The Case of the 11 AM Beer

The Drudge Report picked up a Daily Telegraph story asking, "Why is Barack Obama drinking beer at 11 AM?"

I was prepared to defend the President on this one. It's a local custom for Sunday mornings.

Eleven in the morning might be considered a little early for a beer in some parts of the world, but in Bavaria breakfast is not complete without a weissbier, as the local wheat beer is called. It’s not quite as hard-drinking as it sounds: Bavarians don’t down a quick pint before heading to the office every morning. It originates in Frühschoppen - a local tradition of meeting for a drink late in the morning on Sundays and holidays.

According to Bavarian custom, the sausages cannot be eaten after 12 noon, because no preservatives are used and they are made fresh every day. Therefore those who wish to wash their sausages down with a beer must get supping before that time. The local saying is that the sausages must not be allowed to hear the church bells chime noon.

Besides, if he just flew in from D.C., it's not 11 AM in any meaningful sense for him anyway. So I was going to say that he should be given full pardon for this alleged offense.

Until the last line of the article, I was convinced of this position. But:

A local farmer told reporters Mr Obama had in fact drunk non-alcoholic beer at the breakfast.

Non-alcoholic beer in Germany? There's simply no excuse for that.

The Case of the Casbah and the Offensive American Dancer

A group in Morocco is suing American dancer Jennifer Lopez for "tarnishing women's honor and respect" with her racy performance in country. I have little doubt that the charges are fully justified by the local community standards, but the group is probably out of luck. Morocco has no extradition treaty with the United States, so the potential jail time will certainly never be served.

Last week I related The Tale of Scott Rothstein and His Golden Toilets, and mentioned among other things that Rothstein had "fled to Morocco" along with 16 million of his closest friends when it looked like the proverbial jig was up for him and his Ponzi scheme....

Not coincidentally, Morocco is one of the countries that has no extradition treaty with the United States, something that Rothstein knew because -- and this is possibly my favorite detail of the whole story, short of the golden toilets -- he made somebody in his firm research that issue for him. The project was supposedly on behalf of a "client," but he was in fact having someone research the question of where he should flee to avoid prosecution.

I was sort of hoping he called in an associate and just made that person do it, but it turns out he sent an email, apparently to everyone in the firm, saying he had a rush project for an important client. "We have a client that was a United States citizen until about 6 months ago," Rothstein wrote in the email, probably able to resist making air quotes around "client" only because he was busy typing the word. "He became a citizen of Israel and renounced his United States citizenship. He is likely to be charged with a multitude of crimes in the United States including fraud, money laundering and embezzlement." (I'm trying to imagine what people at the firm were thinking upon reading this.) Rothstein wanted them to research whether the client could be extradited from Israel, or could be prosecuted for the crimes in Israel. "This client is related to a very powerful client of ours," Rothstein continued, "and so time is of the essence. Lets [sic] rock and roll....there is a very large fee attached to this case. Thanks Love ya Scott," he concluded.

That works both ways. They get our Ponzi scheme artists, but they don't get our... er, "artists."

Who Talked?

"Dozens" of people, apparently.

Almost everything about SEAL Team 6, a classified Special Operations unit, is shrouded in secrecy — the Pentagon does not even publicly acknowledge that name — though some of its exploits have emerged in largely admiring accounts in recent years. But an examination of Team 6’s evolution, drawn from dozens of interviews with current and former team members, other military officials and reviews of government documents, reveals a far more complex, provocative tale.

Loose lips, boys.

Catholic Social Teaching, For Catholics

H/t D29:

The Church has long taught that defrauding a worker of his wages is one of the four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance (CCC 1867). In his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII echoed the words of St. James:

Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers… which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?

Again, Pope Pius XI took up the cause in Quadragesimo Anno. He made an important distinction, however, when it came to those businesses which themselves were deprived of enough revenue to pay their workers justly:

[I]f the business in question is not making enough money to pay the workers an equitable wage because it is being crushed by unjust burdens or forced to sell its product at less than a just price, those who are thus the cause of the injury are guilty of grave wrong, for they deprive workers of their just wage and force them under the pinch of necessity to accept a wage less than fair.

OK, so that's a lot of backstory. We know the Church believes this. So what?

First, there is the problem of working for the Church herself. There is no surer path to financial insolvency than for a hard worker to direct their energies towards some form of full-time Catholic apostolate, or to slave away for long hours as a Director of Religious Education, or to teach at a Catholic school.... This becomes a particular problem if they embody the Catholic ethos of “oppenness to life” and have a large family.

I suspect few individuals have ever had aspirations of becoming wealthy while working for the Church, but by the Church’s own teaching, the worker in a Catholic apostolate or school should expect to “be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.” (QA 71) It is inexcusably hypocritical that the same clergy who wield the Church’s social teaching as a weapon against the titans of industry — often claiming that this is a non-negotiable moral imperative — often fail so completely when it comes to applying this standard to those under their own employ.

Emphasis added. This is a good point. Some religious orders require a vow of poverty, but a large part of the work is done by people who do not labor under such vows. How much stronger the moral argument would be if it were joined to practical example.

Triple Crown

First in 37 years.

A French Car

A British/Hollywood ideal, American CGI, and Soviet opponents. But a French car.

Ah, New York

Actual headline: "Minnie Mouse And Hello Kitty Arrested In Times Square Brawl."

D-Day

Libertarian-Hating Day

I think we understand here that I am not personally anything like a Libertarian. However, we also know that at least two of my co-bloggers are. Half of that sample is female, which apparently makes it hugely unrepresentative. Today there's a mini-festival of hate aimed at the ideology around that fact.

Jeet Heer:

This type of yearning for the America of the Robber Barons has little to offer most women (who might not want to return to a world where they couldn’t vote and had severely restricted social lives) or for that matter most non-whites (who might recall Jim Crow segregation). As Brian Doherty notes, “American blacks or women … might find libertarian complaints about government growth silly. Most of them certainly feel freer in many important ways than they would have in the nineteenth century.”

Ann Althouse:

To put it very plainly and simply, to me, the libertarians lacked humanity and they were using their pride in their commitment to abstract ideas to resist examining the reasons why they liked the ideas they were wedded to. I think people like that would be very dangerous if they had political power. Intellectually, as people to converse with, I found them cold and rigid, not interested in talking about anything on the level that I am seeking, and creepily eager to insult me for being on the wrong level.

Kevin Drum:

Jeet Heer investigates a burning question today: why are most libertarians men? He offers several plausible explanations, but I think he misses the real one, perhaps because it's pretty unflattering to libertarians.

So here's the quick answer: hard core libertarianism is a fantasy. It's a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence.... Few women share this fantasy. I don't know why, and I don't really want to play amateur sociologist and guess. Perhaps it's something as simple as the plain observation that in the more libertarian past, women were subjugated to men almost completely.

It's not a great argument, I will suggest. The argument can be pointed equally at any political philosophy that draws inspiration from any past era. But the past is the only place from which we can draw concrete examples to criticize the present approach. We can imagine the future, but we have no way to know if our imaginations of what the future might be like are just moonshine. The past really happened. The cases aren't exactly like our present cases, but they offer concrete analogies that can help us see where we are going wrong, or where we might do better.

Althouse aside -- she's arguing ad hominem against men she really didn't like -- these arguments are rooted in a frame whose purpose is to prevent concrete criticism of the current governing approach. That's no surprise: these are all supporters of the party in power, of the governing President, and of the philosophy he embraces. The sneering at a philosophy because it draws its examples from an imperfect past is really an attempt to disable a whole line of criticism of the present.

On vacation for the next week

Driving to Meridian to spend time with the in-laws and other family.  Y'all be good to each other.

Just Out Of Curiousity...

...how do you do that?

Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.

So, if you're a man -- and not a male-leaning female-born whatever -- you have to register for the Selective Service at 18. They'd love to automate this process, since the concept is zero-noncompliance. But you actually have to go down to the Post Office and send them a card, or at least I did at 18. I assume there are other options now, but they all require you to do something. Because they assume you won't do it for free, there are significant legal penalties for failing to do it.

Most Americans like to drive. So states everywhere have passed "Motor-Voter" laws, requiring the DMV or MVA or whatever they have in their state to ask you if you want to register to vote while you're obtaining a license. Clearly, this doesn't get everyone because we're still talking about it.

Public libraries serve lots of the folks we are hoping to reach, at least we hope they do. It'd be great if they were taking advantage of free opportunities to educate themselves. So when you apply for a library card in many states, they automatically ask you if you'd like to register to vote. But there's no guarantee you go to the library, and if you do, you only need a card to check out books -- not to use the free computers.

We've chased this concept a long way already, and as far as I know we don't have a good idea of how to do what she's talking about. Maybe someone will ask her how she intends to accomplish what Selective Service, Motor-Voter and the Public Library plans haven't managed to do. Assuming, that is, that anyone is allowed to ask her a question.

The rabbit hole

Better than the Avengers.

Jobs and justice for the non-binary

Roger Kimball reports that Bryn Mawr has taken steps to address the increasingly vexing question of which of its applicants are female.  Some, of course, were "assigned female at birth," so that's smooth sailing.  The university will open its arms as well to "transwomen and . . . intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application." In fact, you can get in if you're a member of that shadowy group known as "intersex individuals who do not identify as male." The gates are resolutely shut, however, against "those assigned female at birth who have taken medical or legal steps to identify as male."

What new opportunities for padding the administration the new policy offers! You may have a dozen deans of diversity, but how many administrators looking into the “legal or medical steps taken to affirm gender” do most campuses have? It is an opportunity for growth at a time when many colleges are facing cutbacks.

The one thing we can be sure of is that Bryn Mawr will continue to celebrate its vital role as a women-only institution.

Science and Humility

Rick Santorum, who is a Knight of the Order of St. John of Malta, expressed an opinion to the Pope to the effect that the Church should leave science to scientists.

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists,” he told the pope. “I think when we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible. And I’ve said this to the bishops many times when they get involved in agriculture policy or things like that, that are really outside the scope of what the church’s main message is.”

Despite what the linked article says, this isn't a stupid point. It's also not limited to global-warming/climate-change arguments. It's a generalized approach to the relationship between the Church and science that isn't foolish. If God is the author of the world, then finding out about the world is a way to know something about God by knowing something about his works. It would be irreligious to bias that process, as if trying to tell God how he had to have set things up.

It turns out the Pope probably agrees with that sentiment: he has a Master's degree in chemistry, and was a working chemist in his youth.

Being a scientist means that you have to embrace the fact that you don’t know everything. That you need to be constantly searching for the truth. It’s hard to stay humble as Pope in the extravagant confines of the Vatican. But from all accounts, the new Pope has humility in spades. He lived in an apartment rather than the Archbishop’s palace. He traveled by bus rather than chauffeured limousine. Humility makes one open to change – and change is something that the Church desperately needs now.

That seems to be the considered opinion of every generation. They forget, or perhaps simply reject, that part of the function of the Church is to restrain passion in favor of proven virtue. If your change is right, it will eventually win the day. But it will have to test itself and prove its rightness against a bulwark of wisdom that has done the same, in its time. Many passionately-believed ideas arise, flourish an hour, and then perish. Many such are flourishing right now. Some of them may prove out, but many such ideas will fade in popularity once their consequences become better known.

Chimp Cookery

Researchers built an oven for some chimpanzees, and the chimps worked out how to cook with it for themselves.

Well, no, but that's what they're claiming they found. What they actually found was that chimps can learn to play games involving trading things they like less for things they like more.

The device was actually just a bowl with a false bottom that held cooked food. The researchers didn't use fire because it could have injured the chimps, and because some chimps might have already seen how humans used it to cook food.

So what we haven't learned is how early man came to control fire, or how he learned to cook -- let alone how he learned to build an oven! Fire's too dangerous for the chimps, and no oven construction is being observed.

Boston Mosque Update

So the FBI's victim, that guard at the local mosque who didn't "regularly" pray there, turns out to be the brother of one of the imams. Jimbo is on the case, along with some video of gun-and-sword preaching from another imam there.

Even for HRC, this is bad PR

Her Inevitableness will take no questions.  The speech will be her interview.

The campaign disavows the expression, but it's too apt not to stick.

Local experiments

My husband argues that, no matter how beastly things look in the federal elections, there's an encouraging red wave at the state level.  I'm skeptical whether that's enough, but he's clearly right about the breakout of some kinds of conservative principles in state houses, many of the sort that probably won't even be overturned by federal courts or Congress.  In Nevada, for instance, the governor has just signed several bills calculated to give Harry Reid hives.  A new school choice program will put 90% of the average cost of public schooling into parents' hands for any educational purpose they choose, including tutoring or private school tuition (the percentage goes to 100% for certain disadvantaged students).  A few other states have programs that venture a bit in this direction, but are strictly limited to students with disabilities or students in schools formally identified as "failing."  Nevada's experiment in school choice is wide open.  My own governor is about to sign an open-carry and campus-carry law.

At the same time, blue cities are revolting against red legislatures, thus setting up an entertaining argument over whether too much local control leads to patchwork regulatory systems, with some conservatives taking the pro-uniformity position.

Don't Be That Guy

So I can understand carrying a rifle to a protest outside a mosque linked to an attack by men with rifles on a gathering you support. That sends a message that anyone thinking they can intimidate the American people into surrendering our basic rights through violence is going to meet some significant resistance.

What I don't understand is carrying a rifle loaded with a 100-round drum magazine to the airport just to make a point. What point? Well, it's not really clear, but he did feel harassed by all the police attention.

Is the Koran Grammatically Correct?

I have no way of evaluating this argument, since I do not know any Classical Arabic, but it seems like it would be pretty explosive if it's true. Supposedly the Koran is the direct recitation of words transmitted to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Perhaps Gabriel speaks in a regional patois?