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I know that I haven't been very "posty" or "linky" this week. Indeed, my output this week has been way less than usual. I did mention that I'm slowing down but still... I've been going through some tough times in my "real life" and I'm sure they'll pass. In the meantime, do browse my blogroll for much better (and more active!) folks. I do take weekends off so I'll see you all back here probably Sunday night or Monday morning. I wish you all well. Thanks for stopping by!
I've been covering the Free Staters here and here. This is the group of libertarians who have chosen New Hampshire to move to en masse to try to influence the state politics and create a small government, low taxes haven. They've chosen Claremont, N.H. which is only about 40 miles south of me. Here's the official website of the city.
A city of about 12 thousand people that once was a thriving hub of industry and such, when Interstate 89 was first proposed, the hope was it would pass through Claremont. Instead it went to the North, through West Lebanon and dramatically reduced Claremont's importance and vibrancy while West Lebanon instead became the new hub of commercial traffic.
Anyway, apparently there's already dissension in the ranks because about 1000 of the 5000 members say they won't move to New Hampshire. Hmmm... Claremont is actually a nice town with reasonable housing prices, lots of neat old homes, and plenty of town services (oops, they don't really want that last!)
Besides, their humbug has already permeated the Republican Party. It is familiar to anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the shucks and jives of our incumbent governor. [Gov. Craig Benson -js]
Like the true believers who flocked round millennialists, Utopians and other crackpots in the 1830s and 1840s, the Libertarians worship a false god. True, this god stands for tenets that we Americans all admire: rugged individualism, self-reliance, personal freedom. But the Libertarian view is so far out of touch with reality that Libertarians are irrelevant.
Well. WELL! So how do they really feel about the group? Of course, the Concord Monitor is -- shall we say -- editorially a bit to the left. What a stark contrast to the right-leaning Union Leader which says in this editorial:
There are those who fear that the Free State Project could forever change the political landscape in New Hampshire. Yet, were the Free State Project to succeed in transplanting 20,000 people into the state, its main achievement would be an influx of thousands of individuals who think more or less like most other Granite Staters think. Far from being worrisome, this is welcome.
Because organizing libertarians is like herding cats, we doubt the Free State Project will be able to round up 20,000 people for the move to New Hampshire. The group will be lucky to get a few thousand. But even if the movement meets its goal, thatıs fine with us. The more Granite State voters who cherish liberty, the better.
What a difference between two newspapers that share the same "rack" across the state.
Personally, I wish them well and look forward to following their "pie-in-the-sky" movement. It will certainly make local politics fun to follow. Maybe some of them will even move to or influence Vermont.
Yup! It's that time of the week; time to check out the new stories and editorials linked to over on the Yahoo Gun Control Page. The anti-gun, more gun control forces are slightly winning so here's one of their proponents, fresh off his victory in California. Sorry if that nauseates some of you...
The big news of the past week was the report by the CDC basically stating that there was insufficient evidence to indicate that eight different types of "gun control" laws were effective in controlling violence and gun crime or in reducing such crime. You would think that's good news for our side and I interpreted most of the stories as "not for more gun control" since that's the major implication.
The report does spend a lot of time claiming that it needs "more research" before jumping to that conclusion. The Brady Bunch certainly agrees, calling for "better research" which I suppose means studies that support their quest to disarm the law-abiding citizens of this country and crush the Second Amendment. The NRA has been strangely silent, instead merely linking to this editorial in the Washington Times. Here's a quote:
In the exhaustive brief, the CDC analyzed scientific evidence regarding "bans on specified firearms and ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition [including waiting periods], firearm registration and licensing, concealed-carry laws, child-access-prevention laws, zero-tolerance laws for firearms in schools and combinations of firearms laws."
The verdict? "The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes." The task force also concluded that "firearms-related injuries in the United States have declined since 1993" despite the fact that "approximately 4.5 million new firearms are sold each year."
The CDC maintains that the above conclusions are actually inconclusive, and that more research in needed. Given that a task force of 14 experts spent three years to review 51 different studies to come up with the findings, the only justification for the CDC's equivocation is that the authorities want to continue to research the issue until they reach findings that can be stretched to justify more government regulation.
Exactly. Folks, there are over twenty thousand gun control laws in this country. Surely in a study of this size they would have had to find some evidence they were working -- but they didn't. And frankly, if a law isn't working, it should be stricken from the books as useless or unnecessary. Well that's a nice fantasy but it will never happen.
While the final report was written, predictably, to recommend "the need for more study" (please send us more grant money), there's no escaping what's just happened: Even an outfit as devotedly anti-gun as the Centers for Disease Control now has to acknowledge they can't show gun control laws do anything to reduce firearms crime or violence.
And:
But the results are in. The only question remaining now is whether gun control advocates will ever admit that their attacks on America's law-abiding gun owners have utterly failed to achieve their objective.
I can answer that one: No they won't. There, that was easy. Glad to help out...
The Washington Post had this editorial calling on Maryland to "improve" it's ban on "assault weapons." They say:
...If Congress caves in to the all-guns-are-great lobbyists and lets the limited federal protections die, Maryland ought to have an even better ban on its books. One of the weapons that would be banned, a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle, was used in the sniper attacks in this region a year ago.
Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley have good political as well as safety reasons for backing a more inclusive ban. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. voted as a member of Congress to overturn the federal ban on assault weapons; he prefers to echo the National Rifle Association position that stiffer sentences for gun crimes are a more effective approach. That may scare some criminals, even if it does nothing to lower the number of suicides or accidental deaths of children. But what is so essential about these weapons?
Um, isn't that the whole idea? To scare criminals? You're never going to prevent suicides and if the purpose of bans is to prevent accidental deaths of children than you'd better ban swimming pools, automobiles, steak-knives, boating, playgrounds, all high school sports programs, etc.
As for what is so "essential" about these guns, the better question is "why are these guns so special?" They aren't, they just look different or scary so we'd better ban them. And when banning them doesn't work, why just ban some more, increasing the definition of cosmetic features that must somehow make these firearms "bad."
Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) scolded Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean for his friendly relations with the National Rifle Association during a Capitol Hill rally last week to drum up support for renewal -- and strengthening -- of the federal ban on assault weapons.
While other speakers stuck to the subject of assault weapons, Kennedy assailed Dean, saying he was "saddened" that one of his party's leading presidential candidates is "pro-NRA." He suggested that Dean has "compromised his principles" as a physician by opposing stronger federal gun controls.
Kennedy has endorsed Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) and campaigned on his behalf. But Kennedy told a reporter after his remarks that he had not discussed with Gephardt his plans to attack Dean on gun control.
"This is a personal issue with me, and I'm very disturbed at the fact that people are not paying attention to Dr. Dean's record on guns," said Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both of whom were assassinated by guns.
Thereby demonstrating that Kennedy, like his father Ted, is as knee-jerk liberal as they come and anyone who doesn't toe the far-left Democratic line must be evil and unprincipled. By the way, as James Taranto pointed out Monday:
"Assassinated by guns"? Is the Post suggesting that Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were innocent?
Glenn Reynolds has thoughts on how this actually helps Dean.
John R. Lott, Jr. had an op-ed on NRO last week that Yahoo linked to. It concerns the new gun control laws being enacted by Switzerland. Naturally Lott thinks this is a mistake and he restates many of the reasons he's given in the past regarding gun control here in this country:
Registration could supposedly help identify criminals and prevent them from getting guns. For example, if a gun is left at the scene of the crime, registration could allow it to be traced back to the criminal who used it.
Nice theory, but it just doesn't work. Despite spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of man-hours by police administering these laws in different areas of the United States (such as Hawaii, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.), there is not even a single case where the laws have been key in identifying someone who has committed a crime.
There is quite a bit of controversy swirling around Lott and his statistical methods, or even if his statistics exist. I'm not qualified to referee but I might point out that even using the phrase "key" could be open to dispute, such as "what defines a key reason someone was identified?
Understand that I am opposed to firearm registration for a different reason: It has often led to confiscation of firearms by governments in the past. Sometimes you need to give up something in order to preserve freedom and liberty and the Constitution. I prefer to give up any possible benefits of registration to insure that the state or federal government never try to disarm the American people. Just look what has happened in California over the past dozen years.
The New York Times had a strange story about a crime unit in New York City that exists soley to go after illegal gun sales. According to the article, the 53 detectives and 13 supervisors who make up this undercover unit have only managed to get 486 illegal guns off the streets, and at the cost of two of the detectives' lives. Seems like a huge waste of money and a tragic waste of lives to me. Maybe the unit should be scrapped since almost ten times as many guns were "taken" in the normal course of business by the rest of the police force in that town.
That was it for Yahoo. Quite a few new items but not much change in the final tally of the chart. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I'll see you soon.
Update 10/9 comments received:
John R. Lott responds:
"I might point out that even using the phrase 'key' could be open to dispute, such as 'what defines a key reason someone was identified? '"
In the testimony that I heard before the Hawaii legislature a couple of years ago, the police chiefs there were unable to identify any cases were registration had been useful in solving a crime. I have asked about cases in NYC, Chicago, and DC, and the statements from police in Chicago and DC have not been able to point to any cases. NYC claims that they have no data on this and are unwilling to discuss the issue. I put in the word "key" just to be extra careful on the off chance that there was an instance where a gun was traced after the criminal was already arrested. It was not really meant to imply that there multiple pieces of evidence that lead to arrests and that this was simply not that important. If there were a case where registration records were used, it would have been done after the arrest and after the gun was recovered.
I appreciate his clarifying that point and am glad to have that "devil's advocate" statement of mine invalidated.
Here's another comment I received:
I am a classical liberal. Please stop calling those who would take freedoms
and rights away from others (such as anti-gun extremists) liberals. They are
not me. LIBERals are those who support LIBERty.
Thank you.
--Garrett K.
You're right in that I tend to throw labels around too much (something I suppose I share with an awful lot of on-line magazines and such) yet it is the "liberals" of the Democratic party who wear that label proudest and wear it as a badge of intellectual advancement. I suppose I could just say "gun-grabbers..."
Speaking of low-life idiot garbage can types -- but this time a liberal (see, I'm an equal opportunity ranter-basher) -- Michael "who cares about the facts?" Moore was on NBC's Today Show in NYC this morning blathering about his new book. And of course every other word out of his mouth was that Bush and his administration does nothing but lie to the American people. That, of course, is a lie in itself.
And he said that America isn't under threat from terrorists! The interviewer Lester Holt landed a real punch by saying something to the effect (I can't remember the exact quote) "I beg to differ, there's a site just two miles from here that's evidence that we are under the threat of terrorism."
I think this must have rattled Moore because he started spluttering about how well, yes, there are isolated incidents but there's no constant threat and that this is just another lie by Bush. Then he brings up some school-house bombing from 70 + years ago...
Hey, Michael? You jerk-off! The radical elements of Islam have stated clearly that their ultimate goal is the destruction of the United States. And they are working towards that at every second.
Now I have stated here many times that I'm not a fan of the Patriot Act or TIPS or many of the other measures taken by the administration. These are differences of opinion on methodology on how to address the threats against our country. But for Moore to claim that there is no threat against the U.S. and that President Bush has lied about this is absolutely nuts and just shows what little grasp with reality these leftist-liberal jerks have.
Holt also asked him if the "radical left" like Moore was as out-of-touch with the majority of the country as was the "radical right." Moron Moore stated that the right is wrong but that he -- Michael -- was exactly where the majority was because a huge percentage of Americans support abortion in one form or another. Actually, while a slim majority support abortion under some circumstances, the overwhelming majority want to see partial-birth abortions outlawed.
And of course, liberals always say they might go along with such a law if only there is an exception to the rule for "the health of the mother." This is a bull-dung clause they want to insert because then everyone who wants a partial-birth abortion will (or their lawyers will) claim that they would "feel sad or depressed" if they weren't allowed to crush the skull of their viable child within the birth-canal. And yes, I feel that partial-birth abortion is really "late-term murder."
By the way, I think the Campbell/Holt team will be wonderful for the weekend edition of the Today Show.
Just wandering around the neighborhood... Publicola has a post about how the government used to encourage civilian marksmanship but in our current political climate, no longer does. I grew up under, and and spent my younger teen years in a state-run Summer camp that encouraged NRA sponsered riflery and learned the joy of target shooting. Of course, in our liberal-coastal-dominated country these days, such a very un-PC activity has gone by the wayside. Publicola has much more. And, busy-bee that he is, he has a slew of new posts up at the Shooters' Carnival.
Uh-oh... Jason might be giving up the ghost too! I hope not. I'm not, just changing things a bit. Come on Jason, keep the program going...
Glenn at Hi. I'm Black! unfortunately reports that, like father, like son for Dwight Gooden, Jr. He is correct but too young to know -- I do: I watched Dwight and Darryl throw their lives away -- their talent and promise -- to drugs. And now Dwight's son is following in the same path. What an effing waste.
(Going into rant-mode...)
Look folks, I don't normally come down on someone for having failings such as drug-addiction or such. I certainly wrestle my own demons every day. BUT! I did criticize Rush Limbaugh last week not specifically because of his alleged addiction to pain-killers, but because now that we know he is, we can also see how totally un-merciful he has been to others, minorities and such, who don't measure up to his standards.
Rush was brutally, viciously sarcastic and nasty to anyone with (what Rush considered to be) faults. His radio show featured continuous brutal parodies and commentary on all of us little folks who failed to reach his sky-high bar of morality. And now, if the stories are true, he will ask us for forgiveness for his sins. Something he never let us mortals do. (Rush was famous for screening out all calls that didn't fit his agenda.)
And of course the Rush sycophants at the National Review Online such as Frum and Graham and Barnett are all claiming Limbaugh is somehow someone to be admired for his courage. These are the same "Christian" hypocrites who would probably stomp a black guy in the news for the same afflictions if he committed a similar crime.
Well, the high and mighty Rush allegedly committed crimes to obtain his drugs. And the right-wing jerk-offs at NRO can try to draw the distinctions all they want but the real fact is that if these allegations are true, then Rush is no more or better than a common street-thug. And now we're all supposed to forgive him and his $10 million dollar salaried self-righteousness broadcast.
"Let he who is without sin..." Well Rush has been hurling stones for years at folks he never, ever let present their sides of the story. Feet of effing clay. If these stories are true, I hope they prosecute and imprison this "holier than thou" bastard. Like the fake-phony-fraud Jimmy Swaggart, Rush is just a garbage-can conservative low-life thuggish drug-addict who used a huge radio network with millions of listeners to put down everyone around him all the while he broke the laws and did drugs. He is a hypocrite. That is the worst sin.
Being a criminal, especially a simple drug addict isn't all that awful in my book. Unless you've spent your life and fame and broadcast power putting down others who also are. Then -- you deserve no more consideration than what you've given others on your radio show. Hypocrite!
Rush spoke as if anyone with a blemish in their history or anyone who who didn't measure up to his impossible-to-reach standards must somehow be less than good. Less than moral. Less than deserving of some small compassion.
But now -- if this is true -- I suppose that he (like Jimmy Swaggart) will ask for ours.
I think I hit the nail on the head...
Update 10/9 comment:
After reading your post on Rush Limbaugh's alleged drug problem, I felt that you were very unfair. Because this charge has not been proven, Rush, like all Americans, is innocent until it proven guilty. I am not writing to defend Rush, because like you, I don't know all the facts. It would be as presumptuous of me to defend him as it was of you to tear him apart the way you did. It is very revealing to hear the way you attacked Rush. It sounds to me like you have been just itching for someone, anyone, regardless of credibility, to make the sort of claims that have been made in this case. After one sentence, you go from calling him alleged to saying "he did drugs". This is very revealing of your bias.
Alphecca was the first Blog I ever read, and I will continue to do so. I just wanted to point out the hypocrisy of your views on this subject, since you were so quick to point out his.
--packman
Thanks for your comments and readership. I really thought (especially in last weeks post) that I bent over backwards repeatedly stating "if true" etc. But the more facts come out, including Rush's own statements on the air that when ready he will "tell more than people want to know..."
Through all of this, neither he or his lawyer have disputed any of the reports. I was harsh on him because he has been so harsh on folks he doesn't approve of. It's that "what goes around comes around" thing. I admitted last week that I was biased against him. It is even more revealing that aside from a tabloid reporter, he is in fact under investigation from the feds. There's more than smoke there... We shall see. I do hope, for his sake, that if all this is true, he has kicked the habit. Addictions suck. I know. But I haven't made a career of railing against those who fail to measure up to impossibly high standards.
This isn't proof that the wave of liberalized handgun-carry laws over the same period has driven murder rates down, and I rather suspect that there are multiple factors involved, but it certainly disproves the promises of gun-control proponents that blood would run in the streets if such laws were adopted.
As usual, he's right. Here are some of the findings reported by this story:
Among findings in BJS' [federal Bureau of Justice Statistics] comprehensive examination of 507,681 murders from 1976 through 2000 (the last year in which the data have been analyzed completely):
*2000 was considered a good year because criminals took "only" 15,317 lives, down by 9,000 from annual tolls just a decade before.
*Blacks make up 12.1 percent of the nation's population but commit most of the murders and are over-represented among homicide victims. They are six times more likely to be murdered, and seven times more likely to kill.
*White criminals dominate among those executed and those waiting on death row. They most often commit serial or mass murders.
*The best way to prevent murder is to avoid arguments. They are the single leading factor that accounts for four of every 10 homicides.
I'm not going to comment now on these statistics. I will say that if black folks are disproportionately represented in these murder statistics, it isn't a cause for racism on white folk's part. Often it already was racism, or vestiges of it, that forced black families into "ghettos" and low economic stratums of hopelessness, poverty, broken families, and their kids seeking gangs for some structure and peer acceptance in their bleak lives. I'm not excusing murder, but just trying to explain why the numbers are so (unfortunately) high among blacks.
It's interesting that whites "dominate" those executed for murder in light of the previous statistic.
That is still a lot of death. Fifteen thousand a year. Just a reminder folks -- in an average year there are 45 thousand deaths by auto. It isn't the auto any more than it is the gun. It's the person driving the car or pulling the trigger. And given that concealed carry laws have been loosened dramatically over this same period that murder statistics are going down, I'd say that Glenn is absolutely correct.
In an interview this weekend, Finkelstein accused Dershowitz of "wholesale lifting of source material" from Joan Peters' book, From Time Immemorial, in which she argues that Jewish settlements predated the arrival of Palestinians in what is now Israel.
Finkelstein wrote a book contesting Peters' argument-which he dismisses as a "monumental hoax"-and says he is therefore very familiar with her text.
He said that when he read Dershowitz's book he recognized a lot of material-more than 20 quotes cited to primary and secondary sources-which mirrored the quotes Peters selected for use in her 1984 book.
Finkelstein argues that even though Dershowitz attributes those passages to their original sources, he should not have relied so heavily on Peters' work.
Now I'm going to be right up front here folks, I'm not a fan of Alan Dershowitz. I disagree with a lot of his positions. But he's a great writer and thinker and (I presume) lawyer and I have bought and read his books and even gave a recent one to my brother for his birthday. I can admire people I disagree with. I do Alan Dershowitz.
The point is that Dershowitz used one particular book as a source for many of the quotes in his own (latest) book. He properly gave credit for those quotes. But Finkelstein is basically saying that he used too many of them, especially after another auther also used those quotes in her book.
Let me put this in clearer terms: A blogger quotes someone in a post. I quote that same someone in a post here. Is that plagiarism? Of course not! It just shows we both read and quoted the same source. If Dershowitz wants to quote another author twenty times, fine. He gave credit every single instance. That's quoting, not plagiarism.
If Dershowitz is guilty, than every blogger around here is guilty of the same thing. We aren't and he isn't. And I'm going out tomorrow to the Dartmouth Bookstore to buy it. (Yes, I still shop at the local bookstore -- eff Borders...)
Update 10/13 comment received:
I'd like to comment on the "plagiarism" question of Alan Dershowitz. From
working with an intellectual property attorney, I learned that there are
some things which are copyright violation which might not, on their face,
seem so.
One is the use of a compiled list. For example, if you publish a
"list of the best performances of Gershwin works in the 20th century", the
use of this list is subject to the same copyright questions as one used some
paragraphs of plain prose.
You might say "ah, but these are merely names of
works by various artists". Right ... but as a compiled list, and it is a
creation which carries copyright protection, just as when you assemble "just
words" into paragraphs, chapters, volumes. I don't know anything about
plagiarism law, but I would expect a parallel here.
--Bill R.
Interesting. So I couldn't put up a list here of my favorite Isaac Asimov stories without running afoul of the copyright law. Thanks for the comment Bill, I'm not an expert on any facet of law...
I've received a lot of nice emails and I thank you all for them. For the time being I'm going to continue as I have been. I still want to seperate the Alphecca "weekly check on the bias" from everything else but I'm just not up to it right now. But Alphecca is the "branded name" and so on I go. But I will be cutting back on posts a bit to free up time for other things. Of course the "Weekly" will remain a staple here. I might move it to Mondays in two weeks when I have the weekend off.
I also want to thank publically (I already have privately) two kind folks who hit the "tip jar." Thanks for the vote of confidence. And thanks to others who wrote in to encourage me, and to some swell blogger friends who wrote me as well. I have to say, though, it felt good to not go near the computer for a few days.
Just because I'm not blogging much doesn't mean others aren't!
... If Israel knows from where these attacks are originating, then it has every right to go after those responsible, wherever they are. If the United States condemns their actions, then they are hypocrites.
Exactly!
My energetic friend Jay Solo now has the idea for a Carnival of the Capitalists! For more information see this post. It's a pretty cool idea. Granted, I never really comment on economics -- God knows I'm feeble enough with my own -- but it sounds like a fun deal so check it all out and nominate yourself!
Does anybody know what's happening with William Quick at Daily Pundit? I miss him a LOT. He went fishing almost a month ago. Bill, please come back. You're one of the folks who started this whole thing and... Yes, you did coin the term, "blogosphere." Now please come back to it because you are one of the best and are also one of the reasons many of us leaped into the same fire. You're also one of the really nice folks in this business.
There is so much more great stuff out there -- please randomly pick some of the folks on my blogroll and visit them. All of them are a heck-of-a-lot better at blogging than I am. I almost wish I could just start a blog that "indexes" other blogger's posts.
