[This is part of the script from the latest episode of my podcast, "Consider This!"]

A Rasmussen poll release on June 27^th found that 26% of Obama voters think Tea Partiers are a bigger terror threat than radical Muslims. Fred Thompson asked in a tweet, “So… how many people were killed by exploding Constitutions?”

Good morning.

1. Well, there’s an (unintended) argument for drone use.
2. A maths trick in narrative form.
3. About that pope fella.
4. Cinema: Pacific Rim and a litmus test.
5. Detroit, one in 100? The first penguin to test the waters for whales and seals?
6. Scrubbed from Mr Obama’s past by a friendly press perhaps?
7. Climate, crises and costs. Compare/constrast with this (and don’t ask if the climate change is just the el Nino/Nina cycle).
8. Ah … a last line, I still think Mr Wilde’s was better (“on his deathbed reputedly he said, “Either that wallpaper goes or I go … and died.”)
9. Manners and (just as importantly) … some interesting words I didn’t know. So now your task for the week is to use “blatteroon” in a sentence.
10. Hmmm, I hit #1 and #4. Re #1 without the “droopy oversized” that’s regular summer wear for me and I no longer own any blue jeans having replaced them all with #4, which is all about the pockets (and not having to sit on my wallet).

[This is part of the script from the latest episode of my podcast, "Consider This!"]

The Supreme Court said that the people of California have no standing to defend a constitutional amendment that they passed if the state won’t defend it. It’s now open season on laws that state administrations don’t like. Exhibit A.

Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane announced Thursday afternoon she will not defend the state in a federal lawsuit filed this week challenging the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, calling the prohibition “wholly unconstitutional.”

Who promoted her to judge? Whether or not it’s unconstitutional is not her call to make. The Attorney General represents the state and defends its laws; all of the state and all of its laws.

If a state Attorney General refuses to defend those laws, that’s an abdication of his or her primary responsibility; their oath of office. AGs do not (or at least should not) have this prerogative. Otherwise you’ll have one set of laws when one administration is in power, and another set for another administration.

The Supreme Court said that they’re leaving it up to the states to decide what marriage is. But are we leaving it up to the state governments or to the state’s people?

OK.

1. Promises, promises … footnote clarified.
2. (more) Detroit chapter 9 notes here (soon to be followed by Illinois and California perhaps?).
3. The opposite of eutrapelia is …  (find out here).
4. My wife’s patron saint noted.
5. Sticking to the party line without thinking has consequences.
6. Yikes.
7. So …. the IRS scandal does reach the white house. Woops.
8. Of nekkid and the nood.
9. Some notes on free will from someone likely allergic to Polanyi (esp the book Personal Knowlege).
10. So that jet setting SUV driving green activists can use even more energy zipping about the world telling us all we are horrible wasters of resources.
11. Of feasting and fasting (although not using those words).
12. Mr Biden skewered by his own words … compare this and this.

OK ok … a little late but better than not, eh?

1. After 5 decades … that’s likely an import, eh?
2. Mr Obama said regarding the Zimmerman trial …. “we are a nation of laws” , which I guess falls under the “do as I say not as I do” category.
3. Oh, and the left (ignoring the fact that “stand your ground” was actually not part of the Zimmerman defense) thinks that this case is similar to the Zimmerman one … except that it isn’t apparently. The only actual parallel might be that this case and the Zimmerman one where both non-white on non-white violence.
4. One more on the above … and seriously … if point 8 is a problem then we don’t need a new justice system, we need a new party representing the left-of-the-aisle.
5. Improvements when your soldiers can innovate.
6. Arwen and the Virgin.
7. Overseas remarks on Mr Morsi and his ousting (Hat Tip).
8. Irony and the EPA.
9. For the silver screen viewer.
10. When imminent domain (or the equivalent in China) doesn’t work …
11. This might be related.
12. Wish I was there.
13. Character. Kinda Romans 5:3 ish, eh?
14. Big brother and the X-One.

OK. Back to it.

1. A counter example for the “there are no stupid questions” hypothesis.
2. A passing noted.
3. Academic bigotry on display.
4. Flaming taillights … somebody needs to make that a feature not a bug.
5. Advice for those doing civil patrols or community watch services.
6. Lewis Carroll and CEO publicity statements.
7. Chutzpah defined.

All about the continuing Zimmerman kerfuffle, post verdict.

1. You can be amused by Mr Obama’s upside down metaphor (stop the tide of gun violence) … which gets it exactly backwards. You don’t want to stop a tide when it’s going the way you want, and gun violence has been dropping for two decades, i.e., the tide is receding. Apparently Mr Obama is either unaware of that or wants more violence (more stupid or evil … pick one).
2. The Congo-Somali problem, that is that which gets press isn’t the matters which more deserve the same.
3. Grist for the discussion.
4. What would have happened if? Well, you wouldn’t have the President trying to influence the case to the prosecution, nor the State of Florida switching to one of their top prosecutor teams, and so on.
5. And when what you know about Public defenders comes from Law and Order … keep quiet.
6. Some technical notes on self defense law.

OK then.

1. Better late than never (… is that Shakespeare too?).
2. Journalism, moving into used car salesman and politician territory.
3. Flap flap.
4. Police misconduct (or not) and the Bill of Rights.
5. A lot more impressive 3d printing project than crappy single shot pistols.
6. Sorry, I’d agree most of the time it isn’t a disease.
7. Virtue.
8. Not getting the dilemma here.
9. Failure modes will be so incredibly impressive … which is just one more reason to build it, eh?
10. Pride of place is a common trait, lots of southerners have conflicted feelings about the Civil War. So what?
11. I’ll bet Mr Begin had no public criticism of Ms Clinton’s Senate run. Hmm.
12. Faith, prison and healing.
13. A progression, which follows alongside a reduction in gun violence nationwide during the same period.
14. The world and abortion.
15. A cool toy.
16. Yikes or idiots abounding.

The Prop 8 ruling was perhaps more troubling than even DOMA. The Supremes decided, cutting across ideological lines interestingly, that the people of California had no standing to bring their own challenge against the ruling of a judge that Prop 8, which created a state constitutional amendment defining marriage, was unconstitutional. Here’s a graphic I found that describes the problem the best.

While I’m against true direct democracy (the ol’ “two lions and a sheep voting on dinner” analogy), the proposition feature of California law has a high enough bar to clear to get something on the ballot to safeguard that. But now the people’s will can be simply ignored, with the ruling of a single judge, and we, the people, have no standing to challenge it at the Supreme Court. Wow.

In the recent spate of rulings from the Supremes were two that dealt with same-sex marriage; the Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA), and California’s Proposition 8. I’ll look at Prop 8 tomorrow.

The portion of the DOMA law that was ruled against is a provision that denies benefits to legally-married gay couples. Gay couples, under federal law, will now be considered “married.” The DOMA vote was 5-4, with Justice Kennedy writing for himself and the liberals on the court. He wrote that DOMA is a violation of, “basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the federal government.” Very interestingly, he also pointed out that DOMA infringed on states’ rights to define marriage.

Having just written about the Voting Rights Act yesterday, let me just say that that last observation is almost humorous coming from the liberal justices. The same people who said that 50-year-old data is sacrosanct in one ruling, said, in another ruling released the same day, that the definition of marriage, which has been defined for millennia, is just a states’ rights issue. The duplicity and blind partisanship is simply breathtaking.

In one respect, I agree with the DOMA ruling, regarding the idea that the federal government doesn’t need to be in the business of defining marriage. Now, I don’t thinks states should do that either, but it sets a precedent, that marriage is decided at the ballot box. It isn’t. And besides, regarding federal involvement, it’s the states that give out marriage licenses, not DC. So from that angle, it does make sense. Sort of.

The problem is, some states have decided to insert government into marriage like it has never been before. Glenn Reynolds, one of the most popular bloggers out there, the Instapundit, has been voicing his support for the repeal of DOMA by saying that government should get completely out of marriage. But as I have said before, when the government defines marriage, it is completely in the issue. Politics and PR will now define marriage. It didn’t need formal definition before, because it was almost universally agreed that it was one man and one woman. Cultures and religions, outside of government, defined marriage. All the state did was sanction what had already been decided. Back in episode 38, I discussed this in detail, so there’s a link in the show notes if you want to catch up on that. But basically, now that states decide what marriage is, the logical end of this is that marriage will mean what anyone wants it to mean, which means it will be meaningless. Since states were redefining an already well-defined term, it fell to the federal government to bring a little order and common sense to this chaos. I didn’t like it, but didn’t see any other good way out of it.

Good morning.

1. (said in growly voice) “Grrr… killn’s too good fer em“
2. Variants of bike.
3. Kinda a straw man … nobody’s arguing against discrimination, just that there are unwarranted basis for the same, such as the left’s insistence that discrimination based on race is warranted (or their even less logical insistence that once one agrees that race/gender are a valid criteria at which point apparently the specifics of the criteria are the loci of their dispute, i.e., their religious beliefs are OK but yours are not).
4. Heh.
5. Hacking and damages.
6. Not an accident … so was it a green terrorist or a for-the-pipeline terrorist? Which dya think?
7. Well, yes it was. So? All those drone attacks on neutral nations are also acts of war. We do it all the time.
8. Murdering, uhm, princesses?
9. Mr Obama and Being There.
10. “every child is subject” … huh? Doesn’t that sentence imply the speaker thinks every child has been abused? And seriously, “gosh, let’s troll the nearby trailer park for our nanny.” I realize former Presidents liked to troll trailer parks for date prospects but really … the things people do to avoid raising their own children.

A portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was struck down by the Supreme Court. The Act itself wasn’t chucked, just the way that it was determining which states came under it. The era of poll taxes and literacy tests are gone, and the disparity between whites and blacks regarding voter participation have been erased. The state with the largest gap between white and black voter turnout these days is Massachusetts, for cryin’ out loud. And in Mississippi in the 21^st century, black turnout exceeds white turnout. But the VRA was still punishing the South for race disparities in voting that have long been remedied.

So then, is 50-year-old data better than current information when trying to determine who should come under the Voting Rights Act? Have we learned nothing from the mistakes of the past? The four liberal Supreme Court justices, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama would answer No to both those questions, at least based on the outrage they feigned over the ruling. They can’t seem to bring themselves to believe that progress has actually occurred. Or they’re pandering to their base. Either way, to call requiring these stats to be updated “turning back the clock” is cognitive dissonance of the highest order. The request is that the clock be turned forward, and Democrats are against it. Or they are pretending to be against it, and hoping that their base isn’t paying attention.

If you are a Democrat, and you’ve wondered why Republicans are often wary of laws that try to remedy sins of the past, this is exhibit A. Here is a law trying to do such a thing, but it’s stuck in the culture and racism of the 1960s, and any attempt to acknowledge repentance from those sins is taken, by liberals, to be just as bad. And if you want to take politically corrective legislation like the Voting Rights Act and update it for today’s reality, you must be racist.

Ronald Reagan quipped that government programs are the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth. But the Supreme Court didn’t do away with the VRA, it just said that it should be relevant. Those politicos that spoke out against this eminently reasonable decision are, in my mind, just as irrelevant as 50-year-old statistics.

Links?

1. Markets for everything or is it the other way around?
2. A taste of the descent.
3. FISA and adversary … mark and remark. Seems to me ripe for regulatory capture … but that might be better than than the alternative.
4. Skewering the Times for its racism vis a vis the Zimmerman trial, here and here.
5. News and Mr Gore’s board seat.
6. Bazinga.
7. Liberal notions of penal practice applied.
8. Mr Reid gives advice while failing to notice he never follows same.
9. Liberte, egalite and envy.
10. A record of sorts.
11. A likely omission noted.
12. I’d suspect the effect is unlikely to be that noticeable this soon.

Morning (still)

1. A test passed.
2. The tour recap on the first rest day.
3. Geeky jokes.
4. Yikes.
5. Bender in real life.
6. Judge not lest …
7. “the parallels are very different“. Heh.
8. Getting to the “bottom” of sex harassment in the military.
9. The other side of relaxing gun control.
10. A plug for gen 4 nuclear power, eh?
11. How not to defend abortion.

At least in London it apparently is.

An American evangelist was arrested and jailed this week in London during the Wimbledon Championships while preaching about sexual immorality on the streets.

Sports Fan Outreach International, led by Bill Adams, has been hosting an evangelistic effort in England over the past week to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with attendees of the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament. Approximately a dozen or more men and women are on the streets preaching, distributing tracts and engaging in one-on-one conversation with spectators.

Tony Miano, a retired police officer who traveled to the UK with the team, states that he was preaching about sexual immorality from 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12 on Monday when a woman became agitated by his message and began to curse.

“[I preached about] the fact that people are in sin and are violating God’s word and His law by engaging in immorality — both heterosexual immorality and homosexual immorality,” he explained.

Since he had included homosexuality in his sermon, the woman, who had gone into a nearby store and came out to find Miano still speaking, called the police to complain.

Moments later, officers arrived and notified Miano that he had allegedly violated Section 5 of the Public Order Act, which prohibits public language that is threatening or insulting.

They’ve also redefined "homophobic" as "what Christianity has believed about homosexuality for millennia." Speech code are coming to a church near you.

My parents arrive this afternoon from New Jersey …. but in the meantime, links?

1. The notion that the delay is about anything but votes is hard to imagine. Kinda like imagining an honest politician, eh?
2. A not impressed movie review.
3. A protest.
4. I understand “it’s all about the bike” … but really … it isn’t. Speaking about “the bike”.
5. Middle class and market democracy … chicken and egg.
6. Those vanishing bears.
7. Lighting tech and green energy.
8. Tips for the ammo buyer.
9. Some book suggestions for your summer reading. I should make a list like this.
10. Oooh, someone say “open borders” … so they can be mocked for their stupidity.
11. Where to follow the Zimmerman trial if you are so inclined.
12. More climate model watching.
13. Bones.