unhyphenatedconservative

2006-09-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

My Own Man

The blogging's been light (non-existent!) because I am my own man now.

This is my second month as a solo practitioner. I meant to commemorate the first day with an entry but was too busy. I guess that's a good sign:)

But so far, self-employment has been good to me. A bit of a bleg, however, on what folks have found to be the most cost effective form of advertising.

2006-09-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

Nip/Tuck

The show used to be a guilty pleasure for me.

But the more that I watch it, the more that I thnk that it must be the most subversively traditionalist show on TV.

What appears to be the glamorization of a shallow, decadent lifestyle is anything but. Get beneath the surface and you see that the materialist, secularized culture is amazingly destructive. The ladies' man is utterly lost and confused. His mid-life crisis sidekick is so obsessed with physical perfection that he would kill his unborn son, an especially effective indictment given that his first son is not his biologically. And the children in the show are all shattered by their parents' hedonistic selfishness.

So get your liberal friends watching. They might learn something.

2006-07-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

What Will We Do?

Israel fights Hamas and Hizbollah, the latter an organization which slaughtered our marines in Beirut.

Do we let Israel fight? Do we let them win?

Our do we join Professor Bainbridge and the international intelligensia? Do we cripple ourselves as we fight an enemy dedicated to our destruction? Oh, how proud we'll be that we didn't lower ourselves as they slit our throats.

Come down from the ivory tower folks or just keep your trap shut.

2006-06-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Know Your Role!

Susan Estrich joins the rest of the legal world in lamenting that a bagel maker - bagel maker! - had the temerity to run against a sitting judge and win.

It's the public's fault of course. They ignored ABA ratings. And, as Estrich warns us, the desire to secure our border translates directly to voting against people with foreign sounding names.

I understand Estrich's pain. That a robed master at any level deigns to submit to elections is demaning enough. To actuall lose that election is one slight too much.

2006-05-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

Never Forget

I've been too busy to blog. But today I have no excuse. While I'm barecuing with my family and playing with my nieces and nephew, our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are risking it all for us.

Nothing I can say can pay them fr their sacrifice. But to those brave souls, I express my heartfelt gratitude and prayers for their safety as they offer their lives for our safety.

Thank you.

2006-05-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

So What Do They Sign Up For?

"I don't think members of our military sign up to stand at the border for their two or three year tour of duty."

So says Dick Cheney on Limbaugh today.

You tell me. Would our troops rather be protecting Muslims in Kosovo or Americans in San Diego? We have plenty of troops to guard Germany but the President can only muster 6000 for our homeland.

The sad thing is, this administration has sold itself on being a "war administration." If a Democrat ran a war like this, we'd be screaming impeachment.

2006-04-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

La Reconquista Marches On

A Mexican version of the Star Spangled Banner, with brand new words because the old one forgot to genuflect to illegals

Bienvenidos a Mexico del Norte, folks.

2006-04-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

All Kneel Before McCain?

Rice at Southern Appeal makes a pretty weak case for supporting John McCain. Basically, it comes down to the hope that McCain might appoint acceptable philosopher kings.

2006-04-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

A Tort Worth Having

The Supreme Court likes foreign law. How about this? Hat tip to Southern Appeal.

California, in its enlightenment, has specifically banned torts relating to breaking up marriages, including making divorces no-fault. Like most such "progressive" measures, this has helped to weaken the family and increase social instability.

Spouses and the children of broken marriages are harmed by adultery. They deserve the right to be made whole, or at least as whole as the law allows.

2006-04-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

Straight Talk?

Today, commentators have pointed out that U.S. flags outnumber Mexican flags at today's marches.

KFI reports that this is because Spanish talk radio and march organizers ordered their followers to leave the Mexican flags at home.

But they're just here to work.

2006-04-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove, Boy Blunder?

Shouldn't political genius Karl Rove be concerned that the immigration bill the Bush White House has pushed is championed by Diane Feinstein, Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy.

Let's face it, conservatives, we've been suckered.

2006-04-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

Silver Lining

I've walked precincts for a while. If this amnesty abomination passes, it'll save me some shoe leather because there's no way I'm stumping for a GOP that has utterly divorced itself from conservatism.

2006-04-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

"Money Means Everything"

So says a self-described Wall Street Journal Republican who called into Rush today.

I couldn't coin a better catchphrase for the Mammonist Right.

2006-04-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

Now This Is Straight Talk

Poor John McCain. So used to find folks fawning over him, McCain was booed by union members today.

Hint, John. When you sponsor an amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy that will run down the wages of American laborers, don't go to a building union.

Watch for McCain to sponsor new legislation to ban "unfair" campaign actions like not throwing roses at his feet.

2006-03-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

Viva la Reconquista!

Half a million folks on the streets protesting America enforcing its own laws. Well, at least some protestors thought to bring an odd U.S. flag to waive alongside that of their home country.

On Fox News Sunday today, "conservative" Bill Kristol smugly stated that Bush's amnesty proposal will pass because it has the business community behind it. It's nice to know that when Bush comes to shove, he'll stand tall for American interests. At least, that is, until it conflicts with business interests.

2006-03-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

Arguments Americans Just Won't Buy

Robert Samuelson explodes the arguments that the Mammonist Right uses to justify open borders.

It's about the national interest, not corporate profits.

2006-03-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

And Afghanistan Is The Success Story For Imposing Democracy On Islam.

Afghanistan says court to decide fate of convert.

Didn't Bush say something about everyone wanting freedom or something? Maybe someone should cc: the Muslim world on that memo.

2006-03-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Go To Hell Sounds Pretty Good To Me

Richard Lowry decries the possibility of To Hell With Them Conservatives, an group who believes that some civilizations are, well, uncivilizable. I call these folks (me included) realists. The idea of vast social engineering is the sort of thing for which conservatives mock liberals. Now it's become our national destiny?

John Derbyshire offers a good critique of Lowry's misty eyed utopianism here.

2006-03-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

Medved Equals GOP Hack

Michael Medved now claims that big spending is not the fault of the GOP, despite its being the party in power.

That must be some damned powerful Kool-Aid.

2006-03-16T22:02:00.001-08:00

The Sell Out Continues

The country club commentator set on Fox's Special Report is waxing rhapsodic about the new amnesty bill set to pass the Senate. Yes, President bush is about to embrace yet another of ted Kennedy's pieces of legislation. And the education bill worked so well.

It's time to go to the barricades. The Mammonist Right and Internationalist Left see America as simply an economic entity (of which the top tier is most important) or a gravy rain to the Third World. It's funny to see men and women from the GOP who pride themselves on their patriotism surrender (or welcome) an invasion that threatens to further erode the quality of life for poor and average Americans.

But hey, Brit Hume and Mort Kondracke will be spared the indignity of mowing their own lawns. So all is well.

2006-03-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

What Is Conservatism?

When discussing whether we should exercise oversight of foreign investment, Michael Medved made an interesting comment. Medved, an open borders on the sly type, stated that such oversight (paraphrasing here) "gives control to the government, rather than the free market. That's not conservative."

Excuse me? When did conservatism become profit uber alles? Is he saying that there should be no technology controls? American firms like Loral should not be punished for selling the Chinese advanced technology that allows them to better aim their weapons? American businesses should not be punished for assisting terrorists?

This is a telling slip of the tongue. There is a mutant strain in conservatism that worships profit at the expense of the national interest. To them, America is not important as a nation but simply a marketplace.

It's funny. Liberals hate Christian conservatives. The real threat to America is not those seeking traditional values. It is the Mammonist conservatives who would sell their mother for a profit.

2006-03-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

Cracks In The Foundation

Bruce Bartlett's Impostor and Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons are out. Theese books attack the current GOP establishment for its betrayal of conservatism.

I'm waiting for my copies from the library. From what I've read of them so far, I agree with some critiques and not others. But I'm looking forward to these reads.

The big story here is that the boogeyman tactic might be losing its edge. Conservatives are realizing that slavish devotion to Republican politicians will earn us only their scorn.

2006-02-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

Mr. 1000

I got 1000 hits! I got 1000! I got 1000!

Just thought I'd crow a little.

2006-02-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Hearts And Minds

I am sick of the talk about the necessity to win the hearts and minds of our enemies.

From Sherman to Patton, we have won wars not by wooing our enemies but by devastating them to the point where they knew they lost. The South, the Germans and Japanese did not lay down arms and submit because they thought we were wonderful people. Their cities were burned, the cream (and then some) of their manhood lay rotting and their will broken. Quite simply, they knew that their ideology, their government and they themselves had been crushed.

In Iraq, the various factions know no such things. From the beginning, they saw an America too gun shy to stop looting. Then they saw an America too timid to rout out Fallujah. They hear stories of officers being disciplined for aggressive interrogation and laugh in their cups as we get our panties in a twist about panties on the head.

Why should we be surprised that now the various factions act as if they won the war and now begin battling over the spoils?

2006-02-26T08:14:00.000-08:00

You've Got To Be Joking

Fran Townsend, a Bush security adviser, again repeats the White House question of why an Arab country and its businesses should be treated differently than the British. This came up when Chris Wallace asked her if Dubai Ports World would be privy to our security plans. She refused to answer, so I'll take that as a yes.

The answer is stunningly simple and the President's supporters always refer to it when they want to quiet criticism: September 11 and 3000 dead.

Bush pounds his chest that he is a war President who defends America and thus we should ignore his profligate spending and betrayal of conservative principles.

Yet grandma is still treated like a terrorist at airports. Our borders are easier to crash than a frat house kegger. We play at war with kid gloves while insurgents know that we will not crush their strong holds because every square foot of Iraq is the "most sacred" some such or other.

America has won wars by acting like it is at war. We crushed our enemies and slaughtered their armies. We didn't hand over our ports to "allies" with checkered pasts and unclear presents.

2006-02-23T19:44:00.000-08:00

My Deepest Appreciation

I just noticed that this little blog is linked at Southern Appeal as a Man of the West.

Thanks guys. It's an honor to get ontice by folks one respects. And I thought I noticed more traffic lately.

But do I have to buy a duster now?

2006-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Elites On The Port Deal: Americans Should Just Shut Up And Listen To Their Betters

Rush Limbaugh and other commentators have dismissed opposition to the port deal as simply the panick of the befuddled masses. Indeed, Limbaugh sees opposition as some sort of union conspiracy to keep the ports out of UAE hands. Americans, according to this view, should simply worship Mammon and accept the trade as part of our national security.

This highlights a great divide in our nation. The elites are enthralled with globalization. Limbaugh loves the profits of offshoring. Bush has messianic notions that we can create democracies and peace no matter the culture. And liberals love anything that makes American sovereignty less important.

The average people see the underbelly of these theories. Factories close. Foreign - and sometimes hostile - nations amass our debts and become our bankers. Terrorists gain control of governments via the ballot box.

The basic argument of these forces is that trade ties create peace. Tell that to the French and Chinese who saw their Axis trading partners decide that while profit is fun, their national interests are even more important.

2006-02-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

Arabophobia and Islamophobia (Also Called "Intelligence")

I'm an Araphobe and Islamophobe. Call me crazy, but cultures that slaughter people over cartoons and cheer the slamming of airplanes into office buildings must be feared.

It's about survival, folks.

2006-02-22T21:42:00.000-08:00

We're Your Friends, So Deal With Us Or Else!

The newest argument in favor of the port sell-out is that if we don't deal with the Arabs, they won't like us.

So be it, so long as they fear us.

2006-02-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

If He Walks Like A Liberal

Chris Roach calls Bush's policy "suicidal liberalism" that avoids controversy and promotes cronyism.

A sample of his analysis:

For Bush to acknowledge the risks of such a foreign presence would
contradict the universalist principles undergirding his domestic and foreign
policy agendas. In this way of thinking, people are interchangeable, culture
does not matter, and all people everywhere want to become a bland, consumerist
facsimile of America. This view focuses excessively on the structures of
government and law; you give people proper institutions and let the invisible
hand of democratic capitalism work its magic. When particular peoples' inherited
culture proves an obstacle--in Iraq or Latin America, for example--this only
shows that we need more democracy and more liberalism. This is one reason Bush
could care less if the entire Third World moves to America; in his mind, so long
as we're democratic and capitalist any changes they bring are superficial and
not matters of principle. And this is also the chief reason he has such a huge
blind spot for the limits of democracy as a solution to the illiberal and
pathological cultures of the Middle East.
And:
Under Bush's grandiose philosophy, his role is not to advance the parochial and particular good of America, even when their interest is as basic as self-defence. It's instead to suport the triumph of these universal values. We all are being asked to take one for the team. And the team is not our country. The team is the whole human race, which would supposedy recoil in horror if we behaved like a normal, preliberal society. Why else have we not done more to deport illegals after 9/11? Why else hasn't Bush spoken out forcefully about the Muslim overraction to a few cartoons in an obscure Danish paper? Why else do people in other nations (such as Nigerian Christians) react sodifferently and more predictably compared to westeners when they're harassed by Muslim minorities?
For Bush, America is the creedal nation. And the creed supercedes the objective interests of that nation in things like national security, job security, stable ethnic relations, and the dominance of the English langage and our historical Christian culture. Like so much else in liberalism, our objective decline and endangerment is justified as the supposed march of universal justice. Our meek defenses are recast as offensive "attacks." This is why James Burnham called liberalism an "ideology of western suicide." It functions to redefine our destruction as a good thing that we should welcome.

2006-02-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

Bush Has Jumped The Shark

Bush won't veto massive pork laden bills. Indeed, he hasn't vetoed anything.

But if Congress says that he can't hand over our ports to a Muslim government, then he'll find the veto pen.

A war President. Yeah.

2006-02-20T20:03:00.000-08:00

And Now For Some Comic Relief

Jimmy Carter gives advice on handling the Mideast.

I don't even need to say another word.

2006-02-17T22:46:00.000-08:00

He Remembers That He's A "War President," Right?

Okay. We're supposed to ignore ballooning deficits, an ever expanding Federal government and a general betrayal of conservatism because Bush is "a wartime president" and thus should not be criticized.

Fair enough.

But maybe Bush should keep his part of the deal. And signing over control of some of our biggest ports to a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates is certainly not in keeping with that role. Why Bush defends this deal is unfathomable.

Free trade has become a religious vision in some quarters of the GOP. It serves to justify dealing with China, making a rival stronger. Now we are told that giving an Arab nation control of our ports, and access to the security procedures protecting those ports, is in America's interests.

Rome is burning.

2006-02-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

Just Keep Telling Yourself Free Trade Is Good

America's trade deficit hits an all time high. Again.

And China cheats. When the Wall Street Journal runs a story about China's bad trade behavior, something big must be up.

Folks, we're witnessing the sell off of America by elites who would feel more comfortable in Davos than Dayton.

2006-02-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

Tom Smith Gets It

I took corporations and contracts with Tom Smith at University of San Diego. The type of insight he displays in his comments on the the social responsibility of corporations is what made him one of my favorite professors. And before you think that these are just the rantings of a wild eyed leftist, read his blog.

Professor Bainbridge takes one view, that corporations are responsible for making their shareholders' money, with no moral constraints found outside of the law. Smith disagrees, arguing that "[t]his strikes [him] as very silly, and [he doubts that] anyone who is serious about morality at all really believes it. The idea that a bunch of people coordinating their actions are somehow suddenly released from moral restraints is ridiculous on its face."

This seems eminently reasonable. After all, think of what corporations are. Simply put, they are fictional entities treated as persons. And they have the marked advantage that an investor can only lose his investment in liabilities, rather than all of his assets.

This is an amazingly huge advantage. If you and I run someone down in the road, we can lose our homes. If a Pizza Hut driver does the same thing, investors only lose their shares.

This is an economically efficient legal fiction. However, the advantage it confers also brings responsibility. After all, should not the corporations owe responsibility to the very societies that allow their existence?

Trading with China, a nation that can only be described as rivaling America (at best) should be considered troublesome in that it provides hard currency to that nation's government. However, helping that government oppress its own citizens is simply unforgivable.

2006-02-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

Ah, The Religion of Peace, or, Why Wilsonianism Is Not Conservative Foreign Policy.

I've heard President Bush's speeches. I've read Sharansky's book.

And then I see these images via Drudge.

"Freedom go to Hell." That about sums it up. Despite what the President and his well intentioned idealist advisors intone, some cultures are not ready for democracy.

Hitler came to power through free elections. And, given the creation of Hamasistan, it may be happening again for a new generation.

2006-02-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

Midwifing A Terrorist State

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador, was on Cavuto's show today saying that his office has proof of links between Hamas and al Queda. He further claims that once Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip, Bin Laden's boys moved in.

In supporting a Palestinian state, America has been midwife to a terrorist state: Hamasistan.

2006-01-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

For This I Sped Home?

I have a court hearing tomorrow and had a nightmare case this afternoon. But I sped home tonight to watch the State of the Union Address.

And what did I get.

Lot's of compassion. From the President's proposals, this means lots more foreign aid, (yet more) expansion of federal programs and a general retreat from small government.

On the economic side, the President denies he's for amnesty (but offers no way to deal with the millions of illegals within our borders) but for guest workers (without any hint of what to do when guests don't want to go home). Exporting jobs to China is good (even though they have threatened to nuke us over Taiwan) but trying to protect the American manufacturing base is bad.

Oh yeah. He said something about marriage. That should take care of social conservatives through November.

And on foreign policy, somehow the creation of Hamasistan is a success.

Screw it. I guess I'm an isolationist. I have this crazy notion that American troops should be used in order to protect America, not to create an environment in which terrorists become elected governments. And remind me, why are we in Kosovo protecting Muslims while their co-religionists think up new and better ways to kill our fellow citizens? And where exactly does the Constitution give the federal government the authority to tax me to pay for African AIDS cases?

And I guess I'm a protectionist. I think building China's industrial base is a bad idea. Given that Google has punked and works with China's censors, the hoary old excuse that sending tons of hard currency to China will create freedom is something that not even Jack Abramoff would argue.

And I must be a pessimist because I don't want a GOP President to work with a GOP Congress to GIP me out of taxes for more government programs.

But Bush said marriage. So I'll go vote Republican in November.

2006-01-29T08:23:00.000-08:00

Pence Might Get It
Congressman Gary Pence nails Bush perfectly: "He is conservative but he is not a conservative."

In other words, Bush is an honorable man in his personal life and does not lead a life of wild abandon.

Politically, however, it is a a ddiferent story. Bush's policies have led us to explosions in spending, a huge new entitlement program, an amnesty proposal to illegal immigrants and a foreign policy that has resulted in the formation of Hamzistan. Clearly, this is not conservative governance.

2006-01-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

Perfection Or Nothing!

Professor Bainbridge likes the flood of cheap labor into America. We get that.

But his latest argumentt is of Hewittean stupidity. He points to a recently discovered border tunnel as proof that walls do not work.

That's right. If a solution is not one hundred percent effective, it must go.

If this is the sort of logic he uses in class, some kids better be getting their money back.

Update:

It appears the Professor has taken his ball and gone home. After a perfunctory protest that he was not demanding enforcement be 100% effective, he then insinuated that opponents of illegal immigrants have sinister motives.

Two thoughts:
1. Grow some gonads, Prof. If you're going to call someone racist, call them racist. Don't make some snide comment and chuckle into your wine about how clever you are. It's not cleverness, its cowardice.

I'll give you an example. I could make a roundabout remark that you are Catholic and that most Latin Americans are Catholic, thus there must be a sinister motive for your desire to flood America with the Third World's economic refugees.

But I'll practice what I preach and say it right out. You support illegals because they help keep a scandal ridden Church from facing the same decline in membership that mainline Protestant denominations have faced.

Now that is clarity, Professor. That's putting the issue on the table to debate, rather than your mealy mouthed sniping at Tom Tancredo.

2. You closed the comments after 16 posts. Outside of your last comment, no one was personally attacking anyone else. I know it's your blog and all but it is pretty petty to stop comments simply because your post was getting skewered.

I thought that your logic might merit a refund to your students. Now that you've shown an inability to handle civil disagreement any better than my three-year-old nephew, I know those kids are due some money back.

2006-01-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

He's A War President, Right?

President Bush prides himself on being a "war president." You'd think that things like hundreds of incursions by foreign troops would get some response, right? Or a standoff of foreign troops against our law enforcement?

President Bush has quieted criticisms of his profligate spending, cronyism and lip service to social conservatives by wrapping himself in the national security mantle. Yet he allows our border to be crashed with the ease of a high school kegger.

Is cheap labor more important than our sovereignty? Sadly, the President seems to think so.

2006-01-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

Democracy, the Mideast and American Interests

I supported the Iraq War because I felt Saddam was a threat to America. The Administration's high minded talk about democratizing the Mideast was not a selling point for me; indeed, it gave me serious misgivings.

It appears the Hamas wins prove these concerns valid. Democratically elected killers are still killers. After all, even Hitler came to power through democratic votes.

As the President, his staff and pundits wax rhapsodically about bringing democracy to the Mideast, we should be wary of the popular will in a part of the world that views suicide bombing as a sacrament.

2006-01-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

And Hollywood Wonders Why The Audience Isn't There?

Shockingly, a movie designed to offend half the country (at least) is the apple of Hollywood's eye.

Leave aside the glamorization of homosexuality. How about adultery? I guess in Hollywood's anything goes culture, no one cares.

Maybe after another year of losses, someone in Hollywood will start caring.

2006-01-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

Well, She Would Know About Plantations...

Hillary Clinton calls the House GOP a plantation.

This is a poor choice of words for a woman whose party championed slavery and segregation. The current Democratic Party positions on abortion, welfare and school choice still disproportionately harm blacks.

2006-01-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

Shocking Turn Of Events: Murderer Also A Liar!

It turns out that Roger Keith Coleman, the great white hope for anti-death penalty activists, actually did rape and kill his sister-in-law.

News reports indicate that anti-death penalty activists were disappointed at having the wool pulled over their eyes. However, they were not as disappointed as the woman who he raped and murdered or her family who watched him turned into a hero.

2006-01-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

Don't Blame Me, I Voted For McClintock!

Perhaps it was the spill from the bike. Or perhaps Gov. Schwarzenegger just isn't any type of conservative, fiscal or otherwise.

During the recall, the conservative establishment was star struck by the Gropernator and talk show host busted out the gubernatorial kneepads to hang out with Arnie. They threw Tom McClintock under the bus, despite his having actual experience ad actual conservative positions. The Gropernator's candidacy and victory meant, well, hanging out with a movie star!

And now we reap the results of this "foresight." Can anyone tell me what the state is doing spending $72 million to get folks too enroll for welfare ? Did California's credit rating suddenly stop being the worst in the nation? Did our debt service ratio suddenly stop being at historic highs?

Or did the Gropernator just get bored with even the pretense of sound governance?

When someone tries to argue that Republican means conservative, just remind them of this.

2006-01-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

Don't Blame Me, I Voted For McClintock!

Perhaps it was the spill from the bike. Or perhaps Gov. Schwarzenegger just isn't any type of conservative, fiscal or otherwise.

During the recall, the conservative establishment was star struck by the Gropernator and talk show host busted out the gubernatorial kneepads to hang out with Arnie. They threw Tom McClintock under the bus, despite his having actual experience ad actual conservative positions. The Gropernator's candidacy and victory meant, well, hanging out with a movie star!

And now we reap the results of this "foresight." Can anyone tell me what the state is doing spending $72 million to get folks too enroll for welfare ? Did California's credit rating suddenly stop being the worst in the nation? Did our debt service ratio suddenly stop being at historic highs?

Or did the Gropernator just get bored with even the pretense of sound governance?

When someone tries to argue that Republican means conservative, just remind them of this.

2006-01-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

Is This Theft?

Dennis Prager has taken to relating a story about an individual who went into a camera store, took a decently long period of time asking questions about a particular product and then asked the clerk where she could find it priced cheaper online.

Dennis calls this theft. I disagree.

While certainly rude and terrible behavior, I do not see it as stealing for a couple of reasons. Keep in mind here as well that I have been in retail for about 10 years and still pick up some retail hours on the weekend to earn money for birthdays and Christmas.

First, during that time, the clerk should have determined whether she was just casually shopping or not. I realize Dennis probably considers this blaming the victim but I do not because making such a determination is vital to sales. It effects how you'll deal with the customer throughout the whole transaction. Plus, the clerks nowadays need to anticipate e-competitors and let customers know why buying at their location is the best deal.

Secondly, let's say that the customer did buy online. She will still need services like repairs that e-tailers are less likely to provide. In addition, though this is less true with cameras, any consumables will probably be bought in the store. And when the customer needs these things that e-commerce is much less convenient for, which store do you think she'll go to?

Comments?

2006-01-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

More Libertarians And Kids

I was listening to KFI last night and the host was pointing to an interesting problem (raised in relation to cases involving child sex abuse and child neglect) that in many cases, adults have been acting like children. He also barely scratched the surface of the converse, that children have been forced to act as adults.

I've commented before that I believe that a libertarian society is not good for the raising of children. And this is precisely why. A society in which the highest end of public policy is simply to facilitate the pleasure of its citizens, children are going to have to grow up pretty damned fast.

Think about it. No-fault divorce has led to two generations of children who must, in many cases, choose which parent with whom they want to live. That's about as adult a decision as you can get. Then, in many cases, they end up raising themselves because no matter how great a single parent is, (and my mom did an excellent job as a single mother) that arrangement is simply not as stable as a two parent household. It is only logical that the children of divorce should be more accurately be called the little adults of divorce.

But it goes beyond the libertarian tendency to break down the traditional family. A libertarian attitude that couples unbounded sexual freedom with limitless freedom of speech has created a popular culture that is drenched in sex and targets younger and younger consumers. Thus we have five year olds mimicking the dry hump "dancing" of Shakira and Britney Spears.

This problem, a consumer culture that wishes to consume our children, is exacerbated because conservatism has become infected with a libertarian tendency that sanctifies the actions of large corporations. To a certain breed of conservative, it just feels wrong to claim that regulation is actually necessary to protect our culture. And so conservatism is divided as giants like Time Warner market sex and violence to our children and huge retailers sell lingerie for preteens.

Conservatives, and our culture at large, has a decision to make. Is the exercise of momentary lust so important that we will rob our children of their childhood? Is it so important that grownups be able to seek contentment at whim that they force 8 year olds to go on 18?

Simply put, will the adults start to act like adults again?

2006-01-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

Roe and Precedent

On Fox News Sunday, Senator Dianne Feinstein says that the fact that Roe has been precedent for 32 years, that it is now off limits and that opposition to Roe is grounds for a filibuster.

Well let's see, Plessy v. Ferguson was decided in 1896. Brown v. Board of Education came up in 1954. Does Sen. Feinstein mean to say that Brown was wrongly decided and that children should have remained segregated because the Court said so some 58 years earlier.

The allegiance of a Justice (and a Senator) is to the Constitution, not the usurpations of power of Courts long past.

2006-01-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

Libertarians And Kids

Over at Reason.com, Stuart Anderson has an interesting piece on what he views as libertarianism hidden in some children's books. I find it interesting for two reasons.

First, is the question of whether he is really describing full throated libertarianism or simply conservatism? After all, the two overlap but they are certainly not the same philosophies.

For example, the books he cites oppose totalitarian governments that impose draconian family planning regimes, central planning of careers and execution of the old and infirm. I'll give him that the example of Messenger, with its open borders theme, is most definitely not conservative. But otherwise. The values that oppose totalitarianism and euthanasia are conservative.

Indeed, one should note that in discussing Amongst the Hidden, Anderson quotes the author as viewing China as the model for her dystopia. Yet the libertarian policy for dealing with China - and any other dictatorship that can keep its wage and environmental standards low - is to move in, industrialize the nation and make sure that plenty of hard currency flows in to build up that nation's military. Alas, this religious dedication to free trade has now infected many who call themselves conservatives, even though it does not seem calculated to conserve America's advantage over a nation aiming nuclear missiles at us.

But that is a digression. I found this piece interesting for another reason as well. Quite simply, the idea of libertarian children's books is amazing because libertarian literature in general ignores the existence of children. This phenomenon is discussed in the book Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work, in which the author make the convincing case that in its hedonism, libertarianism is incompatible with raising and socializing children. After all, if the family is simply the vehicle to help adults fulfill their momentary whims, its core role of raising and protecting children vanishes.

So the idea of a libertarian canon of children's literature is interesting. And I think that the libertarian hostility to policies fostering the traditional family is why libertarians must take conservative themes and claiming them as their own. After all, the last two generations have had their lives riven with divorce. Those children are unlikely to view the libertarian social policies that helped melt down the nuclear family with anything but suspicion.

2006-01-04T15:53:00.000-08:00

And You Wonder Why The Media Is Unloved?

Michelle Malkin posts this explanation of the tragic misreporting of the Pennsylvania mine incident. It is an e-mail submitted by an anonymous TV insider.

Apparently, it's the locals fault that the media did not stop to verify the story because "[t]he media was not allowed in the church where the family was gathered, and they were not allowed in the command center." Apparently someone committed the great sin of "shoving a CNN camera away." Why don't people understand that the First Amendment guarantees the rights of reporters to be worshipped while feasting on the tragedy of others?

And why would the people not shower roses on the media biggies who came to town? In the same letter by the TV insider :

In small towns like this, where the closest most people get to a TV camera is when Uncle Joe brings it out for Billy's birthday party, the information infrastructure isn't in place like it is in a big city. Officials are not savvy when it comes to disseminating information. Many of them have an actively hostile attitude towards anyone with a microphone.

Well, at least he didn't make fun of gap teeth and insinuate incest between the family members of the victims.

With attitudes like this, is it any wonder that no one wanted reporters inside the church with grieving families or in the command center with people trying to actually do something productive? It is this very arrogance by the elite media that brings the contempt they whine about.

When will they learn?

2006-01-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

Trust Us, We're Scientists

Secularists seeking to dethrone God have given us scientists to act as the new priests. Thus, as traditionalists protest the destruction of embryos for stem cells and the cloning of humans, we are told that scientific ethics will stop horrors from happening.

Just as the abrogation of politics to the courts has caused grave harm to our society, surrendering decisions about technology to the scientists has the capacity to lead to a moral dark age.

Scientists are people. They have pressures and ambitions. It lead to the South Korean scandal. What happens when it leads to results far more horrifying than a hoax?

It's our world, folks. It's our responsibility.

2006-01-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

Does a Dead Duck Santorum Cook Conservative Gooses?

Jeremy at What Now declares Rick Santorum a dead duck in the wake of his bashing of the Thomas More Law Center in the Pennsylvania ID debate.

And indeed Santorum looks to be in trouble. His opponent is popular and, in a rare move for the Dems, does not advocate infanticide on demand. Even worse for Santorum, conservatives feel betrayed by his support for Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey. His newest retreat from ID will not bring conservative admiration either.

However, no matter how much right conservatives have to feel betrayed, Santorum is right now the indispensable man. He has become so intimately identified with conservative policy that his defeat will be treated by the MSM as a repudiation of conservatism. And the GOP establishment will take it as a signal to engage in further surrender to liberals.

So conservatives looking to exact their pound of flesh should be looking to punish the liberal members of Congress. A Santorum loss is a victory for the Left.

2006-01-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

So Does the Journal Lock Its Doors At Night?

"We have a supply and a demand problem. The supply problem is coming across the border. We are in this bill doing something very specific about that with the inclusion of the amendment, with the passage of the amendment, to build some barrier along at least 700 miles of our southern border. I hope we continue with that, by the way, along the entire border, to the extent it is feasible, and the northern border we could start next."

-- Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., Colo.)

Journal: So there you have it. Tom Tancredo has done everyone a favor by stating plainly the immigration rejectionists' end-game -- turn the United States into the world's largest gated community. The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration "reform" bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.

Me: A question here. Do the editors of the Journal live in gated communities or in apartments that require being buzzed in? Do the doors of the Journal’s office get locked at night? I think the answer to these questions is likely yes.

Why does the Journal wish to deny to America the right to lock its own doors? Is the idea of actually paying American workers decent wages that loathsome?

Journal: For the past two decades, border enforcement has been the main focus of immigration policy; by any measure, the results are pitiful. According to the Migration Policy Institute, "The number of unauthorized migrants in the United States has risen to almost 11 million from about four million over the past 20 years, despite a 519% increase in funding and a 221% increase in staffing for border patrol programs."

Me: If the enforcement programs were incredibly underfunded to being with, huge increases in spending might still be a drop in the bucket.

Plus, over the past tow decades, we have not had administrations willing to enforce the border. Neither Bush administration nor the Clinton administration were all that keen on protecting America’s borders. I will grant, however, that the Republicans and Democrats had vastly different reasons for selling America out.

Journal: Given that record, it's hard to see the House Republican bill as much more than preening about illegal immigration. The legislation is aimed at placating a small but vocal constituency that wants the borders somehow sealed, come what may to the economy, American traditions of liberty or the Republican Party's relationship with the increasingly important Latino vote.

Me: Okay, let’s ignore the studies that show vast majorities of Americans want the border enforced. I mean, 70% of Americans is just a noisy minority, right?

How do Hispanics feel? According to an August 2005 Pew study, 56% of Hispanics feel that immigration from down South should remain the same or even be decreased. 53% of Latino voters favor denying driver’s licenses to illegals.

So the Journal’s plan of turning America into a flophouse in order to buy votes seems pretty short sighted. Why do I think that the Journal would have published editorials praising Esau’s brilliant deal with Jacob?

Journal: Besides mandating the construction of walls and fences along the 2,000-mile Mexican border, the bill radically expands the definition of terms like "alien smuggler," "harboring," "shielding" and "transporting." Hence all manner of people would become criminally liable and subject to fines, property forfeiture and imprisonment -- the landscaper who gives a co-worker a ride to a job; the legal resident who takes in an undocumented relative; a Catholic Charities shelter providing beds and meals to anyone who walks through the door.

Me: I take it that the Journal has never heard of a little legal concept called “aiding and abetting.” Yes, Virginia, if people are helping illegals stay in this country illegally, they are criminals. And no, we don’t grant a religious exemption to the criminal law.

Journal: Sponsors of the legislation, led by House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner and Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, don't stop at targeting good Samaritans. They're also forcing the business community to simultaneously create jobs and kill jobs. The bill would make it incumbent on employers to establish the immigration status of all hires and empower local police to enforce federal immigration laws. This means small-business owners soon could find themselves not only inconvenienced by a mandated hiring database system but also threatened with the prospect of bankruptcy due to repeated raids and high fines. Some will throw in the towel on the GOP.

Me: The business community targeted? Outrageous! Business owners inconvenienced? Oh the humanity!

And small business owners throw in the towel on the GOP? Please. I can just see them clamoring the Democrats and their strong business agenda.

Journal: Perhaps the bill's most revealing feature is the one that makes it a criminal offense, rather than a civil violation, to be in the country illegally. This would effectively turn the country's 11 million or so illegal aliens into felons and automatically disqualify them from gaining legal status -- ever. The provision gives lie to the claim we keep hearing from Mr. Tancredo and GOP Congressional leaders that they're open to a guest-worker program for illegal aliens so long as we first beef up the border.

Me: First of all, no one likes cutters. Why doesn’t the Journal find room in its editorial to give at least a few crocodile tears to the millions of people who actually respect America’s immigration laws and wait their turn? Could it be that those people, in the country legally, will actually expect some decent wages that will allow them to actually afford an American standard of living?

I guess the only good immigrant is the one who can be forced to shut up and take whatever the boss dishes out. How the Journal’s editors must curse the fact that they were not born in the antebellum South, when they would have been able to get real respect from laborers.

Journal: This also smears the law-abiding aliens with the lawbreakers. If a bill with this anti-guest-worker provision ever became law, millions of otherwise well-behaved people who have become integral parts of thousands of U.S. communities would have every incentive to stay in the shadows lest they be deported. As a matter of law enforcement priorities if nothing else, this is crazy. In truth, this bill in its current form has no chance of becoming law. The Senate will take up immigration reform soon and is expected to produce something more feasible.

Me: Stop laughing. Seriously. You’ll hurt yourself.

Wasn;t it a conservative who once said that words have meaning? The Journal must have missed that one.

This is an editorial about illegal immigrants and making illegal immigration a felony. By definitions, illegal immigrants are lawbreakers. Calling them criminals is no smear, it is a polite statement of the truth.

And we have the Senate to save us? I’m sure that this marks a rare occasion in which the Journal is happy about a coalition of Democrats, liberal Republicans like Lincoln Chafee and Arlin Specter and opportunists like John McCain getting together. It shows how low the Journal has sunk when Ted Kennedy is their hero,

Journal: President Bush has said repeatedly that he'll only sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill; that means creating legal pathways for foreign labor to enter the country and fill jobs Americans simply won't do anymore. Regrettably, the White House, in a sop to the throw-'em-all-out faction, praised the House vote. By voicing no disapproval of these over-the-top provisions, Mr. Bush legitimizes the forces that will make it hard to pass useful reform. And so a highly divisive problem may fester without solution into the next elections. At some point, the president of the United States will have to get behind the Statue of Liberty or Tom Tancredo's wall.

Me: Uh, wasn’t the Statue of Liberty a fixture on a port for legal immigration?

2005-12-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

But Santorum Was Wrong To Bring Up This Possibility

Woman weds dolphin.

Hmmm. Lawrence struck down Texas sodomy laws (and could be used to strike down any morals based legislation a judge doesn't like). Texas has a Sea World. This could be interesting.

Thank goodness for judicial independence. It would be a shame if judges were accountable.

2005-12-30T20:23:00.000-08:00

Prof. Bainbridge: Some Laws More Equal Than Others

Professor Bainbridge laments that people who assist illegal immigrants will actually face punishment for aiding and abetting a crime. Indeed, he characterizes this as "vindicitive," particularly because it does not carve out a special license for the clergy to commit crimes.

Let's do a thought experiment for the Professor, using a crime that he might actually take seriously.

Someone steals the Professor's car, right in front of the Professor. The Professor calls the police and a chase ensues that takes the thief into the desert. He loses the cops.

Sadly, the thief crashes and both ruins the car and injures himself. But I'm there to witness the crash and come to the thief's aid.

Now comes my choice. The thief's immediate need for safety is taken care of. Do I call the police?

No, I don't. Instead, I say to myself, "This car thief comes from a poor neighborhood where he can never afford a car like the Professor's. Yes, he could work to improve himself. Yes, he and his neighbors could band together to clean up their neighborhood, stamp out corrupt officials and make themselves successful. But expecting that would be more than they can do."

But that kind of thinking is mean. After all, as long as there are nice neighborhoods, like the Professor's, with nice cars. like the Professor's, are next to poor neighborhoods with crappy cars, there will always be car thieves. So I give the thief some money and, when asked by the cops, tell them he went east instead of west.

So Professor, if the cops found out about my actions and arrested me, is that vindictiveness?

2005-12-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

Free Trade and Freedom?

Today, Roger Hedgecock, as guest host for Rush crowed about the "benefits" of free trade.

Amazingly, one of the items he ticked off was that "Free trade has made the Communist dictatorship of China rich."

And that's a good thing? What has happened to conservatism that it brags about enriching a fascistic/communistic regime that openly declares itself as our rival, menaces our democratic allies and threatens to rain nuclear fire upon Los Angeles if we dare to defend those allies from Chinese aggression?

This is lunacy. Ronald Reagan did not win victory over Russian communism by shipping U.S. jobs to Kiev. He did not bring the Kremlin to its knees by facilitating foreign investment into our enemy's economy.

It is sad to see that those who, rightly, claim the credit for winning the Cold War have now sold out for the profits to be made in China. Will Roger be crowing when our soldiers face off against a Chinese military whose weapons were bought with American dollars and improved from the knowledge gained in American owned factories?

2005-12-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

Finally, Time To Take A Breath and Wish Everyone A Merry Christmas

Blogging has been light ( or non-existent) in exact proportion to how heavy my workload has been.
Finally, I have some room to breathe and post. I'll have some political posts later; there have been too many things in the news that just make me shake my head recently.

But today is for more important things than that. It's Christmas.

And with that I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

2005-12-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

A Travesty

I just finished watching the Dukes of Hazard movie.

It was so wrong for so many reasons. The boys weren't potty mouths. Jesse wasn't a pothead. And Boss Hogg was most definitely not Burt Reynolds.

How you can take a fine piece of Americana like the Dukes and destroy it is a mystery and a tragedy.

2005-12-03T20:13:00.000-08:00

Open Borders Are Good. Trust Me.

Rice at Southern Appeal has problems with an "enforce the borders" mentality.

His arguments:
1. Equal importance should be placed on enforcing the Canadian as well as the southern border.

In and of itself, this is not a bad position. However, it is often a back door way to call enforcement advocates racist without having the guts to call them racist. But that does not seem to be the case for Rice. He appears to be concerned that terrorists will use Canada's liberal immigration laws to use our neighbor to the North as a launching pad for jihad. And I don't blame him.

However, this concern presumes that one should only secure the borders in order to keep out terrorists. While that is certainly an important task, there are other problems associated with our de facto open Southern border.

First of all, there is the fact that the tidal wave of Third World immigrants puts a strain on our public services. If there were a wave of Canadians swarming in who did not speak the language, crowded schools and exhausted emergency rooms, I can bet that folks up North would have fielded their own minute men.

2. Rice does not think that DC bureaucrats should be deciding which unskilled immigrants to let in and which to exclude.

Uh, Rice, have you read the Constitution? Even if we ignore the part about the federal government being responsible for repelling foreign invasion, Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress, and only Congress, power to "[t]o establish a uniform rule of naturalization."

Seems to me that pretty much puts the immigration ball in DC's hands, even if the politicans have dropped it.

3. Our current immigration anarchy provides a Darwinian system in which we get the hardworking immigrants while the lazy stay at home.

Yep, we get hard workers like MS-13, the notorious South American gang that has reputedly played footsie with al-Queda.

But leaving aside that some of Rice's admired "survivors" are simply super-predators fleeing authority at home and seeking new plunder abroad, how does he square the fact that only 49.6% of Latin immigrants graduate high school? The number drops to 33.8% for Mexicans. Compare this to 81.3% for Europeans, 81.8% for Asians and 94.9% for Africans. In addition, Mexican immigrants 34.% of Mexican immigrant households used welfare, in comparison to 22.7% off all immigrant households and 14.6% of native born households. (Figures taken from Samuel Huntington's Who Are We?)

With numbers like those, how can he seriously argue that we are getting the hardest workers under the current policy?

4. The economy will collapse without an unlimited supply of unskilled labor.

Rice brings out the most hoary argument of the open borders lobby, that America cannot survive without illegal immigrants. He asks how much the prices of homes in border states will rise without illegals. Lettuce will cost one hundred billion dollars. Cats will mate with dogs. So on and so forth.

I counter with these questions. Without having to school, treat and jail millions of illegals, how much will taxes go down? Without illegals bidding down the price of labor, how much more will blue collar workers be able to afford?

And will prices suddenly become unsustainable? Australia is not located near Mexico. Yet somehow its agricultural industry thrives. Somehow houses get built. Life goes on.

Will labor prices rise without illegals? Hopefully. I know some who align themselves with conservatism shudder in horror at the thought of rising labor costs, that executives forced to pay their laborers a little bit more will have to suffer the indignity of getting a Gulfstream IV instead of the GV. These folks shudder at Jim Gilchrist's America, in which people mow their own lawns, wash their own cars and raise their own children.

Yes, a secure border will bring truly dark days to America. But I think we will survive.

2005-11-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

Bush On The Border

So the President has figured out that we have a border. And it's porous.

Wow. Good catch Mr. President. That kind of analysis shows that our intelligence dollars are really well spent.

However, some GOP insiders call this for what it is. From the Guardian Unlimited

Bush decided to give these guys their rhetorical pound of flesh," a Republican official close to the White House told Time magazine. "In return, he wants a comprehensive bill, which is what he has always wanted. He's just going to lead with a lot of noise about border security.

Conservative rhetoric with liberal policy. That sounds familiar.

The basic fallacy of Bush's position is his assertion that illegals are simply doing "the jobs Americans just won't do." What I would give for a single reporter to ask the President to name some of those jobs.

But they won't. As much as the media hates Bush and would love to catch him flatfooted with such a question, they are cut from the same cloth as the President. Washington's liberal media has a dirty little secret. As much as they see themselves as "champions of the people," they are as much a part of the elite as Bush and his prep school chums.

These are people for whom the words "border control" and have frightening visions of a world in which they have to mow their own lawns, wash their own cars and raise their own children.

These are people whose gated communities are insulated from illegal immigrant criminals (redundancy alert). These are people who send their children to private schools to escape public schools sinking under the burden of illegal immigrant children. These are people who don;t have to worry about emergency rooms in their neighborhoods closing because they serve as the primary medical provider for illegals.

These people are not you and me. The majority of the country is repulsed at the invasion our leaders welcome. It is time for them to hear our voice.

2005-11-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

Debunking the Debunking of Intelligent Design
What a shock. The libertarians at Reason don't like intelligent design. Cathy Young makes their latest "case."

Hmmm. Holders of a hedonistic philosophy opposed to the idea that there is something more to life than bare materialism. Who would have thunk it?

Young presents five arguments:

1. ID is unprovable whereas there is proof of Darwinian evolution.

Young makes the mistake here of conflating two concepts. One is micro-evolution, that over time there are developments within a species. This is scene in the development of horses and other creatures. ID does not argue against this.

The other concept in evolution is meta-evolution, that species evolve into other species. This has not been proven. Although Jurassic Park talked about dinosaurs changing into birds, that's not scientific evidence.

And as to whether ID is unprovable, there have been many scientific theories that were unprovable when postulated but later proven or disproven as technology advanced. As we gain in understanding of physics, we may be able to determine the cause of the Big Bang and where the matter and energy behind that explosion came from. That would serve to prove or disprove ID.

2. Darwinists aren't scared of ID because it threatens their pet theory, they just don't think it's science.

This argument just begs the question. Throughout history, the scientific establishment has derided interlopers as "unscientific." Notions about the earth turning around the sun was heresy until it proved true.

3. Scientists welcome challenges to the status quo.

Yeah, tell that to folks who oppose theories relating to man-made global warming.

4. ID's advocates believe their scientific theory proves God's glory. Therefore, they can't be real scientists.

Scientists from Newton to Einstein have viewed their scientific work as proof of God's hand. They viewed the patterns that they discovered as proving the existence of God precisely because the Universe has order to it.

Do we chuck them too?

5. Finally, Young points out that Darwinism cannot be seen wholly materialist because Darwin was a Christian.

Quite true. He also never claimed to explain the beginnings of the universe. His inheritors do. In arguing for meta-evolution, they are creating their own materialist religion with its own creation myth.

2005-11-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

Veteran's Day

It's Veteran's Day and I'm sorry to be posting this so late. It seems that I, like many others, get caught up in the day off without fully appreciating its meaning. For this, I am sorry.

Thank you, to all of those who have served and are now serving our country. We owe you more than we can ever know and ever repay.

2005-11-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

Paris Burns, Chirac Fiddles

Chirac has finally promised to punish the rioters. Ah strong words. After 12 nights of rioting, 5000+ cars burned, dozens of torched buildings and at least one death, the government responds with strong words.

And we wonder why the Muslims see the West as decadent and ripe for conquest. From their experiences in Europe, they have been proven correct. They have now exported their anarchy to Germany and Belgium.

We're at war. The Muslims know this. The Europeans are learning. Will we also heed this lesson or will our own cities have to burn?

2005-11-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Paris Burns, the MSM Fiddles

We heard a lot about the anti-Bush riots down south. But the rioting in Paris has been just a blurb.

Some of that is to be expected. Bush, after all, is our President and rioting upon his visit is news. Besides, when would the media miss a chance to link Bush to bad news?

However, I think there's a much different dynamic going on. Who are the rioters? Black Muslins (and not the fake Farrakhan kind).

For the media to give extensive coverage to Muslims laying waste to Paris, capital city of the nation that most vigorously opposed the Iraq invasion, would lay waste to the media's own conceits. After all, Islam is the religion of peace, right?

Hopefully the fires in Paris will clear away the shadows of historical revisionism. Islam began as a conquering faith. The West forgot this. Muslims have not.

2005-11-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

The Wonders of Immigration....
Muslim immigrants (remember that it's a religion of peace?) are currently rioting in Paris and shooting at emergency workers. This is the eighth day of rioting.

Who would have thought that bringing in a huge underclass of individuals who don't share the same culture and customs as the host country would create social chaos?

I can't wait for guest workers.

2005-11-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

Law, Order and History

Last night's Law & Order episode was a highly provocative case on eugenics. Although it had the standard liberal tendencies (white nurse sterilizes black mom, opponents of unfettered immigration equated to eugenics) it did have about as much balance as the writers could get away with. After all, the writers made it a point to reveal that the greater eugenecist scheme focused on the victims being unworthy of children, rather than race. And Paul Robinette, a black, former ADA now guest spotting as defense attorney, confessed his own sympathy to the eugenecist argument. So, all in all, it was a good episode without the leftist diatribes that have tended to pop up in the show.

But there was one noticeable oversight. When talking about the past historical figures in America that supported eugenics, they left out a huge name: Margaret Sanger. Miss Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, championed abortion as a means of keeping the undesirables from overbreeding.

Funny that the liberals would not want people to know that their secular saint viewed the liberal sacrament of abortion as a way of killing the very "little people" whom liberals often claim to champion.

2005-11-02T20:31:00.000-08:00

Bush and the Border

William at Southern Appeal notes (via V-Dare) that the Bush administration's recent rhetoric about enforcing the border is belied by its refusal to enforce employer sanctions.

This is dangerous to conservatism in two ways. First, refusing to patrol our borders is incredibly unpopular. It is the sort of issue that will likely tear the current conservative coalition apart. Of course, the ground for that tear also lie in the fact that conservatives have for too long treated libertarians as soul mates rather than folks who might share some interests with conservatives but, on the whole, have a radically different vision of America than most conservatives.

The other danger lies in the fact that this sort of blatant pandering to business interests at the cost of national culture, sovereignty and security is liberalism's caricature of conservatism. To be fair, Democrats are just as guilty of failing to punish the employers of illegals, but we expect more from Republicans. For the party that is supposed to respect the law to ignore the law when it benefits big business is the most rank of hypocrisies.

What this really speaks to is a Republican leadership that is divorced from its constituents. Safely ensconced in their positions of power, the GOP leadership doesn't have to send its children to schools where English is a second language. Think that Bush has to worry about the local emergency room shutting down because of illegals? Or would John McCain have to worry that his home would be targeted by the gangs that have migrated North, seeking to commit crimes that Americans just won't do? For most elites, eliminating illegal immigration does not equal an improvement in their quality of life; rather, they will have to face the nightmare of raising their own kids and cleaning their own homes.

Folks, the Miers nomination showed us that this administration is not wholly tone deaf. It is time to remind them that they work for the American people, not the businesses who thrive on illegal labor.

2005-11-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

We're All Secular Intellectuals Now?

On Michael Medved's show today, he opined that Christian conservatives supported Harriet Miers while secular intellectuals opposed her.

Oh really?

I'm not a secular intellectual. Robert Bork, Stephen Bainbridge, the folks at Southern Appeal are not secular intellectuals (though they are certainly intellectual).

Indeed, I think this argument shows one of the most corrosive effects of the Miers nomination (and one of the weaknesses of the Bush Administration) . This administration really buys into the diversity crowd (just look at the Michigan cases) and the identity politics that it inspires. Thus, Miers is seen as a sop to Christian conservatives and James Dobson is brought out to bless her on behalf of all evangelicals.

The White House sought to turn Dr. Dobson into its own private Jesse Jackson. And just as blacks ought to be insulted by the inference that Rev. Jackson speaks for their entire community, I am insulted that Dr. Dobson is said to speak for me.

Don't believe the Washington Post. We're not ignorant and not easily led.

2005-10-31T19:48:00.000-08:00

Super-Duper Precedent

With his exposition on "super-precedent" and "super-duper precedent," Arlen Specter underscores the intellectual weakness of liberal judicial philosophy. The Constitution says what they want it to and as soon as some Court comes up with a 5-4 decision ratifying their opinion, liberals demand the discussion stop.

Well, the Alito nomination is likely to get that discussion going full fire.

And just a thought on "super duper extra special with a cherry on top" precedent. Plessy v. Ferguson lasted from 1896 through 1954. That's 58 years. But you don't hear many liberals complaining about overturning that precedent.

Roe v. Wade, on the other hand, has only been on the books for 32 years. That doesn't seem so super after all, now does it?

2005-10-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Harriet Wrap-Up

So the Miers nomination is over. In the end, we should not gloat. By all accounts, Ms. Miers was a nice woman. The President erred in nominating her and in doing so did a grave disservice to conservatives and Ms. Miers herself.

Now is the time for a debate in our nation. Are we ruled by judges who import everything from their warm fuzzy feelings to the dictates of European elites? Or, absent a Constitutional (the real, written one) violation, the people and their elected representatives? I submit that as we fought to rip ourselves away from a king, we should not submit to an unaccountable Council of Nine.

Now is the time, Mr. President. Start the debate so that conservatives can win it.

2005-10-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Harriet Miers, Legal Genius

So we're told the President knows and trusts Harriet Miers. Did he know she said things like this, in a 1993 speech to the Executive Women of Dallas? (Hat tip to Southern Appeal for the link)

"We still have all white juries trying cases which significantly impact the rights of minorities.

We undeniable [sic] still have a justice system that does not provide justice for all as provided by the Pledge of Allegiance."

I'll leave aside her quoting the Pledge of allegiance rather than, say, the Constitution. The thought before that is far more frightening.

Is Miers arguing that juries must be filled by affirmative action? Does she advocate striking jurors once the "whitey quotient" is too high? Or if a case will have significant impacts on whites can blacks be stricken for their race?

Or this gem: "The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women's [sic] right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion."

So she was for legalized abortion before she was against it? This is a well grounded judicial philosophy? Aren't her supposedly strongly held beliefs the reason that we're supposed to trust Bush on choosing her? Yeah, this certainly shows that she will be a veritable Rock of Gibraltar once she gets on the Court.

And finally: "Legislating religion or morality we gave up a long time ago."

Okay, the writing aside, this is simply a ludicrous statement. Law is always about morality. We outlaw murder and rape because we believe people have the rights to life and bodily integrity. That is a moral decision and the fact that there is no paucity of killers and rapists says that not all people agree with that moral decision.

Imagine a world in which we stopped "legislating morality." In this strictly utilitarian vision, the ill and old would be ripe for elimination. The weak would have rights only if the strong deigned to grant them - and never decided to revoke them. In short, it is the law of the jungle. And President Bush's nominee champions this.

Makes you wonder who vetted this nomination.

2005-10-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

Operation: Call Home

As a long time neighbor of Camp Pendleton, the Marine base just outside the Carlsbad-Oceanside area, I've long tried to think of some way to express to the Marines my appreciation for their sacrifice on behalf of our freedom.

With the help of the North Coast Republican Club, I've done just that. The Club and I are proud to launch Operation: Call Home. The idea is to collect phone cards and pre-paid cell phones in order to let soldiers who cannot go home for the holidays at least get the chance to make a free phone call home to their loved ones.

If you wish to support this effort, please send donations to:

Operation: Call Home c/o

North Coast Republican Club
527 Encinitas Blvd., #206
Encinitas, CA, 92024

And a final thought, folks. I know this blog and its author are unabashedly conservative. I know the club helping sponsor this is Republican. But this effort is non-partisan and welcomes donations from anyone on the political spectrum.

2005-10-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

New Fed Pick

Bush's pick of Ben Bernanke to replace Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has left millions of bank tellers and CPAs disappointed. After all, since the Miers pick, we have all hoped to be qualified for top government jobs.

2005-10-18T21:44:00.000-07:00

She Likes Griswold

And I'm not talking about Clark W. Griswold, the lovable Chevy Chase character. Nope, the nominee we're just supposed to support based on the compelling argument of "trust Bush" has come out in favor of Griswold, the case that began the modern abomination of a "right to privacy." Let's see the conserfatives spin this one.

2005-10-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

"Gay Marriage:" Divorced From Reality
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Maggie Gallagher takes on the "gay marriage" debate.

In a nutshell, she argues that marriage is, ideally, the vehicle through which people - and societies - reproduce and then rear their children. The traditional family has arisen precisely because it is the best vehicle to facilitate such activities. Thus it must be protected.

The arguments on the other side are quite familiar. Some argue that because some couples cannot or will not have children, this rationale is false. Others argue that gays "marrying" will have no effect on traditional marriage. Finally, some just argue that she's a big meanie.

To the first argument. Yes, some straight couples cannot, or choose not to, have have children. However, these childless couples still can serve as role models for their child rearing compatriots. They can offer advice to other married couples that is informed by experience that two same sex individuals cannot have, unless you are willing to say that the genders are utterly undifferentiated. So a childless heterosexual couple can still strengthen traditional marriage.

But what effect will allowing "gay marriages" have on otherwise strong and healthy heterosexual marriages? Truthfully, probably none.

Yet I'm not only concerned with strong and healthy marriages. Indeed, the ones we should be focusing on for protection and succor are those struggling and marginal marriages.

As society removes stigmas, it becomes easier to tear apart the bonds of marriages. Once an adulterer could marry his lover and not be ostracized by polite society, the incentive to cheat and remarry increased. Society's endorsement of gays - precisely what the "gay marriage" debate is all about - will similarly induce some in marginal marriages to break up those families rather than stick it out. If you want proof, just ask V. Eugene Robinson whether society's increasing tolerance of gays helped him decide to abandon his family - and tear apart his church.

Yet let us concede that this is speculative. So what. Why should the defenders of traditional marriage be forced to create some parade of horribles? Should not the side of the debate seeking to overturn millennia of tradition not shoulder the burden of proving that its changes will be harmless?

Have we not learned from our previous tinkering with the family? Has the destruction of the inner city by removing stigma from illegitimacy not been lesson enough? Or the explosion in divorce - and its disastrous consequences to the children involved- that followed the "no-fault" revolution? People talk of a progressive vision of the family. But what progress are they talking about; unless they consider higher sexual abuse, drug abuse and incarceration rates for the children of non-traditional families as progress?

Finally, there is the argument that opponents of gays are simply arguing from prejudice. Now, most times, conservatives run from this argument. This stems in large part because much of the conservative intelligentsia has conceded that homosexuality is not immoral or, if it is, that such immorality is not the proper basis for policy decisions.

Balderdash. Morality is part and parcel of the law. When we decide to protect private property from both the government and other individuals, we are saying that our law recognizes the moral legitimacy of owning private property. When we decide that excessive interest rates shock the conscience, we have made a moral decision.

Our laws serve the vital function of telling citizens and outsiders alike just what morals our society holds dear. In surrendering this concept to liberals, we risk giving up the entire game. We are left to simply making and defending utilitarian arguments rather than battling over first principles.

The question that we should make liberals answer is this: What are we? Are we a society where anything goes? Will we allow brothers to marry brothers? Mass plural marriage? Man-boy love?

Make liberals acknowledge there is a moral standard which they will not violate. Then force them to defend why they set it so low.

2005-10-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'm Here, Hugh.

Conserfative HughHewitt wants practicing lawyers opposed to Meirs? Well, there's me, for starters.

I'm not in the government and I'm certainly no Professor. But I'm in the Coalition of the Illin' , blogging against a deliberate slap in the face of judicial conservatives.

Why doesn't Hugh cite me? I'm hurt. After all, the fact that I'm still referred to by some judges as a "baby lawyer" shouldn't bother Hugh. He wouldn't want to be leitist, after all.

2005-10-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

Coining A New Phrase

After hearing all of the Kool-Aid drinkers demanding that we unquestionably bow before the judgment of the Bush in regards to the Miers nomination ,I have coined a new term: conserfative.

The conserfative pledges him or herself to the Republican Part plantation and, like the serfs of old, is transferred with the land, no matter who controls it. So when a Republican President gives you no reason to trust him, you must still treat his every decision as divinely inspired. This also applies, to a lesser extent, to the leadership in Congress and state parties.

If this takes off, remember that you heard it hear first kids. If it doesn't take off, then you're just not ready for my brilliance.

2005-10-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

Reason To Worry

The Washington Post reports GOP difficulties in recruiting for races. Hmm, after the way the party has treated Pat Toomey, Katherine Harris, Tom Tancredo and other conservatives, why would actual conservatives come out to take the hassle of campaigning for the current leadership?

2005-10-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Coate's Tails

Senator Dan Coates denies having ever been up for the nomination to the Court.

C'mon, Senator. If Miers makes the cut, you had to have been in the running. Who wasn't?

Coates also chides conservatives for wanting folks who had writings on complex Constitutional writings because the President wants someone conservatives know won't change her mind.

Yeah, why would we want people who thought complexly about the Constitution, came up with an originalist perspective and then defended that philosophy? Why not get someone who has defended racial preferences and gay civil rights?

UPDATE:

Medved says that this nomination is in the same vein as previous Bush nominees. If he means Myers to head ICE, Kerik to DHS or Brown to FEMA, are we supposed to reassured?

Medved's argument seems to simply be that a true, blue judicial conservative cannot get through without a filibuster. Okay, let's take him at his word. Let's fight the filibuster battle that should have been fought already.

UPDATE 2:
Medved puts out a his theory that if Miers gets knocked down, the President will nominate another liberal out of fear and pique.

And this is the man in whom we're supposed to give unwavering trust?

The Hewitt/Medved Axis of Surrender demands appeasement to Senate liberals. Why? People don't like judges pretending to be legislators. At a time when Bush's popularity is tanking, why not pick a fight where the majority of the people support him?

Let's face it. In his heart, Bush is embarassed by conservatism. He did a good show during the election but now that he answers to no one (except Laura) his true, blue colors show.

2005-10-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

The Sad Tale of the Bush

Publius at Legal Fiction posts this "parable" that speaks volumes about the GOP. I have long had a sneaking suspicion that the GOP does not want to rein in the Courts and especially does not want Roe overturned. That is not to say that the rank and file does not want these things to happen. However, the party establishment has a great interest in maintaining the status quo.

After all, every time a federal judge outlaws the Pledge or determines that titty bars have more Constitutional protection than political speech, the Republicans get a new direct mail campaign. They get a new tool to fire up the base. They help people forget massive entitlement spending, the fact that the President cares more about securing Iraq's borders than our own or that we are acting as midwife to the birth of a terrorist Palestinian state. After all, the mantra of GOP organizers was that we could not have Kerry appointing judges.

Yeah, Bush saved us all right.

2005-10-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

Miers Musings

In the past I have mused about the possibility of non-lawyers on the Supreme Court. So why, some might ask, do I oppose Harriet Miers based in part on her qualifications.

In a word, the answer is timidity. If the president had named an eminent historian or an intelligent business person with a well known philosophy on judicial restraint, that would have been an excellent pick. It would have shaken things up and questioned the entire concept of the legal priesthood ruling our nation.

imagine the statement of a non-lawyer nomination. First, the President could discuss how we have a canon of Constitutional law whose ever more obtuse abstractions takes the law of our land further from the hands of its People. By putting a non-lawyer on the Court, he could have helped to bring the law back to the people.

Secondly, we have a judiciary that has become the most dangerous branch by arrogating to itself the definitive word on our Constitution. By putting a non-lawyer on the Court, Bush could have sent a message that the Court has gotten too big for its britches.

But Bush did not go outside the conclave. Rather, he just picked the equivalent of a well meaning parish priest. Most likely, Miers is a nice woman. But if you're going to pick yet another lawyer for the Court, pick someone of distinction. And by this, I don't mean what school she went to but what she has contributed in the great questions of the day.

Miers is not this distinguished pick. Rather, she is the pick of timidity and weakness. And that is why she has drawn so much fire. Bush has always been one for a fight if he felt strongly enough about an issue. Yet this pick was designed specifically to avoid a fight in the Senate. So does Bush take the Court seriously? Is he really willing to fight to put the elected branches back in preeminence?

He nominated Miers. That is our answer.

2005-10-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

I'm Convinced

Tom Smith makes a compelling case for Associate Justice Barney.

2005-10-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Army He Has....

In the Senate that is. Rush uses the metaphor of Senators as soldiers when discussing the possible confirmation battle that a solid, qualified conservative would have brought upon us.

Some Kool-Aid drinkers are stating that Miers should be given a pass because President Bush does not have a solid conservative majority in the Senate.

Two thoughts on this:

1. Bush has never backed off of a fight when he thinks it is important. When he wanted to create the biggest entitlement program since LBJ, Bush brooked no Congressional dissent. He maintained party discipline through a combination of pork-laden bribery and intimidation.

The same is true for CAFTA. In order to pass this unpopular agreement, the President refused to veto the massive highway bill and had folks "arms twisted until they cried."

So for things that Bush feels is important, increasing entitlement spending and decreasing protection for our remaining manufacturing base, the knives come out. For the Supreme Court, he shies from the fight. This says volumes about his priority.

2. He helped build this Army.

The unreliability of Senators like Arlen Specter is cited as the reason that Bush cannot risk a fight. Specter's a RINO who voted against Bork. There's no way that he would support another judicially conservative nominee.

But Bush supported Specter in the last election. Specter faced a primary fight against actual conservative Pat Toomey. The master strategists in the White House decided to defend Specter in exchange for the Senate delivering Pennsylvania in the 2004 elections. This bold play ended in Specter winning re-election but Bush losing the state - quite possibly as a result of conservatives embittered at the President's actions.

Bush has talked a good conservative game but delivered good Democratic social programs. He supported RINOs in the Senate, well aware that this would directly impact the Supreme Court nominations that everyone knew was coming. And then he has the unmitigated gall to use these RINOs as an excuse for failing to deliver on his promise to nominate more Scalias and Thomases.

For this I walked precincts?

2005-10-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Judging Miers

I'm not an elitist. Far from it. I probably run too far to the populist end of the political spectrum for some conservatives' tastes. So the fact that Ms. Miers is not covered in Ivy League accolades is not an impressive criticism to me.

What does impress me is the fact that Bush had his moment. He could have picked a solid judicial conservative that could have decimated Senate opponents. He could have brought the debate on whether it is unelected judges who have the sole role in interpreting the Constitution or whether the People, through their elected representatives, are still sovereign in this Republic.
Instead he punted. And he punted to someone whose qualifications are difficult to see. This was simply abysmally poor judgment.

But wait, some protest, she's an evangelical Christian. Two thoughts on that. One: Jim Wallis and Jimmy Carter identify themselves evangeilicals. I would not want them on the Court.

More importantly, it does not matter if Ms. Miers out-Christians Jerry Falwell. Such concerns are immaterial. A Justice who relies on personal religious faith is just as illegitimate as one who relies on foreign judicial rulings. That Bush and his allies do not see this shows that they lack a firm grasp of their own legal philosophy. That is frightening.

So I'm now a member of the Coalition of the Illin. Here's to combating the Kool-aid drinkers and thanks to shipwrecked for getting this started.

2005-10-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

Moore, Please!

So Judge Moore is running. I know this drives the fine people at Southern Appeal (hat tip for the news on this story) have many unkind feelings about the Judge but I am thrilled.

Right now our country faces an important question: Is the federal judiciary the only institution in our Republic with a role in Constitutional interpretation? Or do the elected representatives of our Republic, and the people to whom they are accountable, maybe have some say too?

Personally, I think the Constitution has a little clue in it. Remember We, the People...?)

2005-10-03T18:27:00.000-07:00

Banana Republicanism

Stephen Bainbridge gets it. What we have seen from the Bush administration can hardly be called conservatism. It cannot even be justified as putting party over principle because it seems that the only underlying principle of this President is benefiting his friends.

How else to explain massive spending to buy votes for his unpopular trade policies? How else to explain energy, farm and prescription drug bills that seem to do little else but transfer tax dollars to corporate interests? How else to explain a border policy that benefits employers seeking low wages but not citizens seeking lower taxes? How else to explain the appointment of hacks to vital positions?

The GOP is being twisted away from a party of the people to a party of some of the people. We are in danger of becoming the grotesque caricature of greed which liberals paint of us.

2005-10-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

So Serene

Ah, Serenity. The ship at the center of Fox's Firefly is the title character of a movie that takes up where the tragically canceled series ended.

It was great, a movie Joss Whedon made for fans. Yet a non-fan could easily understand the plot and not have the series blown. Anything else would risk being a spoiler and I don't plan on doing that to folks.

See this movie.

2005-09-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

What Color Is Your Kool-Aid?

Sean Hannity once coined a great phrase: “Clinton Kool-Aid Drinkers.” It referred to those who would support the former President, no matter what he did. In short, they were like the cult of Jim Jones, drinking whatever their master said even after it proved toxic.

Oh yes, I laughed at the Kool-Aid drinkers. How could anyone be so foolish?

Ah, pride cometh before a fall. Yes, liberals drank the Kool-Aid. But it seems that Republicans have been stocking their own Kool-Aid by the gallon. I knew this to be true when I heard Tom Delay state of the federal budget “[a]fter 11 years of Republican majority, we pared it down pretty good.”

This is after an 11 year period in which the National Endowment for the Arts not only survives, but finds its budget growing? This is after an 11 year period in which the federal government has even more control of local school districts? This when the Republican successor to William Jefferson Clinton counts the federal government paying for Ted Kennedy’s Viagra amongst his top legislative accomplishments? This when our social service dollars subsidize illegal aliens who are openly welcomed by the GOP elite?

The budget is not the only Republican abandonment of conservatism. Take the border. Please. That literally seems to be the position taken by GOP elites, as the current The President hocks amnesty lite and perennial presidential candidate John McCain teams up with Ted Kennedy to offer his own amnesty bill. A Republican leadership that is sensibly tough on crime seems to lose its stomach when the criminals are businesses using illegal immigrant labor to avoid paying American wages.

We’re at war, right? We have soldiers fighting and dying to secure the borders of Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet our “war President” has surrendered the U.S. border! And when American citizens patrol a border abandoned by the President, he has the unmitigated call to disparage them as vigilantes. Too bad he can’t bring himself to criticize those who smuggle drugs and their fellow men in as strong terms. But then his buddy Vicente might be offended.

But many of these issues are actually symptoms of the true danger that today’s conservatism faces. While liberalism has embraced nihilistic hedonism, there is a significant portion of conservatism that embraces a nihilistic greed.

Property rights and capitalism are integral parts of conservatism. However, one need only read the numerous defenses of price gouging in the Wall Street Journal and various on-line conservative sources to see something disturbing in conservatism.

Liberals see sensual pleasure as their reason for being. This new strain on the Right sees profit, no matter the source, as life’s ultimate purpose. They hear of Yahoo and Microsoft helping the Chinese totalitarian state and marvel at the market share. They hear of $20 bottles of water in a flooded New Orleans and wish they could have been there. These people hear of an invisible hand and think of nothing more transcendent than Adam Smith.

Corporations are not to be hated out of hand. But neither are they to be treated as inevitable allies. After all, who’s pumping out millions of copies of gangsta rap? Who’s pushing thong panties for preteen girls? Who turned the family hour into soft-core porn?

In Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We, he details an interesting study. Ralph Nader sent out a request to the executives of 100 top companies that they begin their board meetings by saluting the flag, arguing that these companies had received billions in subsidies from the U. S. government. Only one company responded favorably. Some, such as Ford and Kimberly-Clark mocked the notion, pointing to their multi-national nature. They had transcended America. This is a sobering lesson. They are not our friends.

Unrivaled pork barrel spending. Open borders in a time of war. Massive subsidies to billion dollar enterprises that see the idea of Americanism as an embarrassment. Folks, we’ve come to a time of choosing.

Are you conservative or Republican?

We have long since passed the time when the two terms meant the same things. That Delay felt it necessary to deny the obvious porkfest that has defined Washington under a veto-phobic President proves this point. He found party discipline more important than fiscal discipline. And with his newest troubles, he’ll need the protection of that discipline all the more/ What’s the excuse for the average Kool-Aid drinker?

But wait, some will cry, what are conservatives to do? We have to vote Republican, right? What choice do we have?

You know, that sounds similar to what folks like Jesse Jackson and his ilk have told their constituents for decades. And unthinkingly pulling the lever for Democrats has done great wonders for blacks, hasn’t it?

Conservatives are n danger of becoming the black vote. Republicans will take us for granted and the Democrats will ignore us. And so the country will creep along, further and further away from any hope of responsible, constitutionalist governance.

If unthinking allegiance to an increasingly out of touch Republican Party is no solution, what then?

There are three solutions:

1. Encourage competition. Although I have cheered at conservative defections from the Democratic Party, does it truly serve conservative interest to have one of the two major parties be utterly devoid of conservative voices? Should the ruling party be toppled by either stupidity or scandal, do we want its Democratic inheritors to be dominated by Howard Dean types?

Conservatives should encourage conservative Democrats to stay Democrats. Tell them to pull their party back from the Leftist abyss on which they teeter. Make it so that Republican strategists know that they cannot simply count on the base being too frightened of the opposition to demand excellence of Republicans.

2. Strike. That’s right. Have a “voter action.” Go to the polls and vote on initiatives. Vote on non-partisan offices. But withhold votes from Republicans. Let them know that conservatives came out but we did not play. Perhaps when a few politicians have to actually earn livings in the real world, their surviving brethren will listen.

3. Third Party. But that’s a wasted vote, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Yes, the history of our nation has been two parties. That seems to be the natural order given the structure of our government.

But the two parties have not always been Republican and Democrat. Parties have risen and they have fallen.

Maybe its time for history to repeat itself. Maybe it’s time for Republicans sick of seeing their party becoming a cash machine for corporate interests can team up with Democrats sick of seeing their party championing ever more deviant behavior.

Whatever the solution, it is time to put the Kool-Aid down.

2005-09-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

All Work....

My boss is in the Bahamas this week. So blogging has been light because work is like.... work. Isn't that just wrong?

2005-09-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

Judge Rules Declaration of Independence Unconstitutional

SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) - A US judge has ruled that the Declaration of Independence is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion because of references to “our Creator.”

The decision has created political shockwaves.

“It is the position of the United States that we are still independent, even without a declaration,” said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. “We are prepared to defend America and our Go… Oops, almost violated the court order there.”

“Let me just say that we have rights and they were given to us. But under this decision, we just can’t say who gave them to us. Or why they shouldn’t be violated. But please believe me when I tell you that we are endowed with inalienable rights On my say so, even without a transcendent power behind them. We can still say transcendent, right?”

A flustered McLellan left the podium shaking his head. Witnesses heard him muttering the words “San Francisco” and “idiots.”

News of Karlton's ruling sped to the Senate and became fodder for the confirmation hearings on the US Supreme Court chief justice nomination of John Roberts.

“We have before us today, Judge Roberts, a legal opinion just issued, hot off the presses, that says the establishment clause of the Constitution apparently is violated by the Declaration of Independence,” said senator Lindsey Graham.

The establishment clause prohibits the federal government from supporting or declaring a national religion.

“This is an example, in my opinion, of where judges do not protect us from having the government impose religion upon us, but declare war on all things religious,” commented Graham, a Republican known for conservative views. That means he’s icky.

"That's why most Americans sometimes are dumbfounded about what's going on in the name of religion," Graham continued. "When we exercise our right to worship, it bothers me greatly that judges, who are unelected, confuse the concept between establishment and free exercise."

The free exercise clause of the Constitution bars the government from interfering with the religious practices of citizens.

Graham's comments were a “misguided, vile interpretation” of the Constitution, said Mike Newdow, the atheist who spearheaded the lawsuit.

“It is not declaring war on religion, it is a war on bigots who want to put their religion into government,” Newdow told AFP. “It is saying the government should stay out of people's business. Unless we’re talking about courts. They need to be involved in everyone’s business.”

Newdow's campaign to overturn the Declaration of Independence “something of a cause celebre,” Karlton wrote.

“I'm not against Christianity,” Newdow said. “I love that people have these options. But I love even more that people now have less options.”

Newdow said he was pleased by Karlton's ruling, but saw it as just another step in a continuing legal march.

“I feel federal judges are paid to uphold the Constitution, and this judge did his job,” Newdow said. “He’s done it far better than two hundred years of other judges. Or the people who actually wrote the First Amendment. After all, doesn’t a judge in San Francisco know more about the Constitution’s meaning than James Madison or George Washington?”

“If they want to go to the public square and worship, fine,” the 52-year-old creator of the First Amendment Church of True Science continued. “I might even go watch them. Just don't tell me I have to do it.”

When reminded that under current law, no student is forced to actually read or believe in the Declaration, Newdow simply put fingers in his ears and hummed.

"The big objective is to uphold the equal protection clause of the Constitution," Newdow said. "Treat everybody equally, as the government is supposed to do."

The Fourteenth Amendment protects equal protection under the law. The equal protection clause has nothing to do with the case at all.

Newdow said he was on his way to the US state of New Hampshire to file an identical lawsuit on behalf of some parents there, and that he intended to file suits in every federal court district.

“Pretty soon,” Newdow said, “No American will have to fear that rees freedom will be protected by this “God” fellow.”

When asked about his use of the word “rees,” Newdow beemed. “’Ree’ is my gender neutral pronoun. When I get done trying to destroy America’s deep tradition of public faith, I plan to trash the English language. I’m not a flash in the pan lunatic. I’m here for the long haul.”

Newdow first filed his complaint in March, 2000. The legal wrangling reached the steps of the Supreme Court after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – ruled the Declaration “impermissibly coerces a religious act.”

“This is the type of strong legal reasoning that shows just why we’re the most overruled Court of Appeals in the nation,” said one judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

However, US Supreme Court judges, in a characteristic move to avoid actually making a coherent statement in a First Amendment case, sidestepped consideration of the appeal. The Court decided Newdow could not legally bring the case because his daughter was in the custody of her mother, who claimed the child was a Christian comfortable with the pledge.

“We dodged a bullet there,” said an anonymous clerk to the Court. “If Newdow hadn’t been completely out of touch with his daughter – and reality – some of the Justices might have actually had to face the consequences of their previous rulings.”

Atheist and pantheist parents of two other children in the school district subsequently joined Newdow in renewing his legal complaint.

“There’s room on the train to Nutville for everyone,” one parent said with a grin.

Karlton concluded that while Newdow did not have legal standing, the other two couples did, and that he was bound to endorse the earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit.

Making students learn about a document that mentions a “Creator” and “Nature’s God” puts children "in the untenable position of choosing between participating in an exercise with religious content or protesting," Karlton stated, quoting the earlier ruling.

Children, he noted, are not known for their ability to protest. They also love lima beans and hate television.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins issued a statement condemning the ruling as "yet another example of runaway judicial activism which is trampling our freedoms and stripping America of any recognition of her religious heritage."

It is almost certain the Supreme Court, possibly headed by Roberts, will make the ultimate decision regarding the pledge, Perkins concluded.

"Today's decision highlights the importance of confirming Supreme Court Justices who respect our nation's history and tradition because militant secularists will not stop until they have eradicated any mention of God in the public square," Perkins said.

Karlton's ruling applies only to the Elk Grove County school district. But some legal scholars stated that the ruling could eventually outlaw the Declaration throughout the United States.

Within hours of the ruling, British warships began steaming towards U.S. waters and stores have reported a severe shortage of tea and biscuits.

2005-09-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

Just Think What Would Have Happened If Islam Wasn't A Religion of Peace

From the News-Telegraph: "Synagogues burn as Palestinians retake Gaza."

It seems that the Palestinians, happy go lucky folk that they are, responded to Israel's generous eviction of its own settlers from their land by razing synagogues that had been left behind.

And yet the world explodes in paroxysms of rage if Western forces dare scratch the paint on one of the "most holy sites in Islam" - How many of those are there, anyway? - that terrorists are shooting from.

Remind me. Aren't we at war or something?

2005-09-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hearing From The Hearings

Listening to the Roberts confirmation on C-SPAN (gotta love Internet streaming!) yielded some gems:

Ted Kennedy weighs in (no jokes here) on the issue:

“Citizens have strong voice in great matters....”

Like the strong voice of the citizens of the States of Colorado (SCOTUS struck down a ballot initiative prohibiting special rights to gays), Texas (SCOTUS struck down sodomy laws), Connecticut (SCOTUS struck down laws prohibiting distribution of contraceptives to married couples). Yeah, the folks have a great voice in matters so long as the voice is stridently liberal.

“No branch of government should grow so powerful as to avoid accountability.”

Does this include the Courts? What measures would the senior Senator from Massacussetts permit to bring accountability to the judiciary?

Senator Biden also opined on the necessity for “ever increasing protection for human dignity and human liberty.”

Except, of course, if those humans are unborn. It seems the only time that Democrats care about the unborn is when John Edwards can channel their spirits to justify multi-million dollar medical malpractice judgments.

Biden also stated that the Constitution is “[o]ur civic Bible.”

First thought: Given how liberals seem to fear the actual Bible, is this intended as a backhanded insult of the Constitution from the Senator?

Second though: Since the Democratic leadership doesn't really seem to think that the words of either the Constitution or the Bible really mean what their words say, I suppose this is at least a consistent view.

Senator Biden also warns that we should be wary of those who would grant “no protection for highly personal decisions”

So does the Senator think that the Constitution should protect the highly personal decisions of business owners who don't want to employ women, minorities or gays? Oh, that's right. Some peronal decisions are more personal than others. So much for consistency.

Senator Herb Kohl warns that justices that have “No constraints except those of [their] mind and heart”

Senator, what about the words of the Constitution? Shouldn't that text constrain judges just a teeny bit? Oh yeah, he's a Democrat. Of course he doesn't recognize those contraints.

Senator Kohl also warned Judge Roberts that when answering questions, “hiding behind legal jargon will not suffice.”

Hopefully by this he means "emenations from penumbras" or arguments that "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Yeah, I'll see the liberals challenging this legal jargon any time soon. Indeed, flowery language devoid of logic is the basis for liberal judcial decisions for the last half century.

And finally, Chuck Schumer tells the nation that "To [him] the pivotal question, which will determine [his] vote is this: [Is Judge Roberts] within the mainstream _ albeit the conservative mainstream _ or [is he] an ideologue who will seek to use the court to impose [his] views upon us."

Let me get this straight. Liberals think that any time a couple of atheists get their panties in a bunch, we have to stop graduation prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance or any of the other acknowledgments of faith that have been with our nation since its inception. But conservatives are the ones who impose their views?

"Conservative ideologues" want votes. We want solutions arrived at by the democratic process and implemented by officials who are accountable to the people.

If conservatives received their wish of Roe v. Wade being overturned, would abortion automatically be outlawed? Of course not. Some states (California, New York) would still practice infanticide on demand. Others would not. And the citizens of all those states would be free to change their own laws. Yep. The true definition of tyranny there.

The Democrats oppose this. And they have the gall to label us "ideologues?"

Well, you gotta admire chutzpah.

2005-09-07T13:27:00.000-07:00

Gut Check For Arnie

When the conservative establishment decided to back the self-proclaimed conservative Arnie over rock solid Tom McClintock, luminaries such as Sean Hannity opined that the governor doesn't make decisions in social issues. The gay marriage question blows that out of the water.

Will Arnie have the guts to buck the Shriver-Kennedy influence and veto the recently passed gay marriage law? Time to separate the real men from the girly-men.

Update: The Governor's office has announced that it will heed the will of the 66% of voters who overwhelmingly paseed Prop 22 and veto the "marriage" bill.

2005-09-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

(Un)Free Republic

I just got kicked off of Free Republic. Again.

The last time was the FR purge of those criticizing the idea of amnesty for illegal aliens. However, since such luminaries as Rush Limbaugh have weighed in against the idea that we need to fill "the jobs Americans just won't do," I heard the forum had calmed down and become open to discussion once more.

My mistake. It turns out that questioning whether the fired former head of the International Arabian Horse Association was the most qualified to run FEMA is forbidden. It makes me a troll.

Oh well. FR has the right to pick and choose its posters. It's just sad to see one more incident of a conservative institution morphing into a Republican institution. 'Cause folks, those terms are not always mutually inclusive.

2005-09-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

Free Trade, Expensive Gas

Apologists for free trade often claim that the cheap products brought in by outsourcing U.S. production jobs makes up for job and wage losses. Of course, I'm still waiting for Reebok and Nike to get the memo on the lower prices but that's an entirely different issue.

What I have not really seen discussed is gas prices. Sure, cheaper knock-off consumer goods might be as appealing as beads were to Indians but the free trade lobby never really likes to talk about how China's rapid industrialization is fueling our skyrocketing gas prices. I wonder how many dollars "saved" in Wal-Mart are being pumped into our gas tanks.

2005-09-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Price Gougers: American Heroes (or, Why I Am Not A Libertarian)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans, it was to be expected that radical race baiters and petulant partisans would demonize the President.

More of a surprise, however, is the full throated defense of price-gougers. Yet Jerry Taylor, of the Cato institution, does just that in today's NRO. And this argument shows precisely why I am a conservative and not a libertarian. One word sums it up: morality.

Taylor argues that "[i]n a free market, scarce goods are typically rationed by price." And to a large extent that is true. But does Taylor seriously mean to argue that New Orleans after Katrina was truly a place in which the classical free market model could apply? After all, in the classic market, if you don't like the prices at Merchant A's store, you can go down the road to Merchant B. However, when the roads are blocked by a toxic soup of floodwaters, the market breaks down.

Taylor also trots out the hoary old Libertarian chestnut that " [g]as at $6 a gallon, after all, is better than gas unavailable at any price. Moreover, shortages are likely to disproportionately affect the poor since rich people can spend more money finding gasoline and securing alternative means of transportation." Again, as a general statement, that is true.

However, reality once again enters the picture.

Let's face it. If you don't have $6 a gallon, there might as well be no gas on the market. Given that those trapped in the city were, as noted by the NY Times, waiting for their welfare checks, six dollars a gallon gas was not affordable. Of course, those who were driving around in Ryder trucks looting the city probably had little difficulty paying those rates.

Taylor's argument that the rich would come in and scoop up the petroleum resources of flooded New Orleans is laughable. Let's be honest here. There weren't many oil speculators hanging out in New Orleans when the hurricane hit. So the idea that Donald Trump was going to corner the gas market doesn't carry much weight.

Of course, Taylor and his cohorts will state that opponents of gouging are just socialists. No one is arguing that merchants should have simply given their gas or other goods away. However, doubling the price at a time when people have just lost everything is inexcusable.

In the end, Libertarians are making the argument that it is admirable to take advantage of one's neighbors in a disaster. They are not simply justifying such behavior but celebrating it. They are taking behavior that once made a person unable to show his face in town and offering him the key to the city.

This greed is the companion to liberal hedonism. And because it wraps itself in the flag of property rights, just as liberal hedonism claims to be simply an exercise in "freedom, " conservatives must be wary about being seduced by these arguments. Conservatism is about community. This is atomized individualism at its worst.

And that is why I am not a Libertarian.

2005-09-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Rest In Peace, Chief Justice Rehnquist

Chief Justice Rehnquist lost his battle with cancer last night. My heart and prayers go out to his family and friends.

One would hope that given the tragedy of Katrina and this personal tragedy for the Justice would allow the politicking to be put off for a day. From the tenor of the Senators appearing on Fox News Sunday, that will not be so.

2005-09-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

You Tell 'Em, Tom!

Tom Smith at The Right Coast is rightfully furious at what's happening in New Orleans.

There has been much gnashing of teeth on the Internet about how terrible it would be to revert to the age old norm of shooting looters on sight. Some worry about whether ordinary citizens can be trusted to defend themselves. Others think that such a response is excessive and disproportionate. Finally, some argue that people have a moral right to loot for food and medicine.

1. I'm not surprised that some folks think that people will turn into rampaging mobs. That's the entire notion of gun control, that the ordinary citizen cannot be trusted with the responsibility of self-defense. Of course, the barbarity of the looters is precisely the counter-argument to gun control.

As Professor Smith points out, the police and National Guard have run, or at least stopped rescue operations when shot at. The very people that anti-gun zealots say should be trusted to defend us when they take away the means to defend ourselves have failed. If the authorities cannot be trusted to maintain order, then it is criminal to expect the ordinary citizens trapped in New Orleans to trust to the tender mercies of roving gangs of thugs.

Folks like Orrin Kerr of The Volokh Conspiracy and Steven Bainbridge are atwitter that ordinary folks using force to defend themselves and their property is "vigilantism." Indeed, Kerr opines that

encouraging vigilante groups in New Orleans to "shoot on sight" whoever they believe is a looter without a valid necessity defense is tremendously dangerous. Such an approach would only help undermine the social order by turning New Orleans from a looting zone into a shooting zone."

What is it about highbrow folks (though Professor Smith can rightly claim a place amongst the brainy, his basic faith in the average person sets him apart from most of his academic brethren) that makes them think that ordinary citizens are just waiting to turn into the bumbling packs of bloodthirsty savages? I remember when the President expressed this view of the Minutemen and the media waited anxiously for the yokels to kill some poor illegal alien. In the end, the hoi polloi disappointed their betters. I believe the law abiding citizens of New Orleans would do the same.

It is disappointing that such educated men forget the origin of the word "vigilante." According to Wikipedia, "[i]n Spanish, vigilante means 'watchman', which is how many of these groups started, where there was no organized law enforcement." Hmm, does a place where rescuers run from gunfire fit that bill?

2. Is shooting a looter excessive? In defense of Professor Bainbridge, that is where his argument seems to trend. Yet is he right? Should we simply allow roving gangs to loot the ruins of New Orleans?

The police have had to stop their rescue efforts in an attempt to restore order. Think about that. People could be dying because the officers normally tasked to pull them out of stifling attics are trying to retake the streets. If allowing decent individuals to crush the criminals around them frees up resources to save the helpless, I'm all for it.

Remember broken windows, people? If the looters find out that they can use force to get some sneakers and TVs, you don't think they'll be tempted to use force to get anything else they want, like maybe an unwilling woman? Showing weakness to these jackals in human form who hunt the weak only invites them to become lions who will attack authorities attempting to restore order.

3. Food and water. This is the hard one and I'm of a split heart on this. On one hand, everyone can sympathize with the individual seeking to feed and water his family. Given the abysmal response of government to provide services to those trapped in the city, it would almost seem criminal to punish someone for trying to take the most basic necessities of life.

But then you read something like this, from Michael at The Southern Appeal. Stealing food from the elderly is simply contemptible. Ditto for hospitals.

So how to allow people to get the basics without stealing from our weakest? Here, I think again social pressure will work wonders. For some reason, I don't see people shooting their fellow citizens for getting bottled water from Wal-Mart. Those same citizens, I think, will take a very different view of those stealing food from the mouths of the old and sick.

A final thought on this utter breakdown of order. What message are we sending to the world? I'm not talking about the clucking of tongues likely to be heard ijn Europe; nothing we could do would be perfect enough for them.

What worries me is the folks watching this in caves and deserts. They are watching as a disaster that our authorities knew was coming has paralyzed a city. They are watching as we allow the lawless to gain control of the streets. If this is what happens when the authorities know what's coming, what would happen after a dirty bomb attack?

Government has a few basic duties. Keeping order is the most basic of them all. While Washington has atttempted to plan everythnig from the pre-natal care to retirement (and everything in between), it can't even maintain order after an emergency for which it had warning. Perhaps government has gotten so bloated in its attempt to do everything that it can do nothing.

The simple truth is that the authorities failed to plan and react. If we do not allow ordinary Americans to remedy that failure, we are not only betraying those still trapped but sending a signal of provocative weakness that our enemies will be sure to answer.