They Never Have Abortions in the Movies

Gerard Baker discusses why Hollywood movie characters never have abortions.

One theory is that film producers, with their eye on the box office, don’t want to alienate large numbers of socially conservative Americans.

This strikes me as a bit flimsy. The big studios are happy to churn out films that promote wild conspiracy theories about evil cliques of conservatives who control the military-industrial complex. And you can hardly turn on your TV these days without coming across some “courageous” new drama about gay couples, which presumably causes loud harrumphing in households below the Mason-Dixon line.

No, there’s a much better and simpler explanation. The reality is that few people – whatever their political views – want to go and see a film where a woman chooses to have an abortion. We go to the cinema in large part to be inspired; to be reminded that, while we go through our real lives making messy moral compromises and falling way short of our ideals, there are some people, on screen at least, who do the good and moral and honourable thing. And confronted with the awful trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, almost all of the time choosing to have the baby is the good and moral and honourable thing to do.

It's not like abortion is never discussed in movies. The Cider House Rules makes performing abortions (something few doctors in the U.S. want to do) look positively noble. And back in the 1970s, in those heady days when abortion rates in the U.S. just kept climbing, you had so many characters having abortions that it looked like an unpaid ad for Planned Parenthood. Maude had an abortion at 45. Lucy Ewing on Dallas had an abortion after being raped. And even more recently, a character on Everwood had an abortion.

But the fact is, people are uncomfortable with abortion and don't really want to go watch movies about it. Try as the pro-abortion supporters might, they can't make abortion just another medical procedure or a blase event in life. But Hollywood can't admit that they don't have abortions in movies because people don't like abortion. As Baker says,

Of course admitting this would be problematic for the “pro-choice” crowd. It would involve admitting that the “choice” they vehemently defend is not really a moral choice at all. But rather that it is a choice between doing something – however understandable and forgivable in difficult circumstances – that is inherently expedient and selfish, and doing something that is inherently good and self-denying.

And that makes you think a bit deeper about the "choice" question. The defenders of abortion like to say that choosing to have a termination is an agonising decision – and certainly many women will attest to this. But they also say that abortion presents no deep moral problem because it does not represent the taking of a human life.

So if having an abortion is no more than the disposal of an unwanted clump of cells, why on earth should a woman feel so bad about it?

Why indeed? According to a Pandagon commenter, it's just a 20-minute procedure. But the fact is, most women do feel "bad" about having abortions. Otherwise, they wouldn't mind talking about it any more than they mind talking about having root canals or bunions fixed.

Baker is right. Even Hollywood acknowledges the inherent evil of abortion. That's why they don't make more movies about it.

Trent Lott Sounds Like the Nutroots

Trent Lott is complaining that talk radio killed the Shamnesty bill.

The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem."

Is that saber-rattling I hear? Is Lott in favor of reviving the un-Fairness Doctrine?

Yes, shame on talk radio for informing listeners of the amnesty bill being pushed by Democrats and lawless-abiding Republicans, including our President. Shame on talk radio for telling listeners where to contact their representatives and senators. Shame on talk radio for discussing the ramifications of this bill.

Those are things our representatives should have been telling us. We shouldn't have to rely on talk radio to tell us that Congress and the president don't care about our laws and want to reward law-breakers. We should have Congressmen who don't support such stupidity.

Michelle Malkin has more.

Impotent Harry Reid

I guess Harry Reid is now the mouthpiece of the moonbatosphere. How else to explain his repeated vitriolic attacks on the administration, our troops, the war in Iraq? Now, Reid has declared the war leadership "incompetent."

Captain Ed points out that Reid has no room to talk about incompetence.

So Harry Reid, the man who couldn't get a supplemental spending bill completed in less than 108 days, is calling Pace and Petraeus incompetent.

That's the same Harry Reid who couldn't get the Democrats' "100 Hours" pledges to fruition in over 120 days and counting. In fact, this is the same Majority Leader that has led the least-accomplished session of Congress in a generation.

And just for the record, it's the same Harry Reid who insisted that he would never bring back the immigration bill if it failed its cloture test -- and then tried for a second cloture, declaring that also a "final" action -- and lost again.

That's the man calling Pace and Petraeus incompetent.

Maybe Reid should resign, if he wanted to be consistent. But I don't expect that, anyway.

Can "Marriage" Be Declared Hate Speech?

According to the Ninth Circuit, the answer is yes. The Supreme Court will decide whether to reverse the Circus Court yet again or not.

The words "natural family," "marriage" and "union of a man and a woman" can be punished as "hate speech" in government workplaces, according to a lawsuit that is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Briefs for Good News Employee Association vs. Hicks, which were filed June 5 with the nation's highest court, lists D.C. school board President Robert C. Bobb as one of two plaintiffs. The case originated five years ago in Oakland, Calif., during his tenure there as city manager.
The dispute began in January 2003, when the two Oakland employees created a subgroup at their workplace called the "Good News Employee Association." It was partly in response to a group of homosexual employees having formed their own group 10 months before and being given access to the city e-mail system. One e-mail, dated Oct. 11, 2002, invited city employees to participate in "National Coming-Out Day."
When several employees asked whether such a posting was legitimate city business, they got an e-mail from City Council member Danny Wan, reminding them that a "celebration of the gay/lesbian culture and movement" was part of the city's role to "celebrate diversity."
In response, the Good News employees posted an introductory flier on the employee bulletin board Jan. 3.
It said: "Preserve Our Workplace With Integrity: Good News Employee Association is a forum for people of faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day." It said it opposed "all views which seek to redefine the natural family and marriage," which it defined as "a union of a man and a woman, according to California state law."
Anyone who wanted to help preserve "integrity in the workplace" was invited to contact the two employees: Regina Rederford and Robin Christy.
A lesbian co-worker, Judith Jennings, spotted the flier and complained to the city attorney's office that it made her feel "targeted" and "excluded," according to a deposition. The flier was removed by a supervisor because it violated the city's anti-discrimination rules.
A U.S. District Court for Northern California ruling said the words "natural family" and "marriage" had "anti-homosexual import."

This is more along the lines of "if it is offensive, it can't be tolerated." It will be interesting to see how the Court decides.

Boys Face More Risk, Less Protection, from Delinquency

I'm certain Echidne will argue that this is yet another sexist study (this is her argument any time a study shows more concern for boys than girls), but a new study has found that boys reported higher levels of risk and lower levels of protection for 18 of the 22 factors discussed than did girls.

The 22 protective factors measured included the teens' attachment to each of their parents, rewards for good behavior in school and social skills in dealing with other people. Risks included family conflict, low commitment to school, peer drug use and sensation seeking.

While boys experience higher levels of risk and lower protection for 18 of these factors, girls only reported higher risk for family conflict and less protection from attachment to their fathers. There were no gender differences for exposure to peer drug use and for peer rewards for delinquency.

The study doesn't claim any unique risks for either sex, but states that boys tend to react more negatively to the risk factors than girls do. It also stated that some programs designed to reduce drug use also lower other risk factors.

They Believe in Abortion Till Birth

This doesn't come as a surprise to pro-lifers, but, according to commenters at Echidne of the Snakes, abortion should be legal until the child leave the birth canal.

If rights to abortion are based on a woman's rights to control her own body, then yes, any point up until birth is acceptable for abortion.

Legally, it isn't, but it should be. To forcefully use any person's body against their will to give/save another life is a violation of human rights. The gift of life should be enirely voluntary, not forced, whether that is in saving a life or giving it.

Always good to see the nuts when they are honest. It's a pity they don't actually read Supreme Court decisions.

Do They Want People to Die?

The all-Democrat board of the Broward County Commission wants to politicize hurricane information. How? They don't want to broadcast the hurricane information on a station that also runs the Rush Limbaugh show.

Radio station WIOD, AM 610, has been the official channel for emergency information from Broward County government for the past year. The County Commission, all Democrats, balked at renewing the deal Tuesday, unable to stomach the station also being home to Limbaugh's talk show.

Commissioner Stacy Ritter said she did not want to support a station that's out of step with area politics. Ritter, a Democratic stalwart in the state Legislature before being elected to county office, cited talk shows hosted by Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and WIOD's partnership with Fox News...

The deal with WIOD would ensure that news conferences are broadcast start to finish live from the county Emergency Operations Center in Plantation. Emergency managers became concerned during hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 that radio and television stations preempted their announcements in favor of news out of Miami.

According to Newsbusters, WIOD was chosen "because of its signal strength, numerous FM sister stations and willingness to give Broward top play." Obviously, logic doesn't play into the considerations of local Democrats, it seems.

When All Else Fails, Blame It on Sexism

CBS executives are blaming Katie Couric's terrible performance in the ratings on--get this--you.

OK, when I say "you," I mean the audience. According to CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves, "I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling."

I'm sure Moonves has a study somewhere that shows the reason his $15 million woman isn't bringing in a larger audience share is because of sexism. After all, it couldn't be that Moonves changed the news format of the CBS Evening News to a softer, "human interest" centered format and that that has bombed. Or that Moonves miscalculated the popularity of Couric when he hired her. No, as Captain Ed pointed out, that would point the finger of blame at Moonves.

No, it's sexism. After all, we all know that sexism is responsible for a host of societal ills, including getting fired. Just go read Echidne of the Snakes and you'll discover that everything leads back to sexism.

I despise these sorts of arguments because they trivialize actual sexism. Katie Couric's ratings tanking isn't sexism. It means she's not presenting the news people want to hear. This isn't to say that there aren't examples of sexism in TV news, but Couric isn't the best example.

Locally, a woman anchors the leading newscast at 6 and 10 p.m. That doesn't surprise me, since Jane McGarry has been a top anchor for years. Are the sexism police going to say it is sexism that causes people to watch McGarry's newscasts?

Attorney Plaintiff Bawls over Pants at Trial Against Dry Cleaners

A month ago, I wrote about the attorney suing the dry cleaner for $67 million because they lost his trousers. Now his case is at trial, and he cried while testifying about the case.

A judge had to leave the courtroom with tears running down his face Tuesday after recalling the lost pair of trousers that led to his $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner.

Administrative law judge Roy L. Pearson had argued earlier in his opening statement that he is acting in the interest of all city residents against poor business practices. Defense attorneys called his claim "outlandish."

As I said before, this guy is the reason we need tort reform. The dry cleaners offered to settle with him for up to $12,000. That's 12 times what he paid for the entire suit. But this jerk wants to be given $15,000 to rent a car every week to go to a different dry cleaners.

According to law.com, Pearson has dropped the part of his suit asking for damages relating to the pants, but is instead focusing on two signs that hung in the dry cleaners: "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and "Next Day Service." He thinks the claims were "fraudulent" and he's entitled to $54 million because of it.

The defendants, Jin Chung, Soo Chung and Ki Chung, are asking for attorneys' fees. I wish they were suing Pearson back for harassment. And I hope the judge throws the book at this creep.

The Chungs are one of thousands of small businesses who get trapped in frivolous lawsuits every year. I understand that the McDonald's coffee case concerned more than just one lady who scalded herself when her coffee sloshed over the sides of the cup, but I'm not terribly sure that suing a dry cleaner for $54 million is protecting the consumers from anything.

Cursing Is So Good for Society

Amanda has her thong in a wad over this Bill Murchison column defending the FCC's fight against profanity on network television.

Amanda's arguments are as bizarre as usual. It boils down to this: conservatives don't want profanity on TV because then people can't talk about certain subjects on the networks. And we can't have that because we really need to discuss in graphic detail gay sex, drug use, or other subjects. Ok, she didn't say the last part, but I assume that's what she means when she says

The FCC’s power to censor is basically made with this model; the fear of being shut down for using a naughty word cows people and makes them afraid to address certain issues that uncomfortable to authority lest they come under closer watch by those looking for an excuse to shut them down.

I'm not sure exactly which "issues" Amanda thinks can't be addressed without using profanity. Knowing Amanda and the way she writes, she couldn't discuss the weather without the f-word thrown in.

I started out at the local paper in the sports department. There's no place in civilian life where you'll learn how to cuss faster than the sports department of a newspaper. And I did cuss like a drunken sailor, sneering at anyone prudish enough to think my language usage was a problem (including one boyfriend who was embarrassed by it).

But a funny thing happened on the way to maturity. I discovered that curse words have a much stronger effect the less you use them. Oddly enough, I discovered that when I wasn't using f*** for every part of an English sentence (except for preposition), I found a whole host of words to use instead. Amazing!

Murchison brings up Vice President Cheney's admonition for Patrick Leahy to go f*** himself. Amanda thinks this is an example of "the rich and powerful" having a different set of rules.

I don't think Amanda is stupid enough to actually think this is a good argument. The reason Dick Cheney's retort to Patrick Leahy is different from, say, Keifer Sutherland is that Vice President Cheney wasn't saying it to millions of people, most of whom wouldn't be expecting it. There is, whether Amanda likes it or not, a difference between one person speaking to another and one person speaking on broadcast television.

But given Amanda's obtuseness when it comes to profanity, I don't expect her to notice such a subtle difference.

Congress' Approval Ratings Lowest in a Decade

Worse for Democrats, their ratings are lower than President Bush's.

Fueled by disappointment at the pace of change since Democrats assumed the majority on Capitol Hill, public approval of Congress has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.

Just 27% of Americans now approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the poll found, down from 36% in January, when Democrats assumed control of the House and the Senate.

And 63% of Americans say that the new Democratic Congress is governing in a "business as usual" manner, rather than working to bring the fundamental change that party leaders promised after November's midterm election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the first woman to hold that position, has also failed to impress many Americans. Only 36% approve of the way she is handling the job, the poll found.

In contrast, 46% of Americans in the current poll said they approved of the way Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia handled the job after he led the GOP into the majority in 1994.

The poll also found continued public unhappiness with President Bush, whose approval ratings have been stuck below 40% since last year.

As Jules Crittenden pointed out, using the logic the moonbats have used about President Bush, the Democrats in Congress should resign en masse. After all, it's not like we haven't heard before that President Bush should resign because of low approval ratings, or at least govern differently.

But I don't expect Democrats to adhere to the standards they want for Republicans. It's all for show, anyway.

A Lame Duck Congress

Liberals have gleefully pointed to President Bush's 28 percent approval rating (even though Harry Reid's approval rating is 19%). They've talked hopefully of a lame duck presidency and ramming distasteful legislation down the President's throat.

But I said way back in November that a Democrat Congress wouldn't do much. Sure, they can hold endless hearings and hope to embarrass the President, but without impeachment, those joys are short-lived.

Now we have the Senate with egg on its collective face because they can't rally enough Senators to conduct a no confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

As Captain Ed points out, no confidence votes are exceedingly silly in a country without a parliamentary system of government. Silly and meaningless. And this no confidence vote wasn't even crafted in a manner that it would appeal to enough Republicans, disgusted with Gonzales' performance, to vote for it. But their votes on Iraq--which, try as Grandma Pelosi might, can't force us out of Iraq--coupled with the debacle that was their U.S. Attorneygate "scandal," which turned up only incompetence and mishandling on the part of Monica Goodling, but no criminality on the part of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, point to the lame duckedness of Congress, not the President.

As Jules Crittenden says,

It’s hard to blame those who repeatedly herald Bush’s lameduckness. Technically, he’s been in lame-duck territory for some time. There was the November election, the Rumsfeld departure, the Libby conviction, the Amnesty bill’s failure. But the notoriously inept chimp keeps defying them. He refused to cede his presidency as they demanded. His surge is moving forward without restrictions, the withdrawal measures and drop-dead progress dates jettisoned. They wanted a change in strategy in Iraq, he gave them one and there are signs it is working, whether they like it or not.

This Amnesty bill, as bad an idea as it was, was a deeply bipartisan bad idea that shows he is willing to reach across the aisle to Ted Kennedy of all people, one of his nastiest war critics, to pursue goals he supports, against the odds. He is operating boldly on his own terms. He has also been practical in the past, and we’ll see what comes out of his meetings with Republicans today.

Indeed, someone needs to inform this exceedingly "dumb" President, the one the Left has such contempt for but seems to escape their noose time after time, that he is a lame duck and he needs to start acting emasculated.

The Ultimate Symbol of the Patriarchy: The Diamond Engagement Ring

Meghan O'Rourke argues against the crass commercialism and paternalism of the diamond engagement ring.

It may seem curious that feminism has made inroads on many retrograde customs—name-changing, for example—but not on the practice of giving engagement rings. Part of the reason the ring has persisted and thrived is clearly its role in what Thorstein Vebelen called the economy of "conspicuous consumption." Part of the reason could be that many young women, raised in a realm of relative equality, never think rigorously about the traditions handed down to them. So it's easy to simply regard a ring as a beautiful piece of jewelry and accept it in kind (I'm guilty myself). But it's also the case that a murkier truth lies within its brilliance: Women still measure their worth in relationship to marriage in ways that men don't. And many are looking for men who will bear the burden of providing for them, while demanding equality in other ways.

I agree that engagement and marriage mean something to women that it doesn't mean to men. It's fairly obvious when you read the rants of Amanda Marcotte about the irrelevance of marriage, as well as in the discussions by Maggie Gallagher about the importance of marriage.

Boiling it down, for women, the engagement ring is the sign that they are wanted, and wanted badly enough to be paid for. This comes perilously close to prostitution, except that the man makes a one-time purchase and gets the hooker forever (a little like one of those cards one can get from a store where you get a stamp for each $20 spent, then get a freebie after the card is full).

I know, that was mean. But I feel I can be a bit mean about it, since I've been married twice and sometimes feel like an expert on the subject. My first husband bought me a little diamond engagement ring (it was so small it was measured in "points" as opposed to carats). It was nice as far as little rings go and I was proud and happy to have it.

The second time through, still suffering the nearly universal condemnation of my family for getting divorced, I wanted to keep things as low-keyed as possible.

My husband (the lovely guy I've been married to for nearly 12 years) is about as egalitarian a person as you'll ever meet. He even suggested we combine our names and create a new one so we would both be changing our names. So, when we were looking at rings and I decided to eschew the engagement ring for a different sort of wedding ring, he was fine with it.

So, let's face it. It's not the men who are hellbent on spending $12k on an engagement ring. It's the women. They want the biggest diamond they can make their man afford as a way of showing how much they are worth.

There's a reality show on the Style Network called I Propose, which shows a man setting up the proposal to his girlfriend, then performing it in front of a camera. There are elements of the show that are interesting. For instance, who the guy calls in for support and help and how he envisions the proposal going.

But what bothers me is the time and investment young women seem to put into the single event known as the proposal and put such a dollar investment in the ring. It has to be two carats? That's approximately $12,000. A person would rather have a ring than the down payment on a house? Is a person who would rather be in debt for a piece of jewelry and dreaming of a particular proposal situation ready to be adult enough to live with the day-to-day problems of married life? It seems to me that the insistence on bigger and better engagement rings means that there are some vestiges of the patriarchy that need to be wiped out.

Law Professors Question Fitzgerald's Authority in Libby Case

According to this law.com article, a dozen law professors are questioning the constitutional authority of Patrick Fitzgerald in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby case.

"The constitutional issue to be raised on appeal is substantial," conservative Robert Bork, liberal Alan Dershowitz and 10 other professors wrote in their nine-page brief, filed Thursday at U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

"To our knowledge, the special counsel appears to occupy virtually a 'class of one' in the history of special prosecutors," the professors wrote...

The professors argue Fitzgerald may have been given too much power, with too little accountability, since he was not appointed by the president or approved by the Senate. Moreover, they say, Fitzgerald was exempted from complying with Department of Justice policies -- even though he was appointed by the attorney general.

"It appears to be undisputed that there is no day-to-day supervision of Special Counsel Fitzgerald by anyone, and no way short of removal even to assure that he complies with the policies of the Department of Justice or the Executive Branch," the professors wrote.

Judge Reggie Walton reacted rather childishly to the display of law acumen.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed to consider the legal argument as part of Libby's request for bail while the case is appealed. But in a stinging rebuke to the professors, Walton sarcastically called it "an impressive show of public service" that such a group of distinguished lawyers would rush to help a criminal defendant -- and questioned whether they would do the same for others who lacked financial means for brilliant legal aid.

"The court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, wherever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it," Walton wrote in his one-page order granting the request to consider the constitutional argument.

But Eugene Volokh points out the stupidity of Walton's remarks.

Yet this makes no sense. The point of amicus brief is to express the signatories' views on some matter that they especially care about, in which they have a special interest or on which they have special expertise. A pro-abortion-rights organization, for instance, may file such a brief in an abortion rights case. Constitutional law professors who believe the Constitution, properly interpreted, supports abortion rights may do the same. No-one pretends that it's an "impressive show of public service," except insofar as any not terribly difficult action on behalf of a legal view that you think is the right view is a form of public service.

Of course it doesn't make sense. Walton was pissed off that so many well-known and respected law professors took issue with the Libby prosecution. Instead of leaving the issue for appeal, Walton decided to accuse the professors of favoring high-level political figures instead of unknown defendants.

But Volokh points out that these same professors could write amici briefs in just the cases Walton suggests, not because of some notoriety or power attached to the cases, but because the issues raised are within their areas of expertise.

Such amici (whether advocacy groups or professors) surely incur no professional or moral obligation to start helping other litigants who raise other issues about which the amici don't are, or on which they lack expertise. Would you demand that a pro-abortion-rights professor who filed a pro-abortion-rights brief also file a brief in an assisted suicide case? Would you demand that he file such a brief even in an abortion rights case that raises a different issue? I would hope not — there's just no reason to think that because someone cared strongly about issue X he must now express his views about issue Y, or even that his views about issue Y would be helpful. The same applies here...

what's the point of the sarcasm? I take it many of the signatories would be happy to express the same view in a future case raising the same issue. Some might not — and according to standard professional conventions, they are entitled to decide which litigants to speak on behalf — but many might. (Why would Amar or Dershowitz, to take the most obvious examples, treat a future Democratic special prosecutor target any worse than a future Republican?) The snideness thus seems at the very least premature.

And immature.

Volokh has more in his post and it is wonderful reading.

They Aren't Teaching, They're Indoctrinating

A British think tank is taking the PC-driven curriculum for schools to task.

The curriculum in state schools in England has been stripped of its content and corrupted by political interference, according to a damning report by an influential, independent think-tank.

It warns of the educational apartheid opening up between the experience of pupils in the state sector and those at independent schools, which have refused to reduce academic content to make way for fashionable causes.

No major subject area has escaped the blight of political interference, according to the report published by Civitas.

"The traditional subject areas have been hijacked to promote fashionable causes such as gender awareness, the environment and anti-racism, while teachers are expected to help to achieve the Government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students," it says.

Some examples of the indoctrination:

Teenagers studying for GCSEs are being asked to write about the September 11 atrocities using Arab media reports and speeches from Osama bin Laden as sources without balancing material from America, it reveals.

In English, the drive for gender and race equality has led an exam board to produce a list of modern poems from around the world without a single poet from England or Wales being represented.

The new 21st-century science curriculum introduced last September substitutes debates on abortion, genetic engineering and the use of nuclear power for lab work and scientific inquiry, it says.

Designed to make science more popular, the results of a study show it has had the opposite effect, with pupils less interested in the subject and less keen to pursue it in the sixth form than they were under the previous, more fact-based lessons.

There are places where discussions of abortion, genetic engineering and nuclear power are appropriate; namely, in debate classes. The problem with using basic courses like science or English to advance these discussions is that they end up drowning out the types of information students are expected to know when they take tests. English courses not discussion English writers? Who makes up this stuff?

Death Penalty Is a Deterrence

Unsurprisingly, a series of academic studies have found that the death penalty does deter murders.

This isn't shocking to me. I've always argued that, of course, the death penalty is a deterrent because that criminal won't get out and murder anybody. And it isn't like there aren't cases of people getting out of jail, then committing more murders.

But don't expect common sense from people adamantly opposed to the death penalty. And, frankly, I don't expect any amount of statistical evidence to change their minds.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?"

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory — if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, trying to tease out the impact of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.

I proudly live in a state that executes more people than any other. Here's the list, if you are interested.

But the studies in question had more interesting findings.

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

• Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

Even liberal law professor Cass Susstein has to ponder the results.

"If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

One point not discussed is that many death penalty opponents dislike the death penalty purely on the moral grounds that the government shouldn't be in the business of executing people. It's a hard point to argue with, even if it isn't grounded in statistics or other facts. If you are 100% pro-life, there's a certain consistency involved with being against both abortion and the death penalty. The Catholic Church opposes both.

I think it is a more principled position than those trying to attack these studies because they don't like the results. To take the moral position that the death penalty is wrong because taking human life is wrong is more philosophical, but at least it doesn't run into the quagmire of studies contradicting it.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Maybe I Wouldn't Want to be an Editor at Wikipedia

Because I might have to write entries for words like lolcat.

I often tell my husband that I'm great at games about esoteric trivia, but don't ask me about pop culture. That's because I've always been hopelessly nerdy and serious beyond reason. My boss at the Star-Telegram once asked me what "people my age" (meaning college age) did for fun. I told him that I wouldn't know since I was always working. He responded that I was much too cynical for one so young.

Of course, I grew out of that to some extent and now accept my geekiness as just one of my lovable charms. After all, who else can quote extensively from The 10th Kingdom (my favorite movie) or Sherlock Holmes (an obsession since junior high) at the drop of a hat?

But now, I'm reading Ann Althouse's post on internet humor, and asking myself why this is still around. I think I got over these things around 2002. But I do like cats.

How President Bush Should Have Addressed the Pope

Lefties are clutching their pearls atm because President Bush greeted the Pope as "sir" instead of "His Holiness."

As a commenter at protein wisdom pointed out, doesn't the President know the address is Pope Ratf*ucker?

Come on, George! Maybe you need to take a few lessons from Amanda on how to address the Pope.

Losers.

"Socks" Berger Disbarred

Sandy "Socks" Berger was disbarred from the practice of law yesterday by the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Berger agreed last month to relinquish his law license to the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, a part of the D.C. Bar, rather than submit to an investigation by the bar's counsel of his removal of classified documents from the National Archives. A three-member panel of the D.C. appellate court accepted his offer.

Berger pleaded guilty in April 2005 to taking classified material without authorization, a misdemeanor. As part of the plea agreement, Berger admitted he lied to Archives staff about taking copies of national security documents out of the building. He was fined $50,000 and barred from access to classified material for three years

As I pointed out in this post, you really have to wonder what was in those classified documents Berger stole--er, removed--that he was willing to give up his law license rather than face an inquiry.

To Pardon or Not to Pardon

Since the sentencing of Scooter Libby, there's been a lot of speculation about whether or not President Bush will pardon him.

Naturally, the nutroots are excited at the Libby sentence (see here for just one example of the nutroots insistence that Libby serve every single minute of his sentence).

I found this argument for commutation of the jail time in Libby's sentence to be persuasive.

Neither vindication of the rule of law nor any other aspect of the public interest requires that Libby go to prison. He is by no stretch a danger to the community, as "danger" is commonly understood. He did not commit his crime out of greed or personal malice. Nor is his life one that bespeaks a criminal turn of mind. To the contrary, as letters to the court on his behalf overwhelmingly established, he has been a contributor to his community and his country. And whether or not we agree, we cannot dismiss out of hand the notion that Libby thought he was serving his country by his overall conduct in this episode, specifically by letting it be known, truthfully, that it was not the White House that tapped Joseph Wilson to look into whether Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Niger.

A sense of proportionality argues in favor of eliminating Libby's prison term. This was an unusually harsh sentence for a first offender convicted of a nonviolent and non-drug-related crime. Sandy Berger, national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, was not sentenced to prison for sneaking documents out of the National Archives, destroying them and then lying to investigators. For his actions, Berger received no jail time, a fine one-fifth of that imposed on Libby and 100 hours of community service.

To pardon Scooter Libby would not be consistent with the imperative that the mechanisms of law be able to demand, and receive, the truth. But to leave the sentence undisturbed would be an injustice to a person who, though guilty in this instance, is not what most people would, or should, think of as a criminal. Commutation offers a middle ground. Unlike a pardon, commuting the prison sentence would not erase the conviction. It would leave Libby with the disabilities of a convicted felon -- no small matter for a lawyer and public figure. But commutation would alleviate the harshest, and unnecessary, aspects of the sentence. A partial commutation would send the message that we insist on being truthful, but in the name of a justice that still cares about individual circumstances, we will not insist on being vindictive.

But don't hold your breath expecting President Bush to even commute the jail time. President Bush is pretty stingy where pardons are concerned.

In a January 2000 interview with reporter Jay Root of the Austin Star-Telegram, Governor Bush explained that his low number of pardons "comes not from political calculation but from pardoning Steven Raney in 1995 for a 1988 marijuana conviction. A few months after being absolved of his crime, the unpaid Ellis County constable was caught stealing cocaine from a drug bust. 'That caused a complete review of the process,' Bush said. 'I have nothing against pardoning. I just haven't been very aggressive on it. There's no philosophical reason. It's just that it kind of slowed us down initially. I said, `Whoa!' because it was a pretty rough story."

However, contrary to certain desperate moonbats, there's virtually no way President Bush will be either subpeonaed once he leaves office (for pardoning Libby) or be indicted for using his executive powers in ways unsatisfactory to liberals. There's never been an instance of this happening, and such would breech the executive privilege involved in performing his duties, particularly in a time of war. But don't expect that to stop the moonbats from being ever hopeful.