Stones Cry Out

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

From the state of Colorado comes this news story, showing just how intolerant this country has become.

A neo-Nazi couple is pursuing a discrimination complaint against a Colorado bakery, saying the business refused them a Swastika wedding cake to honor their ceremony, and alleging that the owners have a history of turning away white-supremacist couples.

Would you support the bakery in their refusal? Certainly, neo-Nazis don’t agree with our civil rights laws, so based on a civil rights objection, should a bakery be allowed to refuse to make a cake glorifying the Third Reich?

As you may have guessed, I’ve modified this news story slightly to make a point. This is really a story about a same sex couple, from Massachusetts, suing a baker in Colorado. Religious freedom is the first of the freedoms guaranteed in the first amendment, even before speech. And yet folks exercising that freedom are not given the same deference as someone who might discriminate based on something that the Constitution doesn’t specifically protect.

Could a baker refuse to decorate a cake with text featuring the N-word, or any other word that we usually identify by its first letter? If they could, what about the customer’s freedom of speech? Does it override the baker’s freedom? I don’t believe this would even be an issue, or if it was, the ACLU might even be on the side of a baker not wanting to display a Swastika or an obscene word on their product. As it is, the ACLU is supporting the out-of-state same-sex couple, because a religious objection doesn’t make the cut.

Nor does it for a florist from Washington, nor a photographer from New Mexico. Same-sex marriage is not a case of “live and let live”. It requires others to validate it, regardless of any objection buttressed by the Constitution.

That’s right, the guy whom the Left said hated black people. The evangelical community, along with Bono, lobbied for it, and Dubya did it. It’s not something that’s mentioned often, but…

"This should be shouted from the rooftops. This is a heroic American story," Bono said in a remarkable radio interview with Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, to be broadcast by the group Tuesday.

Busy busy … sorry Ahm late.

1. Billions and billions.
2. Riding into the sunset (sunrise?)
3. A possible explanation for Mr Obama’s dislike of Catholic schools.
4. A little accelerator, not so little acceleration.
5. A tale of two (types of) Uzi.
6. Our changing language.
7. More word play.
8. Liberals play politics with armed forces, after all it’s just a game.
9. In just 10 minutes a day.
10. In the wake of the Heat NBA championship.

Yo. Links!

1. What do they do? Hmmm, read from the book of Nietzsche and then hear you confess you prayed when the mortar shells whined above you?
   
2. Aged pig (sheep?) skin is better.
3. OK. Follow link with empty mouth to avoid spitting on screen. Heh.
4. Fer the gun control debate.
5. The 11th century had the hair shirt, the 21st … has an alternative.
6. States rights and DOMA.
7. A bad idea noted.
8. The aesthetics of power are apparently very different to those in power than those not.
9. Anonymous protest illegal now in Canada.
10. Misplaced rhetorical terms.
11. When “blocking shot” doesn’t mean what you think it should.
12. Left leading spokespersons need the very sensitivity training they advocate.
13. Surrounding himself with teh stupid. What’s that say about the man doing the surrounding?
14. When the snow dependent industries realize “cutting emissions” means “not traveling to far away places … like skiing resorts” will they pipe the same tune?
15. So …. moving away from home?

Are you a Twitter user? I am (you can follow me at @Daddypundit). Recently I wrote an essay on the pros and cons of the popular social media platform.

Good morning.

1. NSA reform suggestions.
2. Time heals all … misconceptions?
3. Fiction not stranger than … newspaper reports.
4. An unbelievable public service advert.
5. Pocket-able.
6. Built by hand.
7. Lunar cycles and Afghan violence.
8. Yikes.
9. You mean “does he have a plan” … answer: probably not.
10. Some cool bike tech.

G’day

1. Part 2 on hiding in the networked world.
2. Pharma and research/development trends.
3. Engine hybridization and tech.
4. How not to make an argument, that is start with a analogy which doesn’t reflect historically very well.
5. Superman and a review.
6. Celebrating an addiction shared by many.
7. First comment says it all. Yikes.
8. Ms Clinton does algebraic number theory? Oh wait, some other relative unknown person  … I’d have thought only Grigory would be identified by last name alone. Although I suspect “shmooze” is not a word you’d use in the context of the latter.
9. On the blowing of the whistles.
10. On the high court and the fifth Amendment.
11. In the boys + toys department.
12. Speaking of toys.
13. Loneliness.
14. There has been some pushback on GOP criticizing Mr Obama for using a water pistol, but when stuff like this done by Mr Obama’s supporters, that’s what you get.
15. Video and violence.

Edward Snowden was brought to the attention of the world by Glenn Greenwald, reporter for the Guardian newspaper in the UK. From him we learned that the government has been keeping what’s called “metadata” from every phone call made in the United States. By way of explanation, metadata is basically data about the data. If the phone call is the data, then its metadata would be the number calling from and to, the length of the call, the time of day, things like that. The data – the call itself – is not kept; just the metadata.

I’m of two minds on this subject. First, there is the idea that the government is large enough, and computerization is to the point where, all this data can be compiled and stored, in preparation for a search term to be named later. Something like that strikes a chord in just about anybody. Is it legal? But more than that, is it something the government ought to be doing in the first place? Part of me says, no, this is too much. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who wrote the 2001 Patriot Act, said that something like this was excessive and not the intent of the law. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, he pointed out that the key section of the law that allows the government to obtain business records requires the information to be relevant to an authorized investigation. And clearly, not every single phone caller in the US is part of an authorized investigation. The Patriot Act is a favorite target of some, a whipping boy to bring out every time there is a privacy issue, but you can’t blame it for this. This is government overreach.

But the other “mind” I have on this goes along with someone who was interviewed on some news show that I can no longer recall. He said, basically, that when the time comes that you need to find a needle in a haystack, first you need a haystack. If we recover a throw-away cell phone from a terrorist, how do we find out what other numbers it called or called it, to track down leads? Well, we need a database of all phone call metadata to find that out.

There’s a term from decades ago called the “pen register”. That’s really what we now call phone call metadata. A Supreme Court ruling from 1979 (when I graduated from high school to give you an idea of how old that is…well, and I am) said that the use of a pen register is not an invasion of privacy. In fact, did you know that, under the Freedom of Information Act, you or I could get this information from any government phone? Well, except the classified ones. But we have access to it. It’s not illegal, and at least for the government’s part, their data is just as available as your data. How big a deal can it really be?

Overtop of all this is the question of the proper role of government, and what should it be allowed to do; the question of what should be legal vs. what is. But I would say that there’s an even deeper question that needs to be asked. Regardless of what should be legal, do we trust our government? Will it stay within the confines that we, through our representatives, have set for it? Moving more to the personal, will the individuals, the people, in our government execute their powers in a responsible fashion?

Read the rest of this entry

Good morning.

1. Meta-links. (more here)
2. For the Palin fans.
3. Europe is confused.
4. DNA and Mr Scalia …
5. A movie reviewed.
6. Verse.
7. On hiding in plain sight.
8. For when the writing on the wall is on your desk.
9. Speaking of which.
10. Lady in space.
11. Obamacare in nutshell … or a thousand words.
12. Old tech … and quothing the raven.
13. Some thoughts on faith.
14. Well, “pathological altruism” has a kinder touch than my term for the same thing, to whit “stupid or evil” (that is, you don’t realize the obvious consequences (stupid) or you do and … continue because your actual motives are evil but you can continue under the cover of a pretense of altruism) .

G’day

1. A film noted … I will be curious how my ex-gymnast daughter perceives this … as a movie to be seen or meh?
2. Do as I say not as I did, I guess … which is  not exactly convincing.
3. Luck.
4. Immigration policy and the cui bono question.
5. Suckage.
6. Middle East protest demographic noted.
7. Girls and boys are different. Someday the progressive elite will cotton that.
8. Sayings.
9. Ms Lerner and a history of misuse of agency. (HT) If that quote is accurate she should be in jail.
10. Syria working on 900 days, at 300 and counting.
11. Misunderstanding.
12. Run Koofi run.
13. The vaster left wing conspiracy.
14. Pelosi and a failed hermeneutic … what exactly does that woman mean by “sacred?”
15. Actually … Bond chapel is used on Sunday’s for Orthodox worship (St. Makarios is a mission church holding services there), for which standing is preferred and pews should be removed. So you can relax your anti-Muslim rhetoric.
16. Continuing a long line of regrettable theology.

The week progresses. Thursday already, eh? Links!

1. Popular media gets a hold of the NSA kerfuffle. Heh.
2. Sales hype.
3. Apparently “global warming threatens coral” is a real meme.
4. Myths and insurgency.
5. Consider this … from the right.
6. Of DNA tests, rape and Pakistani jurisprudence.
7. Bigger … better?
8. Gorilla’s and cars.
9. Syria and diplomacy considered.
10. Kneejerked journalists.
11. Big collider.
12. Progressivism infection.
13. Meta-data used for network analysis and method. (HT)

Good morning.

1. Apparently there is a misconception that doing the thing you feel is ethical should indemnify you from a jail term. This is wrong.
2. Really. And seriously, let the guy speak, typically guys like that are better advocates for the point of view they oppose than the one they putatively support.
3. Guns and stars.
4. A fool-for-Christ noted.
5. The current not-warming trend may be more extensive than suspected.
6. In the cui bono category.
7. Well, one of them got caught.
8. This is not unrelated.
9. Google’s algorithmic ideology.
10. Yikes.
11. Fukashima an example of nuclear power safety.
12. An shining example of White House open-ness.
13. And … I’ll end with a note that should leave a bad taste in your mouth. Sorry.
14. Oh … I can’t do that.

Whazzup?

1. Natural for a library, I guess.
2. ‘Tis the month for scandals, apparently.
3. Employment and healthcare reforms. Twas a cunning plan I suspect. (Perhaps this should be noted as a preface before the introduction of any Legislature for consideration by our August bodies of state  “Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words ‘I have a cunning plan’ marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation”).
4. Ah, if these walls could, err, blog?
5. Why “or” and not “and”.
6. Young atheists and what they say.

Well, not much garnered … I took daughter #1 to a baseball game last night … 1 hour fog delay? What’s up with that? Seriously, fog?

ObamaCare will require the use of an ID card. Does that make it racist? If not, would requiring an ID card to vote be racist? Or how about this; what if we used the ObamaCare card as a voter ID card? Would heads explode?

Good morning.

1. Of turbulence and wake.
2. A topic for these guys to look at?
3. How nice that’s settled now.
4. Two points of view of the latest meta-data government capture update, here and here.
5. And here is a roundup of quotes from the Congressional knuckleheads.
6. An epic recalled.
7. Grist for the IRS “Somebody rid me of that troublesome priest” discussion (HT).
8. Careful carver.
9. The fruits of dishonesty.
10. Yah, we know what “meta-data” means … apparently it had to be explained to someone.
11. The cold war revisited.