Harry Potter and the Death of Reading

Just ran across this opinion piece by WaPo book critic Ron Charles which doesn't exactly blame Harry Potter for the death of reading, but, then again, doesn't think Harry mania has helped.

(A)ll around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling's books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over "Harry Potter" with nary a child in sight. Waterstone's, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," may be read by more adults than children. Rowling's U.K. publisher has even been releasing "adult editions." That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don't worry. They're the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. And when we're not horning in on our kids' favorite books, most of us aren't reading anything at all. More than half the adults in this country won't pick up a novel this year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Not one. And the rate of decline has almost tripled in the past decade.

I love to read and have since I was in elementary school (I still remember how grown up I felt when I finished Little Women--all 500 pages of it--during the summer between fifth and sixth grades). Both my husband and I are avid readers. All the parenting books and magazines will tell you that if you want your children to read, they have to see you reading. You have to read to them when they are young. You have to keep books available to them.

Don't believe it.

I've read to my children literally since they were born. I still remember reading the editorials to my oldest daughter between colic bouts (maybe the editorials caused them? Who knows?). Oldest daughter also was read to on a nightly basis until around third grade when she was expected to read for herself. We've always had mountains of children's books around, thanks to my mother-in-law who likes to clean out the children's book section of Half Price Books every couple of months. And my husband and I read in front of our children. A lot. I've even taken to reading books I loved as a child to my younger children the past couple of summers, even though the kids can read quite well for themselves. So it isn't like they haven't been exposed to the love of reading.

None of my children exhibit the same enthusiasm for a good book that I have. My son is currently mildly fascinated with the books of Beverly Cleary (he finds Ribsy and Ralph S. Mouse particularly interesting), but neither of his sisters has the reading bug.

According to Charles, I'm not alone in noticing this phenomenon.

Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't encourage much optimism. Data from the NEA point to a dramatic and accelerating decline in the number of young people reading fiction. Despite their enthusiasm for books in grade school, by high school, most kids are not reading for pleasure at all. My friends who teach English tell me that summaries and critical commentary are now so readily available on the Internet that more and more students are coming to class having read about the books they're studying without having read the books.

When I was in high school honors English, in my wild rebellious youth, I decided I wasn't going to read any of the books assigned to us my senior year (I despised Heart of Darkness, and considered it my personal albatross, given that every English course I took in college seemed to require its reading). I managed to ace the course through a combination of CliffsNotes, long conversations with less rebellious friends, and the incompetence of the teacher. I haven't yet told my oldest daughter this story since I don't want to give her any ideas nor dispel the notion that I truly was a model student.

But these days, students don't have to read the books or go through a series of gymnastics to garner enough information about the assigned books to pass tests. There's so much info on the internet that, as Charles notes, students simply feel no need to read Great Expectations or To Kill a Mockingbird or The Odyssey.

Why aren't children reading? Well, my best uneducated guess would be that there are so many other things for them to do that reading has gotten crowded out. There's 24-hour cartoon and children's show channels, video games and computer games. Reading takes effort to get a level of imagination going; turning on a video game, even something as mundane as Harvest Moon, is less work and more visually appealing.

Charles also lays the death of reading at the feet of the mass book marketing machine.

According to a study by Alan Sorensen at Stanford University, "In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors." There's not much reason to think that things have changed. As Albert Greco of the Institute for Publishing Research puts it: "People who read fiction want to read hits written by known authors who are there year after year."

I confess that I read known authors, usually tearing through an entire series and then going on to the next (currently, I'm reading all the Richard Jury novels at present) like a pack of locusts through a field.

But the piece Charles misses in his lament is that people who do enjoy reading do it either for information or for pleasure, and, since we are no longer in school, we may not feel compelled to read Bleak House.

Matthew Yglesias wonders why Charles disses Harry Potter fans when they are, at least, reading. I tend to agree. I like the Harry Potter books not because I expect to learn some universal truth but because I believe J.K. Rowling weaves an interesting tale. And evidently, millions of readers agree with me.

Potential Democrat Court Nominees

If anything should energize Republicans to vote, it's the prospect of Democrats nominating Supreme Court nominees, and Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog has a not so short list of potential nominees.

Goldstein's list is interesting for what it tends to focus on: age (between 50 and 60), demographics (no white guys need apply), experience (litigation specialists need not apply), and ideology (no nutroots). It's an interesting criteria designed to gather liberals who aren't too liberal in a day and age where such information would be all over the internet five minutes after the nomination was made public.

Most interesting to me was the age issue. Obviously, Democrats are taking a page out of the Republican playbook of nominating young candidate who would have decades to shape the law of the land. As Goldstein points out, this is a more daunting task for a Democrat president because it has been so long since there was a Democrat in the White House to appoint judges.

The other interesting aspect of Goldstein's list is the color/diversity/gender problem. Because Democrats tend to be so much more concerned about what a person looks like, it limits their ability to nominate white males who might actually advance their agenda. Surely, the first nominee of a Democrat president will be a woman and some sort of minority (perhaps a Hispanic woman? Who knows?). All Goldstein's top picks are female and three of the four are Hispanic (one is black). I suppose when you are most interested in what someone looks like, ideology comes second.

Reid to Force All-Night Session

Harry Reid is hoppin' mad that those mean ol' Republicans are acting like the minority party. Why, they are demanding that the Senate actually address their concerns in legislation and not just ram things like that gawd-awful immigration bill through the process without anybody reading it! So now, Reid wants to pull an all-nighter...and not the kind you had in college just before exams.

Forcing his Republican colleagues to put up or shut up on the notion of an up-or-down vote, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) just moments ago announced that he will immediately file a cloture motion on the Reed-Levin troop redeployment bill and, if Republicans follow through with a filibuster, will place the Senate in a prolonged all-night session Tuesday to force a true continuation of debate.

"Now, Republicans are using a filibuster to block us from even voting on an amendment that could bring the war to a responsible end," said Reid. "They are protecting the President rather than protecting our troops. They are denying us an up or down – yes or no – vote on the most important issue our country faces."

The Reed-Levin amendment to the Department of Defense (DoD) Authorization Bill requires George W. Bush to "commence the reduction of the number of United States forces in Iraq not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act" and mandates a withdrawal of most combat forces by April 30, 2008.

I have to suppress a giggle that Dingy Harry is so upset that he can't get his Support Defeat bill out for a vote. Why, it seems like only yesterday that Reid waxed eloquently on the historical nature of the filibuster (don't let Jeromy Brown know that...he'll swear there's some homophobia somewhere).

Here's Reid in 2005:

A conversation between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington describes the United States Senate and our Founders Fathers vision of it.

Jefferson asked Washington what is the purpose of the Senate?
Washington responded with a question of his own, “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” “To cool it,” Jefferson replied. To which Washington said; “Even so, we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

And this is exactly what the filibuster does. It encourages moderation and consensus. It gives voice to the minority, so that cooler heads may prevail.

It also separates us from the House of Representatives – where the majority rules. And it is very much in keeping with the spirit of the government established by the Framers of our Constitution: Limited Government...Separation of Powers...Checks and Balances.

Mr. President, the filibuster is a critical tool in keeping the majority in check.

So, there you have it, Mr. Reid. The Republicans are just using the filibuster to keep Democrats in check.

Anonymous Liberal thinks a real Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington-style filibuster would give Republicans such bad press that they would drop it. I guess they don't remember their favorite Senator, Robert Byrd, who used just that sort of filibuster to try to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Remember that? That's the one Republicans supported and Democrats didn't.

Jonathan Singer questions whether it would work better for Democrats this time than it did for Republicans last time. Of course, being a loyal nutroot, he thinks it would. *eye roll*

According to Michelle Malkin, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans are happy to debate the legislation.

2d Amendment Case Headed to Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog has the details, but apparently, Washington, D.C. city officials want to challenge the ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court that a city handgun ban was unconstitutional.

I discussed the original decision here.

From SCOTUSblog:

The petition would have been due Aug. 7, but city officials said Monday that they would ask Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., for a 30-day extension of time to file the case. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and city Attorney General Linda Singer disclosed the appeal plan at a press conference, along with local Police Chief Cathy Lanier. (A news release announcing the action can be found here ) The Mayor said: "We have made the determination that this law can and should be defended and we are willing to take our case to the highest court in the land to protect the city's residents. Our handgun law has saved countless lives -- keeping guns out of the hands of those who would hurt others or themselves."

I'm not sure if Police Chief Lanier is smoking the same stuff as former Mayor Marion Barry, but she must be on something to say the handgun ban kept guns out of the hands of bad guys. Given that Washington, D.C. ranked fourth in homicides in 2005, it sounds like the bad guys had no trouble at all continuing to commit crimes.

I'm anxious to see what the Supreme Court will say about this case. There's a clear conflict among the circuit courts, and it would be interesting to see what legal loophole the Court may use not to decide whether the 2d Amendment applies to individuals rather than state militias.

Balancing Work and Career

Virginia Seitz, partner in the law firm Sidley Austin, is the poster child of the part-time lawyer. But in the legal world, there's an interesting definition of part-time.

Although Seitz defines herself as part time, this is the reality: She's in the firm's Washington, D.C., office every day at 6 a.m. and leaves by 2:55 p.m. to pick up her children, 12-year-old Roy and 15-year-old Miranda, from school.

That's a nine-hour day and a 45-hour week. Only a big law firm would call that "part time." A bus driver would be racking up the overtime with that schedule.

The article goes on to describe Seitz's determination to balance work and home in a rather unusual way for the legal world: she gets to work very early, leaves mid-afternoon, and then is fully dedicated to her home life for the rest of the day.

Although many mothers engage in some kind of multidimensional juggling act, Seitz seems to bring a particularly heavy burden of love, anxiety and vocation to the task of motherhood. "I couldn't make any choice that would have a long-term impact on a child's happiness," she says. "I brought them into the world. I feel responsible."

Before she leaves the house in the still-dark morning, she makes sure her children's lunches are packed and the table is set for breakfast. She helps with school ticket sales, car pools and teacher appreciation lunches. She bakes cookies. She sits in the bleachers at baseball games (albeit sometimes while taking a conference call). And although she does work from home some afternoons, she has dinner with her family every single night.

Her regular nine-hour day serves in part as a cushion against the times she has to deal with a child home sick from school or a parent-teacher conference or the other sundry issues that eat away at any mother's day. In other words, not every day adds up to nine hours of face time.

What do her children think of this level of what some might call sacrifice? They don't think about it, Seitz figures. "They expect and believe that I build my life around them," she says. And it's true, she adds. "My feeling is that they should take me completely for granted -- in a polite way."

I have always had the same philosophy about mothering. I told my husband that I want them to think of me as furniture: comfortable and reliable and something they don't spend a lot of time thinking about. But Seitz nails it: they should take us for granted but in a polite way.

Feminists tend to eschew this philosophy, instead focusing solely on the amount of personal pleasure a woman receives from the life she leads (it's all about ME!). They also tend to frown at the obvious guilt involved in a situation like Seitz's, where she is constantly attentive to the juggling act. I'm sure the argument is because Teh Patriarchy is keeping her down.

Yet this woman satisfies not just her family but also her clients. Billing at 60% is no easy task, and Seitz is considered a top lawyer, meaning she goes above and beyond the usual efforts to please clients.

It doesn't sound like an easy life to me, but it does show that when a person determines not to sacrifice their family for their career, it's possible to do it.

Who Pays Their Fair Share of Taxes?

The New York Times has an article today on who pays taxes and is it their fair share.

The best source for objective data on the distribution of the tax burden is the Congressional Budget Office. The C.B.O. goes beyond anecdotes and bald assertions to provide hard data on who pays taxes. One can argue about the details of its methods, but there is no doubt that it is nonpartisan and that its tax analysts are some of the best in the business.

The C.B.O.’s most recent calculations of federal tax rates show a highly progressive system. (The numbers are based on 2004 data, but the tax code has not changed much since then.) The poorest fifth of the population, with average annual income of $15,400, pays only 4.5 percent of its income in federal taxes. The middle fifth, with income of $56,200, pays 13.9 percent. And the top fifth, with income of $207,200, pays 25.1 percent.

At the very top of the income distribution, the C.B.O. reports even higher tax rates. The richest 1 percent has average income of $1,259,700 and forks over 31.1 percent of its income to the federal government.

Warren Buffett claims he only pays 17.7% in taxes and that the system is unfair because of it. How does Buffett get away with paying so little in taxes when even the top 1% are paying nearly double that?

The reason lies with where one gains one's wealth. Income taxes are progressive enough, as the C.B.O. numbers show. But since Buffett receives most of his income from dividends and capital gains--which are taxed at 15%--this helps explain his lower tax rate. And, as the NYT points out, much of Buffett's wealth is directly attributable to his ownership of stock in Berkshire Hathaway.

I've always said that the people who complain tax rates aren't "fair" enough are welcome to pay as much as they think would be fair. The problem, of course, is that they don't want their tax rates to go up; they want someone else's tax rates to go up. Generous of 'em, huh?

Unfortunately, the NYT doesn't ever actually define what would be a "fair" tax rate. I'm sure many liberals think it would be only "fair" to tax people who make, say, $100k per year something closer to 50%...that is, unless they make that much. And the IRS figures which shows the percentage of taxes paid by various groups shows that almost all taxes are paid by the top 50% of taxpayers.

This is why tax cuts typically don't do much for the lowest wage earners. Simply put, if you don't make any money, you probably won't get a tax cut (although even the poorest got a raise with the increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit). It always makes me scratch my head when liberals argue about how the poor are screwed in this economy. You simply can't go lower than not paying taxes.

That's why liberals have moved the goal post to include things like insurance in their calculations of whether tax burdens are "fair." But the fact is, even people without insurance can get medical care through public health agencies. It may mean one doesn't get the nice birthing suite at the private pay hospital, but one will still get health care.

But still, we're left wondering what is a "fair" share of taxes? I've never gotten a straight answer from a liberal about what would be a fair share. The way I look at it, they learned at least one lesson from Walter Mondale: don't tell people you want to raise their taxes if you want to get elected. That's why liberals always talk about raising somebody else's taxes instead. Just pray you aren't that somebody else.

Harry Potter Book 7

I came to Harry Potter mania very, very, very, very late.

As in last month.

I had studiously avoided reading any of the books or watching any of the movies (well, ok, I did see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone about 14 times, but that was only because the kids played it almost as much as 10th Kingdom.

Don't ask me what finally made me decide to catch up. My husband and father-in-law have been wild fans for years, and even my oldest daughter has seen all the movies. But for some reason, I decided I wanted to catch up before the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. So, I spent the month of June reading all six novels, then watching the four movies in anticipation of the latest movie and book.

I will confess I'm now hooked. So, imagine my joy at reading some Harry Potter speculation on the Volokh Conspiracy. That post led me to HogwartsProfessor.com, possibly the most amazing Harry Potter site I've seen.

We are planning to go to the local Barnes & Noble for the release of the last book. My husband will read it cover to cover as soon as we get home, then I'll read it (and, since I'm a slow reader, it will probably take me two or three days). After that, we have a contest we will be settling.

I told my husband to write down all his predictions for book 7 before we get it, and I will do the same. Then, after I've finished the book, we'll compare and see how we did.

I've already seen some of my theories supported both at the Volokh post and at HogwartsProfessor.com. I won't go into any details about my theories until after I read the book, however, so that we don't spoil anything for anyone who hasn't finished it. But I'd love to hear other people's theories at that point. :)

The Video Games Made Me Do It

The New York Times has a story about a couple so obsessed with the internet and video games that they let their children starve. (Via Ann Althouse).

As Ann points out, this is just a high tech version of an age-old problem: some parents are selfish and neglectful. I've been pretty obsessive about online games and the internet before, but I always managed to feed my kids. In a different era, these parents wouldn't have fed their kids because they were too busy doing something else. It's very, very sad.

They Believe in Free Speech, Don't They?

Not surprisingly, Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment designed to kill the Fairness Doctrine for good.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin said that the amendment was improper, as it should have come out of the Commerce committee, and was taking up valuable time the Democrats need to undermine the war in Iraq.

I can buy the argument that the amendment should have come out of the Commerce committee, if, indeed, that's where such legislation belongs. But do the Democrats really need more time to secure defeat for our efforts in Iraq?

Allahpundit at Hot Air contemplates how the Fairness Doctrine fares under a Democrat president. And what if the Fairness Doctrine gets applied to the internet where it would curtail nutroot activity? Stay tuned.

Confessions of a Former Liberal

Former BBC producer Anthony Jay explains why the MSM are liberal and why that won't change.

And the starting point is the realisation that there have always been two principal ways of misunderstanding a society: by looking down on it from above, and by looking up at it from below. In other words, by identifying with institutions or by identifying with individuals.

To look down on society from above, from the point of view of the ruling groups, the institutions, is to see the dangers of the organism splitting apart, the individual components shooting off in different directions, until everything dissolves into anarchy. Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for order, discipline, control, authority and organisation.

To look up at society from below, from the point of view of the lowest group, the governed, is to see the dangers of the organism growing ever more rigid and oppressive until it fossilises into a monolithic tyranny. Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for liberty, equality, self-expression, representation, freedom of speech and action and worship, and the rights of the individual. The reason for the popularity of these misunderstandings is that both views are correct, as far as they go, and both sets of dangers are real but there is no "right" point of view. The most you can ever say is that sometimes society is in danger from too much authority and uniformity and sometimes from too much freedom and variety...

I can now see that my old BBC media liberalism was not a basis for government. It was an ideology of opposition, valuable for restraining the excesses of institutions and campaigning against the abuses of authority but it was not a way of actually running anything. It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.

I can't deny that my perceptions have come through the experience of leaving the BBC. Suppose I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes.

Journalists are taught (some would say indoctrinated) in school that their job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Indeed, it makes sense that journalists should question authority and institutions since too much authority leads to oppression of individuals.

But as Jay points out, we are possibly going too far the other way these days. Because of the individualization (is that a word?) of culture (through inventions that allow us to pursue our own choices), we are in danger of losing the institutions which bind us together.

In former times, families stayed in one room both for heat and company. They ate collectively because that was how food was prepared. They travelled together because it was safest. And because we stayed in groups most of the time, we developed various cultural norms which bound us together.

But modern life is all about the individual.

It is astonishing how many of the technological inventions of the past century have had the effect of separating us off from the group. The car takes us out of public transport, central heating lets each member of a family do their own thing in their own room, watching their own television, listening to their own music, surfing the net on their own PC or talking to a friend on their own mobile. The fridge, the microwave and the takeaway mean that everyone can have their own meal in their own time. Our knowledge of public events and political arguments come direct from the media rather than from a face-to-face group. We still have some local, territorial group memberships, but their importance is now much diminished and their influence weakened.

Jay's argument is that in championing individualism, journalists discounted the importance of institutions and collective identity, even while identifying with their own collective (i.e., other journalists).

I can testify that when I was a journalist, almost every friend I had worked in media. We all had nearly identical attitudes about politics, religion, education, law, and so on. This is why I don't believe the liberalism of journalists is a conspiracy (something Rush Limbaugh used to say frequently), but rather a result of their environment. If you spend all your time with like-minded people, you all start to sound alike (just visit a few nutroots sites--and a few rightwing ones, as well--and you'll see what I mean).

Jay does an excellent job of explaining all this from a British perspective, but some of his points can apply to the U.S., as well.

It was not that we openly and publicly criticised the government on air; the BBC's commitment to impartiality was more strictly enforced in those days. But the topics we chose and the questions we asked were slanted against institutions and towards oppressed individuals, just as we achieved political balance by pitting the most plausible critics of government against its most bigoted supporters. And when in 1963 John Profumo was revealed as having slept with a call girl and lied to Parliament about it, the emotion that gripped us all was sheer uncontrollable glee. It was a wonderful vindication of all we believed. It proved the essential rottenness of the institution.

Sound like any story we've heard lately?

Again, it's understandable when journalists seem gleeful at the downfall of a Newt Gingrich or, to a far lesser extent, Jim Wright. As the champion of "the little guy," journalists are going to attack the institutions they believe are corrupt. The problem is when journalists attack the little guy's institutions, such as the Catholic Church or even a figure like Jesse Jackson, with whom a lot of the little guys identify. That's when charges of media bias come in.

And those charges are well-deserved. As Jay explains,

Its commissioning editor for documentaries, Richard Klein, has said: "By and large, people who work in the BBC think the same, and it's not the way the audience thinks." The former BBC political editor Andrew Marr says: "There is an innate liberal bias within the BBC".

Most Americans notice that bias, as well. That's why they don't trust many of the stories that appear in the MSM (and, unfortunately, fall for the truly reprehensible crap that appears on the web...*cough*9/11 truthers *cough*).

Defending the little guy is a noble cause, but when one's ideology prevents one from attempting objectivity (something every J-school teaches), that's a problem. But as Jay unfortunately confesses, it's only when you leave the bell jar that you stop believing the liberal ideas.

U.S. Soldiers as Suicide Bombers

Ted Rall is one of the moonbattiest moonbats out there. His columns and cartoons tend to be so far to the left and so offensive that I read his stuff with a sort of perverse fascination.

It's not just that Rall's work is racist or tasteless or rude. It isn't just that Rall's work is disgusting and vulgar. It's that Rall truly doesn't give a damn who he insults, mocks, and injures because Teh Cause is more important than anything else. What is Teh Cause? Why, impeaching President Bush, of course! But that's just for starters. No, just read a few of Rall's columns and a couple of his cartoons and you will get the idea what Rall really thinks of anyone to the Right of him.

Take Rall's latest cartoon, which depicts American soldiers as suicide bombers. Rall manages to bash our soldiers for their service, religion, education, and patriotism. In just six squares! That's got to be a new low even for Rall.

Michelle Malkin says Rall is not the far left fringe (although his politics sure look that way to me).

New Osama Tape

Evidently, Osama bin Laden feels the need to rally his supporters to martyrdom by releasing a "new" tape.

The videotape was made in the last four weeks, but the clips appear to be old, said Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs. There is no indication of where it was shot, and CNN cannot verify its authenticity.

"We're aware of the tape," a government official, who didn't want to be identified, told CNN. The official agreed that the tape's content is not necessarily new.

I put the word "new" in quotation marks, given that the clips of bin Laden are old.

Is bin Laden dead? Captain Ed seems to think so, but it doesn't necessarily mean his supporters won't take it seriously.

Riehl World View finds the tape troubling even if it is old.

Secret Squirrel Comes to Iran

I don't envy the reporter who had to write about the Iranian squirrel round-up.

Police in Iran are reported to have taken 14 squirrels into custody - because they are suspected of spying.

Britain's latest secret weapon? The rodents were found near the Iranian border allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices.

The reports have come from the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

When asked about the confiscation of the spy squirrels, the national police chief said: "I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information."

The IRNA said that the squirrels were kitted out by foreign intelligence services - but they were captured two weeks ago by police officers.

Who knew squirrels could be trained this way? Sounds like they weren't any better at staying undercover than Valerie Plame.

A Different World

I just heard last week for the first time A Different World by Bucky Covington. The lyrics are spectacular.

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead based paint
No child proof lids, no seat belts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets and still here we are, still here we are
We got daddy's belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside, playin' outside

It was a different
life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

School always started the same every day
The pledge of allegiance then someone would pray
Not every kid made the team when they tried
We got disappointed and that was all right, we turned out all right

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

No bottled water, we drank from a garden hose
And every Sunday, all the stores were closed

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

It was a different world

Covington doesn't look old enough to remember all this, but I surely do. Heaven knows how we survived in cars that didn't have seat belts (I remember sleeping up in the back window of our 1972 Chevrolet Bel Air that got 13 mpg on the highway). I also remember fondly drinking from the water hose so I wouldn't have to go in the house for fear that my mother might find something for me to do besides playing. ;)

In those days, we would leave the house in the morning and not come home until it was time for dinner that evening (I don't remember what we ate for lunch or if we even did). Our parents never worried about the fact that we were gone for 6 hours and they only had a vague idea of where we were. There were no cell phones so your parents could know your exact location at all times. Your parents might not even know the parents of the kids you were playing tag with. They just assumed that everybody was normal and not some homicidal maniac ready to snatch your child at a convenient moment.

We didn't have indoor play equipment or McDonald's with big playgrounds or hand sanitizer to use after playing. If you wanted to swing, it was in the neighbor's backyard. We had teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds at the local park and nobody sued the city because these weren't perfectly safe.

I marvel sometimes at the electronic gadgets my children play with, and I envy the elaborate playgrounds they've had to play in. But I can't say I think they have more fun than we did. :)

Sometimes You Just Gotta Laugh Out Loud

Jes, who commented here last year until I stopped it lying about me, is sobbing about what meanies the CSPT crew are over at its almost completely unread blog.

Jes got its panties in a wad because it couldn't back up the Lancet study's 655k dead figure with actual photos or stories about graves. One would think that if there were really 655k dead in Iraq that one would have numerous photos of all the graves. But, alas for Jes, there are none, which should, at the very least, make one skeptical of the figure.

But not Jes. No, when confronted with real photos of real Iraqi graves, Jes cried that I was "gleeful" about Iraqi deaths. This isn't surprising, given Jes' inability to comprehend English (just read most of its comments at CSPT for examples).

Reading Jes' crap requires the sort of curiosity one might have when passing a car wreck on the highway. Watching Jes mangle and twist one's statements took on a certain perverse fascination. Who could actually believe the things Jes writes?

I walked away from Common Sense Political Thought out of real, final disgust with Sharon: her glee over murdered villagers was just the last straw in a succession of ugly encounters. (Her mockery of Elizabeth Edwards for dying of cancer while her husband campaigns for President was very nearly the last straw: but somehow her attacks on a woman dying of cancer whom she'd earlier pretended even to feel sorry for didn't feel quite as brutal as her joy at finding news of a village of the dead, murdered by Iraqis, that she thought she could use as a debating point to "debunk" the Lancet report.)

The fact that I never mocked Elizabeth Edwards for dying of cancer (I did mock her hypocrisy for calling out Ann Coulter yet slandering her own neighbor), or was "joyful" at finding photos of Iraqi dead is inconsequential in Jes' worldview. I suppose Edwards was supposed to get a free pass for her insensitive remarks about her neighbor while attacking someone else for making insensitive remarks about her husband. Sorry, Jes. When you are a public figure--which Lizzie Edwards undoubtedly is--you don't get to be a hypocrite without it being pointed out.

But the most amusing--and stupid--arguments Jes made concerned abortion and contraception. It's obvious Jes has no children. That's why it thinks lowering the age of consent to 12 is a great way to stop teen pregnancy (I'm not making this up). And, of course, if one believes that adult women who decide to have sex are accepting the risk of pregnancy involved in that action, then one must "loathe women having sex for pleasure." It really was hilarious watching Jes try this argument time after time.

I'd like to say I'll miss Jes at CSPT, but I'm not a liar. Besides that, Jes will continue to lie and mischaracterize my arguments (and those of Dana and Eric, among others), just from what it considers to be a safe venue. Good riddance.

Why Should the GOP Show Up at NAACP Events?

Jeffrey Feldman at Frameshop thinks he has a "gotcha" moment when no GOP candidate but Tom Tancredo showed up at the NAACP GOP Candidate Forum.

Feldman thinks this is proof that the GOP are racists and not committed to civil rights, but the real reason GOP candidates don't show up at NAACP events is because the radicals running the NAACP use these events to beat up Republicans.

Doesn't anyone remember the NAACP ad that stated that then Texas Governor Bush's veto of hate crimes legislation was like lynching James Byrd all over again? The perpetrators of Byrd's lynching received the worst possible sentences under Texas law and hate crimes legislation wouldn't have changed that.

Given that ad, why would any GOP candidate appear at a NAACP function? What purpose would it serve, other than to give Democrats free footage?

This doesn't show the racism of GOP candidates. It shows their intelligence.

The Dueling Arguments on the Fairness Doctrine

Captain Ed has a nice post on the continuing debate in the Senate on the Fairness Doctrine. The debate shows the difference in the arguments of both sides. Says Ed:

The effort to bring back the Fairness Doctrine is entirely about fear. Durbin and his associates are afraid that they have lost the debate, and they want to shut down the forum rather than acknowledge it. Either that, or Durbin and Barbara Boxer and anyone else who wants the government to dictate the content of political speech think you're too stupid to find differing points of view.

I've always said that liberals like the Fairness Doctrine because they've been unsuccessful in the marketplace. But that's not entirely true; virtually all the networks (with the exception of FOX News) lean to the left. There's NPR on the radio, and the internet is more heavily populated by liberals than conservatives. This isn't to mention the editorial policies of nearly every newspaper in the country. In fact, the only area that conservatives dominate is talk radio. Would the Fairness Doctrine work to force all of these other news sources to be more conservative? I doubt it.

Liberals change the terms when they don't like the argument. That's why they complain about corporate ownership of media (but then rail at government control of same). They hate Rush Limbaugh because he's managed to remain overwhelmingly popular for nearly 20 years regardless of their attacks. His success showed the profitability of other conservative voices on the airwaves and lead to the syndication of other shows.

But the worst part about the liberal desire for the Fairness Doctrine is the way they insult average Americans by implying (and sometimes saying) that Americans are too stupid to find the truth without a government regulation of the airwaves. The truth is, we don't need the Fairness Doctrine precisely because there are so many places one can go for information. We aren't dependent on what we watch on TV or hear on the radio or read in the newspaper. Because of deregulation, we can watch, listen, and read so many more opinions, ideas, and philosophies to help form our opinions. We don't need the government telling us where we can get our information. That's why the Left fears the marketplace of ideas.

Six Degrees of Separation from The 10th Kingdom

The 10th Kingdom is one of my all-time favorite movies (actually a mini-series). I don't know why I love that movie so much; it's goofy and somewhat predictable and spoofs fantasy movies. Maybe that's why I love it: it doesn't take itself too seriously.

We are a serious 10th Kingdom family. For about a year, we watched it at least twice a month...and that's a 7 1/2-hour commitment each time. For a long time, whenever we asked our youngest daughter what she wanted to watch, she always asked for The 10th Kingdom.

Our 10th Kingdom obsession has faded a little after four years, but my son still periodically puts it in the DVD player before bedtime, and I watch it several times a year by myself when everybody else is off doing their thing.

After so many watchings, you can bet we know our 10th Kingdom and where all the actors ended up (Kimberly Williams who played Virginia, for example, now stars on According to Jim), so you can bet we recognize 10th Kingdomers wherever they are. Imagine my surprise, then, when I recognized a couple of them in the Harry Potter movies.

--Warwick Davis, who played Acorn in 10th Kingdom, is Professor Flitwick.

--Robert Hardy, who played Chancellor Griswold in 10th Kingdom, is Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter movies.

It's always fun to see actors in different roles from the ones in which you know them best. I wasn't prepared to find The 10th Kingdom in Harry Potter, though! :)

Life without a Computer

You never know how much you use your computer until you lose access to it. That's what happened to me this week when we decided to do a huge spring (summer?) cleaning and get almost all the carpets cleaned. To do that, it meant unplugging the computers and putting everything away for a couple of days. And, being the procrastinators we are, it took a couple of extra days to get everything back in place.

Some random thoughts:

1. You can't check your Netflix account without a computer.

2. It's less convenient to request books from the library if you don't have a computer (it's also impossible to check the status of your requests without a computer if the library is closed).

3. You can't look up the starting times for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix without a computer (unless you go get a newspaper).

4. You can't go to imdb.com to find out the name of that actor in The Godfather without a computer.

I know you can do some of these things without a computer. I could call the movie theater to see what time Harry Potter starts, and I could go to the library to request a book. But doing these things online is so much easier. It's amazing how much the internet has altered the everyday tasks we perform.

Last but not least, I couldn't blog for most of the week and that, I confess, drove me nuts (and finally resulted in my shangaiing my teenager to help me put the computers back together). Glad to be back! :)

Marriage Courses and License to Wed

Christine Whelan says couples looking to marry should skip License to Wed and look for serious counseling.

License to Wed is the new Robin Williams vehicle, in which Williams plays a minister who puts engaged couples through outrageous tests of compatibility before marrying them (think eharmony on steroids). The tests include "diapering urinating robotic twins."

Whelan disdains the movie and its trivialization (is that a word?) of pre-marriage counseling, and instead, focuses on the true purpose of such counseling: to help couples find commonly-held values which will guide them over the rough spots in marriage.

My question is: shouldn't they have done this while they were dating? I thought the purpose of dating was to find out all you could about the other person to determine if this was someone you wanted to be with forever.

Granted, my track record is spotty (1 for 2). And I can tell you that I "did everything right" according to nearly every marriage checklist available the first time, and, alternatively, "did everything wrong" the second time, but somehow managed to make the second marriage work while the first one did not. It really does boil down to the kind of person you and your potential mate are and the kinds of people you are willing to become.

When I look back at the problems faced in the first 5 years of each of my marriages, I am amazed at the different ways I handled situations based on my own maturity and level of commitment. Things that drove me nuts the first time (does any man fold the towels properly?) became totally inconsequential the second time (hey, he folded the towels!). That it took me two times to realize that no 2 humans fold the towels the same way but that it is ok gives me greater appreciation for the couples who realize this fact the first time around.

None of this is to knock Whelan's point that pre-marriage counseling can help smooth out the rough spots in the early years of marriage. I just don't believe that such counseling will prevent problems if the people involved don't make the determination that they are going to learn to work together, for better or worse.

Besides, urinating robotic twins sounds funny to me. :)

I Must've Missed Live Earth

I guess I missed the Live Earth concerts, what with my busy day Saturday washing the car and mowing the grass.

But it looks like I wasn't alone in ignoring one more lecture from the privileged set on how I shouldn't drive an SUV but it's ok for them to jet from concert appearance to concert appearance. I'm sure my Hyundai Santa Fe puts out more greenhouse gases, right?

NewsBusters "touches" on the softer side of Live Earth news.

The Q and O Blog notes the suburb-sized carbon footprint of the entertainers.

Ann Althouse notes the unimaginative uses for recycled products suggested now versus then. It's funny, back during the Depression, when people hadn't heard of recycling, they sure found ways to reuse everything, including unravelling the string from the potato sacks to knit them back into dishcloths. Does anyone use dishcloths these days?

Pro Bono: Not Just for Liberals

Law.com has an article discussing the increasing popularity of pro bono work for conservative causes.

Every law student is indoctrinated with the theory that, as lawyers, they have a solemn duty to do pro bono work, offering their legal abilities to various causes for free. Some classes give credit for such work; others work pro bono causes into internships. And students are frequently told that it's not particularly important what the cause is--whether it is family law, criminal law, even employment law (I handled a case for a man who hadn't been paid his final wages at a previous job)--legal work should be open to virtually everyone.

For the most part, however, such cases have been notably liberal causes: women's rights, abortion rights, gay rights, anti-religion, so-called "freedom from religion" cases, and more have used up considerable pro bono hours from prestigious firms. Now that trend is finally shifting to include conservative causes.

They are not the poor, the infirm or the otherwise dispossessed. Instead, Harry Korrell III's pro bono clients are parents -- predominantly white -- from a comfortable suburb of Seattle. Last fall, Korrell, a partner at Davis Wright & Tremaine, took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing against the Seattle school choice program in which race is a factor in the allocation of coveted slots. In a controversial 5-4 decision in June, the Court ruled against the use of race in public school enrollment.

Even before the decision, the case sparked fury far beyond Seattle, galvanizing both supporters and foes of affirmative action. "People view it as reverse discrimination," says Korrell. "It's not popular." Even some of Korrell's partners disagreed with his view of the case. Nevertheless, Korrell says, Davis Wright has supported his work -- and he says that the case has not caused client defections or hiring problems. "We do well in recruiting minority lawyers," he says. "If a lawyer is afraid of coming here because of a case I handled, I wouldn't be sure of that person's judgment."

Korrell's case exemplifies a quiet phenomenon, 20 years in the making: major law firms supporting conservative pro bono causes. Contrary to conventional wisdom, pro bono is not just the province of liberals. Bolstered by influential groups like the Federalist Society, religious organizations and pro bono advocates, big firms now regularly champion libertarian causes such as free speech and property rights. More surprisingly, some are challenging race-based policies and representing groups opposed to gay rights and abortion. Indeed, the politics of pro bono are evolving -- they're more fluid than the stark line usually drawn between the left and the right. Conservative causes are not monolithic, and the distinctions between liberals and conservatives sometimes blur. In the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case recently argued before the Supreme Court, for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union sided with evangelical Christian groups to challenge speech restrictions on high school students, while conservative stalwart Kenneth Starr (now of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis) led the opposition. Even such a die-hard conservative as James Bopp Jr., general counsel of the National Right to Life Committee, is collaborating with the ACLU in challenging political advertisement restrictions in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. In Harry Korrell's school choice case, his clients aren't rabid conservatives, just parents who were "furious," he says, that because of racial preferences, "their kids couldn't go to school down the street." For big-firm lawyers like Korrell, pro bono no longer begins with a litmus test.

This phenomenon naturally has liberal voices screaming at the "unfairness" of using pro bono lawyers to undo their handiwork. Indeed, they don't believe that such causes deserve free legal help. Let 'em pay! After all, they're just a bunch of racists, sexists, and bigots and the Constitution doesn't include them, does it?

Well, unfortunately for the folks at Pandagon and other places, the Constitution is available to all Americans, including those folks you disagree with. And, similarly, pro bono work should be available for all sorts of causes, not just liberal ones. This doesn't necessarily make those lawyers popular, though.

Such advocacy is not without risk, says Terry Pell, founder of the Center for Individual Rights. "Race goes to the bottom line," Pell says, noting the Fortune 500's insistence on diversity at its law firms. Maslon, he adds, is still getting grief for its work on the Michigan cases; last year, a local consortium of firms and corporations working on diversity rejected the firm's membership. Maslon partner Kirk Kolbo, who argued the cases before the Supreme Court, says he's stunned at the fallout. "The irony is that the firm has a liberal history," he says, citing Maslon's school desegregation work. Some of the firm's clients also expressed "dissatisfaction" with the representation, says Kolbo, though "to my knowledge, no client removed their business."

I don't have a problem with clients expressing their own dissatisfaction if their lawyers take on causes with which they disagree. But it just bolsters a powerful argument conservatives make: liberals love "X" as long as it agrees with them. You can insert the word "speech" or the phrase "the courts" into that blank, and it has the same meaning. It goes to the hypocrisy on display many times on the left that they enjoy using some particular tactic for their own causes but cry "Foul!" when conservatives use the same tactics. This is largely behind the moaning from the Left about the latest Supreme Court term. They considered the courts to be their domain for bullying the American populace into accepting their ideas, rather than using the legislative process to persuade people (they knew they would never get many of their ideas through the legislature).

The rise of pro bono work for conservative causes hasn't happened in a vacuum. Indeed, it is mainly possible because of the creation and success of conservative think tanks and legal institutions.

Some groups, such as the American Center for Law and Justice, created by Pat Robertson in 1990 and now headed by Jay Sekulow, have become so successful that they handle most of their advocacy in-house. But others, like the Alliance Defense Fund, are making a determined play for a piece of the legal establishment's pro bono pie. With 35 full-time lawyers and annual revenues of $22 million, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based ADF vies with Sekulow's ACLJ as the Christian ACLU. Though clearly ideological (freedom of religion, sanctity of human life, and defense of marriage and traditional family values are its cornerstones), ADF is practical about how it approaches big firms. "We don't throw Bibles at people," says Jeffrey Ventrella, ADF's senior vice president. Instead, Ventrella says, ADF tries to find matters that will resonate with big firms, such as freedom of speech or religion cases. Or it reframes sensitive social issues, such as combating gay rights, as business matters.

ADF also underwrites a training program that's starting to attract big-firm lawyers. Dallas-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld partner Randall Kucera, for instance, trained at ADF two years ago. Since then, Kucera says, he's taken on constitutional challenges that he wouldn't have handled before. In one case he's defending a school district in Texas that's been sued by the ACLU for including the Bible in its curriculum. In another, now before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, he's defending a school board's right to hold prayer meetings. Just a few months ago, in the highly publicized Baby Emilio case in Austin, Texas, Kucera fought to keep the fatally ill child on life support. (The case became moot when the child died.) Kucera says that Akin Gump has been nothing but encouraging about his pro bono matters.

Another conservative group, the Christian Legal Society, had no problem enlisting Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in a 2001 fight over embryonic stem cell research. Representing an agency that promoted "adoption" of human embryos stored at fertility clinics, the firm filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to overturn guidelines that allowed for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. CLS head Samuel Casey says that he became acquainted with Gibson Dunn when about half a dozen of its lawyers joined CLS for Bible studies. "We prayed with them on a number of cases they were doing," recalls Casey. A former Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe partner, Casey says that Gibson Dunn's work was key in persuading the Bush administration to back the embryo research ban. And should the ban be lifted, Casey says, "We'd take it to Gibson again. ... They treated us like IBM." (Former partner Thomas Hungar, now deputy U.S. solicitor general, led the stem cell case; he declined to comment.)

It's refreshing to see articles about this side of the legal system. The fact is, the legal system should be open to everyone...whether you like their opinions or not.

It Hasn't Rained for Two Whole Days...

So we finally got to go swimming today at a church youth party. It was a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed swimming for only the second time this summer. It rained daily for nearly two weeks. That doesn't happen in Texas!

We are now more than 15 inches ahead of schedule for the year, which is nice for a change.

It took 2 1/2 hours for my oldest daughter to mow my father's lawn. The grass was nearly up to her knees, due largely to the fact that it has rained so much she hasn't had a chance to mow it. While she was happy for the money my father gave her for doing it, she definitely earned it!

They are forecasting still more rain over the next week, albeit more of the "isolated" variety. I may try to take pictures of our "little" creek in the next day or so.

You Can Learn a Lot about Life in MMORPGs

Well, that's my take on Michael Gerson's article on on-line games.

Gerson compares the libertarian Second Life with the fantasy-based Lord of the Rings Online.

But Second Life is more consequential than its moral failures. It is, in fact, a large-scale experiment in libertarianism. Its residents can do and be anything they wish. There are no binding forms of community, no responsibilities that aren't freely chosen and no lasting consequences of human actions. In Second Life, there is no human nature at all, just human choices.

And what do people choose? Well, there is some good live music, philanthropic fundraising, even a few virtual churches and synagogues. But the main result is the breakdown of inhibition. Second Life, as you'd expect, is highly sexualized in ways that have little to do with respect or romance. There are frequent outbreaks of terrorism, committed by online anarchists who interrupt events, assassinate speakers (who quickly reboot from the dead) and vandalize buildings. There are strip malls everywhere, pushing a relentless consumerism. And there seems to be an inordinate number of vampires, generally not a sign of community health.

Libertarians hold to a theory of "spontaneous order" -- that society should be the product of uncoordinated human choices instead of human design. Well, Second Life has plenty of spontaneity, and not much genuine order. This experiment suggests that a world that is only a market is not a utopia. It more closely resembles a seedy, derelict carnival -- the triumph of amusement and distraction over meaning and purpose.

I've played a lot of MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role playing games). I started playing EverQuest in 1999 and was instantly addicted, playing more hours than I care to admit. I've also played Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, and currently play Vanguard (albeit, much more casually than I ever played EQ). I also tried LOTRO in beta, but couldn't find anything in it compelling enough to continue it once the game came out.

What my experience has taught me is that there are two sorts of people in online games: those who play online the way they behave in real life and those who use their online avatars to behave the way they wish they could behave in real life. That's not necessarily a good thing; some of the ways people want to behave in real life are terribly anti-social, mean, and downright evil. Try playing on a PVP server for a while and you'll get my drift.

Having said that, I can also admit that some of the best friends I've had I met in games, and those friendships have lasted through the many games we've played over the course of the last eight years. The connection you can have with people quickly is a great thing and tempers the bad experiences with the meanies.

I've never been interested in Second Life for the same reason that the Sims loses its appeal for me: it's too much like real life. As busy as I am in the real world, why would I want to play a game doing pretty much the same things? I have to herd everybody in this world; why would I make characters that I had to watch like hawks on my computer, as well?

Gerson points out that his biggest concern with Second Life is the shallowness of its existence. Existence is, in fact, pointless outside of random pleasure and materiality. Yet for many people--particularly those who aren't spiritual (and I'm not talking merely Christian)--life is simply about random pleasure and materiality. If you don't believe there's anything more important than your personal happiness, it's hard to understand people who think there is intrinsic value to hard work and accomplishment.

To me, this is one of the basic divides between many on the left and those of us on the right. When discussions boil down to moral imperitives, many on the left are convinced that the most important goal of life is personal happiness. That can allow for nearly anything: high achievement, personal philanthropy, and discipline, but also abortion on demand, high divorce rates, and legalization of drugs.

This isn't to say I'm against personal happiness; I'm not. But when people do not accept the idea that there are ideals that are helpful for societal cohesiveness that are greater than individual happiness, it's easy to see life devolving into simply one more consumer choice to make.

Anti-American 4th of July

Zombietime has a post on the anti-American 4th of July celebrations in San Francisco last Wednesday. The celebration included an art exhibit with no curator (so every entrant was displayed).

The art work--much of which came straight from Iran--was fascinating. Who knew that President Bush could be Satan, a Nazi, a demon, and an evil Spock? With so much wrong with America, why do so many of them choose to live here?

Interestingly, unlike in many of the countries we're told are Nirvana, there were no police or military personnel gunning down protestors. Quite surprising, considering that these are the people who think America is Hell on earth.

They Think They're Smarter and That's Why Talk Radio Doesn't Work in Washington

That's according to Chris Berry, president and general manager of WMAL, on why talk radio--of any stripe--isn't popular in the nation's capital.

Chris Berry, president and general manager of WMAL, says there's nothing particularly unusual about Washington and political talk radio, except that "people in D.C. are smarter" than talk audiences in other towns. "In Boston, Chicago, even L.A., it's more emotional," he says. "In D.C., people really do know the issues."

Funny, you can't tell their smarter by the sort of legislation they support.

Another Eye-Roller from Media Matters

Up to its old tricks, Media Matters' latest "gotcha!" moment screams that Neil Boortz lied that Bill Clinton was convicted of perjury.

As Blue Crab Boulevard points out, this is hair-splitting of the worst kind.

Because rather than being "convicted", Bill Clinton directly admitted in a sworn plea agreement that he had lied under oath. Period. No "conviction", per se, although the typical media shorthand calls that a conviction. No, this was a flat-out admission of guilt to avoid the conviction that would have occurred had the matter gone to court - which even Media Matters must know - otherwise why would Clinton have made the plea bargain?. Clinton admitted his guilt, in public, with no parsing and with no tortured reasoning trying to push an elephant or a camel through the eye of a needle.

So, while Media Matters is technically correct that Clinton wasn't convicted, Clinton surrendered his law license and paid a fine because he committed perjury.

I've written before about Media Matters' habit of completely mischaracterizing comments, viewpoints, and positions of conservatives. This is just the latest example.

The Perjury Trap

Michael Kinsley has an interesting column in the New York Times today discussing what he labels the perjury trap.

His argument is that Scooter Libby, like Bill Clinton before him, was caught in a dilemma: commit perjury and go to jail for that or tell the truth and face unpleasant consequences for that (including, in Libby's case, possible jail time for a different crime).

I disagree with Kinsley's characterization of Bill Clinton's impeachment being "about sex." It was only "about sex" because Clinton so effectively persuaded so many people to lie under oath for him. Monica Lewinsky didn't figure into Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's equation until he started looking into Vernon Jordan's business connections, after all.

On the other hand, I agree with Kinsley's characterization of Libby's situation as being about leaking as opposed to lying, and this is where the NYT and all news organizations showed their own hypocrisy.

The crime, if there was one, was leaking government secrets to journalists. If you were investigating that crime, where would you start? Yes, of course, by questioning journalists. The government leakers, if you found them, would be protected by the Fifth Amendment. You would need more and different evidence, and only journalists had it.

The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, followed this commonsense logic straight into a First Amendment buzz saw. News organizations that insisted on the need to get to the bottom of the leak also insisted that no journalist should have to supply information to this investigation...

It takes two to leak. How can it be fair that one party to the leak doesn’t even have to testify about it, because leaks are so vital to the First Amendment, while the other party might go to prison for it? And if that is unfair, how is a perjury trap fair when it forces a leaker to choose between going to prison for the leak and going to prison for lying?

So as much as I dislike the war in Iraq, as much as I dislike President Bush, as much as I expect that I would dislike Mr. Libby if I ever met him, I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. In fact, if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, "Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously." I bet that today, commuted sentence and all, Mr. Libby wishes they had done just that.

I often wondered throughout Libbygate why it was seemingly all right for journalists to print whatever they were told by leakers instead of being held to the same standard as the leakers. The answer goes back to the Pentagon Papers' case, where the court determined that the government had a heavy burden to meet before it could restrain the publishing of material.

Captain Ed discusses Kinsley's piece and the hypocrisy of MSM in its philosophy on leaks.

Even Driving a Hybrid Car Doesn't Stop the Police from Arresting You

Not when you're going 100 m.p.h. and possess a lot of drugs.

We get a sneering lecture from Tbogg about the people who mention that this happened but say we shouldn't make fun of Algore 3 for the mishap of being his father's son. Well, I agree that it's not Algore 3's fault his dad is a liar and a buffoon, but it is funny that he was speeding in a Prius, of all things.

So, I've decided that I won't pretend there's nothing funny about this event. Because, since the Left thinks gleefully pointing out bruises and deformities is just "honesty," I'll give them honesty.

Happy Independence Day

Here in Texas, it's a wet and soggy 4th, and the rain, which has occurred nearly every day for the last three weeks, is supposed to continue at least through the weekend. But I'm hopeful there will be fireworks this evening regardless.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Dale Franks at The Q and O Blog explains how the nutroots celebrate Independence Day.

Still, spending July 4th, the country's national holiday, recounting what a craphole the place is, does kinda open you up to those sorts of accusations. I mean, isn't there a single day that these people can write down anything they like about the country?

You know, like how, in America, they can write these little screeds about how horrible the government is, and how their liberties are all being taken away, without worrying that the secret police will boot down their door at 2:00am and cart them all off to a concentration camp.

I guess that would be too much to expect, of course. Quite apart from anything else, it would require the ability to comprehend irony.

It's sad, really, because even when there's a president I dislike in office, I can love and appreciate the special blessings associated with living in America. I guess the point is that loving your country and celebrating it should be more important than your individual and petty grievances.

Don't Say They Are Muslims

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word "Muslim" in connection with the ­terrorism crisis.

The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on ­terror” is to be dropped.

The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair.

Because if you don't offend them, maybe they won't detonate bombs in your country? Hasn't Britain tried not offending the Muslims before? And they still find bombs?

Funny, in "War on Terror" landia America, we haven't had any. Hmm...

President Bush Commutes Libby's Jail Time

As he should have, President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's jail time.

It was the right thing to do. Judge Reggie Walton gave Libby an unduly harsh sentence by not only sentencing Libby to jail but insisting that he go before his appeals were done. It was obvious that Walton was determined Libby would spend time in jail, a fate perjurer-in-chief Bill Clinton was spared.

Naturally, the nutroots are livid. They have been salivating for months at the prospect of video of Libby walking into jail. It was the closest they'll get to impeachment and/or convicting either the President or Vice President, which is their actual goal.

Alan Dershowitz explains that the Court of Appeals played politics with this case--so much for all that judicial impartiality that liberals have suddenly discovered they love.

The outcry against President Bush's decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence is misplaced. President Bush acted hours after the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Libby bail pending appeal. That judicial decision was entirely political. The appellate judges had to see that Libby's arguments on appeal were sound and strong -- that under existing law he was entitled to bail pending appeal. (That is why I joined several other law professors in filing an amicus brief on this limited issue.) After all, if he were to be sent to jail for a year and then if his conviction were to be reversed on appeal, he could not get the year back. But if he remained out on bail and then lost the appeal, the government would get its year. In non-political cases, bail should have and probably would have been granted on issues of the kind raised by Libby.

It isn't unusual for a person to be free on bail pending appeals, particularly in a case like Libby's where the chance of jumping bail are very low. But this court system was insisting that Libby serve jail time whether his appeals were successful or not. And liberals call that justice?

"Progressives will now have to win their battles in the political arena."

So says Edward Lazarus in this Washington Post column.

Much of the opinion piece is crying in its beer about how much liberals (he says progressives, but we know that's just their term du jour) "lost" in the last SCOTUS term.

But towards the end, Lazarus said something I've said for a long time about a lot of issues: if liberals want Americans to accept certain ideas, they need to persuade them, not beat them about the head.

Prior to Roe v. Wade, America was becoming more accepting (albeit slowly) of the idea of legal abortion. But that court decision gave birth to the pro-life movement which saw its first outright victory in a 40-year war this court term. The fact is that states might not have completely embraced legalized abortion but for Roe--and, indeed, some states still would have banned abortion--but we know that Roe created a situation that galvanized moral and religious conservatives as well as those who disliked judicial activism.

As recently as last fall, I said here that gay marriage advocates should make it their goal to persuade the American electorate of the reasonableness of their position, rather than ramming down the throats of their opponents through court decisions.

I've seen arguments made comparing gay marriage to the civil rights movement. But the civil rights of all Americans wasn't guaranteed by a court decision. Equal rights were guaranteed through legislative action including the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (possibly the most important piece of legislation ever passed), and the Voting Rights Act. In other words, in order to gain equality, black people had to convince enough non-black people that it was a good idea. It was only then that such legislation was passed and those legal rights secured.

Lazarus says something similar: that liberals need to work with conservatives on issues they both agree on.

progressives need to consider whether they can make common cause with some conservatives. Such a potential agenda does exist. Call it the "accountability agenda," focused on greater transparency in government and on enforcing the checks and balances at the Constitution's structural core.

Conservatives of a more libertarian stripe are as concerned as progressives about overreaching claims of unreviewable executive authority, as the decisions rebuffing the Bush administration's policies on enemy combatants have already shown. Both progressive and conservative judicial philosophies can embrace a judicial role in policing the limits of governmental power and in making our democratic processes more robust.

It may be a painful growing season for liberals, but they will have to discover ways to persuade Americans to embrace their causes, rather than using the club of the courts to force Americans in directions they aren't willing to go.

High Court Rejects School's Appeal in Anti-Bush T-shirt Case

In another law.com article, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by a school district over a ruling that it violated a student's rights by censoring his T-shirt.

A seventh-grader from Vermont was suspended for wearing a shirt that bore images of cocaine and a martini glass -- but also had messages calling President Bush a lying drunk driver who abused cocaine and marijuana, and the "chicken-hawk-in-chief" who was engaged in a "world domination tour."

After his suspension, Zachary Guiles returned to school with duct tape covering the offending images.

Williamstown Middle School Principal Kathleen Morris-Kortz said the images violated the school dress code, which prohibits clothing that promotes the use of drugs or alcohol.

An appeals court said the school had no right to censor any part of the shirt.

On Monday, the Court said schools could regulate student expression if it advocated illegal drug use. Justice Samuel Alito cautioned that schools could not censor political speech.

Far more than "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," a nonsensical phrase according to the student, this is an example of political free speech by a student. It seems to me this is a correct application of the Court's new rule.

Bar Applicant Sues over Gay Marriage Question

A Massachusetts bar applicant says he failed the test because he chose not to answer a gay marriage question.

In his pro se complaint, plaintiff Stephen Dunne seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions barring the defendants from considering the question in regard to his application to practice law and from enforcing the question in the current or future bar examinations. Dunne is also seeking a jury trial and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Stephen Dunne v. The Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners, No. 07-11166 (D. Mass.)

Dunne claims his score of 268.866 on the November 2006 bar exam just missed the passing score of 270 points because he didn't follow the proscribed format for an unlawful question about gay marriage. Dunne said the question required applicants to "affirmatively accept, support and promote homosexual marriage and homosexual parenting." Dunne claims the defendants violated his First Amendment right to exercise his religion and violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution. He also claims their actions impose illegal state regulations on interstate commerce.

I don't have any sympathy for this applicant. He's trying to become a lawyer in a state where gay marriage is legal. To expect him to have knowledge about this area of the law isn't discriminatory; it's timely. If the courts decide he has a right not to answer this question because it offends him (for some reason not stated), what is to stop other applicants from protesting other questions about abortion, religion, or use of taxpayer funds?

The place to argue about the legality of gay marriage is in court once you have your bar card, not at the bar exam.

The Price of Beauty

How much do you spend per year on beauty? I'll admit, I'm pretty light on it. I color my hair about 2-3 a year (maybe more if we can afford it) for $60. I get my eyebrows waxed maybe 4 times a year at 10 bucks a pop. My haircuts average about $40, and I only do that about 4 to 5 times a year. Shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, maybe $100 a year. And makeup? Don't make me laugh. So, all in all, I spend maybe $600 a year on beauty.

That's still less than
Nancy Nall, who gets her hair colored a bit more often than I do. But neither of us holds a candle to this woman.

Every other day: hair blown out, 45 minutes, $65 Twice a week: personal trainer, one hour, $80 Twice a week: eyebrow waxing, five minutes, $30 Twice a week: thigh treatment, 45 minutes, $125 Weekly: hiking with trainer, two hours, $150 Weekly: Zone Diet food delivery, $250 Twice a month: pedicure (with manicure), one hour, $40 Twice a month: facial, one hour, $160 Twice a month: massage, one hour, $125 Several times a month: makeup and eyelash application, $145 Monthly: photo facial, 15 minutes, $500 Every six weeks: hair color, two hours, $450 Every three months: hair cut, 45 minutes, $140 Twice a year: Botox and Restylane, one hour, $1,000

Getting your eyebrows waxed twice a week? Having your hair "blown out" (sounds painful) every other day?

This regimen makes me wonder if this woman has a life outside of the spa. I guess she's never run down to the Whataburger in her slippers with her hair stuck in 2 ponytails, wearing a baggy T-shirt and sweats, huh?

I find this obsession with looks to be disturbing, particularly for 40-year-olds. I mean, I always thought that there came a point in life where who I was inside was more important than how I looked outside (not to mention the effects of gravity and age on a person!). Wasn't that the point of feminism? That we were "more than a sum of our parts"?

Somebody missed that lesson and now we have a world of people obsessed with looks more than ever. And while I don't believe, like Amanda, that everything goes back to misogyny, I do think that waxing till you're infected is both disgusting and disturbing. And the idea that a person would spend fully $55k a year on "beauty" is, as well.

Because the Truth Hurts

Japan's defense minister Fumio Kyuma apologized today for telling the truth.

Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma said he had not meant to offend the victims when he said on Saturday that the bombings "couldn't be helped" because they had brought World War Two to an end and prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war against Japan.

"If my remarks were seen as lacking regard for the feelings of atomic bomb victims, then I am sorry," he told a news conference.

On Saturday, Kyuma had said in a speech: "My understanding is that it ended the war and that it couldn't be helped ... I don't hold a grudge against the United States."

The remarks drew condemnation from victims of the August 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and the August 9 attack on Nagasaki, which together killed more than 210,000 people by the end of the year. Some opposition parties demanded Kyuma's resignation.

The Japanese have always had a hard time facing up to the truth of their behavior in World War II, and this is just the latest round. As Captain Ed pointed out, the firestorm started 10 days ago when the Japanese government announced that it was planning to tone down textbook accounts of Japanese soldiers ordering Okinawan civilians to commit suicide during WWII.

Lawmakers from Japan's southern island of Okinawa, site of one of World War Two's bloodiest battles, blasted a government decision to tone down textbook accounts of soldiers ordering civilians to commit suicide.

Friday's resolution urging the government to scrap the textbook revision comes a day before the anniversary of the end of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, a "Typhoon of Steel" that left some 200,000 dead -- soldiers, civilians, Japanese and Americans.

Many Okinawan civilians, often entire families, committed suicide rather than surrender to Americans, by some eyewitness accounts on the orders of fanatical Japanese soldiers.

Some conservative Japanese historians -- also eager to revise descriptions of wartime atrocities in China and other parts of Asia -- have called into question the eyewitness accounts, arguing the suicides were voluntary.

In March, the education ministry ordered publishers of high school textbooks to modify their descriptions of the suicides. The step outraged many Okinawa residents.

"It is an undeniable fact that mass suicides could not have occurred without the involvement of the Japanese military," the Okinawa assembly said in a statement that was presented in person to the education ministry in Tokyo later on Friday.

"We strongly call on the government to retract its instruction and immediately restore the description in the textbooks so the truth of the Battle of Okinawa will be correctly conveyed and such a tragic war will never happen again."

But, as Captain Ed states, there's more.

That reaction paled in comparison to the worldwide condemnation of a group within Japan's ruling party, who declared that the Rape of Nanking was a fabrication. In six weeks, the Japanese killed between 150,000-300,000 civilians in a city that presented no wartime threat to Japan. The disciplined Imperial Army turned into a pillage movement, raping women, killing civilians indiscriminately and purposely. They put the city to the torch -- and it wasn't an isolated incident. After getting a bloody nose from the Chinese in Shanghai, they pillaged all the way to Nanking.

The Japanese have refused to acknowledge these atrocities, and many more besides, which gives them the intellectual cover to consider themselves victims in the final two bombings of the war. In truth, the Japanese had conducted themselves as brutally and as cruelly as any army could possibly have. In Okinawa, they made it clear that they would murder their own people before admitting military defeat, and they had even less compunction about murdering civilians in other nations, as the Chinese and Filipinos can attest.

Faced off against that kind of enemy, the US had no choice but to use the most powerful weapon in its arsenal to avoid the inch-by-inch massacre of an invasion of the main island. The Japanese refused to surrender, still believing in their megalomaniacal mission to rule Asia to the very end. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were significant cities for Japan's war effort, and the US warned Japan that we would target them with a terrible new weapon if they did not surrender. And as Kyuma notes, the Soviet Union had finally declared war on Japan, and they would have been more than interested in carving up the islands as they were with Germany and eastern Europe.

Kyuma has no reason to apologize. The Japanese should pull their heads out of the darkness and start acknowledging that their brutality and bloodthirstiness in a decade of war in Asia led to the inevitable in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The dropping of the atomic bombs was tragic, but Kyuma was correct when he said it prevented greater bloodshed and the entry of the Soviet Union into the Asian sphere of the war. It prevented the Japanese from becoming another Soviet satellite, trapped for 50 years.

Students Don't Understand the Toll of Communism

Sometimes you find some strange things when you troll the moonbatosphere, but one of the strangest is the way some leftists think the United States is worse, more dangerous, and kills more people than communist regimes.

This isn't an argument I make without evidence. See this site which compares the U.S. unfavorably with Pol Pot. Or this A.P. story about how the ruthless communist regime in China is viewed more favorably than the U.S. I guess the moral to that story is if you suppress your own people, it's ok. Just don't try to bring freedom and democracy to other countries.

Now, Malcolm Kline is suggesting a Communist Genocide Studies class to educate young people on the horrors of communism, a subject glossed over by most university professors.

"Ask college students, and I have, how many Stalin killed and you get the answer, ‘thousands,’" University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors said on June 12th at the Heritage Foundation. "That’s like saying Hitler killed hundreds of Jews."

"Communism claimed 100 million victims," Emil Constantinescu pointed out in the same forum that Dr. Kors addressed. "In my country, Romania, we had one million dead and one million political prisoners out of a total population of 16 million." Constantinescu was the former President of Romania...

"What about the 60’s radicals who kept pictures of Mao and Che on their walls?" Dr. Kors asks. He characterizes that act as "the equivalent of putting up pictures of Hitler and Eichmann."

"They get to teach students about the superiority of their political philosophy," Dr. Kors asserts. Dr. Kors is the co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) which spawned a national network of pro-bono attorneys who defend students whose civil liberties have been jeopardized by college administrators.

"No other system has caused as much death as communism has," Dr. Kors concludes. "In the case of Nazis, we rightly hunt down 90-year-old men because the bones cry out for justice."

"In the case of communism, we follow the advice of our educated class which says, ‘No witch hunts.’" He is pessimistic about the prospects of an enlightenment among these elites.

"Understanding of communism is going to have to come from civil society because it isn’t going to come from the professoriat," he advises. For such an epiphany to occur among faculty members, Dr. Kors contends that "you need universities that hire pluralistically and not by political litmus test."

Part of the problem, as I pointed out here, is that liberals have a convenient memory where communism is concerned. Many don't even acknowledge the millions of people murdered or enslaved by communist regimes of the 20th Century, and have turned communist symbols into fashion statements. Without some curriculum changes, we can't expect young adults to know the atrocities committed by these monsters.

Evidently, Talking about Condoms Hasn't Helped Much

There's a troll at CSPT who is thoroughly convinced that the way to bring down teenage pregnancy rates is so-called comprehensive sex education in which condom usage is pushed. Regardless of how many times this theory is shot down, the troll continues to merrily spin it.

Well, now we have a study from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stating that so-called comprehensive sex education mentions "abstinence" just 321 times, while discussing "condoms" 2,763 times.

The study, conducted by medical professionals, looked closely at some of the most common CSE curricula currently in use in an attempt to see if the content was truthful and truly comprehensive. A cursory review of the study shows that the materials distributed by the "comprehensive" programs mention abstinence only 321 times.

In contrast the materials mention usage of condoms 2,763 times - and only mention condom failure rates a total of 23 times! The study showed these programs have very little impact on increasing condom use among children, and even less impact in delaying sexual activities - the latter being no surprise considering the focus on condoms instead of abstaining.

Liberals frequently scoff at the idea of teaching abstinence "because kids are going to have sex." But that's not exactly true, since, if kids were going to have sex they would all or nearly all be doing so. What we know is that close to half of all teens have sex--but "teens" includes adults age 18 and 19. And while I'd rather even these "teens" not have sex, parents are mainly concerned about their junior high- and high school-aged teens (12 to 18 years old). The study didn't state how many of the nearly 50% of teens having sex were adults.