An Unlikely Reading of Plato

A philosopher writes:

Imagine, for a moment, if, during the tense final hours of the recently concluded negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 world powers, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif decided to set aside their remaining differences regarding the inspections regime and stockpiles of enriched uranium and turn for a moment to the fundamental questions that divide the two nations. Not differences in policy but in first principles.

Imagine Secretary Kerry explaining to his Iranian counterpart the philosophical roots and anthropological assumptions of American liberalism. And imagine Foreign Minister Zarif similarly providing an account of the Islamic republic. Imagine this debate continuing, fueled by endless cups of tea, long into the night, as Kerry discusses, say, John Locke and James Madison and the American founding, and Zarif discourses on Mulla Sadra and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, as they argue about the nature of the human being, the purpose of the political community, the origin of law, and the meaning of justice.

And imagine that, as the morning sun finally rises over the city of Vienna, the two exhausted statesmen slump back to the negotiating table, now with a more sophisticated understanding of and respect for one another, and, over strong coffee, hammer out the final niggling details of the agreement in an amiable and conciliatory manner.

I can imagine everything except that last part. Fully understanding that you are negotiating with someone who has a vastly different idea about justice is not going to encourage you to negotiate in a "conciliatory manner." It's going to completely undermine your confidence that your partner is negotiating in a manner you would recognize as just. How can you take a huge risk like this on someone whose view of justice is so different from yours?

Plato gives us a picture of something quite like this in his Protagoras. Socrates shows up at a house where several other thinkers are gathered. He is accompanying a friend of his who wants to study with one of these thinkers, Protagoras. Socrates tests the quality of Protagoras' teaching by engaging him in a philosophical debate of just the kind the fellow here is proposing. It does not end in agreement, friendship, or anything good: in the end, they are exhausted with each other and firmly set in their disagreement. Both positions, though, have been proven untenable: Socrates argues that virtue is knowledge but that it can't be taught, whereas Protagoras argues that it isn't knowledge but that it is his business to teach it. Neither position even makes sense, yet they have both given their reasons and are committed to them. Socrates is the better man, the dialogue implies, because he is at least willing to admit that his position can't be true. The discussion, though, doesn't increase their friendship or mutual understanding. It only increases their desire to be rid of each other.

Eventually almost the whole of Athens felt that way about Socrates. It's why they killed him.

Should the Senate go nuclear on the Iran deal?

Interesting poll results on the public's view of the Iran deal.  If you're white, black, hispanic, young, old, male, or female, the chances are you think it will make the world less safe.  The only demographic that slips over the 50-yard line toward support is Democrats.

Jim Geraghty threw out the idea last week that the Senate should defeat the deal on a majority vote.  Allahpundit picks it up and runs with it:

The question is, what do you do once the filibuster’s been nuked? If the GOP decides to pass a resolution declaring the Iran deal a treaty that requires two-thirds of the Senate to approve it, Obama will veto that resolution. That shouldn’t matter — since when is Article II contingent upon the president’s assent? — but you’re looking at a court battle at least, and the public will be bewildered after weeks of “does Obama have the Senate votes to protect his Iran deal?” headlines suddenly switch to “GOP changes rules on voting to block Iran deal.” They should have pounded the table about the treaty requirements from the beginning. Since they didn’t, though, maybe Geraghty’s plan could operate as a compromise solution, one that wouldn’t stop the deal but might embarrass Obama. If they nuked the filibuster, they’d at least get their resolution of disapproval to Obama’s desk, something Democrats are nervous about right now because of the message of no confidence it would send internationally in Obama generally and the Iran deal specifically. Iran may lose confidence that the deal will survive and look to back out. At a bare minimum, forcing a veto would be a political humiliation and a way for Republicans to wash their hands publicly of the outcome of this charade once it’s implemented. It’s a way to lay the whole thing in Obama’s lap. Having squandered all of their leverage, it’s probably the best play Republicans have left.

I'm trying to apply Cassandra's test to this approach: do we really want to sink to the level of some tactics just because we face them? Cassandra would make an excellent appellate judge, by the way: scrupulously fair, able to think through complicated ramifications, and determined to find rules that will serve equally well no matter whom they are applied to.  I don't want to see the filibuster undermined; on the other hand, it's been undermined, and I'll like to keep some balance in where it still applies.

Denali

"In your face, Republicans!"

Apparently this is yet another example of John Stewart driving the national agenda. If you don't watch television, you probably didn't know there was an issue with the name of a mountain in Alaska. You almost certainly didn't care about the issue you probably didn't know about. But now you're being mocked for losing a debate you didn't know we were having, about an issue you didn't care about. It's really important, the mockery.

That Kentucky Clerk

You have to admire the guts of a woman who tells the Supreme Court that it can go jump. Dad29 wonders if the US Marshals will be sent to forcibly remove her from her office, while pointing out that the Obama administration has ignored SCOTUS rulings on several points lately. Ed Morrissey takes the responsible conservative line and points out that the government must obey the rule of law, and that someone who works for the government ought therefore obey the law or else resign. Of course, that's true for the President and the EPA, too.

Agreement and dispute

From a C.S. Lewis essay, "On the Reading of Old Books," to which AVI drew our attention at Maggie's Farm:

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.

Bricks

Excellent clickbait site.  Most of the images have nothing to do with bricks, but these were two good ones:

Carbon-testing the Iranian side deal

Powerline's Scott Johnson summarizes the investigation into the secret side deal allowing Iran to control its own nuclear inspections, as reported by Fred Fleitz in IBD/NRO:

When the AP’s George Jahn first broke the story of the secret side deal with Iran on Parchin, the side deal was viewed as so absurd that it was attacked by the left-wing media as a forgery. In the spirit of President Obama, the forgery was imputed in some precincts to Israeli intelligence. The side deal, with its self-inspection provisions — text here — is indeed absurd but, unfortunately, it is the real deal.

Johnson concludes:

[I]t’s hard to see how anyone in Congress can vote for it in light of this deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to conceal from Congress its effort to drop a crucial benchmark needed to verify Iran’s compliance with the agreement.

Is it hard?  Do we really think the Senators who are planning to vote for it are struggling with their decision?

Volk und Land/Raza y Tierra

From Victor Davis Hansen, "How Illegal Immigration Finally Turned Off the Public":

Sometime in the last five years, the public woke up and grasped that Latino elite activists were not so much interested in illegal immigration per se, but only to the degree that the issue affected other Latinos. Were 3,000 Chinese illegally entering California per day by ship on the Northern California coast, Latino activists and politicians would probably be the first to call for enforcement of federal immigration law.

Alright, Let's Tie This Together

The main theme there is "Scotland the Brave." 'Land of the flowing river / land of my high endeavor! Land of my heart forever, Scotland, the Brave.'

Steve 'N' Seagulls vs. the Finland Women's National Ice Hockey Team

I'm kind of off in the academic version of a cage match at the moment, but randomly ran into this and had to share. I think we've seen the Steve 'N' Seagulls before, so here the Finnish bluegrass metal cover band is again. The real fun starts about halfway in.

And "Itchy Fingers," because -- flaming bagpipes.

Let's Have a Song

It's September, after all.

Not a Professor

That was fast.

On Monday, West Point law professor William C. Bradford resigned after The Guardian reported that he had allegedly inflated his academic credentials. Bradford made headlines last week, when the editors of the National Security Law Journal denounced a controversial article by him in their own summer issue:

As the incoming Editorial Board, we want to address concerns regarding Mr. Bradford’s contention that some scholars in legal academia could be considered as constituting a fifth column in the war against terror; his interpretation is that those scholars could be targeted as unlawful combatants. The substance of Mr. Bradford’s article cannot fairly be considered apart from the egregious breach of professional decorum that it exhibits. We cannot “unpublish” it, of course, but we can and do acknowledge that the article was not presentable for publication when we published it, and that we therefore repudiate it with sincere apologies to our readers.

That's A Good Question

I assume someone fed her these questions, but they must have talked her through the concepts so that she could understand the answers. Well, had she gotten many answers!

The Hell You Say

Headline: "Green Berets have growing doubts of duties with skittish political leadership."

Why read?

In Commentary Magazine, Gary Saul Morson explains how he thinks many young students are chased away from studying literature.  The whole essay was good, but I particularly like this discursion into empathy.  It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis remarked about the insistently inward-looking habit of the ill.  It's also a good warning about the perils of victim status.  Not that I am often victimized, having a comfortable life, but on the rare occasions that it happens I recognize these same results in myself:

Chekhov’s story “Enemies” describes a doctor named Kirillov, whose son has just died, comforting his grieving wife as his face displays “that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow.” We empathize with him, not only for his grief over his son, but also because of his empathy for his wife. It’s a chain of empathy, and we are its last link.

Then the wealthy Abogin arrives to beg the doctor to visit his dying wife, and the doctor, with extreme reluctance, at last recognizes he has no choice. When they finally arrive, it turns out Abogin’s wife has only feigned illness to get rid of her husband long enough to escape with her lover. As Abogin cries and opens his heart to the doctor “with perfect sincerity,” Kirillov notices the luxurious surroundings, the violoncello case that bespeaks higher cultural status, and reacts wrathfully. He shouts that he is the victim who deserves sympathy because the sacred moment of his own mourning has been ruined for nothing.

Nothing makes us less capable of empathy than consciousness of victimhood. Self-conscious victimhood leads to cruelty that calls itself righteousness and thereby generates more victims. Students who encounter this idea experience a thrill of recognition. Kirillov experiences “that profound and somewhat cynical, ugly contempt only to be found in the eyes of sorrow and indigence” when confronted with “well-nourished comfort,” and he surrenders to righteous rage.

In this story, each man feels, justly, that he has been wronged by the other. And so neither receives the understanding he deserves. We empathize with both but also feel that they could have chosen instead to empathize with each other. But, as the author explains: “The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart.” That is still more the case when unhappiness makes us feel morally superior.

This was good, too:

Many years ago, when Northwestern student course evaluations appeared in book form, I came across a response to a course on Dickens: “Don’t take this course unless you want to read a lot of Dickens!”

And this:

Students will acquire the skill to inhabit the author’s world. Her perspective becomes one with which they are intimate, and which, when their own way of thinking leads them to a dead end, they can temporarily adopt to see if it might help. Novelistic empathy gives them a diversity of ways of thinking and feeling. They can escape from the prison house of self.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

Planning ahead

James's comment below reminded me that I hadn't frequented Dr. Boli's blog in ever so long.  Among this week's offerings is a link to a website displaying gravestones, which they prefer to call monuments.  And very monumental they are!  Prepare to stretch your eyes.

I have explained to my husband that it's of no importance what's done with my body--give it to science, cremate it, whatever--but I would appreciate his keeping any funeral tackiness to a minimum.  Of the monuments pictured on the linked site, perhaps only the winged lion would suit me.  Or just skip the monument.  In any case, if the word "Celebration" or any canned music is included in my exequies, I will haunt him to his own unlovely grave.  Bagpipes would be appropriate.

Update:  the NPH tells me he recently saw a site illustrating innovative funeral-home viewings, like laying the deceased out in a lawn chair or--and I know this will be as popular a theme here as on Dr. Boli's not-to-be-missed comment thread--on a motorcycle.

Searching for that link also yielded this one, which is pinky-swear not a spoof despite the employment of the word "awesome" in the title.  It's the Martha-Stewartization of memorial services, and I guess it was only a matter of time before this sort of thing spilled over from what we see at weddings already.  My favorite touch:

Also, you know the iconic half-buried Cadillacs? I'd like Airstreams.  Something awesome.

Comma love

I'm a nerd, the first to admit it, so I'll admit enjoyment of columns about heated controversies over grammar.  I'll even declare my true colors right up front:  I like and use the Oxford comma.  Lawyers mostly don't, so I've never been in the habit of quarreling over it when riding herd on vast swarms of lawyers all collaborating on the drafting of documents that can go into the thousands of pages.  All that ever was particularly important to me was that we pick a rule, any rule, and then try to stick to it throughout the document.  Which comma rule?  I decline to argue the point, or the choice between "data is" and "data are."  Actually, the Nate Silver piece adopts the view that surely makes the most sense:  take a poll.

Now, who would have thought that the Oxford comma would win the linked poll?  General reading suggests that it's almost dropped out of common use, something of interest--per the  article--only to people passionate enough about grammar that they're willing to describe themselves as "expert."

You might describe me as a language atavist.  I rarely split an infinitive in writing, or even dangle a participle, and I still make the distinction between "may" and "might" that has almost completely disappeared from modern English.  I haven't yet taken up the craze for "zhir" or "zhwangi" or whatever it is, and I'm really grumpy about the kids on my lawn, or I would be if I had a lawn and there were any kids within a mile or so.

Carbon Dating the Oldest Koran

Biblical scholars worry sometimes that we don't have very early Christian documents -- you are probably all familiar with the debate over dismantling mummy masks in the hope that the writing on the inside will prove to be of historic interest. Nobody thinks, however, that any Christian document predates Jesus.

Scientists now think the Koran predates Muhammad, though, which will be very interesting if it proves true. Muhammad is supposed to have recited the Koran, bringing it into the world directly from the Archangel Gabriel.

British Scandals are Weird

This one involves a spy who was found dead naked inside a locked duffel bag, after hacking Hillary Clinton's email server. Theories on how that happened include 'it was an accident.'

American Outlaws

Your government is about to approve that Iran deal without even a vote in Congress. The White House really wants Congress not to vote. Congress seems ready to go along with that.


There's going to be a rally in DC on 9 September. It's headed by Cruz and, yes, Trump. We'll let that go for now.

I'm thinking of riding up. Who among you would join me?

More lists

We're having a little spate of "lists of best English novels," the newest entry being from Tyler Cowen.  I find that I have read and enjoyed half of his list, but lack the slightest inclination to read the other half.

As usual a spirited argument develops in the comments thread.  Surely the value of these things is not to settle once and for all which are the best books, but to find out something about books that other people are prepared to recommend wholeheartedly.  I'm often surprised when I finally get around to reading a "classic," but the surprise can just as easily take either of two forms:  (1) Why, this is delightful, what took me so long? or (2) What in the world do people see in this dreary mess?  I bogged down immediately, for instance, in the copy of "The Way We Live Now" that I downloaded on the recommendation of the recent Guardian List.  Oh, no, not another exhaustive examination of the wasted life of a young narcissist who spends beyond his income and can't face reality?  If I get 50 pages into a novel and still haven't met a character whose future I care about, I'm in trouble.  The narrative voice had better be something pretty special in that case, and I suppose Mr. Trollope and I don't see eye to eye.  Too bad, because a "drawing room" novel is usually just the thing for me.

Education of the future

If I were a young person choosing a field of work or study, I'd be inclined to give coding a shot.  It sounds wide open for people willing to keep learning something new.  Business applications for nanotechnology would be attractive as well.

This WSJ article suggests that colleges aren't focusing on the right training in the coding field.  It's still largely a self-taught skill pursued by the passionate, and boy, are they rock stars if they turn out to be good at it.

Tennessee Too?

My family's been from Tennessee since the 1700s. So it's of some concern to me to see our civilization washing away there.

Not to play this stupid game, but I’m curious: Why does “they/them/their” turn into “xe/xem/xyr” instead of the more logical “zey/zem/zeir”? Also, why isn’t “they/them/their” proper usage for someone who’s trans, whether singular or plural? I mean, purely in terms of how it scans, “xyr” is an abomination.

The whole thing is. If anyone ever asks me what my pronouns are, my answer will be "F*** you." And I'm about as courteous a fellow as you could want to meet. You know perfectly well what 'my' pronouns are. You can see the beard and the scars. Don't bother me with your bullshit.

Not a Tenured Professor

West Point Professor William Bradford argues in favor of targeting Islamic holy sites, attacking those opposed to the war on terror as a "fifth column."

In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.

Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.

“Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, [dissenting] scholars, and the law schools that employ them, are – at least in theory – targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ nonprohibited weapons, and contribute to the defeat of Islamism,” Bradford wrote.

West Point would like you to know that he wrote this before joining their faculty, and that his views are his own and none of theirs'. The article in question has been taken down, the journal says that publishing it was a "mistake," and they've published in its place a rebuttal explaining that the piece you can no longer read was wrong about everything.

Bradford appears to have a colorful history of being denied tenure for his unorthodox views. He's hugely productive as a scholar, but productive of things that make people's heads spin. Some might argue that this is part of a professor's job, at least if he's a law professor or a philosophy professor! But not, apparently, his past employers.

Our leaders are on the job

Protecting us from the dread dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

 

Lady and the Trump

Jimmy Kimmel has fun with Trump's response to Jorge Ramos at a recent news conference.



The man's a clown, but I can't deny enjoying the "eeks" he draws from the commentariat. "Well, I never!"

Thieves of Liberty

A filibuster was originally a sort of pirate, raiding in Latin America for profit. What they are stealing this time is a future in which Iran doesn't become a nuclear power, and a future in which Iran doesn't immediately receive tens of billions of dollars to fund terrorism. Everyone agrees that Iran will use at least some of the money it's about to receive to fund terrorism. The President agrees. The Secretary of State agrees. The Secretary of Energy agrees. A majority of Americans wants Congress to reject the deal. And we're not even going to vote about the wisdom of doing it.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is threatening to filibuster the bill altogether, and unless at least four more Democrats promise to vote against the deal, Reid may succeed. Critics of the deal are outraged at the idea that Congress’s only chance at oversight of the initiative might not even get a hearing on the Senate floor. The White House is also reportedly pushing for the deal to be filibustered, so that Obama won’t have to veto a resolution disapproving the signature foreign policy accomplishment of his presidency. Such talk has prompted Congressional Republicans to consider moving the legislation first in the House, where passage is assured.

We didn't vote when Barack Obama was named the Democratic nominee for President either, remember. None of the votes in the primary elections were counted. He was named by acclamation. There had been a huge debate about that all year long, as early voting states votes were going to be discounted by the DNC. Hillary Clinton ran all year on the principle of "count everyone's vote." She herself was the one to propose setting everyone's vote aside.

The enemies of liberty and democratic self-government must be held to account. We, the people, must do this. They cannot be trusted to do it to themselves.

Justice in India

An unelected all-male village council in India has ordered that 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister are raped. The ‘sentence’ was handed down as punishment after their brother eloped with a married woman. They also ordered for the sisters to be paraded naked with blackened faces.

So what's going on here is a collective punishment of the family for the sins of one of its members -- very similar to the kind of tribal fighting we saw in Iraq. You can't punish the brother because he's gone, so you punish someone else in the family. The brother was more important in his society than his sisters, so you punish two of them to try to 'even out' the offense done to the other clan.

If you asked them about the justice of punishing these two girls, they would say they weren't punishing them at all. They are punishing the family. If you didn't punish the family through this judicial process, they'd add, the other clan -- which is larger and stronger than the offending clan -- would exact an extrajudicial revenge that would be harsher, and which would probably lead to a cycle of violence. This will put a stop to the blood feud that would otherwise result. It is, in their minds, the least bad solution to a violation of a marriage contract by a member of a junior clan.

We should obviously try to stop this, but we should also understand the forces at work. In stopping it, we are guaranteeing the cycle of violence that the court is trying to avoid. Maybe that's OK -- maybe we are willing for all of these people to die, rather than that they should carry on living as they do. If you don't come with a solution that the clans will accept, though, you're saving the girls at the expense of someone else. Maybe more someones. Maybe a lot more.

Ignatius: Nothing To See Here!

Move along.

“It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information. “There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables." ...

"It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.

It's true that the law isn't always enforced. General James Cartwright -- who, by the way, headed the list of signatories on that letter from 36 general officers supporting the Iran nuclear deal -- was being investigated for leaking top secret information to the press about a US-Israeli effort against the Iranian nuclear program. The investigation died, officially because it 'might confirm the existence of such a program.' It died just before the Iran deal was announced... but I'm sure it's merely a coincidence that he's now vocally leading the pack in favor of that deal.

So yes, there's incredible corruption. Hillary may yet go down, though: not because of the law, which is enforced only as a tool of the powerful, but because she's become a liability. If Biden gets in the race, look for her to be prosecuted as a way of clearing the field for him. For political reasons, that is, not legal ones.

So What?

An opinion piece by a man who describes himself as the scion of a family of hunters.

I see that NRA decal on the rear window of your car and my eyes narrow. I look at the back of your head in the driver’s seat and I wonder if you are a threat.

A threat to my children. A threat to me. A threat to society.

First of all, I don't have an NRA decal on my truck. I have a Cimarron Firearms decal that reads: "I'm Your Huckleberry."

Secondly, who cares what you think is a threat? You've disarmed. You can think all you want about how scary it all is, but your opinion is empty and meaningless if you can't do anything about it. If you want to be able to do something about it, well, you're going to need a gun. And that suggests, per the post below, that it would be wise to get some training and learn to use it safely and well.

The most prominent group you'd want to consult about that is the NRA. When you do, they may give you a decal. You can do whatever you want with it. I have a suggestion, but it isn't printable.

Ballads of the True West

A few selections from Johnny Cash's "experimental" 1965 album.







He was trying to capture the true spirit of the thing. I don't know how well he succeeded. But the second half of that last song sounds real familiar.

A Conservative Case for Gun Control

I think this guy has exactly one good point, so let's give it up front.

Classical republican theory restricts arms ownership to those it deems responsible enough to uphold public order. Our system of guns as a consumer good, and our democratic presumption of good citizenship, puts guns into unsteady and untrained hands.

Making sure a person is qualified to own a gun is something responsible societies do. Many families, gun clubs, and organizations like the NRA do the work of training responsible, conscientious gun owners. It's plausible that some kind of mandatory socialization in gun clubs for potential gun owners would be a good first step at preventing gun violence. It's more plausible than simply wishing for more 'good guys with guns' at every possible location for a tragedy. As things stand, this constructive, social gun culture does not encompass the totality of gun owners; gun shops certainly don't inquire about your sociability and training.

I know what conservatives are thinking: "So you think the government has the power to disqualify citizens from gun ownership?" The government will prove terrible at this task, and it defeats the purpose of an armed citizenry. And to be sure, I don't want a government that can put a gun owner in prison for having the wrong politics. And of course, this power of restricting guns — like restricting the franchise to "responsible, invested citizens" — echoes a historical tie between gun control and racist efforts to confine blacks to a lower status. And yet, we still ought to consider stronger guarantees of responsible gun ownership. Perhaps tests that aim at qualifying the character of a gun owner, rather than searching only for a criminal disqualification.

He's right about what classical theory suggests, and the wisdom of it. He's also right that the government as it stands is completely unfit to exercise this responsibility. The compromise he suggests is pushing it to the NRA. Virginia, oddly enough given that it's the site of the latest famous killing, had exactly that kind of law: a concealed carry permit is not "shall issue," but requires demonstration of being properly trained by an organization like the NRA. When I lived there, I hired an NRA instructor to come and "teach" me proper gun handling and safety so I'd have the certificate on file in order to get a license to carry.

If we had a better government, the best way to do this would be to revive common militia service. If we get back to a small, limited government on real constitutional principles including the right to bear arms, that might be the right way to proceed. For now, I wonder if it can be pushed to private organizations like he suggests, or if we're stuck with "consumers" instead of "citizens" because the government is already too untrustworthy to be allowed to determine who counts as a "good citizen." We can't trust them to prosecute clear examples of misconduct if the 'citizen' is well-connected politically, like Mrs. Clinton. We can't trust them to prosecute nobodies fairly, as in Orange County.

There's a huge national crisis in government because the government has failed almost across the board. Currently they are talking about filibustering a vote against the Iran deal, rather than debating it and voting honestly. Even though their victory is almost assured by the math, they can't allow their opponents to have a debate and a vote.

The government is sick to the core. We can talk about what a healthy government ought to do, but we can't do so while failing to take notice of the disease in our own.

Uh-oh

Judge disqualifies every single prosecutor in Orange County, California, on evidence of systemic corruption.

In recent months, we've learned, over the objections of the Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD), that the agency created TRED, a computerized records system in which deputies store information about in-custody defendants, including informants. Some of the data is trivial; other pieces contain vital, exculpatory evidence. But for a quarter of a century, OCSD management deemed TRED beyond the reach of any outside authority. In Dekraai, deputies Ben Garcia and Seth Tunstall committed perjury to hide the mere existence of TRED. Those lies didn't originate from blind loyalty, however. The concealed records show how prosecution teams slyly trampled the constitutional rights of defendants by employing informants—and then keeping clueless judges, juries and defense lawyers.

The Duffel Blog Strikes Again

"Pentagon Angered at Speed of French Military Awards System."

“There’s no way Airman Spencer rates an actual Legion d’Honneur,” said Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James Cody. “We’ll probably just submit it as a Letter of Appreciation in his record book. It’s not like it will get him any points for promotion anyway.”

Shortly after Cody’s remarks, it was announced Airman Spencer would be nominated for the Air Force’s high non-combat award for being wounded while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a fully armed enemy....

Hokanson further pointed out that Skarlatos hadn’t re-certified on the online Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness module so he couldn’t possibly rate a medal for actually fighting terrorism.

And Yet She's Leading the Poll

The 'Soft Bias of Low Expectations'?

UPDATE: I checked the internals, and it's a poll of 1,563 people. So the 540 responses that are some variation of "liar/untrustworthy/criminal/corrupt/crooked" represent more than a third of total responses: 34.5%. That's not a question about whether or not people think that she's honest. It's a question about the first word that comes to your mind when you think of her.

Wasn't This Dr. Carson's Point?

A new study suggests that women's sexual orientation correlates with their romantic options.

Women in the study who were rated as more attractive — and so, presumably, could attract sexier mates — were more likely to identify themselves as completely straight than the women who were less attractive, according to a comprehensive survey of health and sexual behavior among teens and young adults.

In addition, the study confirmed that women tend to be more flexible than men in their sexual orientation, with women in the study being nearly three times more likely than men to experience a change in their orientation during the study.

"More flexible," sure, but Ben Carson got in a lot of trouble a little while ago for making a similar comment about the huge increase in male homosexual behavior among prisoners. Nobody doubts that there is more homosexual behavior among male prisoners than among males 'in the wild,' and the obvious reason is that they lack other outlets for their sexuality. You put someone in a prison and tell him he's going to be there for years, even decades, and he's got to figure out how to make a life for himself in that very long time.

Now, correlation isn't causation, and the study doesn't prove that Dr. Carson was right -- it's about women and not men, for one thing, and it's about women 'in the wild,' not women in prison. Finally, "orientation" may not change in many of these males: they may not 'become gay,' but they certainly do practice homosexuality.

Still, if on further study the correlation turned out be because of a causal effect, we'd have reason to think that Carson might be right. It would certainly be worth looking into via additional studies aimed directly at the question. Indeed, perhaps this study already suggests the worthiness of such studies. It certainly makes Carson's opinion sound less than foolish.

Wormtongue

You know who's going to stab you in the back? Take a hint from Tolkien: it isn't Gandalf, and it isn't Aragorn. It's the guy who creeps but nevertheless desires Eowyn.

The Old Man knew his business.

Wise Foreign Policy

Special this week only, mid-week quiz

I claim honorary Jewish status: 10/11.

And / Or, We Can Launch Nukes

The Convention of States project is working to call an Article V constitutional convention to limit the power of the federal government. From their website:

The Jefferson Statement
 
The Constitution’s Framers foresaw a day when the federal government would exceed and abuse its enumerated powers, thus placing our liberty at risk. George Mason was instrumental in fashioning a mechanism by which "we the people" could defend our freedom—the ultimate check on federal power contained in Article V of the Constitution.

Article V provides the states with the opportunity to propose constitutional amendments through a process called a Convention of States. This process is controlled by the states from beginning to end on all substantive matters.

A Convention of States is convened when 34 state legislatures pass resolutions (applications) on an agreed topic or set of topics. The Convention is limited to considering amendments on these specified topics.

While some have expressed fears that a Convention of States might be misused or improperly controlled by Congress, it is our considered judgment that the checks and balances in the Constitution are more than sufficient to ensure the integrity of the process.

The Convention of States mechanism is safe, and it is the only constitutionally effective means available to do what is so essential for our nation—restoring robust federalism with genuine checks on the power of the federal government.

We share the Founders’ conviction that proper decision-making structures are essential to preserve liberty. We believe that the problems facing our nation require several structural limitations on the exercise of federal power. While fiscal restraints are essential, we believe the most effective course is to pursue reasonable limitations, fully in line with the vision of our Founders, on the federal government.

Accordingly, I endorse the Convention of States Project, which calls for an Article V Convention for "the sole purpose of proposing amendments that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress."

And the signatories, the project's legal advisers, follow. Some of those who signed the statement have some fame or notoriety: Randy Barnett, Mark Levin, and Andrew McCarthy. You may know others I didn't.

And they are apparently having some success, having started less than a year ago and issuing the following progress update today:

• Four states have passed the Convention of States application - Florida, Georgia, Alaska, and Alabama.
• Seven state houses have passed our application - Arizona, Arkansas, North Dakota, New Mexico, Iowa, Louisiana, and Texas.
• Three state senates have pass our application - Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Missouri.
• Multiple state committees have passed our application.
• Thirty-seven state legislatures began considering our specific application this year -- a record in the history of our country.

Mad Max in Go-Karts and Paintball

How the Empire Started

General Mattis Crosses Potomac With 100,000 Troops; President, Senate Flee City

Suddenly it makes sense.

A Persuasive Alternative Theory

[US Department of] State considered this information classified at that time — as well it should, since it disclosed embassy security gaps and vulnerabilities. Only an idiot would send something like that in the open, and yet that’s exactly what happened.

Is "I'm an idiot" a useful legal defense? It's not usually considered a quality one advertises when running for office, but that may be water under the bridge at this point.

The Bible as Explained by Facebook

People have shorter attention spans brought on by social media. Some redaction is necessary to cope with this. Hopefully nothing too important got left out.

Slippery Slope

A school district in Tennessee slides down.

They aren't banning all flags from the property -- they'll presumably still fly an American flag on the flagpole -- but they are banning flag displays by students on their personal vehicles. That strikes me as the strangest assertion of authority: the school would seem to be on much stronger grounds in banning flag displays elsewhere than the parking lot used to enter and leave the school, on personal property of students who are entering or leaving.

I have often wondered, since I was a teenager in high school myself, how we think we can raise American citizens devoted to upholding their basic rights at any cost while educating them in an environment in which they are regularly asked to surrender those rights to the state.

Guerrilla Warfare, the Left, and Getting Paid

I'm short of time, so this will be rough.

I posted the basic point of this post over at neo-neocon's blog where she is calling for a march on Washington to oppose the Iran deal, and the conversation turned to the reasons why the right doesn't do activism very well.

One reason the right isn't good at activism is because we're amateurs, and amateurs pay for what they do. Professionals get paid.

The left understood long ago that they were insurgents. As I'm sure all of you know, one of the problems of waging an insurgency is logistics. The insurgent's answer is to steal the enemy's provisions and use them. So, if insurgents need guns, food, ammo, or just about any materiel, the best place to get it from is the enemy's supply lines. It's a double-win -- you deny the enemy materiel he has paid for, and you get to use it against him.

The American left took this to heart and went after the professions where they would get paid for their activism by the very system they intended to overthrow. They became professors and teachers, researchers with government grants, social activists and community organizers (also with government grants), government employees with powerful unions, judges, Hollywood movie makers and news reporters. The members of these groups get paid for their activism, and then they go out for a good time or home to enjoy the weekend.

The right is in the opposite position. If they want to take action, they lose money. They have to take time off from work, or close the shop for the day, or spend their day off on it. They have to pay their own transportation, and buy their own signs, and in the end it saps their resources and makes them tired and hard to get along with.

The left is paid and energized from their activism, the right is drained of money and energy in theirs.

50 years ago, the left was the insurgency. Today the positions are reversed, but many on the right still look to conventional forces for salvation: maybe the GOP will turn it around, maybe the Koch brothers will buy up some major media outlets, maybe Jesus will return and we won't have to mess with any of it anymore.

Conventional forces still have a role to play, but conservative politicians and other public figures can't fight nearly as effectively as they should because they have tremendous strategic disadvantages. The left controls the strategically essential ground of the universities and educational system in general, they have tremendous air superiority in the mainstream media, and they have a direct line to the hearts and minds of the citizenry through the entertainment media. If the conservative tanks roll out, they are immediately hit with artillery from universities full of enemy experts, enemy airwave assets degrade their credibility and reputation, and then the ground troops, high on the false promises of Hollywood moral crusades, move in and finish the job. Conservatives have seen this play out over and over, but for some reason many of them are still waiting for the cavalry to come over that hill.

Well, they can't get here. They're bottled up. They'd probably be destroyed if they genuinely tried to break through, as we saw with the government shutdown. We need to take out a good part of the enemy's air assets and take a bunch of those hills and mountains. We need movies and novels and songs and poems to build up the courage of our fellow fighters. We need to create the situation on the ground where our conventional forces are free to maneuver and bring their big guns to bear on the fight. The only way to win this is to embrace the reversal and throw ourselves into our role as infiltrators and insurgents.

And that means we need to get paid for our activism, preferably by the same system we hope to overthrow.

Threshold

I think we've identified it: it's the point at which these two things become more likely than not.

1) Facts emerge that make it likely a court could rule that Hillary Clinton is disqualified from ever holding any further public office.

2) The party gets some comfort with the emerging Biden ticket.

Get comfy, killers. You may be about to watch the destruction of one of the great powers of our age pour encourager les autres. Whatever comes after, it's going to be a tremendous spectacle.

Ending Discrimination Against Military Men

Scott Faith at the Havok Journal has a solid point buried several paragraphs below some ranting about how women aren't forced to register for the draft.

Men and women are held to two different physical fitness standards–VASTLY different standards— yet we all compete against each other for assignments and promotions. I don’t compete against just the other men in my career field for promotions and career-enhancing jobs, I compete against EVERYONE in my career field. With the doors to combat arms branches and units being flung wide open to admit women, those women have institutionalized, gender-based bias in their favor when it comes to physical fitness standards as they join units that highly value physical fitness. They aren’t any more fit, mind you; they just enjoy a much better score on their physical fitness evaluations.

Because of their gender, and all other things held equal, female troops have an unfair advantage over men because a number on their evaluation will be significantly higher in physical fitness tests for the exact same quantifiable performance. And because the Army is an institution that values easily-quantifiable numbers over substance when it comes to promotions, women have a distinct and unfair advantage.

As just one example, in the 17-21 year old age group, the minimum passing score for men is 42 pushups. What is the maximum score for women in that exact same age group? You guessed it, 42 pushups. So in this age bracket, 60 points for men = 100 points for women. The bare minimum score for a male Soldier is literally the max possible score for a female. This would be the academic equivalent of giving a D-minus to a male student while giving an A+ to a female for getting the exact same answers right on a test.

Promotion points are a big deal, and physical fitness tests definitely influence promotions. You could easily see the opening of the combat arms to women meaning that women are promoted ahead of much more physically fit men, which sets up a dangerous situation in the field. It's already the case that your platoon sergeants, being E-7s, are going to be much older than the young men (and, I suppose, soon women) they are commanding. They're the ones with the experience to know what to do and how to do it, and to bring these young guys back. If we set up those privates with NCOs who are physically fragile by comparison, we are setting them up for failure. Failure means death. It could mean the collapse of the unit, too, which means that the whole infantry structure will be weaker on the "for want of a nail" principle.

Now, the counterargument -- which has heretofore held the day -- is that equality means making sure that women aren't excluded from promotion. If you really held them to the male physical fitness standards, only the women who could max the female PFT would even pass the non-gendered PFT. While being able to do well on the PFT is important for promotion, not being able to pass it on multiple attempts is grounds for dismissal. Accepting genuine equality of standards thus means accepting a lot fewer women in the military.

I don't particularly care about "fairness" standards -- I think men and women are too different for any talk of "same standards" to be sensible in any case. The other examples he gives -- women can have longer hair! Can wear earrings! Are sometimes excused from uniform standards! -- don't strike me as important, and I'm completely opposed to the idea of registering women for the draft. We don't use the draft anyway, and if we ever have a big enough war that we need to, our civilization will need those young women to recover in terms of population. Men are far more disposable on that score. That's not fair either. Life isn't.

The point about a sharply increased fragility in the NCO corps on the field of war, however, is really strong. That's a serious danger: to the soldiers, to the units, to the successful execution of tactics, of strategy, of national security. It's a change with the potential to be genuinely disastrous. At least for the combat arms, maintaining standards can't be done if existing lower standards for women are employed.

UPDATE: OAF Nation weighs in. An excerpt of the argument that I think strongest:

For some odd reason, the anatomical argument receives the least traction (maybe because it’s irrefutable statistics, therefore a buzzkill to the debate). So, I will play the game and abide, and get the anatomical stuff out of the way. It is truly the tip of an ice burg called the Musculoskeletal Injuries in Military Women , but consider these stats: the astronomical difference in reported pelvic stress fractures in male and female recruits (1 per 367 females, compared to 1 per 40,000 males), ACL ruptures in athletes (females range from 2.4 to 9.7 times higher), or trainees discharged from Basic Combat Training for medical reasons (12.7% females, compared with only 5.2% for males). These are only a few of the many findings that should obviously be considered.

Unfortunate choice of words

I hope they mean they captured the whole guy, still breathing:

The head of a Chinese exchange that trades minor metals was captured by angry investors in a dawn raid and turned over to Shanghai police, as the investors attempted to force the authorities to investigate why their funds have been frozen.

The Dow has already bounced back up 500 points, by the way, but things are still looking a bit hectic here and there around the world.  West Texas Intermediate oil slipped below $38/barrel.

Crash!

Dow is down around another 1,000 this morning, a few minutes after opening.

You don't need permission

You don't even need a band.

The Media Begin To Notice The Air Gap

For now, it's just a writer at PJ Media, but this is of course the real story that people do not understand. Most people have never dealt with classified information systems, and don't realize that the air gap exists. If they understood about the air gap, they would realize that there is no chance that these various Hillary defenses could possibly hold water.

I've been reflecting on it more since we last talked about it, and I think maybe the most likely case is that the Hillary State Department -- or at least her clique of advisers and aides, as well as non-DOS personnel from her faction like Sidney Blumenthal -- were just completely careless about classification. It's less likely that they downloaded or wrote down information from the TS system to transfer onto the private email server than that they summarized what they'd read on the TS systems in unclassified emails. Quite possibly she and they believed this was perfectly safe to do, as they controlled the server and were only talking to other members of the trusted in-group. The danger of hackers? We have a top-flight (at least very well-connected) IT firm to prevent that from being an issue. Classification rules? I slept through that briefing -- who cares about rules, rules, rules? We're the powerful.

In that case you wouldn't need a firewalled tie-in, nor a band of flunkies whose job it was to strip classification markings. There were none to strip, since the information was transferred across the air gap in your brain. This seems like the simplest explanation, provided that we discover no examples of actual classified documents in the email. We should expect, if this is right, only to see summaries of classified information in these private, unclassified emails.

From the perspective of the law, this makes no difference. The rule is that a document that contains classified information is classified, and if it was built out of another document or set of documents, the new document inherits the highest level of classification of any of the summarized documents. Thus, if I write an email to you about yoga and your daughter's wedding, and at the very end say: "PS: Did you see the column of tanks moving up on Benghazi this morning?" based on a satellite photo from the high side, the email I have just written now needs to be marked "TS // SI / TK // NOFORN" and cannot be sent on the unclassified system. Indeed, just because the computer will automatically save a draft of that information on the unclassified system while I am typing it up, just by typing it up and not sending it I have already committed the crime that Petraeus went down for (i.e., storing classified information in an unapproved location).

She's in real trouble, and sooner or later the reasons why will seep out into the public debate. Wiping the server will look more and more like destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice, as there's already enough to convict her of several felony counts in what they've found.

Girls and Cigar Box Guitars for Saturday Night

Luke 17:33

Chris Norman, the Briton who participated in the salvation of the French train against a mysterious young man with unknowable motives said this when asked about why he fought back: "I figured, I'm probably going to die anyways, so let's go.... Either you sit down and you die, or you stand up and you die."

But you didn't die. You're the one giving the interview.

This is one of those New Testament passages that comes up over and over and over again. Chesterton said of it:

“He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

It is good, it is encouraging, to see that men are taking this to heart once again. It is a practical as well as a spiritual insight, a hint from the designer at a surprising truth built into the structure of the world. It's an Easter egg in reality, so to speak.

Another Saturday quiz or two

Someone has come out with a list of 99 of the 100 best novels in the English language, presented alongside a ten-question quiz about their authors and circumstances of publication.  I believe I've read 27 of them, though some were so long ago that I may have confused them with something else.  Others seemed familiar, but probably only from movie treatments.  Some I didn't care for, and wouldn't have finished if they hadn't been assigned to me in school, such as "The Great Gatsby."  One of them I happen to be re-reading with pleasure at this very moment.  As for the associated quiz, I totally bombed it:  2 out of 10.

A New Idea For Reparations: Weighted Voting

The author likes the idea of America paying reparations to blacks to repair the damages of slavery, but doesn't want money. He wants a bigger vote. Specifically, he wants to repair the 3/5th compromise by giving black Americans a 5/3rds vote.

It's a more interesting piece than it sounds like from that summary, as he tries to wrestle with some of the complications of the idea.

And then the problem of who exactly is eligible must be addressed. Would a biracial voter qualify? A black immigrant? And what exactly is an election official to do when Rachel Dolezal shows up to claim her five-thirds vote? The government shouldn’t be the sole arbiter of who gets to be black — nor flirt with archaic prescriptions such as the one-drop rule in determining a voter’s race. The most straightforward approach would be to limit access to weighted voting to those American-born citizens who have demonstrated through government documents, such as drivers’ licenses or birth certificates, that they identify, and are identified by others, as black or African American. There are bound to be instances where this approach is challenged, and one answer would be to model guidelines after the general requirements for establishing American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry as outlined by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which involve establishing that a lineal ancestor belongs to a specific tribe and then producing vital records that document a relationship to that ancestor.

The 3/5ths compromise didn't give blacks 3/5ths of a vote, though: it gave states representation in the House of Representation based on counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person. (I suppose we all understand that the South wanted to count slaves as whole people, and the North wanted not to count them at all.) If you wanted to do this in a way that mirrors what was done during the slaveholding era, to count blacks as 7/5ths of a person (a more obvious standard than 5/3rds, being 2/5ths off in either case), it would be purely to determine how many representatives in Congress each states get.

Now, that would doubtless increase black representation in Congress somewhat. It wouldn't have the wild swings that are posited in the article, though, because it wouldn't affect the Senate or the Presidential election at all. It would only mean that places like Georgia would have more congressional districts, and because black voters were considered 7/5ths of a person, more of those districts would end up being gerrymandered into black-majority districts than currently is the case.

The author points out that 90% of white Americans are opposed to the idea of reparations. I am not among them: it satisfies my Viking sense of justice, because it is a parallel to the weregeld. That was also inheritable by the family (indeed, it was often paid in cases where the person wrongly offended had been killed). We used to help the tribes in Iraq negotiate diyya payments to settle similar feuds. Assuming we can work out a deal of that kind, I would not be opposed to making the deal. The terms are, though, that the payment resolves the debt in full -- honor is satisfied, and we discuss it no more.

For that reason, the proposed 24-year period of weighting doesn't strike me as the right approach. The payment should be a one-time thing, something everyone agrees to accept as a settlement of the debt, so that we can finally put it behind us forever.

Weekend Quiz

Name these 12 famous people from the Middle Ages. It's tricky, since of course we don't have photographs! My first-time score was 92%.

They'll Find The Trains Are Guarded By...

You know the song, but let's hear it anyway given the news of the day. More, let's hear it a cappella since their brothers apparently didn't need instruments to perform.



UPDATE: Apparently the initial reports were wrong: no Marines were involved. The three Americans were a National Guardsman, an Airman, and a civilian. A Briton and one Frenchman were also involved in taking down the attacker. You can read about them here.

Strong work, gentlemen.

Justice, A Long Time Coming

Way back in 2003, during the initial invasion of Iraq, a soldier named Hasan K. Akbar fragged two of his comrades while deployed at war. A military court has upheld his death sentence.

The decision was not unanimous. Two dissenting judges objected to the fact that his diary was made available to the court martial panel:

“These pages included a running diatribe against Caucasians and the United States dating back 12 years, and included repeated references to (his) desire to kill American soldiers ‘for Allah’ and for ‘jihad,' ” Judge James E. Baker noted.

I don't know: that sounds pretty relevant to me.

OAF on the DOS

A former Blackwater contractor has been writing a short series mocking State Department 'war tourists' in Afghanistan. I sympathize somewhat, although I think I mentioned the other week that the embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team guys were good dudes. Of course, excepting the one Foreign Service team leader, those guys were all contractors too: the DOS couldn't staff them with volunteers. Still, the Foreign Service Officers they did find to lead the teams were fine gentlemen. We never had to deal with the high-level DOS guys, because we were too far down the strategic/tactical chain.

Still, I can easily imagine the scene our Blackwater friend is describing. Nor is he wholly wrong in his punishing description of the pending failure of the whole mission in Afghanistan. The leadership at the elected and appointed civilian levels lost that war as they lost the Iraq we won. In the case of Afghanistan the President himself, by declaring a half-surge with a withdrawal date, decided to lose it in a long and drug-out way that ended up costing us most of the Americans killed in that conflict.

Good Judgment on Display

Ronda Rousey, again:

In a recent interview with CNN, [Trump] spoke about women fighting in facets of the military. For some reason, he lumped Rousey into the conversation, and stated that she was a supporter of his:

"I guess the answer is yes, because they're really into it. Some of them are really, really good. I'll tell you what, I know some woman that are just -- Ronda Rousey is an example, who likes me.

"I'd take her on my side as a fighter."

The only problem with that little statement is that Ronda is not a big fan of The Donald. In a previous interview with the same network, Rousey made it clear (while blinking a lot) that she would not vote for him:

"I mean, I wouldn't vote for him. I just really wouldn't trust the guy with running my country, that's all.

"I'm not really going to get into specifics of it, but, I mean, I don't want a reality TV star to be running my country."

Rousey is likely to meet Meisha Tate in the Octagon later on this year, while Trump is likely to meet the end of his White House hopes and dreams any day now.

Emphasis added. Given the nature of such shows, it should probably be an informal disqualification.

Rain

Our six-week drought is breaking, with good rains yesterday afternoon, and more early this morning.  When the sun comes up, I bet I'll find my cistern is full again.  In honor of the event, I present this video, showing a "wet microburst" that resembles the effect of a helicopter dumping a load of water on a wildfire.

Related, much worse news:  three firefighters were killed yesterday in Washington state when their vehicle crashed and they were overrun by a wildfire.  The chilling news from officials:  "the crash did not kill them."

The new wild west: deregulated eyebrow-threading

Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner examines new depredations by the unstoppable Reichwing machine in eroding the government's power to curtail the free market and free speech.  Somalia, baby!

How to end-run economic control-freaks

Uber is having a hard time getting a foothold in China:  the regulators keep raiding its offices there.  AirBNB has a different strategy, which takes advantage of its ability to woo Chinese customers first in their incarnation as travelers to other countries.  The idea is to get them used to the idea of an unregulated net-based vacation-lodging service during one of their 109 million trips abroad every year, then count on them to put pressure on the regulators at home to allow a similar service domestically.  As the article notes, China can't raid AirBNB's offices in California.

Welcome, robots

The good news in automation:  as brute-force jobs decline, jobs providing caring and service increase, fulfilling the new demand created by all the wealth produced by automating brute-force jobs.

A Footrace on Immigration

The NYT describes it as a 'race to the bottom,' but it's the one beneficial effect of the Trump Show that the Republican primary race has been for a little while now. The American people have been taken for a ride on immigration: generations of leaders of both parties have simply defied the popular will, and presented ongoing massive waves of immigration as a fait accompli. Democrats since Teddy Kennedy have looked with glee upon the horizon when their imported coalition will come to dominate elections; conservatives long ago began adopting apologetic rhetoric in order to avoid giving offense to their new electoral masters.

So suddenly we're talking about birthright citizenship, whether it's the proper standard for the American Republic, and just how much immigration should be subordinated to the greater cause of maintaining a polity that supports the ongoing American project codified in the Constitution. That's exactly the conversation we should have been having all along, but people were too afraid to have it.

It isn't necessary to adopt unfair rhetoric to have the conversation, and we shouldn't speak unjustly of anyone. It is necessary to have the conversation. America is not a bloodline nation. Birthright citizenship doesn't make much sense here. We're a nation founded on a creed. Adherence to the creed should be what we are looking for in new immigrants, and numbers should be kept small enough over time that assimilation get to work. The creed should never be endangered by demographics. The creed is a vision of human liberty that is what this country was all about. Achieving and sustaining that vision is the whole point of the project.

These levels of immigration are not compatible with that, and therefore we need to address them. We must do this will all seriousness, because the survival of the project is at stake. We are not racing to the bottom, but we are in a race against time.

It's Hard Not To Snicker

Headline: "Hillary's latest defense: What is classified information, anyway?"

"If You Still Support Planned Parenthood, You Are Simply Not A Decent Person."

More likely than this, you just haven't seen the videos. The media has done its best to play them down. The people I know who still support Planned Parenthood are aware they exist, but describe them as 'those doctored videos that tried to show Planned Parenthood was guilty of a crime, which has been debunked.'

The proof that these guys haven't even watched the videos is contained in the headline of that last link, which reads, "Investigations turn up no Planned Parenthood wrongdoing." If you have seen the videos, you know that what is debatable is whether there has been any lawbreaking. "Wrongdoing" is indisputable. That the law supports these practices is a huge part of the problem to be solved.

UPDATE: An analogy featuring baby pandas.

Ranger School: Graduation

The Ranger School says that the President will not be attending graduation.  They also want to dispute a series of additional rumors that have been circulating on Facebook about how the two women managed to pass the final phase of the course.  I've seen all of those rumors in my FB feed.

I have heard one rumor that isn't denied here, which is that the women were involved in a fratricide incident on patrol and were passed anyway (as they should not have been). The source for this is a Regiment guy who claims he has it from one of the trainers directly. There are so many false rumors circulating, though, I don't know whether to believe this one or not. The rumor about the President attending was similarly sourced by Havok Journal. Of course, it may have been true: even if the President wasn't coming, the instructors may have been told to prepare for him to come; or, he may have in fact been planning to come and sent initial warning, and later been talked out of it by someone giving him good advice. In any case, the information in that case was as good as the information in this case, and I can't say whether or not you ought to believe it. At the very least, you can believe that there is a great deal of bitterness among the Rangers about this business -- otherwise, such hostile rumors would not be being passed around, nor so readily believed. The effect on unit cohesion is at least temporarily ugly, though perhaps that will pass in time.

What I do know is that the two women have been passed through the final phase and will graduate tomorrow, becoming the only women in history entitled to wear the Ranger tab. They certainly deserve congratulations for surviving the course -- not everyone does, and they were at a severe disadvantage. Even if they did receive extra help, as they are confirmed to have received second and third chances, it's really appropriate given that they had to undergo the school with a body type that carries less muscle and more fat, a strength and aerobic capacity approximately 20-40% lower than mens', structural disadvantages in their hips and knees, and in coming to Ranger school from outside the Combat Arms, which means they had to learn the skills on the fly rather than honing skills they already had. Any of these would have been a potentially crippling disadvantage. They managed the course while carrying all of them together.  That's a tremendous accomplishment whether they got extra help or not.

It happens that I had a long talk about all this with my friend, who happens also to be Uncle Jimbo's fiancee, and goes by the online nickname "Airborne Girl." She had wanted to get into Ranger school when she was in the military (and did, as the nickname suggests, successfully complete Airborne school). Indeed, she tells me that she applied for Ranger school like seventeen times. Her opinion is that it ought to be opened to women who are in positions that may require them to lead soldiers in combat, as it is the Army's best leadership course. As a signals officer, she wasn't likely to be called upon to do it, but it was far from impossible that she could find herself in the situation.

I respect that opinion. I still think the course should probably remain closed to women, as a 10% pass rate (ordinarily the pass rate is 42%) and only after the third try appears to confirm the results of previous studies involving the USMC IOC and the United Kingdom's tri-service longitudinal study of women in combat. Even if you get them through the course, they're not a good fit for the units the course is designed to support -- which is not necessarily the Ranger Regiment, but it is generally the Combat Arms. A separate leadership course for officers who may be called upon to lead soldiers in combat, but only accidentally and not for extended periods, would better support officers of the kind Airborne Girl is talking about.

What the military has actually decided to do is open BUD/S to women in an attempt to produce female Navy SEALs. That course runs for six months instead of the roughly two months of the Ranger course. Now the SEALs -- excepting DEVGRU, or "Seal Team Six" as it used to be called -- are a much larger group that we often realize, more or less the size of the 75th Ranger Regiment all told. Still, BUD/S is famously punishing, and it is very long. The risk of injury over time strikes me as the main reason to disfavor women in the combat arms: getting them through a two month school is one thing, but a six month or year long deployment in Afghanistan is something else again. Further, the Rangers and SEALs both deploy at a very high tempo, over and over again. A longer course will provide a sterner test of that capability, and it looks like we're going to see how that plays out.

All seriousness aside, the Department of the Navy is about to have a field day with the Army in the playful blood sport of inter-service rivalry jokes. I expect to see Marines mocking the Army for having a Ranger course that is easier than the USMC Infantry Officers Course (as it "must be" if women can do it) any minute now. If women pass BUD/S too the whole of the Marine Corps will become insufferable for years. If they don't, meanwhile, imagine how much fun the Navy is going to have mocking the ease of life in the Army. They've been taking constant mockery on that score from the Army for decades, and I'm sure they will take intense personal pleasure in the opportunity to give it back.

Fun with public schools.

XKCD.

Ashley Madison & dot-govs

From the Washington Times:

The list says there are 44 emails registered on the Ashley Madison site with a "WhiteHouse.gov" address.

The largest non-military user of Ashley Madison appears to be the Department of Veterans Affairs. The leaked summary shows 104 emails from "va.gov."

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is close behind, with 88 emails. The U.S. Postal Service shows 52 emails, and the Department of Homeland Security has 45.

The cheating website also has 42 emails registered from the Social Security Administration, 33 from the State Department, and six from the IRS.

The Federal Aviation Administration has 17 emails on the list, and the Labor Department has 15.

Watchdog Group: She Used Option One

A former US Army counterintelligence officer who now works for a watchdog group says he believes that Secretary Clinton used what I described as "option (1)" to get around the air gap:

Farrell said his investigation of the matter indicates that Clinton aides likely read classified documents and then digested and excerpted the material into the unclassified email system. Clinton has said she never sent any classified information on the email server and did not receive any classified information that was marked as such. “So she’s relying on the idea that somehow her deputies, Huma Abedin and Jay Sullivan, would excerpt the pertinent points out of a classified cable,” Farrell said. “They would pull those nuggets out of the classified version and restate it in an regular, unclassified conventional email on her server. And that’s what we’ve come across now.”

...

Said Farrell: “Here’s the bottom line: The secretary of state in an extraordinary and unprecedented move, set up a private email server to circumvent the conventional government classified and unclassified networks. Her aides and assistants excerpted code-word material from various classified message traffic and then took those excerpts and then sent them to her over an unclassified email server.”

Perhaps the biggest news in the story is that Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills disregarded the Federal judge's order that they give sworn statements in this matter. That is going to have consequences.

It takes a hurricane

From Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, a disturbing analysis of Katrina's forcible relocation of many of the residents of the worst bomb-crater neighborhoods in New Orleans. The removal improved not only the lives of those who moved away but also the lives of those who stayed behind.  I don't know of any way to look at these results than to conclude that there is a poor black culture that can be improved--and can be prevented from dragging down the cultures it touches--only if it remains a locally diluted minority.  If you belonged to that culture, what could be a harder message to accept?

Irony and the State Department

Classified military intelligence on Libya? Send it in an email. Details about the Iran 'secret deals'? Sorry, man, it can't leave the SCIF.

The Obama administration delivered 18 documents to Congress on July 19, in accordance with legislation requiring a congressional review of the nuclear deal. Only one of these documents is classified, while the remaining 17 are unclassified.

Yet many of these unclassified documents cannot be shared with the public or discussed openly with the press. The protocol for handling these documents, set by the State Department and carried out by Congress, is that these unreleased documents can only be reviewed ‘in camera’—a Latin term that means only those with special clearance can read them—and must be held in various congressional SCIFs.

Most staffers were hesitant to discuss—let alone share—a number of these documents, even though they’re not classified, because they require security clearances to view. By mixing a classified document with unclassified documents, critics of this arrangement contend, important facts are being kept from the public just as Congress is deciding whether to support or oppose the Iran deal.

On the upside, it's good to hear that they're suddenly taking seriously questions of proper handling procedures.

Way better than the actual debate

Bad Lip Reading

What "Secret Deal"? This is a "Confidential Agreement," Morons.

Secretary Kerry explains it all, starting at 4:45.

This is just an ordinary secret confidential deal, um, arrangement that is perfectly ordinary and standard practice in these matters. We've been doing all this for a long time. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Schlock Mercenary

Joe W. introduced me to this strip years ago, and I continue to follow it. Minor quibbles aside, it's remained impressive year after year. If you haven't read it before, you can start at the beginning and enjoy weeks of binge reading pleasure.

Well, Why Not?

Iran was already going to get to limit the citizenship of inspectors to countries with which it has normal relations. It was going to get to sign off on each individual inspector via a background check by its spy agency. So why not just let them use their own experts to inspect their military facilities?

[T]he agreement diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agency's investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied - trying to develop nuclear weapons....

The White House has denied claims by critics that a secret "side deal" favorable to Tehran exists. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the Parchin document is like other routine arrangements between the agency and individual IAEA member nations, while IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he is obligated to keep the document confidential.

But Republican critics are bound to harshly criticize any document that cedes to Iran the right to look for the very nuclear wrongdoing that it has denied committing.

Kerry says he's been briefed on this and is OK with it. Clearly our real goal cannot be to stop their nuclear program. It makes me wonder if our real goal to raise their self-esteem. Iran's got a space program too, you know -- at least, they claim that's why they want advanced ballistic missiles capable of hitting precise targets.