiring symbols of slavery (such as the Confederate flag) and impolitic words (such as the n-word).

While eulogizing a slain minister and state lawmaker allegedly killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, S.C., he outlined a whole raft of ways in which discrimination remains and inequality continues to grow. And now, in the span of two weeks, he has announced two major reform packages — housing last week and criminal justice on Tuesday — that could, if ultimately implemented, be of particular benefit to people of color in the United States.

Here's the thing: This Obama might look or sound "brand new" to some Americans. He might even sound a little something like the black president some white Americans across the political spectrum feared (or hoped for).

We've been strongly critical of the President and his administration on very many points. None of these, however, have come up as criticisms of him. In fact, in general we've supported all of these things -- prison reform, courtesy, with some regret the retirement of the Confederate flag from the war memorial at the South Carolina statehouse as a show of support for black Americans. Housing is the only one in which I suspect there's any strong disagreement lurking, and that simply because the most of you are pretty opposed to government interference in markets of any sort.

She goes on to point out that he spoke to the NAACP. Well, of course he did. The NAACP's call this week to sand blast the monument off Stone Mountain ought to be opposed for the same reason we oppose ISIS or the Taliban when they destroy artistic symbols of the world before Islam. But I don't think the NAACP is a "hate group" because of it. (Oddly enough, that's the kind of rhetoric long-time NAACP-supporter the Southern Poverty Law Center uses.) We understand there's a painful history, and oppose the rhetoric and the idea without thinking they are haters for expressing their anger and bitterness.

The differences ultimately aren't about race. They're about America, about liberty, about sovereignty, about the Constitution and about duty. Those are the things that divide us from this President. The things he does that point to race are the main things that don't bother us.

"Why Aren't Ethicists Better People?"

Because contemporary ethical systems are bad. The two leading ethical systems are utilitarianism and deontology. Utilitarianism is really just a modern form of hedonism, i.e., an ethical system that takes pleasure and the avoidance of pain as its ground for "the good." Quite sophisticated versions of this philosophy have been known for millennia -- Socrates tries out a version towards the end of the Protagoras. It doesn't work because "to be good" doesn't align with "to cause pleasure and not pain."

This is true even if, as Socrates attempts, you suggest a model in which we're talking about 'the most' pleasure, so that minor pleasures now that cause worse pains later are not considered good. Sacrificing your life for your children may not bring any pleasure and only pain, but it might still be the ethical choice. Utilitarians try to avoid this problem by shifting to a kind of aggregate pleasure/pain as experienced by the whole society, but it still doesn't get it right. It still can't say just why it is more obvious for a parent to sacrifice his or her life for their own particular child, but extraordinarily excellent for a stranger to lay down his life to save the child. At worst, the movement to aggregate pleasure as the standard for utilitarianism can end up saying that we ought to sacrifice the child, especially if the death of the child can mean increased aggregate pleasure for the community -- witness the Planned Parenthood atrocities currently under discussion.

So, naturally ethicists who are utilitarians won't be especially excellent people. It's not just (as the article alleges) that they don't follow their own rules. It's that their system is pointed to the wrong ends.

Deontology attempts to establish duties. It's healthier than utilitarianism, but it still has the problem of rooting its ultimate standard for goodness. Does your duty come from reason? Kant makes an argument that it can't come from anywhere else: it is only reason that allows us to make choices that are more than actions from animal instinct. Reason must therefore be the standard for ethics. If ethics comes from reason, well, rationality is the same for all of us. Thus, we will all naturally agree about what is right and wrong. Kant thought this was so obvious that there really could only be one moral philosophy.

Empirical evidence demonstrates conclusively that Kant was not right about that. The problem, I think, is this:

1) Reason applies most perfectly to logical/mathematical objects;
2) Logical objects are like physical objects only by analogy;
3) Analogies always break at some point.

Thus, it turns out that rather than discovering laws of reason that ought to govern all human situations, we end up discovering that no two situations are really alike. We reason by analogy to previous situations, and to general working rules-of-thumb, but we can't come up with rational laws for human behavior of the sort the early moderns hoped to find. Ethicists who do state that they've found such laws and try to apply them end up doing injustice by trying to force square pegs into round holes (because the hole looks at least a little bit like a square, and certainly more like a square than a triangle).

So of course ethicists are bad people. They have devoted their lives to trying to make the world comply with bad systems. Naturally, at some point, the frustration leads them to tend to give up hope and just do what they want.