Stones Cry Out

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.

Good morning, to y’all.

1. Antonin Scalia, uber liberal (see paragraph 3).
   
2. Atomic bomb tests aids pachyderm survival.
3. Gun control.
4. Mr Snowden’s recent remarks.
5. Oil forecasts revisited.
6. Huh?
7. A possibly crux of the marriage difficulties.
8. Animal talents.
9. Yes, and if we somehow returned to subsistence farming or being hunter/gatherer’s we’d have 100% employment too.
10. Expensive options for our “most open” administration.
11. Watching Egypt.
12. Dating advice.

OK. Back at home and at my desk at work.

1. Hospitals and stress (for the patient).
2. Law, war and the collapsing state … an introduction and first post.
3. That NRA shirt and the kid wearing it concluded.
4. Loneliness.
5. Why? Why so blinkered? My post from yesterday attempts to explain … it’s because the part of the progressive brain which houses “multiculturalism” has been severed from that part of the brain which houses “rights for women and so on”.
6. God is not ideology.
7. Woops.
8. Whoever said “there is no such thing as a stupid question” … was wrong, very wrong.
9. Alternating current and allergies to garlic, or Tesla meets the vampire.

So go out and do the right thing (and don’t be angry ’bout it).

(This is one of the segments of the most recent episode of my podcast, "Consider This!")

On May 16^th, Oregon Health and Science University scientists explained how they had managed to take skin cells, and inject them into a human egg that had its genetic material stripped out. Sounds something like cloning, but the researchers say that the procedure wouldn’t likely be able to make a clone. Still, the stem cells created are pretty much embryonic stem cells, and the organs that would be produced from them would not be rejected by the body from which the skin cells came.

It was George W. Bush who had enough faith that science would find an alternative, and thus who decided to curtail the destruction of embryos as a compromise to banning embryonic stem cell research altogether. You have to wonder, too, if this sort of research into finding alternatives wouldn’t have been nearly as urgently pushed if the floodgates had been opened on the supply of frozen embryos back then.

This proves 2 things. One, that George W. Bush was most definitely not anti-science. In fact, he believed scientists could research their way out of an ethical dilemma, while those who push for using existing frozen embryos, then and now, are putting expediency over ethics. And two, that market forces work, even in the scientific community.

(This is one of the segments of the most recent episode of my podcast, "Consider This!")

The NY Times recently reported on a study that, I imagine, came as a shock to most of the Times’ readership. “News organizations are far more likely to present a supportive view of same-sex marriage than an antagonistic view, according to a content study by the Pew Research Center to be released on Monday.” The Pew study also noted that the views of the public at large, contrary to the news reporting, are evenly divided.

For conservatives, this is like a study showing that the sun rose this morning, or the Pope is actually Catholic. But this paranoia about news coverage does, in fact, prove the adage that it’s not paranoia because, if you have the unapproved viewpoint, they really are out to get you.

Jack Cashill lays out the facts of the case as they have been presented by George Zimmerman, various witnesses, and the Sanford Police Department. He also notes distances and times to keep things in perspective.

One thing that hasn’t been well-publicized in much of the discussion about the case is that Zimmerman, when told by 911 operator, "We don’t need you to do that" (that is, follow Trayvon), he stopped and went back to his truck. He did as he was instructed.

Definitely worth a read as the case goes to trial.