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Harry Browne, former Libertarian Party Presidential candidate, writer on business and the author of the very interesting book, How I Found Freedom In an Unfree World, has died. Here is an article about his life and contribution to the libertarian political cause in the United States.

I think his book cited above is the thing I am most grateful to Browne for. It points out the many ways in which, right now, you can make your life freer, less dependent on the State and open your eyes to making the most of life without waiting for someone's permission. At a time when the prospects for liberty seem rather gloomy in some ways, that is a good message to spread around.

I am sure those closer to the coalface of U.S. politics might have less kind things to say about Browne's activities in the LP, but I'll leave that to others if they are so inclined.

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The other day I made a less-than-complimentary reference to the thoughts of so-called "crunchy con" Rod Dreher, who has taken against the ugliness of modern capitalism and its assorted vulgarity. Blogger Clive Davis thought that I was being a touch unfair.

Well, if you thought I was harsh, then check this out by Radley Balko:

"Only after raw, unabashed capitalism has taken care of more primitive problems can we begin to have places like Whole Foods, or targeted products like no-chemical, no-additive, no-hormone, free-range chicken. Only after industry has knocked down a lot of trees and sullied a lot of streams on its way to feeding us, medicating us, and giving us good reason to think we'll live past the age of forty do we get the luxury of beginning to worry about the health of the environment, and the survival of beings outside our own families, much less outside our own species.

I don't begrudge Dreher his Birks and his granola, but talk about the excesses of capitalism and so-called conspicuous consumption are innevitably followed by calls to slow things down -- maybe idle the engines of progress for a bit. There's generally little acknowledgement that it is excess and consumption that have put them in the position of being able to write books about the problems associated with...you guessed it...excess and consumption."

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A friend of mine in Manhattan has joined an effort to save St Brigid's Church in the Lower East side and I find myself sufficiently drawn to the cause to support them in print.

Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.

St Brigids was built on the old waterfront of New York at the time of the Irish famine. It was perhaps the first stop for those who escaped the horror which starved one and a half million of their fellow citizens to death in Ireland and then survived the unspeakable conditions of the Atlantic crossing. The trip alone killed perhaps one of every five who attempted it. As one British Captain put it at the time, the difference between carrying slaves and Irish to the new world was that you did not get paid for a slave unless you delivered him alive.

The church was built in a time when the majority religion in Ireland was outlawed; those landing on New York's quays built their own place of worship on the shore to celebrate the freedom of religion they found in their new home. The ceiling was built by boatbuilders and carried some of the characteristics of that trade. You can read more about the history here.

The Catholic Diocese of New York has decided to tear it down and has thus far turned a deaf ear to the sometimes strident cries from parishioners. I agree the Diocese is legally the owner and does have the legal right to do with the property as they choose. I do not agree they are doing the right thing. Quite the contrary, I feel they are going down a path that runs counter to the long term interests of their religion, their members, the community the church has served for over a century and a half; and those who wish to see a bit of the historical roots of their own families kept alive.

This is not a problem unique to this small parish; due to costly recent legal problems the Catholic church in America has been destroying small congregations in the same way a national store would cut costs and sell assets to raise capital in hard times: by chopping off all marginal operations. The problem is, a church is not a business, or at least that is not why it exists. A small congregation is not a cost center; it is the very reason the religion exists. If religion is to have any meaning at all in the 21st Century it has to be as the last bastion of community. We used to have small community schools in America. The State destroyed education and communities to gain 'economies of scale' and to 'pay teachers more'. I would hate to see Big Religion join Big Government as yet another destructive force in our society.

If you find this argument compelling; if you want to save a bit of 19th century American architecture or have strong feelings about the immigrant history of the Irish, Italians and Hispanics, contact these people and see what you can do to help.

It is a given in libertarian circles that property rights are an absolute right. You will find no one at Samizdata who will stray from that view. This does not mean libertarians like myself turn a blind eye to what their neighbors do or what happens in the community around them. The actions of others can affect my quality of life, and I feel it my duty to use strong but peaceful persuasion when I feel someone is harming others. Many find it confusing that libertarians will at the same time defend someone's right to do something while saying they are a bloody immoral fool if they actually do it.

I have recently come across two cases which have impacts in areas which I care about. I have dealt with one of them above; the other is a far more complex issue of regulatory distortions which may soon cause disastrous and irreversible secondary harm and are perhaps only answerable in the time available by a devil's deal. I have yet to figure that one out, so I decided, for the moment, to stick with this far simpler and clearer issue of property rights in an unfree world.

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It has been said that the best political arrangement when it comes to protecting liberty and constraining the size of government is when no party controls all branches of government. Gridlock is liberty-friendly, on this view. Well, the idea that it is bad for a single party to run the entire shebang does seem to be borne out by the skyrocketing spending going on in the United States under George W. Bush. Bruce Bartlett, a Reaganite Republican of long standing, has written a blistering indictment of Bush's record on spending.

Bush ran back in 2000 (it already seems a long time ago) as a "compassionate conservative", and only the most gullible must have ignored the fact that this was codespeak for spending lots of other people's money. I fear very much that we could get the same outcome if David Cameron ever leads the Tories back to power by promising the same menu as his Labour opponent.

I get the impression - and that is all that it is - that some conservative writers are getting a bit fed up with Bush, and I am not just talking about the cack-handed post-invasion phase in Iraq. On a whole list of bedrock issues for conservatives, such as federalism, free markets, respect for liberty and privacy, this administration has fallen way short. It has not even delivered on Social Security reform in any meaningful way, and the tax code is as hideously complex and full of distortions as ever.

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You may have already heard this but I laughed out loud when I came across this: an officer involved in Dick Cheney's recent difficulties is called Captain Kirk.

Phasers off, gentlemen.

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Popular Mechanics takes look at the myths that sprung up after Hurrican Katrina hit New Orleans. Some of their findings will be of no surprise to samizdatistas, I'm sure, including:

Folks in Tornado Alley and along the San Andreas fault don't get federally backed insurance, so why should taxpayers subsidize coastal homes, many of them vacation properties? Before we start rebuilding "bigger and better," Congress should reform the flood insurance program. A good start: Structure premiums so the program is actuarially sound and clamps down on repetitive claims.

Three major policy changes could help make our energy system more resilient in the face of disasters. 1) Loosen restrictions on refinery construction to encourage new refineries in more diverse locations. 2) Expand port facilities for Liquefied Natural Gas to help supplement domestic supply. 3) Relax the current ban on offshore natural gas drilling along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Others point to a civil society that is capable of functioning with relatively low levels of government supervision:

In reality, although looting and other property crimes were widespread after the flooding on Monday, Aug. 29, almost none of the stories about violent crime turned out to be true. Col. Thomas Beron, the National Guard commander of Task Force Orleans, arrived at the Superdome on Aug. 29 and took command of 400 soldiers. He told PM that when the Dome's main power failed around 5 am, "it became a hot, humid, miserable place. There was some pushing, people were irritable. There was one attempted rape that the New Orleans police stopped."

When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. "The Corps estimated we would need 72 hours [to evacuate that many people]," says Brian Wolshon, an LSU civil engineer. "Instead, it took 38 hours."

Disasters such as this pose a challenge for minarchists and anarchists, because they present situations where government can apparently make a difference for the better. The article looks at the government response, and although it has suggestions for improvement, is somewhat favorable.

Interesting stuff.

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Various precincts of the respectable press and the blogosphere having gotten wrapped around the axle regarding Vice President Cheney's hunting accident, I thought a little background on quail hunting in Texas (by an actual Texas quail hunter!) might be in order.

It is not uncommon for a quail hunter to get "peppered", due to the tendency of quail to fly somewhat erratically at relatively low levels. Unlike ducks and dove, which come in high, and pheasant, which take off vertically, quail often fly at head level. Not to mention that quail often live in brushy country where visibility can get a little short, and people tend to hunt them with open chokes which spread the pattern out. Serious injuries are rare, due to the small pellet size, open chokes, and (often) smaller gauge guns used by quail hunters.

I myself have just barely avoided shooting an actual pickup (bright red, thank you, about 20 yards away) while quail hunting, and have had a member of my party peppered (not by me, thank the gods). It was a pretty typical incident - a few stray pellets in the neck, no harm done. It is, in short, easy even for a very conscientious shooter to have an accident.

That said, based on the rumor and speculation in the press, it sounds like what happened to Mr. Whittington was a little more than your typical peppering. The length of his hospital stay alone points to more of a direct blast than a few stray pellets.

The typical rules of gun safety simply do not apply in their usual way when hunting upland game. To verify, to the same degree as with a rifle or pistol, that there is nothing at all in your line of fire before shooting would preclude wingshooting at quail, grouse, and other birds, where you are swinging your gun through a low-flying bird at high speed. For that reason, safety is assured to a large degree by having a disciplined shooting line - everyone stays more or less in line, and everyone knows where their zone of fire is.

The story is that Whittington came up behind Cheney, or that Cheney shot Whittington when he was behind him. Someone can come up behind another hunter and still be in his designated zone of fire, and everyone in the party has a responsibility to stay clear of each other and not show up where unexpected. Its possible but by no means certain that Vice President Cheney was only negligent, and that there was some contributory negligence by Mr. Whittington.

Here in Texas its just good manners to say that it is your fault if you get involved an accident like this (as Mr. Whittington has apparently done). That said, the crashing silence from the Vice President is a little disturbing. Not to blow this accident out of proportion (as the partisan press is busily doing), but he needs to stand up and take responsibility like a man.

The current complaint from the press that they were left out of the loop tells us a lot more about their self-regard, and about how well they have trained the Bush White House to treat them as enemies and tell them nothing, than it does about anything else. Still, the VP needs to hold a press conference, say his mea culpas, mix in some good words for Mr. Whittington, utter a few nostrums about gun safety, and generally be a gentleman (in the older sense of the word) about this.

UPDATE: Cheney finally takes the podium. Looks like the mea culpa I would expect of him.

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U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney wounded a fellow shooter of quail in an accident. Well, I guess it shows what a gulf now exists between the U.S. government and our own. I cannot imagine a single senior Labour politician who would spend time out shooting. (Imagine John Prescott doing it. Actually, don't). The story reminds me of another deputy leader, the late William Whitelaw (a decorated soldier in the Normandy WW2 campaign), who managed to fire some buckshot at someone during a grouse shooting meeting in the Scottish highlands.

Many politicians in the past have enjoyed the pastime of shooting game. Many MPs were landed gentry, who could not wait to get out of smelly London in the summer months and, once the game season started in August, would blast away at hapless birds, bagging them in prodigious quantities. And several paid the price. Robert Peel, Prime Minister in the 1840s, suffered a nasty buzzing in one of his ears after a gun went off too close. Salisbury and Churchill shot game, as did Macmillan and Alec Douglas Home. Across the big pond there was no greater hunter of game, of course, than Teddy Roosevelt.

All that tradition is fading out. I cannot imagine Tory leader David Cameron shooting game (imagine how that would jar with his trendy image) although his ancestors probably nailed whole flocks of pheasants in their time.

Anyway, the lesson of all this is that if you find yourself in the company of a politician holding a shotgun, stand well behind.

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Just as newspapers around Europe and beyond are coming to the support of Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, US State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper has said that freedom of expression in a European country is "not acceptable".

Firstly, who the hell asked the US State Department to opine on something in a newspaper in Denmark? Secondly, if they are going to take a side here, are religious extremists so deeply entrenched in the US political establishment that they cannot understand the importance maintaining secular rights to free expression in the face of attempts at religious censorship and overt intimidation?

Land of the free, home of the brave, eh? Not in Washington DC it seems. Rather than face down the intolerant face of radical Islam, the US State Department is pandering to it. This is a national disgrace and I hope some US newspapers will show how they feel by supporting their colleagues in Denmark and publishing the damn cartoons themselves and telling Kurtis Cooper where he can stick his political master's craven opinions.

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The other night I enjoyed a pleasant meal with a business contact, who works in the property industry and for a large U.S. company. He was talking to a group of people and struck me as a thoroughly charming fellow: articulate, funny, interested in other people, highly intelligent. And then he said something that slightly vexed me in that he started to go on and on about how we must be so appalled by this nutcase rightwinger in the White House, how most Americans were insular and dumb, yadda-yadda. It was so obviously an attempt to deflect what anti-American prejudices potentially might have existed by getting in the blow first. He was, then, slightly surprised me when I said over a drink later that I did not like the way that Americans felt the need to abase themselves this way, or denigrate their home country, or its people. In fact, I told him that, much that I disagreed with many of Bush's policies, such as his fiscal profiligacy and Big Government leanings, I liked the United States a great deal, not least much of its culture, its vitality and the niceness of most Americans.

So a gentle tip for American travellers from this Brit: don't slag off your own country when abroad. The locals will see through it and despise you for it. Be proud of what you are as an individual living in Jefferson's Republic, which for all its faults is the greatest free nation on the planet, and likely to be so for a while to come.

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Efforts continue to use powers of eminent domain (UK = compulsory purchase) to take US Supreme Court Judge David Souter's home away from him in order to use the land for a hotel and tourist attraction called the Lost Liberty Hotel.

However New Hampshire State Representative Neal Kurk, in spite of being behind worthy measures to prohibit in his state the sort of abuses of eminent domain that the US Supreme Court okayed with their monstrous Kelo judgement, is nevertheless opposed to the plan to use eminent domain against Souter.

"Most people here see this as an act of revenge and an improper attack on the judicial system," Kurk said. "You don't go after a judge personally because you disagree with his judgments."

Why not? If Souter was part of the system underwriting a grotesque abridgement of liberty, who not grotesquely abridge his liberty? I suppose being a politician himself, the notion of using laws against the people responsible for them might be a little too close to home for Kurk even if he is sponsoring a measure to prevent such abuses in New Hampshire. Yet why should people whose liberty is abridged and rights to property threatened not want to punish the guilty parties with the tools they themselves have no problem seeing used against others? I am a great believer in revenge.

Do unto others as they do unto you.

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For those of you that have enjoyed your Festive break and have not been keeping up with political happenings 'over the pond', there has been an eye-opening little scandal going on in Washington.

A member of the Most Honourable Order of Washington Lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, has pleaded guilty to the heinous crimes of fraud, bribery and tax evasion. In a plea bargain deal, Abramoff will face nine to eleven years of penal servitude in exchange testifying against the sundry Congresscritters that may face prosecution.

Clearly, Mr. Abramoff is a menace to society:

Among the allegations in the court documents is that Abramoff arranged for payments totaling $50,000 for the wife of an unnamed congressional staffer in return for the staffer's help in killing an Internet gambling measure. The Washington Post has previously reported that Tony Rudy, a former top aide to DeLay, worked with Abramoff to kill such a bill in 2000 before going to work for Abramoff.

An internet gambling measure? Not surprisingly, it turns out that Mr. Abramoff was getting a large part of his money from Native American tribes who have a large stake in gambling operations in the United States outside of Las Vegus.

Abramoff's appearance in U.S. District Court came nearly two years after his lobbying practices gained public notice because of the enormous payments -- eventually tallied at $82 million -- that he and a public relations partner received from casino-rich Indian tribes. Yesterday, he admitted defrauding four of those tribal clients out of millions of dollars.

As you can imagine, that part of the Washington elite that has emerged from their Holiday cheer is agog with the news. Wonkette, for example, took time out from promoting her book to pass comment on the latest news, which is that Republican politicians are falling over themselves to 'return' money that Abramoff donated to them. Starting at the top, President Bush is returning the $6,000 that he donated to his re-election campaign. Abramoff was a generous soul; 24 figures from both political parties in Washington have announced that they are following the President's lead. Oddly enough, a leading Democrat Senator, Harry Reid, is declining to return his $47,000 booty, saying that it is basically a Republican problem.

I was bemused that there was no follow-up from the media on that point. It would seem that it is okay for Democrats to take money from a crook, but not Republicans. It must be that 'liberal media' that they talk about over there.

As a non-American citizen, I must confess to being bemused at the fuss; in a political system where cash is vital to electoral success, where do people think that the money comes from?

But American political analysts, such as The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, seem to me to miss the point. He wrote about the lobbying system in Washington and its biggest critic in the Washington system, John McCain:

Back to McCain. For years now, he has been fulminating against the system -- the outsized role and influence of lobbyists and the parochialism of senators and representatives who, like the ridiculous Ted Stevens of Alaska, have turned selfishness into a matter of high principle. But more important, McCain has tried to rein in campaign spending, which is a root of the problem. The sad fact is that the average member of Congress has his hat out for campaign funds most of the time. Lobbyists know that. They go see a member and in a heartbeat they are hit up for a donation.

...So much needs to be done: campaign finance reform, an ethics committee with teeth, the insistence that lobbyists report whom precisely they are lobbying -- the name, please, not merely this entity called "the House of Representatives." But what's needed most of all is indignation on the part of the public, a cold fury about being ripped off and taken for granted.

Closer to the point was that old friend of Samizdata.net, Boris Johnson. Writing in this morning's Daily Telegraph, Johnson thinks that Abramoff's lobbying clients, the Native American tribes looking to protect their gaming interests are the real victims.

It was a classic piece of lobbyist's hocus-pocus. The Native Americans needed him to represent their gambling interests, and Mr Abramoff was happy to oblige. In fact, he became known as "Casino Jack" for his skill in persuading Native Americans that he was indispensable to their cause, and prising millions from their reservations...

The point is that he was not only suborning the politicians; he was deceiving the business interests he represented.

Businessmen long for certainty; they long to know what the decision-makers are thinking, so that they can plan ahead. They yearn to be in the loop, to have the drop on things. It is the genius of the lobbyists and the consultants to understand this need, and to satisfy it in the most imaginative way.

The reality is that government decisions are often taken in a way that is shambolically unpredictable, but the lobbyist pretends otherwise. He whispers that he can get his client an introduction to so-and-so. He produces organograms of power. He rustles up members of the governing party, or civil servants, or journalists, and persuades them to come to watch the football or the rugby. And nine times out of 10, since this is England, the freebie-takers will do absolutely nothing to requite the favour they have received; but the lobbyist knows that doesn't really matter. The client sees the beaming, drunken faces of these important folk; the client is satisfied, and the client believes just about anything the lobbyist tells him.

Johnson hints, but does not explain the full nature of the problem.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with lobbying or being a lobbyist. When the state takes it upon itself to regulate and interfere with people's lives and business, it is natural that people and business would like to have an input on the political process that has the potential to ruin or enrich them, depending on the fickle finger of legislative whims. An honourable lobbyist would use intellectual argument to present the case for their client without unseemly corrupt practices. However, it is tempting for the not so honourable to use the shortcut of cash.

Well meaning statists, like Senator McCain, think that campaign finance reform will have an impact on reducing the temptation for politicians to take bribes. I would suggest that an honest politician is always honest. He misses the point that rampant lobbyist-driven corruption is a sure sign of excessive legislative involvement in business life. Businessmen do not give money to lobbyists because they have too much of it, and your average Washington lobbyist is just a smashing fellow, but because they think lobbyists can change legislative outcomes.

Legislatures that do not have the power to distort market outcomes are not plagued with lobbyists. How many gambling industry lobbyists are infesting Philadelphia's City Council? Mr. Abramoff just a symptom of the disease known as 'the state'.

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I must admit to being saddened and a bit angered to read that Doug Bandow, a former writer for the CATO Institute, a leading U.S. libertarian think tank, has left after it was revealed that he was paid by a lobbyist to write articles specifically favouring said lobbyist's clients. I used to like some of the stuff Bandow wrote as he came across as a relatively sane voice on domestic and foreign policy issues. It turns out that at least on certain topics, he was a shill. Ouch.

Of course, most of us have to work to earn a crust, and there is nothing specifically wrong in my view in a writer being paid by a company or organisation to advance a point of view so long as the writer is up-front about that. If a person writing skeptical articles about the so-called Greenhouse Effect is backed by Exxon or Shell, then one can obviously take that into account, even if the quality of the argument is impeccable. The same might go, say, for a writer getting backing from Greenpeace who writes all manner of doomonger articles, and so forth.

A lot of people who once enjoyed Bandow's articles will be feeling slightly peeved.

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Almost uniquely amongst nations, the United States takes upon itself the super-ownership of its subjects even when they are not within the territory over which it claims sovereignty. Even if you live and work outside the USA, you are required to file tax returns and have US tax liabilities. It would appear Americans cannot escape the enveloping grasp of their government and its rules anywhere on this planet.

And yet as soon as you step outside the USA, even though US subjects retain their tax liabilities to the state, it would appear they loose any constitutional protection from its excesses.

Whilst in many ways the USA offers the world a splendid example of defended civil liberties, in so many other ways the freedom Americans assume is theirs is really an illusion.

The state is not your friend.

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The U.S. Senate has blocked a vote to extend the Patriot Act, about which Perry de Havilland wrote the other day. Maybe some sanity is breaking out. Many of the Act's provisions are tenuously linked to protecting the public from terrorism, to put it mildly, and violate parts of the U.S. Constitution. Let's hope Congress reflects more before passing such laws at such high speed in the future. And the same applies to our own benighted Parliament and the wretched UK Civil Contigencies Act.

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It is good to see opposition to the absurdly named 'Patriot Act' but as expected, there are many who want to see this monstrous legislation extended.

Looks like the best chance here is for moves to extend the provisions of the act falling to a filibuster and therefore allowing many of the more egregious aspects to expire.

Much was made much of 'sunsetting' aspects of the Patriot Act when it was initially passed so one would have hoped Congress would be happy to see those parts of this draconian and intrusive law wither away. However the eternal trouble with giving the state more power is that 'emergency' provisions inevitably become the norm from that point onwards as those in power are loath to ever accept a reduction in their ability to exert control over people.

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It is a great shame to see Randy Cunningham, a fighter ace who did sterling work over North Vietnam, descend into the cesspool of corruption like so many before him. My opinions of the man were already diminished by his blinkered views regarding the excesses of Serbian nationalism but to see this old warrior revealed as utterly corrupt is still deeply saddening.

It is equally revolting to see Democrats act as if this is the special preserve of the Republican Party rather than an endemic feature of the whole process of which they too are very much a part. Taxpayers for Common Sense has some rather more non-partisan views:

Keith Ashdown, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, said Cunningham's guilty plea hurts both parties. "There are very few things that I read that kick me in the gut. This is beyond my wildest guess of how bad it actually is — how bad, how long and how nobody knew about it," said Ashdown. "I don't think Democrats or Republicans win on this. It basically makes people detest Congress even more and deters voter turnout."

In truth the only way to reduce corruption in high places is to have less high places and which party is on top makes very little difference.

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Are the political opponents of George Bush, who are advocating cut-and-run in Iraq, about to take the attrition war there (which by any objective measure the USA cannot possibly lose on the battlefield) and turn gradual military advantage into decisive political defeat?

Discuss.

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I am certain it comes as little surprise to any of our readers that politicians are, by nature, liars. Still, it is a bit of fun to see them blatently caught at it, especially when the lying is potentially putting the lives of their own citizenry at risk.

This Republican film clip shows the moving lips and indeed proves our belief in a multi-party system being the best thing next to a no-party individualist system. Competition makes the antagonists apply resources to counter 1984 style rewrites of history,

Of all the Democrats shown, only the Clintons are truthful enough to admit and some extent hold to their past sentiments. They represent the most honest and upstanding individuals the Democratic leadership has to offer.

Take that as you may...

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Yes, you read that correctly. And moreover he states that presidents do not create jobs, entrepreneurs do... Mister Bleeding Heart himself, Alan Frigging Alda!

Follow the link and read the whole thing, I kid you not.

I am chastened as clearly I must reappraise my views of the man and repent a few of the things I may have said about him in the past. Any moment now I fully expect to see a flock of pigs flying past my window!

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Yesterday I got into conversation with two sibling members of my family, both of whom are opposed to the US invasion/liberation of Iraq. One is (approximately) an environmentalist, the other is (precisely speaking) a UKIPper, but both are agreed in opposing the war and Britain's involvement in it. I am cautiously and pessimistically supportive, but am not sure. I hope Mark Steyn is right about it, but fear that he may not be.

Anyway, an hypothesis about the state of US public opinion surfaced, as interesting hypotheses will when people who disagree, and who hence bring varied ideas and attitudes to the table, but who wish to remain civil with one another, as I and my siblings do.

For the last few years, the Left in the USA has been saying: It's all about oil, it's all about oil. Now for many Americans, and for most people outside America, fighting a war for mere oil is evil. But what if lots of Americans hear that this war is all about oil, and are pleased? But what if the dime has now finally dropped that actually this war is NOT all about oil?

Could that be what Middle America is getting nervous about? For as long as they were convinced that it was all about oil, they were content. That is our kind of war. Simple, limited, clear, selfish. All the things you want, and not like Vietnam at all. But now that it is dawning on them that this really is about "democracy" and such like, for that exact reason they are getting fidgety. Will it be worth it? When will it end? Where will it end? etc.

It would be entertaining to think that the American Left have been the most energetic de facto supporters of President Bush because of what they regarded as their fiercest criticism of him, but that now that the Left is being defeated in the argument about the true nature and true purpose of the war by the war's most energetic supporters, support for that war is, as a direct result, eroding.

One should probably not be looking for entertainment in such serious things, but, entertainment aside, is this not a rather interesting way of looking at it? I am sure that this theory does not apply to all American supporters or ex-supporters of the war. But to some, maybe?

No links in this I am afraid. I do not recall hearing anyone else saying anything quite like this, although some surely have.

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I am in New York. I try to visit this great city every now and then, although as it happens I have not been here since 2000. Besides the fact that the skyline of this city has been defiled since then, it is still the same place, although it seems to get richer and cleaner every time I visit.

My first trip here was in 1991. I was 22 years old at the time, and before I went I remember my mother being slightly scared for me. At that point New York had a reputation for being a somewhat rough and dangerous place. It had perhaps deserved that reputation in the 1970s, but by 1991 it was not especially fair. When I walked the streets of Manhattan I quickly discovered that New York was a fabulous city, but my first experience was an odd one. I arrived at Newark Airport, collected my luggage and headed for the bus stop outside. However, my progress was impeded by the fact that the dead body of a large black man was lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of one of the escalators. There were policemen standing nearby, preventing other people from coming too close.

I do not know how this man died. My best guess is that he simply fell while on the escalator and hit his head. Howevever, my mind was filled with visions of airport shootouts. The thought "What is this place, and what the fuck am I doing here?" went through my mind. I cowered a little.

I then got the bus into Manhattan, found the hostel where I was staying, and had a great time. The city was a litttle grimy, and there were one or two rough neighbourhoods, but it was in truth a magnificent place.

Since then the city has got a lot richer and more gentrified, and (at least in Manhattan) the rough neighborhoods do not seem quite so rough as before. On Saturday I wandered into Hell's Kitchen, famous for being a tough location, recorded in bad movies such as this one.

But of course its proximity to the important locations of midtown means that a certain amount of gentrification may have taken place. That or the long time residents have taken a liking for politically correct lettuce leaves.

Having roughed such a dangerous place, I retired to a nearby restaurant, where I had some Provencale food washed down with an excellent premier cru Burgundy. (Although the food was excellent, the restaurant felt nothing like France. Everything about it was obviously New York, from the size of the portions to the accents to the volume of the diners to the decor). Okay, at that point I got the "kitchen" part. Hell was still eluding me.

If you go a long way uptown, then yes, some places are not quite as gentrified as this. But they are perfectly fine, and in terms of safety New York feels these days more like Tokyo than the dangerous, feared place that people in foreign countries had heard terrible stories about during my childhood.

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Just over a year ago I spent a very happy few days in northern California, spending one very long and pleasant day in the state's Napa Valley wine region. The region boasts some of the best wines in the world, including the now-famous wineries of Robert Mondavi. Mondavi's wines caused a global sensation in the trade when, during a "blind tasting" in the early 1970s, wine critics rated his produce a notch above the competition from more exalted premises in Bordeaux and Burgundy. The horror!

This article very nicely draws out how the challenge of New World wines from California, Chile, Argentina (a magnificent producer of wine), South Africa, New Zealand and Australia has led to a fairly grumpy response from the traditional centres. This is perhaps understandable. The French produced some of the finest wines of all time, with only a bit of competition from the flowery Hocks and Moselles from Germany and the likeable Riojas in Spain and a few good ones from Italy. About 20-plus years ago, you could walk into a supermarket and choose from only a relatively limited range of wines, much of it fairly basic plonk. Globalisation has put some of the world's most far-flung wine producers into the reach of Joe Public.

All we need now is a similar global "race to the top" in the production of effective hangover cures.

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Regular readers may recall that I supported Bush for President as the "least bad" alternative. Certainly his domestic agenda was nothing for a libertarian to crow about, but on most issues his opposition was at least as bad.

Bush is certainly doing what he can these days to put the "bad" in least bad.

One of the areas where this libertarian could confidently point to Bush as better was on tax policy. He cut taxes, and his Democratic opposition was all about raising them. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is now floating tax "reform" that includes limitation of the mortgage deduction, a great way to raise revenue and disrupt the economy by assuring a hard landing from our current mortgage-fuleded credit bubble.

While the usual Democratic lament when faced with the Republican budget agenda has been some combination of "they aren't spending enough" (the Dems wanted to spend more on the brobdingnagian presription drug benefit) and "they aren't raising taxes to pay for this", the Republican spending spree has gotten so far out of control that the normally rock-solid claim that the Dems would spend more is getting harder to make.

And finally, we come to his nomination of crony Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Now, the reasons for disappointment in this pick are multiple.

First, Bush blinked on the diversity/affirmative action front. You may recall that his first pick to replace Sandra Day O'Connor was a man, John Roberts, a nice thumb-in-the-eye for the diversity crowd. However, Roberts was shifted over to fill Rehnquist's seat, and Bush explicitly told his crew to find a woman to replace O'Connor, pandering to the worst kind of identity politics.

And he apparently did so based on his confidence that she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision creating a right to abortion in the US. Now, as a matter of Constitution law, Roe is a terrible decision, and should be overturned pronto. However, there is every reason to believe that Bush has sold a seat on the Supreme Court, for a single vote on a single issue, to a woman who will be reliably statist and anti-Constitutional.

Harriet Miers is from Dallas, and the word here is that she is a pretty squishy liberal who found God (conveniently, just about the time that being an evangelical became a real entre into the Dallas power structure, but lets give her the benefit of the doubt on that). There is no reason whatsoever to believe that she won't join the anti-individual rights wing of the Court, and some pretty good indications that she will. From what I hear from people who have reason to know, she is a very conventional thinker whose strengths have always been political, not intellectual, and who has never shown a shred of political courage in her life.

She is likely to be very much in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter, in other words, with the occasional anti-gay and anti-abortion vote thrown in.

Another opportunity blown. Humbug.

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So is GWB really facing 'rebellion' by conservatives over his choice of nominee to the Supreme Court? It has long puzzled me why he has been cut so much slack for so long given that his conservative credentials were never very strong to begin with. I guess just not being Bill Clinton was enough for the GOP's supporters to stomach his significant expansion of Big Government and clear lack of any interest in trying to revive the squandered Reagan legacy.

But is this the straw that breaks the camels back or just a storm in a media teacup? Are there really enough people in the GOP willing to derail his latest nominee to the Supreme Court on ideological grounds and do they think there is any chance of them getting someone more to their liking from a Big Government statist like George Bush Jr.? Is this 'outrage' on the right going to make a difference? I will be curious see how this is really going to play out.

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It has been claimed by the BBC that George Bush has said he was "instructed by God to invade Iraq and Afghanistan", not "inspired by his Christian beliefs" mind you, actually "instructed", presumably via some sort of celestial Red Telephone in the Oval Office. Now he may or may not have actually said that (the BBC is rather prone to run with whatever story fits its world view), but I can certainly believe he might have said those things.

As the guy is a practicing Christian, it is to be expected that the G word is something that might come easy to his lips. Now I am all in favour of the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan but I really do wonder if he has any idea how utterly bonkers that sort of thing sounds to non-believers such as myself?

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying he should deny his faith if he thinks he has a personal relationship with God. If that is how he sees things, why should he not say so? I realise than many of my utterances about liberty and the world generally strike many of a different bent as equally bizarre. But I am well aware how negatively my remarks are often received even though I may not actually care a great deal... but at least I know.

But I wonder if GWB actually has the slightest idea how he sounds to some people when he invoked his deity in such a manner? Is the President of the United States really saying he hears voices in his head and acts on what he hears?

Just curious.

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I must admit that at some stages I thought that Andrew Sullivan had slightly lost the plot in his apparent obsession with the torture issue concerning the treatment of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere. At one stage Sullivan seemed to take upon himself the task of scolding other bloggers (notably Glenn Reynolds) for not buying into his argument. Well, this story today suggests that Sullivan has been right to bang on about the issue and to champion the cause of people in the military looking to clean house. I think this also counts as a genuine victory for a blogger and shows the power of this medium. I don't doubt, for example, that Senator McCain and his allies read blogs like Sullivan's.

In case anyone thinks this is some sort of anti-American or anti-Iraq war issue, it is not. I want to finish the job properly in Iraq and let it be done with honour as well as competence. The U.S. Senate just took a step in that direction.

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It is about three months since the dreadful ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Kelo ruling, authorising public authorities to grab people's homes and businesses so that corporations - with political favours to grant, no doubt - can build big developments on the land and promise a big tax flow for the public purse. The battle is continuing to rage, even though some individual jurisdictions in the U.S. have passed laws trying to contain this monstrous use of what is called "eminent domain".

It is well worth keeping a beady eye on this issue from here in Britain because so much of what happens in the legal and economic sphere in the U.S. tends to eventually hit our shores.

In the meantime, I continue to recommend this blog for regular updates on eminent domain, as well as the Institute for Justice, and this excellent book on property rights issues.

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Rita is starting to look like she is right up there amongst the mothers of all storms. According to the National Weather Service:

000
WTNT63 KNHC 212351
TCUAT3
HURRICANE RITA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
650 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005

...RITA BECOMES THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE ON RECORD...

DROPSONDE DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT AT 623 PM CDT...2323Z... INDICATED THE CENTRAL PRESSURE HAS FALLEN TO BELOW 899 MB...OR 26.55 INCHES. THE DROPSONDE INSTRUMENT MEASURED 32 KT/35 MPH WINDS AT THE SURFACE...WHICH MEANS IT LIKELY DID NOT RECORD THE LOWEST PRESSURE IN THE EYE OF RITA. THE CENTRAL PRESSURE IS PROBABLY AT LEAST AS LOW AS 898 MB...AND PERHAPS EVEN LOWER. FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES... A PRESSURE OF 898 MB IS ASSUMED... WHICH NOW MAKES RITA THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE IN TERMS OF PRESSURE IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN. SOME ADDITIONAL DEEPENING AND INTENSIFICATION IS POSSIBLE FOR THE NEXT 12 HOURS OR SO.

RITA CURRENTLY RANKS BEHIND HURRICANE GILBERT IN 1988 WITH 888 MB AND THE 1935 LABOR DAY HURRICANE WITH 892 MB.

FORECASTER STEWART

If you are in Rita's path, please get out.

UPDATE: Here is the current (updated hourly) satellite image of Rita.

UPDATE: Current Category 4 warning. Note that Lake Ponchartrain and New Orleans are within the danger zone.

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We will just have to get used to bigger storms as we head deeper into the upside of the decades long Atlantic storm cycle. Over the next decade nature will be reclaiming land which became saleable during the downside of the cycle. Unfortunately there are some pretty useful things in threatened areas. One of which is the marvellous Lone Star Flight Museum.

I hope they are getting their airframes out of Dodge and their exhibits to safety. I would hate to see a repeat of what happened to Kermit Week's collection in Florida about ten years ago.

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I see that Instapundit has started a bit of a blogstorm with his campaign against government spending. Together with the Pork Report blog, a grass-roots campaign against government excesses might well take off.

I just wish I could imagine this happening in Australia.

Be that as it may, I wonder what the anti-Porkers will make of the latest NASA plans to resume manned missions to the Moon. It is all very good, but NASA admits it will cost $104 Billion and what is the betting that figure will grow as time goes by?

And this drives to the heart of any anti-Pork campaign. What is pork, and what is legitimate government spending?

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I like New York. It is very different from London although they both share the same characteristics of a big city. What I like most about New York is its sense of history. The Art Deco architecture, the 1930s feel to the city, the strange effect of light in the streets that comes through the skyscrapers.

Last night I was on a yacht cruise going from New Jersey and sailing around west Manthattan, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island all evening. As I could not talk, having lost my voice, it was time to watch the view. It was a spectacular one, beautiful and inspiring. Going around the Ellis Island, I thought about all those who saw the same sight before me. There were many people from my country (it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire then) coming to America in 19th century and one thing I am sure of is that their experience of New York was very different from mine in 21st century. Although the comparision may be rather pointless, as I am coming from London these days, the 'going to America' is an integral part of the Slovak history that comes to mind when seeing what to them was America's 'front doors to freedom'.

cross-posted from Media Influencer

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I happen to be in New York on the anniversary of 9/11 and I visited the WTC site today. Alas, I did not get to see much as the place is open only to the relatives of the victims, may they be remembered when decisions are made...

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It is fair to say that I do not always agree with what I read over at the Lew Rockwell blog, considering its position on foreign policy to be sometimes naive to the point of downright obtuse. (That should get the comments fired up nicely, ed). That said, this article drives home very effectively what might be one of the few silver linings of the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina: it may undermine respect for the wonders of Big Government and underscore the importance of local initiative in times of great danger.

And this article by David Kopel certainly adds to disquiet about what certain state officials are up to.

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I ran across this via one of the professional lists I read. It is a fascinating peek behind the scenes of a datacentre that kept going right through Katrina and well into the worst of the aftermath.

The many people like this were (and are) the real heroes of New Orleans.

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If you want to read a splendid and truly hilarious article about US politics from the Irish Times, written by Newton Emerson, then go take a peek at Slugger O'Toole, where the entire article has been reproduced with permission.

And the reason it is so damn funny is that it is entirely correct.

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A hat tip to Glenn Reynolds for this link to video from Fox News about the total incompetence of the state and local governments and their interference with those who could have given real help: The American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

There really need to be some rolling heads in Louisiana and I suggest the Mayor of New Orleans be one of the first to meet "La Madame".

Additional thoughts: If you remove all the weasel words and boil the whole strategy down to its essence, what the government plan in New Orleans seems to be is: starve and disarm the local american populace so they will make less trouble during the forced relocation program.

The job of aid agencies is to supply aid. It is not to tell people what to do. It is not to kidnap people from their homes. It is not to violate their Second Amendment rights and steal their property. It is not to prevent people from creating spontaneous order. It is not to prevent those who attempt to evacuate themselves from doing so.

Perhaps I can get some sleep now.

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How else can you interpret the authorities intention to disarm people in New Orleans? We are not talking looters here, we are talking about people with legal weapons.

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This is not the first article with this title I have written but if some of the accounts coming out of New Orleans prove to be genuine and fair accounts, then I suspect a whole new generation of people who agree with my tagline have just been created on the Gulf Coast of the United States. This was written by a pair of paramedics who were trapped in New Orleans.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

These are clearly admirable self-reliant people here, not a bunch of welfare addled 'do nothings' incapable of independent thinking. They came up with a solution to their problem and the state simply stole it from them.

And if this is true, I can think of no better justification to openly state that people should own firearms to defend themselves not just against criminals but from agents of the state when there is a crisis.

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

And the real stunner...

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

Ok, now would someone like to tell me why these people (a) should not have been armed (b) would not have been entirely justified using deadly force against the 'law enforcement' officials who, at gunpoint, did their damnedest to reduce their chances of survival?

We have heard accounts by authorities of crazed looters inexplicably shooting at contractors who were just trying to repair essential infrastructure. You know what? Maybe that is what happened and maybe not. I find myself thinking the official version of a great deal of what went on is far from the truth. Yet all we are ever going to see on CNN is pictures of heroic cops and National Guardsmen saving the day.

Unless this account proves to be a hoax or a gross misrepresentation of what happened, nothing less than a root and branch purge of the power structures in Louisiana will be enough. This is a true national scandal of the highest magnitude. I am appalled but not entirely surprised.

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I am sure very few readers have the slightest doubt about the Samizdata Editorial opinion on forced removal of sovereign individuals from their property. It is without a doubt their right to use deadly force to defend their property. If there were a confrontation of homeowners and the State, it would not be the first time there has been a Southern showdown between residents and corrupt officials. Although I doubt it will happen in this case, a good dose of property rights enforcement by free men and women would certainly be a pleasant thing to see on the nightly telly in place of the victim of the day image.

Local government officials are claiming they are worried about disease and the danger of gas explosions in the flood and hurricane effected areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Poppycock. The population density there is hardly enough at this time to be cause for worries of any massive outbreak. Both are risks which individuals may choose to accept. It is not the place of the State to second guess the wisdom or foolishness of the individual citizen.

Now, finally, in my round about way I come to General Inge. In his recent press briefing he is ducking and weaving on the issue of committing violence upon peaceful American citizens:

GEN. INGE: I've been watching the news this morning and I understand that this is an issue. The situation as I know it now is that civil authorities in Louisiana and New Orleans are discussing this issue. It's not clear to us what the exact state of the mission is. We would believe -- we are told there are some 900 policemen in New Orleans. We would certainly see forcing evacuation as a first priority for them to work. If the authorities in the state of Louisiana chose to use their National Guard in a state status, that would certainly be permissible and their call.

When this turns into a law enforcement issue, which we perceive forced evacuation is, regular troops would not be used.

I sense relief in his words that his troops do not have to take part in this foolishness. I also sense he is politely sidestepping what he really wants to say about the local authorities.

Addendum: One of our commentariat supplied this reference. Read it. The State Is Not Your Friend.

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I have read a comment that said that New Orleans had large numbers of school buses, literally hundreds of them, which were not only not used by local government to move people out of New Orleans, they were abandoned to the floodwaters. Is this true?

Now presumably the local authorities in New Orleans were uniquely aware of the economic situation of their poorer subjects and thus aware of their lack of motor transport when they started telling people to evacuate New Orleans.

If that fleet of buses was indeed available right there within the city, can anyone explain why, rather than encourage people to assemble at the Superbowl without any logistic planning in place to actually cope with them or plans move them elsewhere promptly, why were these buses not used to move those displaced people to several sites not so close to New Orleans (i.e. somewhere the transportation and logistic infrastructure were not so badly disrupted) and then use those same buses to provide logistic support for a few days for the relocated people. Presumably Louisiana has contingency fuel stockpiles that are enough for a few hundred buses for, say, 4 to 5 days (i.e. the peak crisis period)?

I realise that logistical planning is not a game for amateurs but seeing as the transportation assets were just sitting there near the people who needed transportation, surely there must have been a way for the city government to have avoided what happened in New Orleans even if the situation in more rural areas may have been more problematic. Am I am missing something?

Update: Take a look at this. Yes, the buses were indeed there and some people did indeed get evacuated... but guess who?

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Robert Tracinski has written an interesting article laying out why he thinks what happened in New Orleans was a man-made rather than natural disaster.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

I do not entirely agree with the article's assumptions but the general thesis is compelling.

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I became very familiar with that phrase when participating in online debates about guns. It is an odd thing that many of the same people who make the argument that whatever might save one life must be done when advocating gun bans are so scornful of government efforts to give advice on self-protection in the event of disaster. Their scorn is based on the premise that having a supply of bottled water will avail you nothing in a nuclear explosion or catastrophic flood. All it will do, they say, is give you a false sense of security. That is quite true near Ground Zero, but the bottled water could easily make the difference between life and death for some people at the edge of the catastrophe. Why not put some by?

I do not often defend government efforts on anything, but pamphlets on basic precautions seem to me to be a great deal more useful than so much else they do. Cheap per life saved, too. Perhaps that is the problem. The mockers feel that the pamphlets are a substitute for whatever action (which usually means tax-funded government action) they would like to see taken. Could be, could indeed be, but if it saves just one life...

(Way back when I myself used to be very amusing at the expense of a British government pamphlet called Protect and Survive. It said what to do in the event of a nuclear war. Paint your windows white and hide in the cupboard under the stairs, I seem to recall. Ha ha ha if your body is being reduced to its component atoms by a nuclear explosion. But, my present-day self says, sound enough advice if you are at the margins.)

Via John Weidner's Random Jottings, I found this post from Cold Fury arguing that mockery of the US Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge's advice on making a survival kit helped create a climate of opinion where preparations that might have saved lives were less likely to be made. Apparently Ridge's recommendation of duct tape came in for particular ridicule. (Haven't these people watched Apollo 13?) I must take issue, though, with John Weidner's use of the word "murderers" to describe the mockers. They were not murderers. They were wilfully, harmfully blind to quite likely possibilities and that is bad enough.

The same point about advice that works sometimes came up in the comments to this Crooked Timber post. One commenter was heavily criticised for saying that people should have walked out of the path of the hurricane. Another commenter replies angrily - and correctly - that a hurricane moves faster than a running man. Once again, it is true to say that for many of the victims attempting to "walk out of it" would be no more than a means of bringing forward their deaths by a few minutes. (A further point made by the commenters is that for able-bodied people to stay to help those too old, too young or too sick to flee is a good act not a bad one.)

Nevertheless. Some people who are dead now would be alive if they had walked early. I do not claim I would have followed my own advice. In his book The Periodic Table, Primo Levi says as an aside that many of his relatives died in the Holocaust because, although they could see things getting worse for the Jews under the fascist regime, they could not summon up the tremendous initiative necessary to emigrate. I felt as soon as I read it that in their place I would have been the same. Probably I would have been the same in the floods too. Probably I would have persuaded myself that the option I wanted to take, staying put, was also the safest - and duly drowned.

But the advice "walk to a safer place" is not always fatuous even if you have left it too late to get right out of the area. Not all places hit by the storm bore its full fury. There are enough stories of people hanging on to trees, rocks or particularly sturdy buildings while seeing the dreadful sight of their less well-situated neighbours being swept away to suggest that some places are definitely safer than others. Even without government instruction it might be beneficial to think about these things in advance.

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Apparently, according to this great story over at CNN, it was still possible to get a decent drink in the centre of New Orleans over the past few days, in the finest decadent traditions of that city.

That must have really annoyed the self-loathing creeps who opined that Katrina was some sort of Divine Punishment for the city's libertine, jazz-loving past. Screw 'em and make mine a tequila.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed Reason Hit and Run blog for the pointer.

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And another thing to think about when we start pointing fingers is this. The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There's too much bureaucracy - initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval.

It's not as easy as say rounding up 4 of your co-workers and saying, "We've got someone at such and such an address, let's go grab her and get her out of there." Now add a destroyed or disabled command and control center to that bureaucracy and you've got a total and complete mess.

You (as a civilian) don't need "Approved" stamped on 3 different forms before you can run into your neighbor's house and pull them out. I hope this makes sense.

Anyway, I'm sure there's been human error in this catastrophe. How could there not be? But what I'm saying is that I've come to expect poor decision making and a total lack of initiative from government. They can't even balance a budget, at the federal, state, or local levels. I could balance my checkbook and spend within my means when I was a teenager. But I'm not gonna point fingers and get into the blame game. If you want me to blame something besides the storm herself, I blame the nature of government in the first place. It's too big, it's too slow, it's too inefficient, it's too bloated, and it's too intiative-stifling to be effective in normal circumstances, much less in a disaster. It's a systemic issue, more than an issue of individual people in government.

- The Interdictor writing yesterday

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This article contains some pretty damning stuff.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

[...]

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

Yup, let the finger pointing begin. However although I am rarely loath to heap scorn on the state for cocking things up, it does need to be kept in mind that this is the worst natural disaster in US history and any blame laying needs to keep a sense of proportion (ha, as if) as expecting the state to magically solve even the most unexpected problems with seamless efficiency is at best (and I do mean at best) rather like relying on a well meaning but hopelessly alcoholic uncle to be there for you when things go badly wrong. Well, he might come up trumps but it is probably not a good idea to expect him to be there when you need him.

I also expect membership in the NRA and other similar groups to surge as people re-learn the lessons of the Los Angeles riots: the state might help you pick up the pieces after the fact and a policeman might come around to draw a nice chalk line around the bodies of your murdered loved ones, but when the veneer of civilisation cracks, you had better have a gun and be psychologically prepared to use it because the reality is that when the predators turn up, you are on your own.

Hat tip to Tom Pechinski

Update: LGF has some more as the blamefest starts to gather steam.

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Sci-fi addicts will understand why the Star Trek reference in the title is appropriate.

A comment by the minimally named 'IC' on a previous article here neatly sums up an aspect of the situation in the United States:

How many of those who died in the Katrina catastrophe chose not to evacuate? When you died and became one of the satistics, your loved ones would cry and wail in front of CNN, someone started to sue, some politicians' cushy jobs died with you for not doing their jobs of rescuing you from yourself. Hence we have all these idiotic CYA [cover-your-arse] laws.

On the other hand, if you were forced to evacuate, and Katrina hit Houston instead, and your New Orleans home was looted while you were gone, you start fuming in front of CNN, some politicians got blamed for forcing you to leave...

So either way, it was all bound to be Bush's fault

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Compared to the overall scale of the disaster, this tale about part of the costs of Hurricane Katrina may not seem that big a deal. But as a music-lover and fan of blues and jazz myself, one cannot fail to be moved by this story.

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I recently read Philip K Howard's The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America. It is an infuriating look at how politicians have legislated responsibility and judgement out of consideration when coming up with ever more exact, non-sensical laws. Even Mother Teresa could not get a break from our bureaucratic nightmare:

In the winter of 1988, Mother Teresa's nuns of the Missionaries of Charity walked through the snow in New York's South Bronx in their saris and sandals looking for abandoned buildings to convert into homeless shelters. They found two, which New York offered them at $1 each. The nuns set aside $670,000 for the reconstruction, then, for a year-and-a-half, they went from hearing room to hearing room seeking approval for the project.

Providence, however, was no match for law. New York's building code requires a lift in all new or renovated multiple-storey buildings of his type. Installing a lift would add upwards of $130,000 to the cost. Mother Teresa didn't want to devote that much money to something that wouldn't really help the poor. But the nuns were told the law couldn't be waived even if a lift made no sense.

The plan for the shelter was abandoned. In a polite letter to the city, the nuns noted that the episode "served to educate us about the law and its many complexities."

What the law required offends common sense. After all, there are probably over 100,000 walk-up blocks of flats in New York. But the law, aspiring to the perfect abode, dictates a model home or no home.

The book is full of examples like this one, each one showing exactly how critical thinking and common sense have been regulated out of laws in favour of precision. And, as Howard puts it, the more precise the rule, the less sensible the law.

America's modern legal system has achieved the worst of all worlds: a system of regulation that goes too far —while it also does too little. A number of years ago, two workers were asphyxiated in a Kansas meat-packing plant while checking on a giant vat of animal blood. OSHA did virtually nothing. Stretched thin giving out citations for improper railing height, OSHA re-inspected a plant that had admittedly "deplorable" conditions only once in eight years.

Then three more workers died —at the same plant. The government response? A nationwide rule requiring atmospheric testing devices in confined work spaces, though many of them have had no previous problems. Most such legal dictates are stacked on top of the prior year's laws and rules, the result is a mammoth legal edifice: federal statutes and rules now total about 100 million words. The US Federal Register, a daily report of new and proposed regulations, increased from l5,000 pages in the final year of John Kennedy's presidency in 1963 to over 68,000 pages in the second year of Bill Clinton's.

The second chapter of Howard's book is entitled The Buck Never Stops. This phrase is what came to mind as soon as I heard all of the responsibility-dodging going on in Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. And it would make the perfect title for this interview with the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, in which he expresses his frustration at the lack of action taken by authorities at all levels, and their failure to give him any power to act now. Some bites from Nagin's outburst:

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore. And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done. They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

...[D]id the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?

...But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

The emphasis on process is mine. By using this word, Nagin has pinpointed the problem with American law. Sure, we need due process in our justice system, and in other areas where we do not wish the government to use (blatant) coercion against its citizens. But there are other instances - fixing a leak in a levee on an urgent basis, for instance - in which procedure more often than not gets in the way of a sensible result. In Howard's words:

[M]odern process barely distinguishes among the vast range of government acts, and has thrown its cloak over every decision. Ordinary decisions are subject to rigid formalities taken as seriously as the due process protection in a criminal trial. The actual goals of government are treated like a distant vision, displaced by an almost religious preoccupation with procedural conformity.

...Individual initiative in government has shriveled up and lies dormant. Process has, indeed, rendered initiative unlawful...Irregularities are dangerous, someone might argue; these procedures serve important practical purposes, like preventing fraud and getting the best price, and it would be unwise to permit exceptions. But serving practicality, as anyone within ten miles of a government contract knows, is the last thing these procedures do. Their inefficiency...is legendary. Fraud, notwithstanding all the procedural layers, happens all the time.

...Orthodoxy, not practicality, is the foundation of process. Its demons are corruption and favoritism, but the creed of this orthodoxy is a perfect uniformity. Only if all things are done the same way can government be fair. Sameness, everywhere for everybody, is the operating instruction of modern government...But concepts like equality and consistency are absolute; they have no logical stopping point; there is no place where they say, "Oh, I certainly didn't mean that a broken lawnmower should be treated as a federal case," or, "The Chicago commissioner shouldn't worry about bidding procedures with the river only a few feet above the leak."

Where do you draw the line? No one wants to take that risk, so the line is never drawn. Shuffling to the rhythms of process, answering any potential complaint with one more procedure, becomes what government does.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but surely most of us have a strong sense of the government's ineffectiveness, do we not? Which is why I find it so strange and irritating that so many people in Louisiana believed that the state would save them. It would be a nice thing to believe, a comforting thing to believe, but when push comes to shove, do you really believe that this group of responsibility-dodging, procedure-obsessed egotists would save you? Would you entrust them with your life, the lives of your family, your home? Only cognitive dissonance would allow for such a positive conclusion.

At some point, the wishful thinking of those in danger should have disappeared in favour of reason. For many, it did. For too many others, it did not. If anything positive is to come out of this tragedy, I hope it is a wide awakening across America and other countries that the state is not your friend.

Cross-posted to JackieDanicki.com

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Not a direct quote, but it pretty much sums up the comments from a Louisiana politician in this interview with Anderson Cooper (wmv file). Cooper, quite rightly, calls her on her bull - but not nearly as harshly as he should have. (Again, trying to perpetuate the objectivity myth is doing our media no favours here.)

By many accounts, thousands of people are dead. The survivors are, in their thousands, newly homeless. By many accounts, some survivors are being raped and beaten, and many of them are starving and dying of thirst, their corpses being eaten by rats in the streets of America. Yet all this politician can tell us is how wonderful her fellow politicians are. If you do not think statism is a sickness of the mind, watch this video.

Link via Bitchypoo

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Tyler Cowen over at his Marginal Revolution blog lists out a load of articles about the case for privatising stuff like flood defence, and critiques of U.S. Federal efforts in that direction. He personally believes that flood defence, spectacularly breached in New Orleans, is a proper function of the state. But being the fine scholar and liberal writer he is, gives a comprehensive roll of reasons for thinking these things could be done better out of the State's hands.

Flood defence can be presented as one of those classic "public goods" that cannot arise via the Invisible Hand of the market. Is that really the case, though? It seems to me that if the full, insurance-related costs of living in a flood zone were presented to the people either living or looking to live there, it might either encourage a lot of flood-related civil engineering defence, or for that matter discourage locating in such areas in the first place.

Anyway, hindsight is very easy, especially if you are thousands of miles away. In the meantime, I urge folk to look at the many examples of voluntary compassion flagged up by Glenn Reynolds.

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Thanks to Sean Sirrine of Objective Justice for pointing out the live audio feed from police radio in Hurricane blasted Baton Rouge.

Astonishing.

Want to see some robust news blogged from the front lines of the crisis in New Orleans? Try here.

Perhaps someone has some ideas on links to reputable sites where people can help with donations? Here is one place to start if you want to lend a hand.

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Whilst the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina will take weeks to unfold, the 'experts' flocked to the disaster. They squawked the usual litany of 'climate change' and oiloholic armageddon, overjoyed that they now had a ready-made disaster to cite as evidence. And, of course, such relish could not be served without the knowledge that their moral certainty had been strengthened by the dead Americans; corpses that will serve as an additional accusation in the long list of crimes attributed to President George Bush.

James Glassman, over at TCS, quotes some of the "environmental extremists" who wrote before they thought.

But that doesn't stop an enviro-predator like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from writing on the Huffingtonpost website: "Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."

Or consider Jurgen Tritten, Germany's environmental minister, in an op-ed in the Frankfurter Rundschau. He wrote (according to a translation prepared for me): "By neglecting environmental protection, America's president shuts his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflect on his country and the world's economy."

The bright side of Katrina, concludes Tritten, is that it will force President Bush to face facts. "When reason finally pays a visit to climate-polluter headquarters, the international community has to be prepared to hand America a worked-out proposal for the future of international climate protection."

He goes on, "There is only one possible route of action. Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced, and it has to happen worldwide." In other words, thanks to Katrina, we'll finally get Kyoto enforced. (He might start at home, by the way. Europe is not anywhere close to reducing CO2 to Kyoto standards. In fact, the U.S. is doing much better than many Kyoto ratifiers.)

Tritten is unrepentant about his article.

Yet, despite the uproar he has caused, Trittin remains unrepentant. On Wednesday, his spokesman Michael Schroeren even said that he "can't understand ... at all" why Americans are upset. Trittin's comments "are true and he wrote what he meant."

Perhaps he would understand if he had to hand out food parcels to the homeless or dig out corpses from the mud. But we know one universal truth about politicians from the European Union: they never dirty their hands because of their pristine ideals.

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It is very hard to know what to say, from the comfort of London, about the horror that has engulfed New Orleans and nearby places. Johnathan Pearce did his best yesterday, concentrating on what he knows about, which is the financial fall-out and the British news coverage.

But Ben Jarrell's situation is very different. Finding the words to describe this catastrophe is the least of his problems, because he and his wife have been personally hit by it. He added what follows as a comment on Johnathan's posting, but his words, and his predicament, surely deserve a bit more prominence here than that.

I live in uptown New Orleans, and my wife and I evac'd Saturday morning - but as reports of the levees breaking and the city's poor looting (I've heard reports they are looting on my street) I don't expect to have much of anything left when I get home.

This global warming bullshit is ridiculous, and despite the amount of aid the US provided to the tsunami victims, I still expect the global community will pretend to care while choking back a smirk.

As for FEMA, despite my libertarian leanings, I will be standing in line for whatever I can get. My belongings are insured, but my insurance company won't pay off on the policy until an adjuster can go in and look at the damage - which could be months.

We escaped with little more than a suitcase full of clothes, and it will be nearly impossible to function for the months it might take to get any resolution to all of this.

It is really surreal. It's hard to think that we are homeless refugees, but that pretty much sums up our situation.

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Reports about Hurricane Katrina make for grim reading. Not just the immediate human and physical toll, which is the worst of all. Also worrying must be the financial impact, both in terms of the likely huge insurance payouts and the rising price of oil - although high oil prices may eventually trigger a supply response, if the market works as it should.

More than 90 percent of the Gulf of Mexico oil production has been shut down and for how long, is as yet unclear. Crude oil is now over $70 a barrel and could even march higher, particularly if another hurricane takes hold, or if political and military affairs take another bad turn in the Middle East, or for that matter other places such as Nigeria and Indonesia. The black stuff is getting ever more expensive and of course, makes a mockery of the sort of anti-SUV posturing of the sort I mentioned a few days ago here. As the price rises, people will not change their motoring habits to please non-drivers like Andrew Sullivan, but because it makes plain common sense. Alternative energy sources, even those once branded too offbeat, starting to attract more venture capital and support.

Britain's Channel 4 news had an item on the hurricane in which the general gist of the commentary went like this, to paraphrase a bit: "Is America getting the payback in weather for being the world's largest carbon polluter?" The broadcasters may mean well but it came across as almost gloating in tone. I hope that was not the intention.

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Clive Davis, writing for TCS last week, has some sad news for his American friends:

Mrs. Miniver is dead. The funeral was held some time ago, and there were not many mourners in attendance.

Mrs. Miniver being a character in a Hollywood film that represented all that was best about war-time Britain and Middle England. Looking beyond the pageantry of the Anglosphere, a different picture emerges:

Immediately after 9/11, much was made of such ceremonial gestures as the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Changing of the Guard. Dig a little deeper, though, and there's no mistaking the hostility to American values among large sections of the British population. Conservative commentators in the US have got plenty of mileage out of jibes at French anti-Americanism; the unpleasant truth is that Britain is home to a similar phenomenon.

Why the hostility? When did this happen and why? My experience supports Clive's view to some extent. Although I tend to move in circles where America may be criticised for some things but respected for many of its qualities, I am often taken aback by latent anti-Americanism when talking to people outside those circles. The most annoying thing about such attitude is that it is emotive, not based on anything other than some misplaced zen-like view of the world. Well, you know, there should be some counter-balance to the US power... . As Clive quite rightly notes it is a potent mix of ignorance and arrogance that feeds the Middle England's political cosmology. (Or shall I say astrology...)

Perhaps as a consequence of all those hours spent sighing over Hugh Grant, Americans tend to assume that British are much more worldly and sophisticated than they really are. The truth is, when it comes to knowledge of American history and institutions, the Brits are woefully uninformed. What they are familiar with is American popular culture, which is - as I don't need to remind you - a different thing all together. The result of that false sense of familiarity is a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance. Besides, the British middle classes (like many of their counterparts in the US) do not necessarily see American popular culture as an unmitigated force for good. As the cultural critic Martha Bayles observes in an essay on public diplomacy in the latest edition of the Wilson Quarterly: "Popular culture is no longer 'America's secret weapon.' On the contrary, it is a tsunami by which others feel engulfed. "

Indeed, the thing that seems to gall the British chattering classes and, at the same time, helps them maintain their sense of superiority is the impression that Americans are, oh so, stupid. I find myself replying with increasing frequency that in a country where people are free to be as triumpantly stupid, it also means that they are free to be triumphantly creative and innovative.

Update: Clive posted comments emailed by readers of the TCS article on his blog.

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The bureaucratic mind at work, from the WSJ Political Diary:

"Before deploying from Savannah, Georgia to Iraq by a chartered airliner, the troops of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, a National Guard unit, had to go through the same security checks as any other passengers. Lt. Col. John King, the unit's commander, told his 280 fellow soldiers that FAA anti-hijacking regulations require passengers to surrender pocket knives, nose hair scissors and cigarette lighters. 'If you have any of those things,' he said, almost apologetically, 'put them in this box now.' The troops were, however, allowed to keep hold of their assault rifles, body armour, helmets, pistols, bayonets and combat shotguns" -- reported in the Air Finance Journal.

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Take note: Michael Barone has a blog. And its just as good (so far) as you knew it would be. Takeaway line from his first few posts:

All of which only illustrates my First Rule of Life: All process arguments are insincere, including this one.

And he hints at the problem that will bring the GOP down, if not next year then very likely in 2008: the lackluster-to-disastrous domestic performance of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have given most Republicans no reason to turn out and vote for them. As Virginia Postrel said recently (sorry, can't remember where), now that the Republicans have given up on economic freedom and markets, they are basically just the party of social/religious conservatism after all.

And if that's all you got, you won't win many elections in this country.

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Attempts to use the Kelo 'eminent domain' ruling to take property in New Hampshire from US Supreme Court Justice David Souter have now been extended to trying to do the same to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

This is splendid but maybe it would be good to extend this to Senators and Congressmen and particularly much lower level local politicians who collude with property developers. Some of these people often have property outside the jurisdiction they live in (and thus maybe be vulnerable to politically or personally motivated grudges from other elected representatives).

The important thing is to make as many members of the political class uneasy that they could be targeted. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

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The retirement of a Supreme Court justice is always big news in the USA. Coming on the heels of a ruling which made big business developers grasping municipalities across the United States rub their hands together with glee, it is vital that the mindset which produced one of the most monstrous anti-liberty trends in America today not be reinforced with yet another ultra-statist. To her credit, although Sandra Day O'Connor was neither a darling of the right nor consistently supporting of civil liberties, she did dissent quite strongly from the monstrous Kelo verdict.

Perhaps now that more people are seeing past the simplistic left/right divide on the issue of eminent domain abuse, the importance of insisting on a judge who does revolt at the very idea of such a predator's charter should become the main focus not just for George W. Bush but people of any party who think that being secure in your property is one of the very lynchpins of a free society.

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No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
- 5th Amendment: US Constitution

Today is the 4th of July, when Americans celebrate their independence and much talk of freedom and constitutions occurs. This day is in many ways an orgy of self-congratulation, much of which is entirely justified (I make no secret of my pro-Americanism Atlanticism).

But perhaps, just perhaps, the 'shot heard around the country' that was delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States with the Kelo verdict will snap a great number of Americans out of their understandable but entirely misplaced complacency regarding the benevolence of their own nation-state.

Not only does Eminent Domain now pose a threat to anyone whose property happens to catch the eye of a well connected property developer, the USA also has outrageous 'asset forfeiture' laws that allow suspects to have their property taken by the state, reversing the burden of proof and making the accused (but un-convicted and usually un-tried) person prove their property is not the proceeds of some crime in order to have the property returned (they cannot prevent it from being taken in the first place). So much for 'due process'.

Americans would do well to remember that it was the use of British sedition laws to seize private property from political activists was a major cause of disaffection in the colonies in the lead up to the Revolution in 1776. Moreover those sedition laws were far less capricious and more respectful of due process than modern 'asset forfeiture' laws (colonial era sedition laws at least required you to actually be convicted).

The fight against Al Qaeda and any who ally with them must go on but the greatest threat to liberty (and in the long run that inevitably means life) facing the people in the United States comes not from without but from within. Until the entire scope of what government can do is radically cut back, Kelo is pointing the way to a grim future. I hope that the Supreme Court's destruction of the 5th Amendment by allowing the state to take private property for the private use of property developers, will be reversed long before it requires the active use of the 2nd Amendment to make private property secure against those who would rather use political power rather than markets to enrich themselves.

Happy birthday America.

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Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and current Wall Street Journal columnist, often serves in my mind of an example of how even East Coast conservatives share a mindset that is parochial, elitist, insular, and irredeemably statist. However, in today's column she steps back from the Bos-Wash bubble to marvel at the bloviating egomaniacs that populate Washington.

What's wrong with them? That's what I'm thinking more and more as I watch the news from Washington.

Welcome to the club, Peggy. Too bad it took you so many decades to join up.

How exactly does it work? How does legitimate self-confidence become wildly inflated self-regard? How does self respect become unblinking conceit? How exactly does one's character become destabilized in Washington?

And, bless her, she even takes on the fair-haired boy of the elites, Barack Obama. Barack is widely heralded because he is young, a Democrat, reasonably articulate, and, of course, because he is black. He has also revealed himself to be a first-rate egomaniac. Although in the Senate he doesn't even make the A team for self-importance, what with such colossi as Roberty Byrd and John McCain to contend with, he is certainly putting himself forward as a bloviator to be reckoned with.

This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack Obama, flapping his wings in Time magazine and explaining that he's a lot like Abraham Lincoln, only sort of better. "In Lincoln's rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat--in all this he reminded me not just of my own struggles."

Because this kind of inflated self-regard is part of the molecular make-up of politicians, there is no such thing as "good" government, instituted through any kind of ethical or institutional means. There is only "limited" government.

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There is a serious plan being master minded by pro-liberty activists to use powers of 'eminent domain' in New Hampshire to take a house belonging to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and build a hotel on the site.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

The way the systems works is that you need to make sure at least five of the Selectmen have a nice fat stake in the project personally (and why bother to hide it? That is how this process works). Justification? Easy: it will draw pro-liberty activists and tourists into Weare and thereby increase tax revenues to the town.

This is one of the most splendid ideas I have heard in a while as I have long liked the idea of using the impositions of the state against the very people responsible for imposing them on others. When it comes to such things, there is no 'public and private sphere', there is just a private sphere.

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It seems just a tad perverse that whilst uttering rhetoric about supporting freedom and democracy, the US is sending its military to help train Communists in Vietnam.

Why, exactly?

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It is just plain wrong to think things were just peachy in the United States until last week when all the Supreme Court did was make de jure what had been de facto for quite some time regarding the state's ability to sieze private property for no other reason than to get more tax. But perhaps this is for the best as there is no longer any doubt that things are badly broken and that this should not be a left vs. right issue. As Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent:

If ever there were justification for intrusive judicial review of constitutional provisions that protect discrete and insular minorities, surely that principle would apply with great force to the powerless groups and individuals the Public Use Clause protects. The deferential standard this court has adopted for the Public Use Clause is therefore deeply perverse. It encourages those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms to victimize the weak.

Those incentives have made the legacy of this court's public purpose test an unhappy one. In the 1950s, no doubt emboldened in part by the expansive understanding of public use this court adopted in Berman, cities rushed to draw plans for downtown development. Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were non-white, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them. Public works projects in the 1950s and 1960s destroyed predominantly minority communities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland. In 1981, urban planners in Detroit, Michigan, uprooted the largely lower-income and elderly Poletown neighborhood for the benefit of the General Motors Corporation. Urban renewal projects have long been associated with the displacement of blacks; in cities across the country, urban renewal came to be known as Negro removal. Over 97 percent of the individuals forcibly removed from their homes by the slum-clearance project upheld by this court in Berman were black. Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the court's decision will be to exacerbate these effects.

I trust that decent Democrats who are not in the pockets of public sector employee associations and who actually have at the core of their convictions the desire to help the 'have nots' against whom the system can at time be so slanted, will set aside partisan politics and join with Republicans who are not in the pockets of well funded business interests to rebel against this savage wound to the US Constitution which in effects rips out the Fifth Amendment. Let this case be the litmus test of decency against which political figures of both left and right will judged and judged harshly.

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There is an industry in the USA in which people make a career based on using the power of the state to seize the private property from churches, home owners and small businesses and turn it over to large corporations in order to let them benefit by setting up large businesses and thereby provide more tax money for more public sector employees to share in.

It has been pointed out by many that this is a deeply corrupting process in which wealthy developers simply pay local government officials to use force in their narrow economic interests. Yet 'corrupting' seems a rather weak term for what is simply naked theft which at the same time negates the often stated pretence that the state is there to ensure individual rights are not trampled upon by the rich and powerful. In fact the Supreme Court ruling overtly institutionalises the fact that the police and courts are vehicles for the rich and powerful (business and governmental interests) to do whatever they wish if there is money to be made.

To understand how this could happen it helps if you realise that many Democrats these days take what is technically a fascist view of private property (that you are free to own property provided you further state objectives with it) rather than a socialist one (that all means of production should belong to the state). So next time a some hysterical Democrat from the Daily Kos tells you how important it is to prevent George Bush from adding some conservatives to the Supreme Court because of the need to safeguard civil liberties from The Wingnuts, understand that these same people actually have no problem from a civil liberties point of view with enriching already wealthy property developers at the expense of community churches and poor people. Exactly how this squares with their purported support for 'the little guy' (have you ever heard of a wealthy district full of stockbrokers and lawyers being bulldozed to make way for a Wal-Mart?) is an interesting question answered only via some impressive pretzel logic. In reality the Justices who stood up to corporate interests were 'conservatives'. The fight to prevent eminent domain abuse now has to be conducted at State level now that the Federal battle has been lost to the corporatists.

But also many advocates of the Second Amendment talk about how private firearms are the ultimate bulwark against tyranny and injustice. Well maybe now it is time for them to walk the walk. Maybe if some of the people who make their living as 'eminent domain professionals' were unable to scout out their targets in the most egregious of these cases without considerable personal risk, much like any criminal casing a property they intend to rob, then perhaps the true nature of what they are doing becomes harder to hide behind legal verbiage.

The only upside to this whole situation is the likely radicalising effect this ruling will have on people to whom civil liberties matter and to whom private property is the very corner stone of those liberties.

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"I think that maybe -- just maybe -- anti-Wal Mart sentiment has more to do with an aversion to the white, rural ethnology the store sometimes represents than its labor practices. We can't have our Ethiopian restuarants and esoteric bookstores blighted by NASCAR culture."

- The always good American blogger Radley Balko, telling it like it is.

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Failed Presidential candidate and negligible Senator John Kerry claims to have released all of his military records to the public. It is unlikely that this claim is entirely truthful.

Lets be clear: he did not release anything to the public. He released some records to his homies and long-time supporters at the Boston Globe, who have written an article glossing over the gaps in what they got from him, but have not made the records available to the public in any way, shape or form.

It seems pretty clear that the Globe did not get the full records, for reasons summed up in this rather pithy post. There is good reason, in short, to believe that the full record described prior to the election, was not released even to the Globe.

It is always dicey to reach a conclusion in the absence of full information, but when the people involved refused to release that information, well, they invite speculation. I think the reason it took Kerry so long to "release" his "records", as he promised on national television some months ago, and the reason they were not released to the public as promised, is because he was playing games with (a) who he requested records from and (b) what records he actually released.

But let's not allow our annoyance at the perfectly ordinary dissembling from this perfectly unexceptional man to cloud our glee at the release of both that picture and the fact that George W. Bush, reviled across the Democratic Party as a moron, got better grades than Kerry did.

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The tabloid Dallas Observer bangs another one out of the park with its ongoing coverage of the corruption and incompetence of the Dallas police force. What's fascinating in this rendition of the age-old story of extortion and protection rackets is the way this one operates out in the open, in the light of day.

Dallas has quite a crime problem in some of its neighborhoods - enormous amounts of violent crime orbiting the black market drug trade. Because people in the drug trade don't give a crap about laws making it illegal, such laws are understandably less than efficacious in getting rid of the black market and its ills. Thus, with impeccable legislative logic, since criminals aren't deterred by the law, our betters decided that laws imposing penalties on law-abiding people, such as the owners of property where the criminals live or hang-out, might have some effect. The so-called "nuisance law" was born, and one of the more astonishing tales of unintended consequences of the law began.

If you have a business in a bad neighborhood, and you call the cops over and over again reporting crime, you are not likely to get a timely and effective response from a police force that claims to be overburdened.

Khraish Khraish and his father own single-family rental properties in South and West Dallas. He caught some guys hauling stuff out of one of their properties on Canal Street, southeast of Fair Park, less than a mile from Edmondson's properties.

"I confronted these people, who were stealing appliances out of my house. I said, 'I want you to stop.'"

No. Not stop. They attacked him instead, for irritating them.

"I literally called 911 as I was being assaulted," Khraish tells me. "I'm telling her, 'They're running after me! They've got me!' I was screaming as this was happening."

He got loose and outran them. They gave up the chase, went back and finished hauling off his appliances. He returned to his property and sat there on the stoop, waiting for the police to come. For hours.

"No one ever came," he said. "That's a typical story. That's what happens out here."

No, you will instead get a visit from the cops telling you that you are the problem, for calling 911 so much, and that you will be fined and possibly lose your business if you keep it up, because the volume of 911 calls from your property proves that your property is a "nuisance" subject to penalties under the law. (Note how "public nuisance" has been redefined from "property that is a haven for crime" to "business owner who bothers the police too much.")

That's when the police department's "Nuisance Abatement" or "Safe Team" comes calling. They lay it out. Look at all these 911 calls, Sam. All from your building. You know what? Your building is turning into a nuisance abatement problem. We may have to turn you over to the city attorney for a nuisance abatement lawsuit. Then you're going to have to hire a lawyer, run up a lot of bills. I don't know, these 911 calls are really starting to look like a problem, aren't they?

Wait. Stop. That's not the punch line yet. Here's the punch line--a line I have heard now from several property owners, a line that was repeated again and again in the hearings in Austin. You know what the real punch line is? I have it on my desk.

The rate sheet.

The next thing they hand the owner of a car wash on MLK, or the owner of a major hotel chain, or the owner of refurbished apartment buildings, is the rate sheet for what it costs to hire Dallas police officers to work as security. Off-duty.

Get it? You call 911 too much. You're making us look bad. We're going to have to sue you and put you out of business if this keeps up. But, hey. There is a way out of your dilemma. Hire us off-duty. Now you're not a nuisance anymore. Now you're our buddy.

And it gets worse. What may well be going on here is that parts of Dallas are being set up for a major urban renewal project. Part of the set-up involves letting things get so bad that only a billion-dollar public works project can save the day.

Dennis Topletz, the chief operating officer of Topletz Investments, said experience has taught him that the city of Dallas usually has an agenda, even if it's not easy to see. He says the city used tactics similar to what it's using now in order to force the Topletzes to sell property in the State-Thomas area in the 1980s.

"They threatened us with the RICO statutes then," he said. "I mean, we're talking about government. We're talking about federal. We're talking about criminal. We're talking about jail time, unless we would sell them the property under eminent domain."

He smells a similar but larger agenda behind the wholesale assault on private businesses that the legislative committee discovered when it investigated the misuse of the nuisance law. Somebody wants certain people out of certain neighborhoods, while other people, who are wired to City Hall, qualify for lavish grants and subsidies instead.

I feel sure that, from the inside of the Dallas administration, this all looks perfectly logical (thus the phrase "the banality of evil"). But from the outside, it stinks like day-old fish in the hot Texas sun.

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It is astonishing that a potential law could even reach the stage of being voted on in the USA that says if you witness or 'become aware' that neighbours or friends have broken the law with narcotics (which presumes you are a competent judge of that), you will be compelled by law to denounce them to the police. Failure to do so means prosecution and the threat of a two year sentence yourself if convicted of simply minding your own business. Even if you disagree with the drug laws, you will be threatened with prison if you do not actively help enforce them against other people.

I have met Congressman Sensenbrenner and I am shocked that he could have come up with such a profoundly authoritarian and illiberal law like this. He explained his support for the ghastly Patriot Act was purely a temporary emergency measure, pointing to the sunset clause as proof of that. Well if this* is his idea of reasonable legislation then I fear that I see all his motivations in a dramatically different light.

Turning neighbour against neighbour like this was how communist states maintained power in the Eastern bloc and anyone putting their name to such a law should be seen for the enemy of civil society that they are, turning people who just wish to be left alone into coerced informers for the state. Truly disgraceful.

*= to see details, enter HR1528 in the search box, then check the enter bill number button, then press search

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The US Supreme Court today overturned the obstruction of justice conviction of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm. This comes too late, of course, to save Andersen, which was largely destroyed by the conviction, but it nonetheless injects some common sense back into the rules around withholding information from the government (it can be legal, you know, a fact which the SCOTUS felt the feds needed to be reminded of) and document disposal (a topic on which I spend far too much of my time).

In a unanimous opinion, justices said the former Big Five accounting firm's June 2002 obstruction-of-justice conviction - which virtually destroyed Andersen - was improper. The decision said jury instructions at trial were too vague and broad for jurors to determine correctly whether Andersen obstructed justice.

. . .

[I]n his opinion, Rehnquist noted that it is not necessarily wrong for companies to instruct employees to destroy documents, even if the intent is in part to keep information from the government.

Like a mother who advises a son to invoke his right against compelled self-incrimination out of fear he might be convicted, "persuading" an employee to withhold information is not "inherently malign," Rehnquist wrote.

"The instructions also diluted the meaning of 'corruptly' so that it covered innocent conduct," Rehnquist said.

The Andersen case was of a piece, really, with Martha Stewart's conviction. Both were convicted, essentially, of failing to cooperate in their own prosecution. Give Martha cred for serving her time, but I wonder if she wouldn't have won out on appeal. Eventually.

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According to the New York Times:

An American military inquiry has uncovered five instances in which guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba mishandled the Koran, but found "no credible evidence" to substantiate claims that it was ever flushed down a toilet, the chief of the investigation said on Thursday.

All but one of the five incidents appear to have taken place before January 2003. In three cases, the mishandling of the Koran appears to have been deliberate, and in two it was accidental or unintentional, the commander said, adding that four cases involved guards, and one an interrogator. Two service members have been punished for their conduct, one recently.

I am not sure if the service members that were punished had other things to answer for- the investigation is by no means complete, apparently.

However, I am curious if that was what they were punished for. Does the Koran have some special legal protection in the United States now?

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The Bush administration wants to get rid of the filibuster in the US Senate when voting on nominations to the US Supreme Court. Now the prospect of replacing left wing activist judges with right wing slightly less activist judges seems like a minor move in the right direction, however... I am uneasy because although this (none too civil liberties inclined) government adjusts the underpinning rules to impose its will now, the shoe could so easily be on the other foot in a few years, with President Hilary getting to ram through some ghastly left wing jackanapes using the very mechanisms Bush looks likely to put in place next week.

And anyway, anything which buggers up the process of laws getting made (which filibusters certainly do) tends to appeal to me instinctively. But is the filibuster a good thing when it comes to the calculus of whether or not the US system is conducive to producing liberty? Is that peculiar institution a good way of curbing legislative excess or is it just a way of locking in bad stuff already on the books and making the system un-reformable?

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A retaining wall in the Upper West side of New York at the Hudson River, just up-river from the George Washington Bridge has collapsed and buried several parked cars at the very least. I was unable to find out if anyone had been caught in the collapse: no one seemed to know at the time I was asking around.

Since I am on the same side as the collapse, I was unable to get into a position to get a picture. There is nowhere one could do so without standing on part of the hillside which has just collapsed and the NYPD has the cliffside cordoned off in both directions for many blocks. I know. I tried.

I do know that the Henry Hudson Parkway is closed and traffic in NYC is a royal mess right now.

I ha ve never in my life heard so many sirens and seen so many emergency vehicles. Lines of them filling city block after city block and off into side streets. Broadcast vans from every station in New York with a news program. Talking hairdo's smiling into TV cameras every which way you look. Police smiling and saying absolutely nothing about what is going on. Lots of the folk thought it must be a terrorist threat because there was nothing but rumour floating through the gathered crowds.

You will get the details on the News at Eleven... but I will start uploading some of my on the scene photos. So, here goes... Dale Amon reporting Live and On The Scene in New York City.... Roll 'em!

Move along now, nothing to see here...

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

The line of emergency vehicles fades off into the distance.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

Notice the herd of cameramen down on the edge of the hillside where they can all go down together. Somewhere along there and below is my best current guess as to where the collapse occurred.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

Gee, Perry, when can we get one too?

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

The talking heads were out in force.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

A newsgirl and her cameraman.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

This is a couple blocks upriver. Beautiful view but still cordoned off. Note the hardhats and police near the hillside.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

This shot is from about three or four blocks upriver. Obviously you cannot see the collapse, but it does give you an idea where it happened. That is the George Washington Bridge.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

Coffee break time I presume...

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

Update: No one was hurt; cleanup will probably take through the weekend; traffic on the Henry Hudsen Parkway is being diverted at 181st St.

Morning Update: I was able to get to a location from which I could get a photo of the actual collapse area and it was not where I'd thought it, but a block further upriver. The big worry yesterday was whether or not some apartment buildings had been undermined. Engineers determined they were safe so this morning it was easy for me to get within telephoto range.

Photo: D.Amon all rights reserved

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Jim Babka, President of DownsizeDC has more to report today:

The Senate is supposed to vote on REAL ID Act this afternoon. "Roll Call" reports yesterday that governors are protesting the creation of a national identification system. Plus, we know of other organizations that are now rallying their forces. We're not alone in this fight.

It's traditional for the Senate to vote unanimously in favor of Conference Committee Reports - to rubber stamp them. As a result of all the voices they're hearing, I'm not so sure that's how this is going to play out. Let's keep up the pressure all the way to the finish line.

The REAL ID Act could signal the end of real privacy in America, as this article suggests.

And I told you yesterday about my experience on an Omaha, Neb. radio show. Well the host might not have gotten it, but his local paper certainly did! Did our interview influence the following editorial? {Registration required} Who knows? But it's well worth reading to get a clear understanding of this issue. And when you share our campaign with your friends, encourage them to read this article for a clear explanation.

Send another message to the Senate right now, asking them to vote down the appropriations bill containing the REAL ID Act. Tell the Senate to send the appropriations bill back to the Conference Committee to remove the REAL ID Act. Send your message by Clicking here

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I just can't help myself, it seems. I suppose my attitude towards Dems suffers from the soft bigotry of low expectations, - I really don't expect any better from them. For the Reps, well, they have been marginally better than the Dems on liberty issues, but whatever principled commitment they had to Constitutional limited government is apparently no match for the strong solvent of controlling the unitary state.

This time, really, a nice even-handed non-partisan bashing that indicts both Dems and Reps on federalism. I happen to think that dispersed power is one of the most critical bulwarks for freedom in any society, and one to which many seem oblivious to. The column details the ways in which the dispersion of government power in the US has been destroyed by both Dems and Reps.

Since the Great Society delusions of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrats have assumed the powers of Congress are unlimited absent an express constitutional prohibition. The assumption turned the Constitution on its head. It evoked stentorian pledges from Republicans to honor traditional state prerogatives and to restore the Founding Fathers' design of a limited federal government, not a Leviathan. But after capturing control of Congress and the White House, Republicans are bettering the instruction of Democrats in pulverizing federalism. The pledges of change proved hollow, like a munificent bequest in a pauper's will, to borrow from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.

The US Constitution successful in preserving individual freedom as long as it did in large part because it dispersed power so widely among and between the state and national governments, the governments and the people, and between the branches of the national government. That dispersion is at an end, and with it is born the unitary totalising state that is, and always has been, the bane of individual freedom.

One side note - the article actually does a decent job of capturing the embryonic "new federalism" jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, but any Court that will uphold an abomination like the McCain-Feingold political speech controls offers faint hope indeed to libertarians.

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This item is in from the folks at DownSizeDC:

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

I'm sending out today's Downsizer-Dispatch message earlier than usual. The Senate may vote TODAY on the "emergency" appropriations bill and the REAL ID Act. Hammer them. And do it now.

Let them know that you know that they can vote down this bill and then come back and do the spending bill again (that is, if they really must take another step toward national bankruptcy), only next time they should do it without the REAL ID Act. Tell them you know it won't be easy, but you want them to show some backbone on this vote. Tell them you will remember what they do. The REAL ID Act must not be passed.

Send your message by clicking here.

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Just another stone in the bucket:

The Republican promise of smaller, less-intrusive government is getting harder and harder to believe. Especially when a more plausible plot line is unfolding every day: that the GOP has put aside the ideals of Reagan and Goldwater in order to pursue a political strategy based on big spending.

It's not always easy to see how radically Bush has transformed the GOP — from Reagan's admonition that "government is the problem" to Dubya's own assertion that "when somebody hurts, government has got to move." But it's a real transformation — and an expensive one.

I have never been a big fan of GW Bush's domestic policies, although the primary complaint from the loyal oppo has generally been along the lines that he isn't a big enough spender/regulator. Still, the refrain that "But Kerry would have been worse" is starting to wear a little thin.

Between the Rovian big spenders and the prudish blue-noses pushing their own nanny state, the Republican Party's status as a better home for libertarians than the Democrats is getting more and more dubious. Truly, libertarians are being cast into the wilderness, with their only company a smattering of gibbering anchorite "true believers" and associated hucksters. Why, its getting almost as bad in the US as it seems to be in Britain!

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In what is almost certain to become a long-running series devoted to the topic, let us now note one of the ways in which the Republicans are fools:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, like his immediate predecessor, John Ashcroft, has pledged to make obscenity prosecutions a priority. The department is expected to announce soon the creation of a special unit within its criminal division to focus on adult obscenity cases.

Surely no additional comment is needed, but let us note that there are apparently federal laws against obscenity in spite of a rather clear and unqualified statement in the Constitution of the United State to the effect that "Congress shall make no law... , " so let us pause a moment to lob a brickbat or two at the apparently illiterate Justices of the Supreme Court who have upheld such laws.

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I frankly haven't been paying much attention to President Bush's Social Security reform, ehrm, thingie (hard to call it a proposal because I don't think he's really proposed anything concrete), but I gather that the spineless wimps in Congress are coalescing like a school of jellyfish around a "bipartisan" proposal to raise the hell out of taxes and do absolutely nothing to create private ownership. Sounds like I, personally, can look forward to paying several thousand dollars more per year to support Social Security.

Business as usual in Washington. Just think how much worse it would be if John Kerry had won! (Sadly, I'm not sure if I mean that ironically or not.)

In the relentless, frantic spinning that passes for political discourse among our anointed masters, though, the frothing anti-Bushie Paul Krugman sets a new high. Krugman frantically lets us know that under Bush's latest Social Security thingie "the average worker--average pay now is $37,000--retiring in 2075 would face a cut equal to 10 percent of pre-retirement income."

That's right, folks - we should swat down whatever the evil Chimpler McBushiburton proposed because it might cause people who aren't even born yet to take a 10% reduction in income when they quit working for their money.

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How little coverage there is of this scandal, no?

When was the last time a felony fraud investigation into the campaign of a sitting Senator and presumptive Presidential nominee was almost totally ignored by the press?

This looks pretty open and shut to me, at least as far the fraud part goes. The only real question is whether the candidate knew, and that puts the candidate in the position they so frequently find themselves in - they either knew what was going on in their campaign, in which case they are guilty and unfit for office, or they didn't know what was going on in their campaign, in which case they are incompetent and unfit for office.

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One of my occasional forays in the United States has washed me up on the shores of historic Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. Looking back over the Atlantic to the West Coast of Ireland has reminded me of how the weather can be just as bad over here as it is at home.

Anti-Americanism remains as popular at home as it is misunderstood here. What was originally considered a prejudice has now transformed into an orthodoxy, where the demonisation of the United States, its people, culture and contributions has acquired the power of an aesthetic reaction. The reaction is not an ideology, although the attacks are structured as such within various contexts, especially as formed by the Left or the Green movement who merge the USA with a wider system of empire, capitalism or oppression. Ideologies tend to wither if they drift too far from reality. Anti-Americanism has acquired the power of an aesthetic, a style derived from its audiences and reproduced from T-shirts of Che Guevara to a new orthodoxy amongst the educated elites. Like left-wing satire of the nineteen-eighties, it has ceased to be funny and its proponents look down on those who disagree with them.

Politics and style are a dangerous combination. Supporting Bush is not the same as accepting America on its terms, good and bad, but orthodox behaviour encourages polarisation in argument. When confronted with an anti-American style that is no longer based upon argument and is winning the culture war, you provide the 'fishbone statement' that will make these people choke. To stand up for the Stars and Stripes can be considered a form of private dissent, allowing you to needle those whose views you hate.

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One can, I suppose, trace the end of the ideal of limited government in the United States from any number of events. I have heard the Civil War, Roosevelt's court-packing schemes and the emasculation of Supreme Court jurisprudence on enumerated powers, even (half-jokingly) the extension of the franchise to women.

If these are all candidates for the beginning of the the end of limited government, I wonder if we aren't witnessing the end of the end. Constitutional structure, jurisprudence, and the like were never more than temporary and imperfect restraints on the state, in the absence of real political backing and deep cultural roots for the ideal of limited government. There is precious little sign of either in the current landscape.

At this point, one looks around in despair for any sign that limited government has any political viability at all. The Republicans, whose commitment to limited government has been steadily waning for decades, appear to have abandoned it entirely now that they hold the reins of government.

While some libertarian types may have been upset with President Reagan's deficits, he was at least singing from their hymn book: Government is the problem, not the solution. George W. Bush on the other hand has never even gone to the trouble of aping a small-government posture. Instead, Bush has adopted one of Reagan's other famous lines, sans irony: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.

This represents a fundamental shift in the direction of the Republican Party and a threat to its traditional alliances. The shift is self-evident. Instead of being the party that tries to rein in entitlement spending, the Republican Party is now the party of the $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Instead of being the party that is opposed to even having a federal Department of Education, the Republican Party is now the party of extensive intrusion into local schoolhouses by Washington, D.C. And instead of being the party of the rule of law and state's rights, the Republican Party is now the party of Congressional intervention into the thoroughly adjudicated medical decisions of an individual family.

It scarcely need be said that the Democratic Party provides no hope whatsoever for limited government, outside of a few isolated issues. Of the Libertatian Party, well, the less said the better. Many small-l libertarians, pragmatic and incremental reformers such as myself, looked to the Republicans as the least worst alternative, with some hope that their authoritarian and statist instincts could be tempered by the political calculation that they couldn't do without us.

It is apparent, however, that a new political calculation is afoot, one that relies not at all on believers in limited government, and thus consigns them to utter political irrelevance.

What if Karl Rove's idea for a permanent majority actually worked? The GOP could convince soccer moms that it's not so hard-hearted by implementing national health care piece by piece. It could pick up the votes of blue-collar union members by appealing to them on "values" issues that the Democrats can't talk about without choking on their own bile. And the GOP could even pick up votes from socially conservative black and Hispanic voters who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage.

The electoral logic of Big Government Conservatism, in fact, is virtually inescapable.

At this point, I see no hope for limited government in the near or medium term. I don't see any political home for us, anywhere that we can exert any meaningful influence. We can look forward only to the expansion of the state, until the entire political system is rendered chaotically fluid by some shock or upheaval. The most likely scenario I see for realignment and revival of limited government ideals would be the collapse of the Democratic Party, which would at least create an opening to reinvent the current, sterile Rep/Dem, Conservative/Liberal dichotomy as a new opposition between liberty and the total state.

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Now that the animated corpse of Terri Schiavo has finally been allowed to die, some of the fault lines of American conservatism have been brought into sharp focus. The behaviour of quite a few on the left has not been very edifying either but certainly it is amongst the Republicans that the most remarkable behaviour has occured.

The term 'pro-life' may be a reasonable description for those who oppose killing late term foetuses but the broad political church of pro-lifers (with whom I actually share many positions) includes a section of conservatism which is so obsessed with the physical trappings of life that they have stretched the definition of human existance to the breaking point.

The origins of this conservative faction are not hard to see. It came about in opposition to those on the socialist left who treat abortion as not so much something to be tolerated but rather a sacred sacrament which they venerate with cult-like obsessiveness and even demand it should be supported by the tax money of people who abominate the practice. In resistance to this we now see some conservatives developing an equally extreme cult to whom being 'pro-life' means treating the intentional death of a fertilised egg as tantamount to murder and demanding the removal of the customary fiduciary role of a spouse in decisions such as the Terri Schiavo case when the spouse does not follow the 'pro-life' party line. Moreover these people describe courts which does not intervene in such a civil matter as 'activist judges' who should be opposed with force by the executive if they will not buckle under and act like a, well, activist judge.

So when such a group which thinks extending the existence of the hapless Terri Schiavo's body regardless of the fact much of her brain was spinal fluid and pretending that being in some way reactive to light and sound means she was still 'alive' in any meaningful way, they cannot really be called 'pro-life' because it seems to me that Terri Schiavo's life ended many years ago. We are not talking about euthanizing someone who is horribly brain damaged and has been reduced to sub-child like imbecility (i.e. someone with at least a pathetic but identifiable remnant of a human existence), no, we are talking about someone with an effective intelligence of pretty much zero.

Now it seems fair to differentiate between three classes of people who opposed moves to allow Terri Schiavo's body to die:

Firstly, those who disagreed on the medical facts (i.e. felt that she was not persistently and irretrievably vegetative)...

Secondly, those who did not feel Michael Schiavo was the right person to make the decision because he had alienated his right to be regarded as Terri Schiavo's husband...

And lastly those to whom the only acceptable outcome was keeping Terri Schiavo's body alive regardless of who was nominally 'in charge'. It is this later group with whom I have the greatest disregard and who seem to me as being the ones making the most noise at the front of the pack.

For the first group, granted I am not a doctor but the publicly available evidence seems pretty clear to me. That said, I admit that opinions may vary but I can only go with what seems the most plausible theory. Likewise to the second group, it seems to me that Michael Schiavo's behaviour fell within sufficiently acceptable bounds to not disqualify him and that far from taking the 'easy way out', in spite of the character assassinations levelled at him, he did what he thought was best and was well within his rights to do so. Ann Coulter has certainly not convinced me that Michael Schiavo stands to get anything out of this other than the hatred of millions of people and precious little else. Again, I realise that reasonable people may disagree on these points. I certainly do not think all (or even most) of the people who took a contrary view were either unreasonable or immoral, I just think they were wrong.

To the third group however, no accommodation or meeting of the minds or even reasoned discourse seems possible. For me, the decision to starve this poor creature to death was wrong: once it was decided that the body that was once Terri Schiavo was better off dead, why not just have the courage of convictions to end it all with an more dignified injection? I understand the legal niceties of why it was done the way it was done but that does not make it the right or humane way to do such a thing. Terri Schiavo may have been past caring but the fact there are people who are so obsessed with prolonging physical existence even under the most horrendous circumstances that to 'do the right thing' would risk prosecution for murder, which is deeply disturbing.

I am fortunate that this blog means my views regarding what I would want for me if I was ever in Terri Schiavo's situation will be a matter of public record so not even Tom DeLay will be able to argue if someone wants to pull the plug on me if some day I get hit by a bus when in Florida. To demand the intervention of the state to ensure the continued bodily existence of a woman whose brain was made up of a high proportion of spinal fluid is not being 'pro-life', it is being 'pro-undeath', what we have here is truly an American Zombie Cult.

We want your votes!

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Just to stir the pot in the peanut gallery:

Does anyone else find the use of the term "undocumented" to describe people who are in the US illegally to be more than a little disingenuous, misleading, and politically correct?

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On The Voice of Reason (slogan: "A penny saved is a government oversight"), there is a pretty clear headed little essay of what I think is most the reasonable position on this absurdly emotive case.

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Bill Quick puts up 11 excellent reasons for limited-government types to be pissed off at the current administration. I found little to quibble with.

Generally, I have found George W. Bush to be good, very good, on foreign affairs, and mediocre to bad on domestic issues.

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Some readers may have heard of the Institute for Justice, a U.S. organisation which fights the legal battles of property owners resisting the odious power of what is called eminent domain. Eminent domain powers, which were originally designed to give governments the ability to seize private property to build facilities for so-called "public use" like an airforce runway, prison or road, have also been used by said governments to build things like condos purely in order to boost tax revenues. It goes without saying that such a power is a powerful force of corruption, since a large property developer who wants to build a supermarket or whatever can get his political chums to use ED to kick small businessmen and homeowners out of their property. The politicians get lots of campaign contributions. The whole business stinks, and flagrantly abuses property rights. In any event, if the re-development of an area really made financial sense, that would be reflected in the increased prices of the houses and shops targeted for demolition, in which case the issue can be left to the market.

The Institute for Justice is, quite possibly, the most important libertarian organisation now in existence. I can also recommend the Free Space blog for regular updates on this issue and I also love the book, Defending the Undefendable, by Walter Block, on the same subject.

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I often do not see eye to eye with James Taranto but he does point out some good stories in his "Best of the Web" email newsletter. He highlighted this Drudge Report today. Drudge reports Michelle Zipp, editor of Playgirl magazine, was fired for being a Republican. It contains an e-mail from Ms. Zipp:

After your coverage of my article about coming out and voting Republican, I did receive many letters of support from fellow Republican voters, but it was not without repercussions. Criticism from the liberal left ensued. A few days after the onslaught of liberal backlash, I was released from my duties at Playgirl magazine.

After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, "I wouldn't have hired you if I knew you were a Republican."

I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views.

I would go further. The currently constituted Democratic Party is based on victimology. 'Minorities' must be victims. Victims must be helped. The only way to help victims is through regulation, law and massive Federal spending. If a member of a Democratically important minority breaks ranks, they are endangering the core beliefs which bind the party together. Thus that individual must be silenced or put in their proper place as a victim.

Minorities contain intelligent, hardworking and resourceful people. You can not keep them 'down on the farm'. You can not pretend to speak for all of 'them' because they are not really a 'them'. As any libertarian will tell you, there is no such thing as a Class. There are only individuals with temporarily aligned self-interests.

This is a problem for the Democrats. As soon as the underlying self-interests of their pet victim classes were met, those classes began to dissolve. The Democrats do not have an acceptance of this, let alone a plan to understand and deal with new alignments. All they can do is individually lash out against 'class' defectors. It solves nothing, it wins them no friends... but perhaps it makes them feel better.

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The American diplomat George Kennan passed away on Thursday night, at the ripe old age of 101.

George Kennan was famous for being the principle intellectual architect of the US policy of 'containment', as applied to the USSR. As a diplomat who served in the USSR, he composed what is known as the 'Long Telegram', which had a considerable impact on the thinking of US policymakers, which became even greater when it was expanded into a longer essay, 'The sources of Soviet conduct'.

Kennan's view was that Soviet expansionist tendencies were internally driven, and based on the fundamental illegitimate nature of Soviet power:

At bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted Russian rulers rather than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundations, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.

Kennan's view was that US policy should be to meet the Soviet challenge with firmness, patience and intelligent policymaking. In the 'Long Telegram', he compares the relationship between the US and the USSR as that of a doctor and a disturbed patient.

What is curious though is that Kennan thought this would be solely a political and diplomatic effort. He deplored the US military buildup in the Cold War. It strikes me as curious that a diplomat that lived through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany would under-rate the importance of military preparedness in dealing with militant totalitarian dictatorships.

But then Kennan had many curious views.

It is odd that a man who had a profound impact on the policy direction of the US in the Twentieth century should be so out of sympathy with the prevailing spirits of the age; the great advocate of Bismarckian 'realpolitik' had indeed, a world view closer to Bismarck then any figure in his own age. As Daniel Drezner noted:

Kennan never gave a flying fig about the developing world, believing that it never would develop. Kennan's narrow world vision consisted only of the five centers of industrial activity -- the US, USSR, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan. By the early nineties, when he wrote Around the Cragged Hill, he clearly believed the U.S. to be doomed to decline and devoid of "intelligent and discriminating administration." And the less said about Kennan's view of non-WASPs, the better.

Believing as he did in a limitless human capacity for error, Mr. Kennan was an unabashed elitist who distrusted democratic processes. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas reported in their book "The Wise Men" that he suggested in an unpublished work that women, blacks and immigrants be disenfranchised. He deplored the automobile, computers, commercialism, environmental degradation and other manifestations of modern life. He loathed popular American culture. In his memoirs, he described himself as a "guest of one's time and not a member of its household."

He not only deplored such modern gadgets as cars and computers, and equal rights for all, he deplored nuclear weapons; he pushed his opposition to the point where he was considered unemployable in the State Department, and retired to that haven of the impractical man, academia.

There, he forged a productive career, writing books, articles and winning prizes; his views remained archaic and unworkable, which is a pity. He made a great contribution to American public life during his short spell of real influence; looking back, one can only consider that if he had only been more willing to re-examine his views, he might have made a far greater contribution then he actually did.

See also David Adesnik, and a collection of his Foreign Policy contributions can be viewed here

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Instapundit has already just linked to it, and to other responses to the same story, and copied and pasted the first two paragraphs. It being a CNN report about how Forbes has included Fidel Castro in its list of the world's richest people, and about how Fidel Castro is not amused. This story will soon be everywhere, but I do not care. Count me in, if only as one delighted heckler among millions.

Funny as those first two paragraphs are, I think this sentence is my particular favourite:

Castro, 78, and in power since a 1959 revolution, said he was considering suing.

I cannot believe he really said that, but in the event that he did... you go grandad.

This reminds me of Danny de Vito's line in Mars Attacks, where he says (if memory serves), to the invading Martians, something like: "You want to take over the world. You're gonna need lawyers, right?"

Not that Fidel is trying to take over the world any more. It is just the idea of a hitherto unreconstructed Marxist-Leninist trying to protect what's left of his revolutionary reputation by calling in the lawyers.

It is, alas, far too much to hope that he will really do it.

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"To permit an entire class of political communications to be completely unregulated... would permit an evasion of campaign finance laws..."

The American regions of the blogosphere has been reverberating after Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly stated that blogs must be regulated in order to comply with US campaign finance laws.

However I do not propose to add my voice to the myriad of other commentators decrying this or explaining why it is such a bad idea, as regular readers of this blog can pretty much join the dots to guess The Samizdata Position on that issue. What I will do though is point out that as well as being a threat to freedom of expression, this has huge positive potential as well.

There are few things more corrosive to the power of the state than for it to decree something and then be seen to be unable to enforce its writ. So let Colleen Kollar-Kotelly do her worst. You want to link to a Democratic or Republican campaign site regardless of what regulations say you can or cannot do? Simple... off-shore hosting. Host your blog outside the USA and post using a pseudonym (like maybe "Tom Paine" or "Ben Franklin") and then link to whoever the hell you want to. Moreover put a banner on your blog saying "This Blog is in wilful violation of US Campaign Laws and there is not a damn thing you can do about it".

Hell, my 'inner capitalist' is whispering in my ear as I write this... I just might talk to some chums of mine who are hosting experts with a view to setting up Samizdata.net branded non-US based hosting, available for bloggers across the political spectrum who want to stick their thumb in the eye of those people who want to control free political expression. Anything which weakens the authority of the state, shows the limits of political power and makes enterprising folks some money whilst helping people to do all that is too good for me to pass up. Yeah, I really hope this travesty becomes law in the USA... stay tuned <evil laugh>

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My former flatmate Drew Johnson has been setting up a new think tank. It has just launched a website. Called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the organization aims to do for the US state of Tennessee the excellent job that many state-based think tanks have been doing elsewhere in the United States. So get to work with the Jack Daniels and Coke and give Drew some moral support by visiting his site.

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Irony, or hypocrisy? You decide.

In one of those events that barely even raises an eyebrow anymore, one of the leaders of the "Million Mom March" in favor of (even more) gun control, was arrested on firearms violations.

A Springfield woman who began lobbying against gun violence after her son was shot to death in 2002 was arrested last week when police allegedly found an illegal gun and drugs in her home.

First, lets be clear - she wasn't lobbying against gun violence, she was lobbying against gun ownership. The Million Mom March was all about driving guns out of everyone's hands, regardless of criminality.

So just what was she busted for? Having a gun with a scratched-off serial number, and not having firearms owner ID card (required by Illinois). Two classic gun-grabber laws, here being applied to someone who admits that she had the gun in question.

In other words, she admits violating the laws in question. One wonders if she will plead guilty and volunteer for jail time, as her beliefs would seem to require. Well, one wonders only if one is terminally naive - she is fighting the case, apparently unwilling to live with the consequences of the restrictions she wants to impose on others.

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Michael Barone is truly the dean of American political analysis. Throughout last year's election, his analysis was spot-on, and his recent post mortem continues in the same vein.

I have long thought that the way to win elections in the US was not to chase the apathetic and uninformed "undecided" voters, but rather to "motivate your base", that is, to give people who care about goverance and who lean your way philosophically a reason to vote for you. I was particularly gratified to have a strategy that is generally dismissed by the American commentariat ratified by Michael Barone:

But polling in late 2003 and for most of 2004 indicated a very close presidential race. Bush strategist Karl Rove keeps a card in his pocket showing that the percentage of voters who were behaviorally "independent" declined from 15 percent in 1988 to 7 percent in 2002. The strategy that Rove designed and that Bush-Cheney '04 campaign manager Ken Mehlman executed was geared not to persuading the undecided and weakly committed voters, but to turning out the maximum number of Republicans. The Kerry campaign and other Democrats likewise saw their main task as turning out the party faithful.

Rove won the turnout war (although not for lack of, erm, "creative" attempts by the Democrats to get the Deceased-American and Fictional-American communities to the polls in critical precincts), and the rest is history.

The Dems achieved impressive turnout gains, Barone notes, using their old, command-and-control, industrial-era model. They were, however, buried by Republicans using a new networked model for campaign organization. As a result, the Republicans under George W. Bush may well have turned the Democrat's flank , inaugurating an era of Republican dominance.

The 2004 election has also reshaped the American electorate, in part through the invention of new political techniques. It is too early to say that it produced a natural majority for the winning party. But it has laid the groundwork.

In this article, Barone shows how it is done, using historical perspective and current data to put forth a predictive and testable thesis. If you get all wonky over American politics, read the whole thing. Peddling its insights at cocktail parties will make you seem smarter than you are, and isn't that the ultimate payoff for all the blogs you read?

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For a while now, I have reading about how the mighty U.S. economy, heavily in debt, with big budget deficits and a large current account black hole, is headed for the rocks. The dollar is on the skids, inflationary pressures are rising, the Fed has been putting up interest rates, the coming Social Security crunch... you know the drill. And some of these worries are to my mind justified, which explains why, with all the plan's faults, I broadly applaud the efforts of President Bush to overhaul the state pensions system.

Is the situation really as grim as some of the jeremiads claim, however? This suitably wonkish article in the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal argues that things are not nearly as worrying as some might make out and that if anyone has cause for worry, it is Europe with its shrinking birth rates.

The article concudes with this paragraph, and it seems to hit the mark, in my view:

Only one development could upset this optimistic prognosis: an end to the technological dynamism, openness to trade, and flexibility that have powered the U.S. economy. The biggest threat to U.S. hegemony, accordingly, stems not from the sentiments of foreign investors, but from protectionism and isolationism at home

Indeed.

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He may not be the sort of man who gets the attention of the ordinary citizen, or the sort of man one talks about down the Dog and Duck on a Friday night, but New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, wannabe Democrat politician and formidable lawyer, is making quite a name for himself as a legal terror of big Wall Street businesses, launching a flood of suits against insurers, brokerages, fund management companies and banks.

Some of his suits may have an element of justice behind them and no doubt he has calculated that bashing the Gordon Gekko classes makes for good copy and will no doubt endear him to the sort of folk who regard Michael Moore as a political seer. To the rest of us, however, who make a living in the financial markets, his zeal is troubling. Take the recent so-called "scandal" surrounding the case of mutual fund firms which allowed certain types of quick-fire trades to happen in and out of their funds. The activity, while not illegal, is considered harmful because it can damage the long term investments of ordinary investors. Well maybe, maybe not. I find it worrying, however, that the cumulative impact of Spitzer's energies will be to push up the costs of doing business in the U.S. capital markets, and drive many smart would-be financiers into other fields.

We tend to forget that despite high-level scandals such as the collapse of energy giant Enron, the world economy has greatly benefitted from the efficiencies and new products driven by the entrepreneurs of the modern age. My worry about the whole raft of laws spawned in recent years, such as Sarbanes-Oxley or even the awful Patriot Act, is that financial innovation will be curbed. And as a result, many businesses will shun the public listed stock market and choose to go private instead if that is the way to avoid the glare of the Eliot Spitzers of this world.

Regulatory growth is not a sexy subject, I admit, but let's not forget that the destruction of wealth and entrepreneurial morale will end up biting us in the economic behind if we don't take a full regard to the effects.

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I was on the road again today, or perhaps I should say 'rail'. The US northeast is still very much in the deep freeze as one can see from this photo I took somewhere before Baltimore.

Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.

The AMTRAK Acela train seemed to require more resets than a Microsoft Operating system. We were stopped a half hour on a siding while they attempted to 'reset the air'; and later for problems in the lead locomotive. My 'express' train trip took nearly five hours from Penn Station NYC to Union Station DC and wrecked my plans for meeting up with some aerospace types in town. I will not complain too loudly though. The trains have normal AC power available for your laptops, you have enough legroom and arm room to actually type... and you can use your mobile phone.

As opportunity arises - I am now on another gig and my meter is running - I will catch up on a few photo stories left over from Manhattan.

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Today is the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 1916 that income tax is a violation of the Constitution.

So the politicians had to change to Constitution.

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I am working in Manhattan this week and next and will post a few longer stories as I get caught up with work after several days of mail server problems. In the interim, here is a quick bit of weather photo-blogging.

It has been snowing all day long, is still snowing, and is slated to continue doing so for some time to come. I snapped a few photos during a walkabout in the Upper West Side of Manhattan a short while ago. While we did have a White Christmas in Belfast this year, it was nothing like this.

Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved

One day accumulations of this sort are more like what I grew up with in Western Pennsylvania. Ah, the glory of snow days!

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After his oath to protect the Constitution of the United States President Bush made a speech in which he said he wished people in other nations to be free in their own way.

I hope he meant this, as the examples of the broad American way of freedom that President Bush gave in his speech were 'the Homestead Act', the 'Social Security Act' and 'the G.I. Bill of rights'.

The Social Security Act (a government pyramid scheme) speaks for itself. As does free education for ex-servicemen (to call this the 'GI Bill of Rights' was an insult to the real Bill of Rights - rights as limits on government power, not excuses for it).

As for the Homestead Act - well this (in 1862 I believe) was an effort by President Lincoln to copy some of the ideas of Jefferson (as expressed in the North West Ordinance) of breaking up land into small farms. In the West it was a terrible mistake - as much of the land was not (and is not) environmentally suitable for farming (as opposed to the big ranches that would have naturally envolved). 'Water mining' and soil damage (remember the dust bowl of the 1930's) were the result of the Homestead Act.

The Social Security Act at least was unconstitutional (or the Tenth Amendment does not mean a thing - and there is no need to list the powers of the fed government in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution - as the "General Welfare" has been declared a power rather than what is actually the case, that "the common defence and general welfare" being the purpose of the powers).

In short, like most recent Presidents, Mr Bush does not have a clue about the document he swore to defend.

Oh well Presidents do not write their own speeches, and at least there was no plan to go to war with Lower Slobovia to make sure they have got a Social Security Act.

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Nothing gets the political class to lying their faces off like the chance to spend your money on their legacy.

I saw it in Madison, Wisconsin when the new Frank Lloyd Wright convention center was being pushed through. The lies included (a) we will not build a new hotel next to this facility (it was built a year or two later (b) this facility will not block views/access to the lake it is built on (it does, in spades), and (c) this facility will not be a drain on the public purse (it requires a taxpayer subsidy ad infinitum.

I am seeing it again in Dallas, where the legacy project revolves around the Trinity River that runs through downtown Dallas. Jim Schutze, the excellent political writer for Dallas' alternative newsweekly (the one with the sex ads) details the lies now on offer from the City of Dallas and its allies and puppets.

For example, recently arrived on my desk is the slickly produced special D magazine Trinity River edition, just out, called "The Trinity: How the river will change Dallas forever." This magazine--a collection of preposterous whoppers, fibs, prevarications, exaggerations, subterfuge, propaganda and Orwellian doublespeak--is an omen of things just ahead.

The D magazine special edition goes on and on about the recreational amenities the Trinity River project will create: "...the Trinity River will accommodate small sailboats and paddle boats," the magazine tells its readers. "More interestingly, a reverse-flow lake is planned with a 17-foot drop where it curves back to the river, creating rapids and a perfect whitewater course for winter kayaking competitions...

"But the most visible benefit will be on the Oak Cliff side, which will have easy access to downtown, great views and--most important of all--along the levee, direct entry into the country's largest urban park."

All of this is a lie.

Read it and weep.

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And speaking of rain, so here I am in Los Angeles, having escaped dreary grey London for a while and...

...it has been pissing down with rain here for 11 days now! Wonderful.

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There are a lot of big shiny 1940s-era aircraft zooming across our cinema screens at the moment. Yeh! We have had Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we are due to get the remake of The Flight of Phoenix, based on the wonderful old movie starring James Stewart, and I have just returned from watching The Aviator, starring Leonardo Di Caprio as mogul, test pilot and eccentric, Howard Hughes. It is a fine film, and makes a number of important points about the man himself, the nature of doing business in America in the mid-20th Century and the evolution of modern air travel.

The story is quite well known of how a rich young oil family son becomes a major player in the aviation industry, challenges rivals like PanAm, produces smash-hit movies, before descending into madness and solitude. Director Martin Scorcese has long been fascinated with Hughes' tale and gets DiCaprio to convey the mixture of driving ambition, brilliant engineering skills, bravery and craziness. Hughes could be seen, from one vantage point as an almost Randian-style business hero, challenging rivals like PanAm, whose boss was played with appropriate menacing charm by Alec Baldwin.

There are two great scenes which get the pro-enterprise, unpretentious side of Hughes across. He drives with his then girlfriend, Katherine Hepburn, excellently played by Cate Blanchett, to see Hepburn's family. At lunch, Hepburn's mother, instantly declares to Hughes that "we are all socialists here", and "I do hope you are not a Republican", and Hughes, bless him, looking around the vast mansion and its grounds, is too dumbstruck at these comments to make a fast and smart reply. Recovering his composure, later Hughes tells the preening Hepburns that his favourite reading is technical engineering reports on planes, which of course has the welcome effect of shutting the ghastly Hepburns up.

In a later scene, set in 1947 when Hughes is fighting for the future of his airline TWA against the monopolistic ambitions PanAm in cahoots with the U.S. Senate, Hughes makes a number of fine points about competition and business risk-taking that almost got me cheering in the stalls. Hughes wins his battle and PanAm is forced to concede.

Hughes was a troubled man and spent the last two decades of his life in circumstances so lonely and depressed that it of course will colour one's view of his life in the round. But I came away from the film feeling a certain admiration for Hughes in how he was willing to challenge the status quo. Long after people have forgotten corrupt U.S. senators and complacent airline bosses, they will remember the man who built and flew some amazing planes. I also cannot help but wonder whether people will think something similar in future about our contemporary airline boss and daredevil man of action, Britain's own Richard Branson. We shall see.

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At Joanne Jacobs I learned about another of these teacher/pupil ruckuses where the teacher would appear to have behaved very stupidly.

17 year old Ahmad Al-Qloushi disagreed with his teacher, Professor Jospeh Woolcock, about America being great. Ahmad Al-Qloushi thinks it is. His teacher, Professor Joseph Woolcock, on the other hand, said to Ahmad Al-Qloushi that he needed therapy for expressing such an obviously bonkers opinion. The story is already bubbling away on the internet and will surely spread. Al-Qloushi has put his version of the story out there, and however much the Professor may curse, he cannot now reverse this. The Professor has filed a grievance, whatever exactly that means, against Al-Qloushi, for putting his, the Professor's, name out there, but out there it is and out there it will now remain.

Whenever I hear about disagreements like this, I always think to myself: well, maybe the guy is a bit crazy. Maybe, in this case, the essay was a bit bonkers. And maybe Al-Qloushi had said and done other crazy things which he is forgetting about, and this essay was just the final straw in a hayrick of craziness that we are not hearing about. So, I am especially interested that in addition to reading Al'Qloushi's complaint, we can also read the offending essay.

Says Joanne Jacobs:

If the student's tale is accurate, it's outrageous. It's one thing to flunk him - I think the essay is not bad for a 17-year-old immigrant - quite another to treat him like a lunatic because he thinks the Founders were good guys and is grateful America liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

This guy (IA?), on the other hand, is sceptical about Al-Qloushi. Registration may be needed at the other end of that link, so I quote from this mercurynews.com story at length.

Needed: a grain of salt

"Arab Student Pushed to see Therapist'' the headline began. The Foothill College Republicans blasted faxes to reporters this month complaining that a professor had forced a student to see the college therapist merely because the student wrote a pro-American essay.

This, the students fumed, is why the Los Altos Hills campus should adopt an Academic Bill of Rights.

Nationwide, conservatives are pushing the political protection bill, which says that while colleges tolerate different races, sexes and creeds, they only welcome liberal politics.

Ahmad Al-Qloushi seems a poster child for the cause: His political science professor allegedly told him to get psychological help simply because Al-Qloushi wrote a chest-thumping patriotic essay.

But IA was suspicious. Al-Qloushi happens to be president of the Foothill College Republicans - a fact the group's press materials neglected to mention.

What were the odds of a campaign-perfect case happening to the college Republican president?

"It is a coincidence,'' Al-Qloushi said, "but this is the case.''

IA tried to confirm Al-Qloushi's story - and a subsequent release from the group that said the professor had filed a grievance against Al-Qloushi - but campus officials said they couldn't discuss confidential professor-student matters.

The professor wouldn't return calls and e-mails; the therapist simply hung up.

Fair enough. If you criticise someone publicly, you become a target yourself.

My first reaction was that maybe an angry Professorial outburst was being misunderstood, or misinterpreted, as a serious recommendation. But if there is indeed a therapist involved, the Professor presumably meant his recommendation seriously.

And maybe the fact that Al-Qloushi is the college Republican president is all part of what the Professor regards as so crazy about him.

However, I further guess that the combination of a pupil who is also a student politician (and maybe also an aspiring politician period) plus the Internet, faced the Professor with a situation he did not see coming. I guess that this Professor is used to getting away with crap like this, but did not realise that he was dealing with a different sort of pupil to the ones he is used to subjugating. My guess is that this Professor is a lefty who did indeed, despite what the mercurynews.com guy says, do something seriously wrong, but who did not understand that the Internet has changed the rules of these little conflicts.

Maybe he simply underestimated his adversary, regarding him as a confused immigrant without the moxie (as Joanne Jacobs would say) to stand up for himself.

In which case, the Professor is now getting a rapid piece of further education in the subject he is already a Professor of: American government and politics.

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When people criticise 'America' for not giving more money to help with the horrendous calamity that has overwhelmed a large part of southern coastal Asia, they really need to keep in mind that, as mentioned on James Bartholomew's site, private aid does not get counted and that far outwieghs US government aid. Moreover, money received from a nation-state cannot be charity as the money is not freely given, whereas willingly donated private funds are true charity.

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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

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A full recount of Ohio's votes in the recent presidential election has been ordered by a federal court, following lobbying by the Libertarian and the Green presidential candidates. I have covered the story here. There is no way a full recount could be completed by December 13, when the Electoral College has to formally cast its votes.

It occurs to me that it is a very strange way of promoting the Libertarian message to waste $1.5 million of Ohio taxpayers' money. The recount is not going to change the overall result and could only conceivably cause the Libertarian candidate to finish behind the Constitutional Party or the Greens finish behind a local independent.

The real purpose is exposed by Badnarik's musings about TV exit polls. He appears to be the only person not taking medication in the US to believe that the exit polls were right (Kerry win) and the ballot counting wrong (Bush win). This beats Dan Rather anyday:

From what I can see, there's no reason to believe the exit polls were wrong, and fairly good reasons to believe that it was the election process that was faulty.

I can see some benefit to the Democratic Party in all this. Without spending any money, or attracting the tag of "Sore Loserman" from the 2000 election, the Kerry camp gets all the benefit of the Libertarian and Green lawyers trying to put their guy in the White House.

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...Thanks

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Instapundit thinks there is a connection between the dodgy cover-ups in US public life such as Rathergate and the Sandy Berger affair, as detailed here, and the basketbrawl and its public implications as detailed here. For good measure, he invites us to call him crazy.

I do not think he is crazy, but he might be taking a short term view. As Jim Geraghty put it:

There's one set of rules for regular folks, and another set of rules for celebrities, former high-ranking government officials, and other "important" people. If we break the rules, we pay the price. If a Dan Rather lies on the air, or Sandy Berger steals classified documents, there's no consequence.

Well, yes. I would posit, though, that rich and powerful figures in society have always benefited from these sorts of shenanegans. There is nothing new there. What IS new is that thanks to the compressed news cycle and bloggers, whistleblowers and better education, is that people are much less willing to put up with it. Compared to the dodgy dealings of earlier times, Rathergate is small beer indeed. We are not talking Teapot Dome here.

That is not to say that we should not worry about this level of dishonesty. Dodgy dealings by those with public responsibilities should never be tolerated. But it is a positive sign that people are increasingly unwilling to tolerate illegal behavior from what is laughingly known in some quarters as the Great and the Good. (Maybe one day people will worry about the actual laws that get passed. I remain an optimist.)

Instapundit thinks there's a connection between dodgy dealings and boys behaving badly, either playing or attending sport. I remain to be convinced. The actual fight in question seems to me to be a bit excessive, but hardly unprecedented. I have seen worse fights in Australian country football, and as for players and spectators interacting, well, after 25 years of watching cricket, I think I've seen it all before.

The shock that US bloggers seem to be in over the affair does suggest that it is new to American sports lovers though. But as a sportslover with a more global perspective, I would say that the behavior of sports fans (and indeed players) is probably somewhat improved, if you take a long term and global view.

But then, when it comes to the long term (longer then the next electoral cycle), I am a raging optimist. I think Professor Reynolds is wrong on this one.

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The Republican party is normally presented by the media and academia as the anti Welfare State party - the 'liberal' (i.e. statist) establishment denounce the Republicans as the party of cuts in government spending and wicked deregulation.

And yet when the Republicans win an election, most libertarians are not very pleased. Of course we are happy to see the media people upset or the academics in despair, but we do not really expect the Republicans to roll back the entitlement programs or slash and burn the mass of regulations. The reason for this, many libertarians tell themselves, is that Republicans are no good - they talk the language of freedom, but when put to the test they fail the voters who supported them.

However, there is another point of view and this is that most voters (including many people who vote Republican) just do not support liberty and would turn against the Republicans if they ever seriously tried to roll back government.

Take the example of the most recent election. Florida voted Republican for President and sent a new Republican to the United States Senate. And yet, at the same time, the great majority of voters in Florida supported a new State minimum wage law.

Is this because the Republicans did not oppose this minimum wage law? No they did oppose it (if you wish check, look at the web site of the Florida Republicans), but the people voted for it anyway.

People do not tend to support deregulation - when they think a regulation will (by magic) give them something they want (higher wages, cheaper medical care, whatever).

And people may vote for lower taxes, but they are not in the habit of voting for less government spending.

Deep down most Americans are not much different from the people in my own country (Britain), they do not care about the traditions of liberty - at least they do not care enough to give up some nice government program they think would benefit them.

Have we yet to understand the lessons of 1936? The Constitution of the United States was never perfectly enforced, but it was only really with F.D.R.'s administration (1933 onwards) that it was treated as a bit of toilet paper, with Welfare State programs, the voiding of private gold contracts, massive regulation...... and all the rest of modern statism.

In 1936 the Republicans put up the moderate Governor of Kansas (Alfred Landon) as their candidate for President and such organizations as the Liberty League, whilst unhappy with Alf Landon's moderation, supported him as a way of getting the statist monster out of office.

In November 1936 F.D.R. destroyed Landon 60% to 40%. Landon did not even take Kansas (just Maine and Vermont - every other State went for Roosevelt).

Would if be different today? I doubt that someone standing against the basic structure of statism would do any better (although, I admit, a Republican candidate would do better than the 1% or so that libertarians tend to get).

So when we grind our teeth that President Bush (or some other Republican) is not fighting the programs of the New Deal and Great Society we should ask ourselves "and would the people support him if he did fight these programs"?

My guess is that they would not.

(2) (22)

I have been waiting for final results on the 2004 election at the county level before writing about them, but Brian beat me to it. The map at Freedom and Whisky is an early one with a number of ugly black holes for incomplete returns. Yesterday's USAToday map is marked 'final' and has very little politicus incognito.

If you flip back and forth between the USAToday 2004 and 2000 Presidential election by county maps, you will see small but significant differences. The 'Yankee' vote is going more and more solidly Democrat. Counties north of New York City are becoming bedroom and retirement communities, a part of Greater Boston and Greater New York. New Hampshire in particular has been solidly colonized by New York City. Notice that almost all the State of New York went Republican and perhaps would have been carried by Bush but for the huge Democratic majority in New York City.

The rest of the country appears to show the Republican vote is growing in virtually all of the non-Urban counties. There is a significant decrease in blue-dominant areas in the non-New England States.

Also of interest is the Princeton map. While less dramatic, it is probably of more importance to an election campaign team as it shows much more clearly where the 2008 battle ground areas will be.

I would love to see this re-done as a pseudo-topographic map, and I'd love to see it for 2000 as well. That would give us a much improved view of long term trends. While blue usually does mean depth in such maps, that may annoy the more oversensitive amongst the bluish, so we will perhaps need both blue-deepest and red-deepest maps to avoid offending a victimized minority.

(0) (14)

I agree with Virginia Postrel and Tim Worstall, and no doubt with plenty of others, that it is a nice giggle that 7-Eleven had the best on-the-day polling for that Presidential Election they had in the USA the other day. 7-Eleven coffee purchasers that day were asked to choose between Bush cups and Kerry cups, and it went Bush: just over 51; Kerry: just under 49, which was better than anyone else seems to have done on the day.

Is this the first time 7-Eleven have tried doing this? And, crucially, did they announce a rolling score throughout the day? If they do announce the score throughout the day (and I suggest that they should next time if they did not do it this time – see below), and if the news gets out big that they did well with their coffee cup polling this time around, the story will not end there, because the next step will be for political fanatics to drink gallons and gallons of 7-Eleven coffee on the day of the next election, in order to influence the 7-Eleven results. The fanatics will not, I think, necessarily buy coffee in the cups of their own team, because if their guy is reckoned to be well ahead, they might want to make the race seem closer than it is, to get all of their vote out and win bigger. Then again, they might drink gallons of their own guy's cups of coffee, to demoralise the opposition vote, and to say to it: you have lost, there is no point in you voting. It depends on what time of day the various Karl Roves reckon their voters and the other guy's voters will be voting.

If 7-Eleven do as I suggest, they will either (a) get the result spot on, again, or (b) get it totally wrong but sell an extra billion gallons of coffee. Win-win.

(1) (61)

Just to cast a slightly different view in to the frenzy of commentaries here about the election in the USA...

Sorry but I cannot see how the election of George Bush, a big government right-statist, shows that the the so-called 'right' differs that much from the McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view in reality. Fetishizing the differences between the two, which is particularly strange when viewed from overseas, does not change the fact the underpinning meta-contexts are pretty similar when you add it all up. Sure, the Republicans will probably not do something idiotic like try to emulate Britain's nightmarish socialist healthcare system whereas that is exactly what many in the Democratic party want... but how many government departments is Bush going to simply wind up in order to roll back the state? The argument between the two parties is how much to turn the ratchet of the state's encroachment into civil society, not whether or not to actually turn the ratchet around to face the other way.

Economic and technological reality will eventually break the regulatory statism of both left and right: party politicos will follow, not lead that process, but please, just keep in mind the only real good thing about Dubya winning is that we get to give all manner of sanctamonius lefties an aneurism, and whilst taunting the collectivist left because the collectivist right won is indeed great fun, it is little more that a minor blood sport that will soon loose its appeal as Leviathan gets more corpulent by the day as both left and right shovel more severed bits of civil society into its maw... the defeat of the ghastly Kerry by the ever so slightly less ghastly Bush was hardly the victory of the forces of light over darkness.

(0) (27)

This observation by Big Trunk at Powerline certainly took the shine off of my morning:

When the electorate rejected George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984, it did so on each occasion by a margin of roughly 20 percent. The McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view of the United States has made enormous inroads in the past twenty years. It is less than three percent short of a majority and the trendline seems to be moving in its favor. Shouldn't we be asking what we need to do to roll it back before it crosses over to majority status?

(0) (20)

President Jacques Chirac, who has just rushed to the military hospital in Clamart to be at Yasser Arafat's bedside, took time off to pen a letter to his American colleague. My translation [handwritten bits in bold]:

Mister President, Dear George In the name of France and in my personal name, I wish to express to you my most hearty congratulations for your re-election to the Presidency of the United States of America.

I make the wish that your second mandate will be the opportunity to reinforce franco-american friendship. The ceremonies for the sixtieth anniversary of the landings paid a shining hommage to the American soldiers who fell on the Normandy beaches for our freedom and that of Europe.

It is in the spirit of dialogue, esteem and mutual respect that our co-operation, our common combat against terrorism and the action that we carry out together to promote liberty and democracy, must continue.

We cannot find satisfactory answers to the numerous challenges against which we are confronted today without a close transatlantic partnership. The United States and France are called upon to play in this an essential role. We share the ambition of assuring to the greatest number peace, security and prosperity, in the spirit of solidarity [this usually means entitlement programs in French]. I am convinced that together, we can get there.

I beg you to believe, Mister President, of the assurance of my very high opinion of you. and of my very cordial friendship

Jacques CHIRAC

I bet that was painless. Oh and I hope that the President Chirac is careful in his motorcade coming home from Clamart. That's right next to the road junction where the OAS tried to assassinate General de Gaulle (as seen in the Day of the Jackal) in 1962. And we would not want anything to happen to Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat's favourite Frenchman.

(0) (17)

Over on Fox News website:

LATEST HEADLINES

- Official: Arafat in Coma
- Arafat Congratulates Bush

Food for thought.

(3) (44)

You know, I generally hate to gloat but:

The mistake we all made was in getting our hopes up.

The only mistake you made?

Dismally, people asked each other how long they had stayed up the night before. "Until 4.30am," said my friend Jim. "Long enough to start crying like a girl."

The first email I received the following morning read: "Fucked off, dejected, our hopes have been blown to shit."

Signed: G. Soros.

The next one read: "As REM once sang: 'It's the end of the world as we know it.' Only unlike REM, I don't feel fine."

Such creativity. Such depth.

"There's going to be a brain drain from this country which will leave the Red-State [Republican] morons to fend for themselves," wrote an American on the Guardian talk-boards.

And spend their own money on themselves, to boot.

I rang my cousin in Chicago. "I'm good," she said. "Well, no, actually, not great." The hope thing had prospered there, too. "We thought we were going to win. Bruce Springsteen ... the youth vote ... " She had to get off the line then; there were commiseration calls waiting.

It was Bruce on the line. He's crying like a girl.

[Warning: obligatory 'Bush is Hitler' reference coming up]

"Ach," says Oliver James, the clinical psychologist. "I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s and thought, 'Why doesn't anyone see where this is leading?'"

Hmm..I recommend an intensive round of therapy.

There might be a feeling that a dirty bomb exploding in London is more likely to happen with the policies pursued by a Bush government.

Quite right. Just ask the Spanish.

This sense of powerlessness was also raised by American psychologists, who, anticipating high levels of disgruntlement among voters, were on standby yesterday to analyse the fallout.

And, today, they are being treated for depression, hysteria and suicidal tendencies.

"I am deeply ashamed to call myself American," wrote another, while, "I'm ashamed to be English," countered a third, in a competitive orgy of shame. Lots of people talked about powerlessness. "And that," said one, ominously, "won't lift until we get our own general election."

And I bet John Kerry would still lose that one.

Naah, I was only kidding. I love to gloat really.

(1) (20)

Not only is Kerry the '60s candidate, but he also apparently employed a campaign strategy that would have given the election in the '60s. If Kerry had won the same bundle of states that gave him 252 electoral votes in this election, but the states were still valued according to the Congressional apportionment based on the Census of 1960, he would have won the election, 270 electoral votes to 268. The trend since then:

1960 census (1964, 68 elections) - Kerry 270, Bush 268 1970 census (1972, 76, 80 elections) - Kerry 270, Bush 268 1980 census (1984, 88 elections) - Bush 276, Kerry 262 1990 census (1992, 96, 2000 elections) - Bush 279, Kerry 259 2000 census (2004, 08 elections) - Bush 286, Kerry 252

This is indicative of a potential long-term problem for the Democrats: they are strongest in the parts of the country that aren't growing anymore. Even since the 2000 election (which was still based on the 1990 Census) the states Kerry won this time around are worth seven fewer electoral votes than they were worth last time.

On the other hand, maybe I should not bring up any of this, out of fear that someone will accuse Bush of stealing the election through the Census. Bush 2004: enumerated, not acclamated!

(Source for old electoral college apportionments: Statistical Abstract of the United States Table #402 - this link opens a .pdf file.)

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I was reminded today of something Ayn Rand wrote in the run-up to the 1972 election:

I am not an admirer of President Nixon, as my readers know. But I urge every able-minded voter, of any race, creed, color, age, sex, or political party, to vote for Nixon as a matter of national emergency. This is no longer an issue of choosing the lesser of two commensurate evils. The choice is between a flawed candidate representing Western civilization and the perfect candidate of its primordial enemies... If there were some campaign organization called 'Anti-Nixonites for Nixon,' it would name my position.

Maybe this is suggests a reason why liberty-lovers the world over should be cracking open the champagne today.

(0) (49)

I just want to say that I am already very tired indeed of listening to US Democrats and British broadcasters drone on about how President Bush must now reach out to various people, and in particular to his defeated opponents. By this they do not merely mean that he should be polite and dignified in his moment of victory, as he has been, and as John Kerry has been in his moment of defeat. They mean that President Bush should now do what John Kerry proposed should be done (which lost Kerry the Election), instead of what he, Bush, proposed should be done (which was what won). This is a very stupid idea.

(6) (111)

Despite that CNN keeps insisting the election was incredibly close, Bush now has exactly the cosy sofa of a mandate I have been predicting for months: good majority in the senate, four million more popular votes than his opponent, above litigation-level majorities in the electoral colleges, plus the endorsement of millions of people who do not usually vote at all, despite that nearly everyone expected increased turnout to be good for the Democrats.

The polls were, of course, wrong in a leftwards direction, as polls have been for years (see Natalie Solent), because the sound and fury of the media and liberal extremists does not make people change their minds, only encourages them to keep quiet about their allegiances so as to avoid having their tyres slashed.

But more important than all these things is the great battle against terrorism that has just been resoundingly won. Every Islamist from Arafat to Bin Laden wanted America to reject its president and vote for the relatively antiwar John Kerry. Anti-Americans everywhere were hoping that the U.S. people would either retreat in fear from the Middle East, or pretend that the "nuisance" did not exist. As the anti-Bush candidate, Kerry would have been the anti-American-values president, standing for ambivalence, appeasement and, in the eyes of Islamism, weakness.

It did not happen. Americans recognised the threat, and voted to continue fighting it. They stood by the Afghan and Iraqi people, waiting for hours in queues in the rain to register their support for George W. Bush and the moral imperative he has vowed to enact. The biggest voter turnout in American history has refused to be cowed by terrorism. And when terrorism fails to terrorise, it has lost.

Perhaps now, for the first time since 9/11, we can begin to hope that an end to this war may be within our distant sights. In any case, the world is safer now than it has been since Al Qaeda launched war on America a little over three years ago. And for that we can afford a few extra sighs of relief between our conservative/ anti-liberal victory toasts.

(4) (74)

Dear Michael,

Although things are hectic at my end, as I am sure you can imagine, I wanted to take time out to thank you for your part in my success. Difficult times make for difficult decisions and in the final analysis, the buck stops on my desk. As a result I am not surprised that Rummie, Condi and I have taken flak over Iraq and in retrospect we might have done some things differently.

But thanks to you, many people became so polarized that in the end, millions decided that no matter what they thought of me, the chance to give you one in the eye was all that really mattered. I mean, that loathsome dissembling lard ass shtick of yours is just amazing!

So thanks, I couldn't have done it without you! Oh, and when you see Noam next, tell him I will also be sending him a few 'kees' of that great jerky to thank him for what he did too.

You guys are the best!

Yours faithfully,

George W.

(2) (16)

The following item was passed to us via our secret underground network of samizdatistas and has struck me as both so true and so humorous I simply must share it with you. It is purportedly written by George Carlin, a comedian whom I greatly admired in the seventies. It does indeed read like Carlin patter. If anyone has definitive information on the source, please let us know. George or not, I love it, so here it is.

I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American. I am George Carlin.

I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some mid level governmental functionary, be it Democratic or Republican!

I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer; it makes you a smart American.

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything.

I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, try to do it in English.

I think fireworks should be legal on the 4th of July.

I think that being a student doesn't give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster. In fact, if your parents are footing the bill to put your pansy self through 4 years plus of college, you haven't begun to be enlightened.

I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.

My heroes are John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and whoever cancelled Jerry Springer.

I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.

I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time arguing about it.

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I didn't wander forty years In the desert after getting chased out of Egypt. I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you! So, shut up already.

I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson practices, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution. Can I get an AMEN on that one?

I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry tail if you're running from them.

I also think they have the right to pull you over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are.

I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.

If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.

If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know.

We need our country back!

ED: The consensus so far is that this is not George Carlin's work. I still like it though!

(0) (5)

Glenn Reynolds has a good article in the Guardian about the election and expresses some interesting ideas about its lessons for the media.

Thanks to the internet, cable news channels and talk radio, media bias is easier to spot and easier for people to bypass. This not only changes views, but prevents the formation of a phoney consensus - what experts call "preference falsification" - resulting from widespread, and unified, media bias.

Those of you across the Atlantic may wish to take a lesson from this. As the BBC's atrocious handling of the Gilligan affair - and, indeed, its war coverage generally - illustrates, media bias is hardly limited to the United States.

But what is with that photo? I would not have recognised that as Glenn but for the context in which it was displayed.

(0) (3)

Over at the Daily Kos, things are are, how can I put it - deflated. I followed their coverage on the basis that the longer it took to post and the more shrill the content, the better things were going.

Robert Reich looking like he'd just developed piles on the air, whilst trying to pretend that everything was going according to plan provoked deeply uncharitable thoughts in me. I like watching BBC coverage on occasions like this. You can rely on Nanny BBC to dig out scores of 'independent' collectivists to first announce their confidence in victory before squirming in the face of reality.

Has anyone seen Michael Moore lately?

(3) (12)

Well, that was painful. Although it must have been a whole lot more painful for those who wanted Kerry to win. First, the good news:

The least bad alternative won.

The Islamists were denied the moral and propaganda victory of a Kerry win (what did you think bin Laden's last video was all about anyway?)

The victory appears to have been beyond the "margin of lawyer" (in Mark Steyn's priceless phrase), although several states were close, and nothing exceeds the ability of a lawyer being paid by the hour to cook up a marginal claim.

The establishment media were made to look like fools, mostly because they acted like fools.

The odious and unspeakable Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost.

The Democrats, running (again) on a nanny state/class warfare platform, were driven a little further into the wilderness. Perhaps they will reach the point soon where a major restructuring can occur and I can start voting for mainstream Democrats.

The bad news:

Ohio is still contested, as Kerry hopes for salvation from that mother lode of fraudulent voting, the provisional ballot.

I was wrong about Wisconsin - I was sure Bush could flip it.

And my prediction? Pretty much on target. Bush won by a small margin, Kerry topped in the high '40s, Bush lost one state that he carried in 2000 (New Hampshire), and I believe he picked up a few (New Mexico, for one).

Oddly enough, for someone who was up until all hours four years ago, I was out like a light at 9:30 last night, before anything had been decided. I have a tiny niggling qualm about the ability of the Dems to manufacture enough votes to flip Ohio, but the margin there is into the six figures, so this should be a wrap.

(1) (16)

Unlike David I actually got some sleep. But this morning, I was woken by some loud bang-bang-bang pop music. But as the thuds thudded through my building and my brain, the thought gradually formed in the latter that there might now be a result in that... that... election... thing. Stagger into kitchen. On with TV.

Bush winning.

And Tony Blair losing. The Labour Party hates Bush, and hates hates hates that their leader has been cosying up to him these last three years. Another four years of Bush gazing out across the world, apparently not even knowing let alone caring that they hate him – well, it is just frightful. This could break Blair, by breaking the through-gritted-teeth support of his party for Blair's vile vile policy of not hating Bush.

But 'could' is not 'will'. Labour will suffer yes, but they will probably carry on suffering. Today as yesterday, the big questions in British party politics are: How long will Blair last? and: How will his successor conduct himself? For as long as Blair carries on the Conservatives are unelectable. If Blair's successor gets how Blair has done this, then the crucifixion by opposition of the Conservatives will continue indefinitely, just as the crucifixion of Labour by the horror of having to share the planet with President George W. Bush will continue.

The ITV news is now saying that it is essential that Blair tells Bush that he must do what Kerry would have done. Retreat in his various wars, sign the Kyoto Treaty, blah blah blah. But we all know, and more to the point Bush and his cronies know, that you can only do well in a war if you show no sign of wanting to duck out of it. And America is not convinced about Kyoto. Dream on British media.

As for the USA, here is how it looks to me. The big story that I now see, for whatever that may be worth, is that Bush won despite a much increased turnout. When I went to bed, Kerry stroke British media optimism was based on the notion that all these New Voters who were even then queueing in their millions to actually vote in a Presidential Election for the very first time, would obviously help Kerry. Only settled old farts support Bush. Young people, bright eyed and (if you will part the expression) bushy tailed, will obviously back Kerry, on account of him being obviously nicer, better, wiser, better at talking, not so Christian, etc. etc. Ditto all those gypsies, tramps and thieves who last time around were too befuddled and too unregistered to vote. All these folks were now voting. Democrats, all of them. Got to be. Kerry camp happy. Bush camp 'subdued'.

What actually happened was that the New Voters turned out in strength, yet Bush still won. Had Bush won with the kind of low and falling turnout that happened last time around, with the Settled Old Farts again voting for Bush but the New Voters again not actually voting, this result would have had a far less definite feel to it. Democrat fundamentalists would have spent another four years saying that they had won really, and that next time around this blip would be corrected.

But this was more than a blip. Either those New Voters are not as pro-Democrat as they were supposed to be, or a whole bunch of Settled Old Farts who had not voted last time around because they were too busy trying to work out how to set their new digital video whatchamacallit machines and forgot, managed to totter out to the polls this time around and vote for George W. Bush. Either way, that is a Bush win, and more of a win than last time.

Apparently Bush got more votes than anyone has ever got before in one of these things.

(3) (12)

To deny one's own basic nature is an act of futility I find. Being a political animal, I have been up for the entire night watching the results of the US Presidential Election unfold on the BBC whose coverage, I must admit, had been admirably comprehensive.

As I type, it is now just past 7.00am in the UK and it appears (and I use that word advisedly) that George Bush has been returned to the Whitehouse.

Anything I have to say in response to this will be drowned out by the weeks, and possibly months, of wailing, whining and teeth-gnashing that is going to be emanating from this side of the Atlantic but I do think that it might interest Bush-supporters in the USA to know that every single BBC reporter looks like they have just swallowed a wasp.

(0) (8)

The night is young and the election is totally in the air. One of the more notable things I see thus far is how far behind BBC is running. At least fifteen minutes I would say. I have read things on the net like the Maine vote split long before the Beeb mentioned it.

There is also the question of the exit polling looking a bit shaky. The fact that so many Eastern states are still up in the air is quite unusual. One wonders if the Amish vote turn out might put Pennsylvania in the Bush column despite the solid Democratic machine controlled areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That would truly be an interesting political event.

We will just have to wait awhile. If the exit polls are as badly off as some are saying, the election could suddenly shift to Bush and end early; if they are not, we could have a very long night ahead of us.

Particularly for those of us in the UK...

0350. Looks like the Beeb is now running real time on the Electoral counts, although they are a bit slow to pick up on some stories like the exit poll problems. As in, they have not brought it up at all. Hours to go no doubt, and here's me with no more munchies...

(0) (24)

Medienkritik has some food for for thought which I would recommend reading on this election day:

Democracy is something that members of free societies should never take for granted. It has been dearly paid for in the past and continues to be dearly paid for around the world today in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. We at Medienkritik therefore humbly encourage all our American readers to participate in the political process and the upcoming election. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, exercise that simple and basic right that signifies our freedom: Vote.

(1) (4)

Unlike our Dale Amon, I am not going to endorse a candidate - in fact, I am rooting for a 269-269 electoral tie, just for the sake of making history - but I still find the horse race intriguing. I was overwhelmed with requests (okay, two people asked) to run one last version of the election monte carlo that I offered last week. Apart from updating the probabilities, I did a few things differently this time:

- if the price was greater than 90 or less than 10, I changed it to 100 or 0, so that only the swing states impact the model.
- I kept track of which states were most likely to end up in the winners' column; I wanted to know which states were the kingmakers. (Well, we already knew which states, but I wanted a way to quantify it.)
- I ran a few different scenarios, taking different swing states off the table (i.e. setting their probabilities to 100 or 0.)

Scenario I: every swing state up for grabs

BUSH: 5972 wins, avg. 275.82 electoral votes KERRY: 3843 wins, avg. 262.18 electoral votes TIE: 185

Florida ends up in the winner's column 7578 of the 9815 scenarios where there is a winner. After that, the most 'decisive' swing states are Ohio (6515), Wisconsin (5636), New Mexico (5606) and Iowa (5521.)

Scenario II: Bush wins FL, everything else is up for grabs

BUSH: 8227 wins, avg. 287.70 electoral votes KERRY: 1586 wins, avg. 250.30 electoral votes TIE: 187

So basically, Kerry almost has to have Florida at this point.

Scenario III: Kerry wins FL, everything else is up for grabs

BUSH: 3083 wins, avg. 260.46 electoral votes KERRY: 6692 wins, avg. 277.54 electoral votes TIE: 225

Bush has more ways to win without getting Florida than Kerry does. Let's try one more ...

Scenario IV: Bush takes OH and WI; FL and other states are contested

BUSH: 8313 wins, avg. 291.05 electoral votes KERRY: 1515 wins, avg. 246.95 electoral votes TIE: 172

If Bush can take these two Midwestern states, he becomes a prohibitive favorite.

A few other desultory remarks:

- who says the country is more divided than ever? My favorite political story of the week: South Dakota, except for the Indian reservations, is a conservative state, and it is tough for a Democrat to win. So Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth, in the heat of a tough reelection battle, has pledged that, should the election end in a 269-269 tie, she will vote for Bush when the House of Representatives has to choose the president.

- Since I'm rooting for the 269-269 tie, here's one way it could happen:

source: World66.com

- Finally, Megan McArdle, guestblogging for Glenn Reynolds, offers the best election day advice of all: use the electronic political markets to hedge, just like a farmer would use the grain futures markets to hedge against the possibility of low selling prices at harvest time. If you don't want Kerry to win, bet a few bucks that he DOES win, so you can at least drown your sorrows with some hard-earned beer.

(2) (49)

If you want to read about the truly extraordinary and deeply depressing paroxysm of anti-Americanism that has swept like a firestorm through the British media over the last few days and weeks (having merely smouldered for years), you can read about it here.

Of a particularly fatuous TV guide blurb ("Jonathan Dimbleby takes a critical look at the Anglo-US war on terror..."), Mark Holland has this to say:

A critical look! Just for a change. I don't know about you, but for me all those "Hey it's all going swell; Bush, Blair and Howard are doing fine; the oil for food scandal has lined the pockets of Saddam, the UN and Total Fina Elf; etc" documentaries have become a tiresome bore.

For me the most depressing British anti-American exhibit of the last few days was a rant by Peter Oborne in yesterday's Mail on Sunday. Having ignored the Mail, Sunday or of any other sort, for years, I had no idea it was capable of sinking to these depthsm and I only spotted it because I shared some coffee with Michael Jennings in my local Café Nero yesterday.

This picture, of the front cover of the Review section, sums it up well:

Click to get it bigger and more legible. If you really want that.

This is absolutely not mere anti-Bushism, for Oborne is vitriolically nasty about both Democrats and Republicans. Maybe this piece is available to read on the internet, but I cannot myself find it. I am actually rather pleased about that.

But, just in case you suspect that "RIP Democracy" has been slammed on top of a piece which is not nearly as stupid as that, here are Oborne's first two paragraphs:

During this year's presidential election, both candidates have claimed America possesses the greatest political system in the world. It is not just a boast George W. Bush and John Kerry make in front of their own electorate. Far more important, they make it abroad. America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in order to banish despotism and teach them the wonders of US-style democracy.

But there is growing reason to doubt whether America herself is a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.

Yes. Apart from, you know, regular elections which neither candidate has any intention of postponing in the future, which millions of Americans vote in, for different candidates who argue with each other fiercely, including the challenger with the incumbent, whose various arguments get written about in very contrasting ways by a free press. Apart from those meaningful senses.

Idiot.

How seriously ought anyone to take this stuff? I cannot ever remember a time when British anti-Americanism was so strident and so nasty, and so deeply, deeply ignorant, stupid and bigoted. So maybe: very seriously indeed. On the other hand, American movies now, as always, dominate our TV screens and DVD shops, and American actors and actresses continue to chatter away happily on our TV sets as if stuff like this was never written. And I am not talking only about anti-American Americans talking on anti-American chat shows. Michael Moore is not the only American who gets a welcome here. I can detect no concerted move by British electro-scribblers away from Microsoft software. Maybe the ludicrously hostile intensity with which many Brits are now reacting to these US elections reflects not any attempt on our part to get separate, but just yet another spasm of resentment at how ever more permanently joined-at-the-hip British popular and political culture now is to American popular and political culture. Maybe it is just pure imperial envy, coinciding with the dismantling of the last of our armed forces, and our bitter acceptance of ourselves as Never Again a Great Power. Maybe it is all just got up by the press and has no real basis out there in British normal-land. You tell me.

What I do know for sure is that Peter Oborne of all people ought to bloody well know better than to denounce the USA as undemocratic. This is a man who, not that long ago was reporting secretly in Zimbabwe, for heaven's sakes. Phrases like "RIP Democracy" should be saved for when and where they are really needed and are actually true, not drained of all meaning by being slung at the USA, of all places.

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It seems like everyone has announced their decisions now: even Megan McCardle. So it is my turn... well, actually that isn't really true. You see, I had to vote about two or more weeks ago to make sure my absentee ballot made it to Pittsburgh by October 31st so my decision cycle was a bit tighter than most.

It is not so much a difficult decision as a painful one. I have had to do something I have never done in my life. I started off Clean for Gene putting up posters when I was still a high school student; friends were out for McGovern... and then the LP came along and made me feel comfortable voting, something I had not really felt in the earlier elections.

I have election after election been perfectly happy voting straight LP. Even if I did not see my candidate take an oath, I at least knew I agreed with what they stood for.

Unfortunately, this year I again became, in Marshall Fritz's words, 'Politically Homeless'. The LP stand on the current war has left me in the unfamiliar and awkward feeling position of selecting the least of three evils.

Do not get me wrong. There is really only one of the three candidates whom I really loath and it is not Badnarik.

I also a worry this election might be another squeeker, something I was not expecting. I believed it would be a runaway. That appears not be the case. Votes do matter more than usual this time.

It really came down to a no-brainer though. I have voted for a Republican for President for the first time in my life. I do not agree with George Bush on many issues, but I do indeed agree with him on the war and the war cabinet is one I quite like. There is a minor plus that all the right people are totally off the wall and over the top insane about the prospect of him winning.

There is an undertone of religious intolerance against his obviously sincere and deep faith. I do not find this distressing despite my own total non-belief. I am a pure physical scientist, but just because I do not see need to posit a supreme being does not mean I do not respect those who do. I feel George is a good man and honourable. I simply do not buy the rantings of the left or even of some of our own. Disagree with him if you must, but please do not descend into ludicrous accusations.

I do not like some of his domestic agenda, but for the exact opposite reasons the Kerry side is against it. On the other hand, he has managed a number of political shuffles that appear to be one thing but whose outcome was not really that bad. The cloning research 'ban' appears to have been little more than a ban of state funded research, something no Libertarian could argue with.

But that is all secondary. We are in the middle, not merely of a war in Iraq, but of a global war on whose outcome our very lives may depend. I am too close to technology not to realize how much evil can be done by a small number of dedicated followers of the dark side.

I endorse George W. Bush for President of the United States.

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Although I am interested in elections, I rarely feel moved to comment on them at all. But I understand that US voters go to the polls this week. Who can predict who they will elect?

Whoever may get elected, they will have to write an Inaugural Speech in January - and there are parts of this Inaugural from Calvin Coolidge, that some US taxpayers may feel merit a second airing...

When we turn from what was rejected to inquire what was accepted, the policy that stands out with the greatest clearness is that of economy in public expenditure with reduction and reform of taxation. The principle involved in this effort is that of conservation. The resources of this country are almost beyond computation. No mind can comprehend them. But the cost of our combined governments is likewise almost beyond definition. Not only those who are now making their tax returns, but those who meet the enhanced cost of existence in their monthly bills, know by hard experience what this great burden is and what it does. No matter what others may want, these people want a drastic economy. They are opposed to waste. They know that extravagance lengthens the hours and diminishes the rewards of their labor. I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

If extravagance were not reflected in taxation, and through taxation both directly and indirectly injuriously affecting the people, it would not be of so much consequence. The wisest and soundest method of solving our tax problem is through economy. Fortunately, of all the great nations this country is best in a position to adopt that simple remedy. We do not any longer need wartime revenues. The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute. They do not support any privileged class; they do not need to maintain great military forces; they ought not to be burdened with a great array of public employees. They are not required to make any contribution to Government expenditures except that which they voluntarily assess upon themselves through the action of their own representatives. Whenever taxes become burdensome a remedy can be applied by the people; but if they do not act for themselves, no one can be very successful in acting for them.

The time is arriving when we can have further tax reduction, when, unless we wish to hamper the people in their right to earn a living, we must have tax reform. The method of raising revenue ought not to impede the transaction of business; it ought to encourage it. I am opposed to extremely high rates, because they produce little or no revenue, because they are bad for the country, and, finally, because they are wrong. We can not finance the country, we can not improve social conditions, through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon the rich. Those who suffer the most harm will be the poor. This country believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which every one will have a better chance to be successful. The verdict of the country has been given on this question. That verdict stands. We shall do well to heed it.

They do not make politicians like this anymore, do they?

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For years, more precisely since 8 July 1963, Cuban cigars have been a banned pleasure for U.S. citizens but at least when abroad they could legally indulge. Earlier this month the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced that Americans are barred from not only purchasing Cuban goods in foreign countries, but also from consuming them in those countries.

I quote from the OFAC's Cuban cigar update (pdf):

The question is often asked whether United States citizens or permanent resident aliens of the United States may legally purchase Cuban origin goods, including tobacco and alcohol products, in a third country for personal use outside the United States. The answer is no. The Regulations prohibit persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States from purchasing, transporting, importing, or otherwise dealing in or engaging in any transactions with respect to any merchandise outside the United States if such merchandise (1) is of Cuban origin; or (2) is or has been located in or transported from or through Cuba; or (3) is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba. Thus, in the case of cigars, the prohibition extends to cigars manufactured in Cuba and sold in a third country and to cigars manufactured in a third country from tobacco grown in Cuba.

The penalties for violating the prohibitions include maximum criminal fines for individuals of $250,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years. Corporations can be fined as much as a million dollars.

What this means is that the US government claims 'ownership' of its citizens. It extends its jurisdiction beyond the territory of the United States and imposes its restrictions wherever you are. If that is not the state's way of saying it owns its citizens, I do not know what is.

This is not the first time we got our knickers in a twist over this modern form of slavery. Here is what Perry de Havilland says about the matter when you get him started on the US citizenship.

American citizenship particularly (more than any other advanced nation's citizenship) is rather like being branded like livestock. To have that brand means that, unlike almost every other state on earth, the US government will always claim a pecuniary interest in the private property that you acquire, even if you live outside the USA and make your living outside the USA and keep your assets outside the USA. Unlike other countries, which by and large lose interest in you the moment you step outside their borders, the USA actually makes itself your super-owner. The USA do not just claim a territorial monopoly on the means of force, it actually claims to own part of your labour regardless of where you are.

There you have it. You cannot hide. The US government wants to see even through the haze of your cuban. The good news is that you are welcome at Samizdata HQ as I light up a lovely Trinidad fundadore. Just remember not to inhale.

via Ben Hammersley

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A lot of bloggers (e.g. the indefatigable Stephen Green) have been posting electoral maps and trying to anticipate who is going to win based on the latest and greatest polling data. But Green, who had posted many such maps over the past few months, finally threw in the towel on Tuesday, declaring:

Say it with me now: It's all a bunch of crap.

The polls all suck, for reasons gone into by people way smarter than I am. The predictions all suck, because everybody is working from the same assumptions, based on voting patterns from the last election.

... And yet everyone - myself included - still bases all their predictions on a tight race? I don't know how this thing is going to pan out. Neither do you. But right now, I feel as though the electorate is going to play all of us pundits - amateur and professional - for fools.

And I think he's 100% right about that ... coloring states red or blue based on poll results is of limited use when there are so many conceivable outcomes, when we have such a hard time extricating sampling biases from polls, etc. Here is one possible way out of the dead end - instead of thinking deterministically and trying to project a winner in each state, let's look at everything probabilistically, and run a Monte Carlo scenario to see each man's chance of winning.

For this exercise, I assumed:

- that each candidate's probability of carrying a state was equal to the current selling price on TradeSports.com. For example, if the price of "Bush carries Iowa" is quoted at 58, then Bush has a 58% chance of carrying Iowa in any given trial.
- No third-party candidates had any chance of carrying a state.
- Colorado and Maine are treated as all-or-none propositions.
- no "faithless electors" shun their commitment to vote for their candidate.
- all 51 events (50 states + DC) are independent.

I ran 10,000 trials, and this is what I got, based on today's TradeSports prices:

Bush averaged 279.99 electoral votes to Kerry's 258.01. The standard deviation of the vote was 30.78 electoral votes.

Bush got a majority of the electoral vote in 6283 trials; Kerry got a majority of the electoral vote in 3583 trials, and 134 times the race finished in (gulp) a dead heat, 269 electoral votes to 269.

In 10,000 trials, the most electoral votes Bush got in any one trial was 419; the most Kerry got was 357.

This approach is not perfect either, because it is not true that all 51 events are independent. If Bush's 6% chance of carrying California comes through, he is probably going to win everywhere else in the country too. It would be possible to build some positive correlation into the model, but I have no idea what the correlation coefficients might be, and just saying that they round down to zero probably isn't unreasonable.

What I find really interesting is that right now there appears to be greater than a 1% chance that this thing will finish in a tie. (In that case, the House of Representatives breaks the tie, of course, and would presumably re-elect George W. Bush, since the House has a Republican majority. My understanding is that the House vote would take place BEFORE the new Congress was sworn in, so that lame duck Reps who had already lost or retired could cast a vote to determine the presidency.)

If anyone finds this line of thought remotely compelling, I will update this (with current prices from TradeSports) a few times between today and election day.

UPDATE: An astute reader points out that the new Congress would cast the vote in the 269-269 tie scenario ... the new (109th) Congress will be sworn in on 1/4/2005, and we need a new President by 1/20/2005, so there's a two week window of opportunity there. A few of you also noted (correctly) that the House vote goes by state -- the California delegation gets one vote, the Wyoming delegation gets one vote, etc. Right now, there are 31 states that have more GOP Congressmen than Democratic Congressmen ... and everything is so gerrymandered now, I just cannot see that number changing much no matter what happens on election day. Of course, GOP Congressmen would be under no obligation to vote for Bush.

There has been one instance in US history where no candidate received a majority of the electoral vote and the House had to pick the next president -- the election of 1824. But we have come close a few other times -- in 1968, for example, if Wallace had carried one or two more southern states, Nixon might well have been unable to get the needed 270 electoral votes. Since the House had a huge Democratic majority at that time, they would have elected Humphrey even though Nixon had more popular and electoral votes.

A few of you asked a question that I had thought of myself -- the individual state prices on TradeSports suggest that Bush has a 62%+ chance of winning, but you can buy a "Bush is elected" contract for about 60 or 61. So is there an arbitrage opportunity? In an ideal world, you could buy a Kerry contract for all 51 states and buy 51 Bush Wins Overall contracts, and you could expect to make money, net-net, off that, except of course that transaction costs would certainly render that unprofitable.

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I am really looking forward to seeing the new Alien vs. Predator movie, the tagline of which is...

Whoever wins... we lose

But I also find it very appropriate to see those sentiments applied here as well regarding the other big fight epic due to be released a few weeks hence. No, I am really not looking forward to that one.

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It seems as though I have not really paid much attention to domestic issues in quite some time. Perhaps its because the domestic front has been locked into near-total stasis, with little movement, much less progress, of any kind.

The political scene has resolved itself into the party of 80% hostility to a libertarian agenda (the Republicans), the party of 95% hostility to a libertarian agenda (the Democrats), an irrelevant fringe, and a legacy media complex to whom anything other than the cult of the the state is simply incomprehensible. Frankly, I do not see any significant changes in the relationship between the state and the citizenry in the offing, just a long expansion of the state sphere until something catastrophic/revolutionary occurs. What that might be and when it might happen, I have no idea.

On the domestic political front, I am left rooting for the slightly less bad option, which is not exactly energizing.

All the action and energy seems to be around foreign affairs, and specifically how we stop the Islamic world from oozing its toxic Wahhabist/fascist effluent into our societies. I find the current debate in the US on this issue to be less than enlightening. The Bush campaign has done a terrible job of explaining why they are doing what they are doing, and the Kerry camp is too busy straddling and flopping to make any contribution at all. Suffice it to say that I remain convinced we will not see the end of this without nuclear weapons being used.

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Since no one else here seems to have much to say about the Great Debate, let me chip in with a few meandering thoughts. If you do not like meandering, stop now. Strong meandering warning. I have now read the rest of this, and believe me, it meanders. It nuances hither and thither like some damned diplomat who has been at the drugs.

Okay. So far as I am concerned, I thought John Kerry won it. My opinion of him could only improve, and it did. And I have got to admit that not only was I impressed, in the sense of feeling that others would be, by the air of coherence he brought to stating his case. I also think he may actually have an alternative policy that might count for something.

The general opinion in our part of the blogosphere/internet is that the idea of the USA 'forming alliances' better with the 'international community' is a load of old sneer quotes. Lileks said it yesterday. On what planet is Kerry living? Does he really think that the rest of the world will suddenly swing into line behind President John Kerry, and win/settle the War Against Terror? Will it bollocks, says Lileks, although a little more politely than that.

But I do not think it quite so unlikely as Lileks does that the rest of the world, by which I mean Europe, actually will swing obediently into line, like an eager little Euro-dog. Even those Moderate Arabs may feel less culturally slighted, and contribute somewhat more than they are contributing now.

After all, what 'Europe' (the sneer quote version, the leadership of Europe) hates about Bush is not really his policies. It is not his alleged corruption, for the leadership of Europe is at least as corrupt as he is. That stuff is all projection. No, what they object to about Bush is what he is, that is, how he chooses to present himself, which in politics amounts to the same thing. And Bush is/presents himself as: an unashamed American. The cowboy boots, that amazing Tom Cruise performance with the sunglasses and the leather trousers and the aircraft carrier, his unashamed down home folksiness and hesitancy when he speaks in public on all occasions except the biggest, his whole air of "I know, I'm an American, and I know lots of you folks don't really care for that, but hey, I am an American – is that really such a big deal for you to live with it? I'm not going to learn up a lot of crap about cathedrals and renaissance philosophers just to please you folks." There is the whole born-again thing, the religion embraced, the booze completely abandoned. The crazy down-market brother (I presume he has at least one of those). It all adds up to something Europeans deeply disapprove of.

I know, Clinton had a lot of this also. True. But he presented it all very differently. He did that pseudo-cringe, that "Europe is still the shining light of the world" performance, as and when addressing Euro-audiences. Everyone knows this is bullshit, but at least he had the grace to do it. Bush refuses to. He talks about European countries ('folks') as if they were small US East Coast states of the sort that will not vote for him and will not need to. His words are polite, but you just know he thinks something else and something a lot less.

John Kerry, on the other hand, is quite different. Let me say that again, emphasising the word that matters, he is quite different. He is one of them. Tall, ex-lefty troublemaker, privileged, a Euro-travelled bullshit artist, expensive suits, rich posh wife, the whole Chirac Gisgard Monsieur le Euro-WaterSkier, hey (evocative Gallic shrug-and-wink) we-oll-do-crezzy-things-when-we-wair-yernger routine. No need to bring God into it, or to give up on drinking fine wine. No need to live, intellectually speaking, in a caravan. Stick with Chateau Nuance, to drink and to live it.

And never forget that the USA now contains a big I-hate-what-Bush-is-or-pretends-to-be constituency, who were lefty troublemakers themselves and who now like fine wine and who are embarrassed by God.

Now you may say, and I can hear the angry comments from America piling up in front of me: so f...er 'rigging what? Are we supposed to give two flying ... pins for what Sneer Quotes Europe thinks about this or that or any damned thing?

Well, life is, to quote a regular Americanism, not fair. It is not fair that Europe still counts for anything, or that so many Americans like to think that it does. Yet it does, and they do. Europe now contributes just about bugger all to the military effort of the International Community. But it might contribute quite a lot, and that might – the other kind of military might, you might say – is the basis of Europe's continuing importance in the world.

For, to repeat a lot of the above a bit differently, Europe's preoccupation is not with what is being done, but with who is doing it. (See also: European Union.)

Just now, Europe (the UK fitfully excepted) is on strike. Bush rules the world insofar as anyone does, and Europe sits on its hands, waiting for him to crash and burn. If Bush were to be crashed and burned by John Kerry, now, I think that those hands might come out from under those Euro-arses, in sheer pleasure at the come-uppance of the Hated Texan. And I think a genuine US-Euro effort to subjugate those Islamo-fascists might actually create a truly different world.

But none of that may turn out to be true, and we will almost certainly never know. Bush still looks like a winner to me. For, if Kerry were to win, Europe might remain the same sneering, shrugging, nuanced waste of space that it is now. All Kerry might achieve would be to confuse the US armed forces and drive them to drugs. Were I an American, I would say: why the hell take the risk? Stick with what you know. Win this damned thing and then let those damned Euros swing into line then. Or not. Who gives a shit?

But the idea that America and Europe might, now, join hands across the seas and actually make serious (far more serious than now) common cause against Islamo-fascism, were Kerry to win, is at least a plausible theory, and in politics, plausibilities count for as much as facts – plausibilities are facts.

Bush and his minions have succeeded in presenting Kerry to America as a vacillating bag of wind. Well, you can do that to a ducker and weaver of the European school of international relations. You can point to the various daggers, and to the various different smiles, and say: look, not the same! Which is it? Dagger? Smile? Which dagger? Which smile? "I think the American people deserve to be told" blah blah. But diplomacy, properly understood, can always be criticised for that.

Kerry's point, if I understand him right, is that although this Terrorism thing may be a war, it is a mistake to turn it into a 'war' war, with the Tom Cruise sunglasses and the aircraft carriers. This is a more nuanced war, or should be. It is a war where you shake hands with Lawrence of Arabia extras in white robes and funny headgear at conferences and emit platitudes about their ancient and peace-loving cultures, and simultaneously have their sons assassinated in back allies and their camps and bases bombed to rubble with whatever civilian casualties that involves, and then you call in your media favours to ensure that the bombing never makes it to the Mainstream Media. But, the Lawrence of Arabia guys get the message. You need to be nuanced in a Middle Eastern kind of way. More treacherous. Less up front.

The irony there being that Bush is probably at least as 'nuanced' in that particular regard as John Kerry. Indeed. of the two, I would say that Bush is (as opposed to appears) more nuanced and treacherous and multi-faced than Kerry. Kerry, like so many of his type (and I would put myself also in this box), wants all his thoughts to be on show. God forbid he should seem dumb. That is a real weakness in a US President, I would say.

And so on. I am thinking aloud here.

According to the news stories I have read, Kerry has had a bounce. (By the way, I love that picture – especially the cool Secret Service (?) guys in the background, at whom Kerry's performance is not being aimed.) My guess, now that I have seen this first debate, is that the debates, because Kerry is a better performer on the day than Bush, with fewer embarrassing pauses and verbal ... ... ... ... mis ... ... ... verbalisationism ... things ... ... will save Kerry from slaughter, but not from defeat. In the last days of the campaign, the Bush camp will point up the risks involved in the Kerry attitude (basically that he will nuance the USA into another Vietnam), and the fact that Kerry was able to attach such a plausible manner to the front of all his nuances will fade, a little.

But then again, what if Bush does his usual unsatisfactory performance, with all those too-long pauses, in Debate Two, but in Debate Three plays a blinder, while Kerry is then the one reduced to repeating himself, having used up all his ammo in Debates One and Two? That would be very much in character with the way they both seem to do things? If that happened Bush could yet wipe the floor and make the entire map the same colour. I just thought of that.

Oh, what do I know? I apologise now, Lileks style, for this having been such a Kerry-esque zig-zag through the terrain. (Copiers and pasters will be able to make me agree with any proposition that they personally favour.) As Lileks said at the end of his piece, thanks for reading this far, I would have given up long ago.

Basically, what I think about this debate is that it was at least a real Debate, between two entirely distinct positions, and as such an important World Event, and that if Samizdata has any serious pretensions towards being a Mainstream World Medium it ought to have something to say about it. Certainly it should have regular things to say about things like it. I have a very busy day, so I am going to just fling this up anyway, without nearly enough second thinking, and hope that it will amuse and enlighten, and get you thinking a bit straighter even if I have not been doing that. So, with apologies for all the errors, small and big: have a nice weekend.

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I have a number of times mentioned that some members of the Democratic Party have been dishonestly spreading rumours about a pending draft. They imply it is being planned behind the scenes in the current administration and will be unveiled after the election if Bush wins. In fact, the only activity behind the noise is a Bill backed by a handful of extremist Democrats and introduced by Democratic Party slavery advocate Charles Rangel.

I have been reading quotes from DOD briefings for almost four years now. Every time the issue comes up, DOD officials diplomatically state it is a bad idea and they do not want it. I believe the continuing appearance of this outright lie all across America is beginning to wear bureaucratic diplomacy thin. Here is a portion of the transcript of Donald Rumsfeld with Albuquerque's KKOB-AM Radio host Jim Villanucci:

Q: We're talking with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Secretary, there's been a lot of discussion, I know, and this is a very political question, but I'll ask you anyway, because it will become your decision, ultimately. Will there be a draft? Do you see any present situation where we might reinstitute a draft in the United States?

SEC. RUMSFELD: There isn't a chance in the world. It is clearly mischievous. Somebody is going around spreading that nonsense. There's a couple of congressmen and maybe a senator or two who've put in bills to reinstitute the draft. I am dead set against it. President Bush is dead set against it. It simply is not going to happen. And the perpetrating of that myth I think is unfortunate. We don't need a draft. My goodness, we've got, what, 295 million people in this country and we've got a 1.4 million on active duty. We can certainly attract and retain the people we need and we are attracting and retaining the people we need. And if we can't, all we have to do is change the incentives, so that we are a more attractive place for people to come.

The next time someone tells you the current administration is going to re-instate the draft... tell them their source is an intentional, blatant and provable liar.

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Legal experts, property developers and lovers of liberty ought to be eagerly waiting for the outcome of a key US court ruling on what is known as the law of eminent domain. The ruling could kill off the practice in which property developers, in alliance with local politicians and bureaucrats, can push property owners from their possessions, seize the land and re-develop it, usually in the hope of grabbing higher tax revenues than was the case before.

I am not an expert on the fine print of this law as it applies in the United States, and readers ought to look at works such as the excellent book by Richard Epstein on the subject. What is clear, however, is that for years Americans, like Britons, Frenchmen, Germans and others, have been living in a world increasingly resembling the law of the jungle rather that of a liberal civil order when it comes to the treatment of property.

I honestly do not know how the ruling will turn out. Essentially, contestants in the case are arguing against the idea that eminent domain can be exercised on commercial grounds. Hard-line defenders of property will, of course, argue that eminent domain does not exist even if the supposed use of property is for something required for 'public use', such as a port, military airfield or highway.

Here is a thought - this ought to be a classic 'left-wing' sort of issue. It is actually a good issue for libertarians to try to use to convince socialist types that property rights, understood in their fullest sense, are a protection for the weak and vulnerable, not the other way round. The old man in his shabby cottage who refuses to sell up to Big Gleaming Corp. is as much a hero of the free market order as any Ayn Rand character or 19th Century industrialist in a frock coat.

Side observation: I would be interested to know if the hugely loss-making Channel Tunnel link could have been built without compulsory purchase. Somehow I very much doubt it.

Thanks to the excellent Anger Management blog for the pointer.

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My nuanced prediction a week ago to the effect that President Bush is going to win huge and that Kerry is going to be put through the electoral mangle is starting to look rather (if you will pardon the expression) silly. It is not so much that the prediction is wrong, more that it is looking more and more obvious by the day. I sold my few remaining Kerry stocks when the Kerry graph was already in free fall.

In addition to the insights I offered in my earlier US election posting – that Bush is clever at suckering his enemies into ground of their choosing, but also of his, and then killing them, and that he is doing this just now (a) in Iraq to the Baathist/Islamofascist/Moonbat tendency and (b) in the USA to Kerry and his cohorts – there are about another two dozen reasons why Bush will win, most of them to do with all the many different ways in which Kerry is a stupid, ignorant twat. Every time he opens his mouth the Anyone But Kerry vote gets that bit bigger.

And since so few people actually seem to like the guy, the fact that he is conducting himself so ineptly in all the pseudo-crises, that must necessarily be heaped upon a non-incumbent Presidential candidate to check out how good he is in actual crises (and the more crass these tests are the more of a test they are), becomes yet another reason not to vote for him, which only intensifies the larger crisis that his entire campaign has now become. He is losing, and do we want to vote for a loser to be President? No. Anyone but Kerry.

I always enjoy reading what Mark Steyn has to say about things in general, and about John Kerry and his supporters in particular, but this piece, of course also linked to by Instapundit which is how I got to it today, is especially fine.

Quote:

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

And here is what Steyn has to say about all the many Ratherlets who still infest the US mainstream media. Instapundit picked these paragraphs out too, but they deserve all the copying and pasting anyone can give them:

They're six feet from Iraq's head of government and they've got not a question for him. They've got no interest in Iraq except insofar as they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers of swing voters in Florida and Ohio.

Who's living in the fantasyland here? Huge forces are at play in a world of rapid change. As the prime minister said, ''We Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations.'' But the gentlemen of the press can barely stifle their ennui. Say what you like about the old left, but at least they were outward-looking and internationalist. This new crowd – Democrats and media alike – are stunted and parochial, their horizons shriveling more every day.

The question I would have asked Ayad Allawi is: What do you reckon to the idea of only holding elections in those parts of Iraq which are now secure, and holding off in the parts where things are still bad? Did anyone ask him that? If they did, what did he say? I guess he is still gung-ho for elections everywhere, and if he is, I daresay he is right.

Only one thing in Steyn's piece bothered me. Whenever someone is putting the boot into the Cretin Left they usually include something small but nice, just to show that they are capable of seeing the good in them, but this sop is usually wrong. The pattern is repeated by Steyn here. As soon as I read the sop to the current Cretin Left about how "outward-looking and internationalist" the old Cretin Left used to be, in a way that at least suggested that they were not complete scum-of-the-earth scum, I started to say to myself: no, they were complete scum too, and if anything even worse.

And they were. They looked outward, but misunderstood everything of importance that they saw, and they were "internationalist" only in believing that the world's entire Cretin Left ought to unite to make the world a massively worse place. They achieved excellence only in the cunning and ferocity with which they pursued their disastrous internationalist agenda. Had those monsters had been a whole lot more "stunted and parochial", how much better a place would the world now be. The present Cretin Left, at any rate in the USA (over here it is a very different story), is actually quite an improvement on the old Cretin Left, in that it is now so stupid and ignorant and incompetent.

In other words, I recommend that the only Steyn bit about the old Cretin Left that we should really go with is where he says "say what you like" about them.

Meanwhile, what of the current USA Cretin Left? By which I mean: after the Bush trashing, then what?

The British Cretin Left got a trashing in the 1980s, basically because the British economy reached the stage a quarter of a century ago where it could not afford such people having serious influence. The US economy, in contrast, can carry just about any parasite that climbs onto it. It took 9/11 to create a situation where the USA could not afford having its own Cretin Left at the heart of its governmental arrangements either. So only now is the USA's Cretin Left getting its trashing.

But once trashed, they will, like our Left, and very possibly by taking lessons from our Left, get less cretinous – less "stunted and parochial" and more "outward-looking and internationalist". And when they do, they will be ready to inflict a whole new batch of miseries upon the world, along the lines of what is happening here and in Continental Europe now.

As President Bartlet said in the West Wing episode I have just watched (and what a charming parallel universe refuge from their current electoral miseries that must be for US leftists!): "Welcome to the show that never ends."

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A couple of months ago, I went on the record with my prediction of the US Presidential election would come out. Because so far it looks to be spot on, I am pleased to post a status report.

As I predicted, Kerry has lost ground since early August, and shows every indication of having, indeed, tested the top of his market for votes somewhere in July, somewhere in the high 40s. Current polling shows him with support somewhere in the mid to low 40s.

Bush has made up ground since August, having tested the bottom of his support in mid-August, and is now polling in the high 40s. My market timing was off a trifle on Bush - I thought he had hit bottom in late July/early August, but there was a bit of a lag before he started moving up to his current, fairly stable 5 - 6 point lead.

The Kerry campaign tried to ramp up a new negative attack on Bush (coodinated with CBS) based on allegations that he got special privileges as a National Guard pilot during the Vietnam war. Lost in the kerfuffle over the forgeries that were supposed to drive this story is the fact that this is well-plowed ground - this is at least the third time the Dems have tried to hang Bush with this one. Similarly, Kitty Kelly's book supposedly detailing Bush's wastrel past is merely an attempt to sex up a story that has already been put to the voters, and has indeed been coopted by Bush as a tale of sin and redemption. As I guessed, it appears that the Dems have nothing new to try to stick on Bush.

With five weeks until election day, I see nothing on the horizon that can fundamentally change the dynamic of this race (all caveats from my original post apply, of course). I will confess that my prediction of a narrow Bush victory appears to be a little pessimistic at this point.

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I hardly know where to begin on this one (from Fox News).

While Bush has been campaigning as the best candidate to deter terrorists and protect the nation, Kerry portrayed him as out of touch with the situation in Iraq.

"With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?"

This man thinks the Commander-in-chief should formulate war strategies according to what it says on CNN, and he is standing for president of the United States?

With all due respect to the Democratic candidate, has he never heard of military intelligence? Does he even know what the blogosphere is? Is he talking about the same universe that the rest of us are talking about?

Damn right, we are talking about different wars. This is the real one. And it's not available in any newspapers.

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I have just attached a comment to this posting by Bill Hobbs. It could all, as I explained in it, be nonsense, but since postings here have been a little thin of late, I thought it worth a copy-and-paste to here. But please understand that what follows is a think-aloud guess that only just now occurred to me, and that I would not feel personally wounded if it was immediately comment-banged into oblivion.

I am a Brit, living in London, and have watched the Dan Rather forgery story with fascination.

But until now, like Dan Rather himself, I had assumed that George Bush's conduct in the National Guard was indeed not to his credit. But now I am starting to believe that this might have been entirely made-up nonsense.

Two things I am learning about your President are that (a) he loves to win, and that (b) one of his favourite methods for winning is to sucker his opponents into a battleground where they think they will win... and then kill them.

I get the feeling that Bush is now doing this to the Sadaamites in Iraq. Let them (and their cheerleaders in the West in general and among the Democrats in particular) think they are winning and that Bush is losing, let them choose what they think is the perfect battleground, and then crucify them. Operation Crucifixion is just now getting underway, if I understand present circumstances in Iraq rightly. Interesting timing, eh?

What this latest ABC story suggests to me is that maybe Bush is also doing something very similar to the Kerry Campaign re Bush's service in the National Guard. He has suckered the Democrats into a frenzied focus on Bush the skiving daddy's boy and fake warrior, only now to hit them with the story, at just the right moment, that this was actually one of Bush's more honourable early episodes.

I hereby place a bet on your forthcoming Presidential election: f**cking Bush landslide. Thermonuclear. If Kerry thinks it is bad now, let him see how it all looks in another month. 25 point poll difference. Meltdown chez the Kerry campaign. Bush looking so smug the Democrats will be jumping off ledges.

As I say, I am only a watcher from a distance and this comment could itself all be made-up nonsense, and the worst sort of wishful thinking. But ... well, we shall see. Just some late night thoughts.

Forgive me, I am not a regular reader of this blog [i.e. of Bill Hobbs' blog], and if it and its regular commenters have explained/demolished all this at length already, then my deep apologies for the repetition.

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The left thinks that the issues around the TANG service are relevant – Bush was AWOL then, Bush lied about WMD, both instances involve acronyms, and can't you SEE the cloven hooves? It's the same sort of thing that gripped the feverish elements of the Right in the 90s: Clinton winked at drug-smuggling out of Mena, therefore he sold nuclear secrets to the Chinese for campaign donations. ISN'T IT CLEAR? But that sort of nonsense was confined the margins; the editor of the Clinton Chronicles wasn't sitting in the presidential suite at the 2000 convention like Michael Moore sitteth at the left hand of Jimmy Carter in 2004.
- James Lileks via Hugh Hewitt

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It seems that the same idea has indeed gone out like a clarion call from many watchtowers and mountain tops and it must be a great time to be in the gun store business in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Heh

(joyous tip of the hat to Freedom Sight for the link)

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...well, arms shops actually.

The absurd 'assault weapon' ban which prohibited certain weapons on the basis of largely aesthetic criteria, has expired in the USA as of today. However as Dubya made it clear that if there had been enough support for extending the ban in Congress, he would have signed it into law rather than try and veto it, please resist the urge to feel much gratitude for his lukewarm support for the Second Amendment.

However it was passed before and could certainly happen again.

And so I urge all the redoubtable gun owning men and women of the USA to run, not walk, to their nearest gun shop and purchase nice Kalashnikov or AR-15 or Ruger Mini-14 or FAL or M-14 or whatever, plus a goodly selection of flash suppressors and high capacity magazines, thus ensuring that there are soooooo many of the damn things in circulation that any future ban will simply have no effect.

Use the power of the Buycott, have fun at the range, arm yourself to the teeth and, best of all, absolutely enrage advocates of gun control in the process.

I mean, how good it that?

Good stance and correct breathing: now that is what I call gun control

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This is a day on which Americans must stop in the daily flow of life and remember our war dead. We should think not only of our fellow citizens who died in their thousands in those terrible few hours this morning three years ago, but also of the courage of those around the world doing their best to prevent or delay 'the next time'. Each day which passes without another attack on our soil is a blessing we should cherish. It is another day in which millions may go about their daily lives, love their children and spouses, be kind to strangers and enjoy the blessings of liberty.

Make no mistake. Our turn will come again. Before this World War is over, there will be other grim days to remember.

As we have seen in Russia, not even children... not even infants are safe. These are monsters we battle. This is evil and depravity of a depth and kind almost beyond twenty-first century comprehension. Whether you wish to call them a mutation or a throwback or meme infested cultists of the damned makes no difference to me. I refuse to share a planet with them and I refuse to share the name Homo Sapiens with them.

I will never forget. And I will never, ever, forgive.

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George Will, dorky docent of American conservatism, detects a return to the libertarian stylings of Barry Goldwater at the Republican national convention.

Four decades after a Republican convention in San Francisco nominated Sen. Goldwater, sealing the ascendancy of conservatism within the party, his kind of conservatism made a comeback at the convention here. That conservatism - muscular foreign policy backing unapologetic nationalism; economic policies of low taxation and light regulation; a libertarian inclination regarding cultural question - is not fully ascendant in the party. But the prominent display and rapturous reception of Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated that such conservatism is not an insurmountable impediment to a person reaching the party's highest echelons.

For structural and probably cultural reasons, it is highly unlikely that America will ever have anything other than a two-party system. For this reason, pragmatic libertarians will have to learn how to work the two-party system. For all their manifest shortcomings, the Republicans seem to be a more hospitable environment at this point.

But the domination of the Republican Party by cultural conservatives did make some other conservatives — libertarians and religious skeptics, among others — feel uneasy, even unwelcome. Being derided as RINOs — Republicans in name only — did not help. And the dominance of the cultural conservatives gave force to the Democrats' and media's caricatures of the Republican Party as a brackish lagoon of intolerance, a caricature that, like all caricatures, contained a trace of truth.

For all the rending of garments coming from the Democrats and the secular left, I see remarkably little in the way of actual state action implementing the allegedly theocratic cravings of the social conservatives since their rise to influence in the Republican Party. I certainly disagree with them on a number of points, but a careful reading tends to show that a great deal of what they want falls into the area of civil society, not state action. They have, of course, been infected to some degree with the virus of statism, but cries of alarm from the statist left that the Christian conservatives are attempting to implement state-mandated mind and social controls smack more of projection than anything else. Much of the social/cultural conservative agenda is defensive and reformist - they are animated by a desire to roll back what they see as a state-facilitated and noxious cultural of radical relativism and secular radicalism. Even their current flagship issue - the "defense of marriage" - boils down to preventing change from being imposed by state organs without democratic approval.

Interesting times, my friends, interesting times.

ADDENDUM: A few additional thoughts whilst standing in line for lunch.

In discourse, terminology is destiny. As a legal drafter, I always go first and foremost to the defined terms of a contract, regulation or policy. In bashing out the paragraph above on cultural or social conservatives, I mistakenly adopted some of Will's terminology.

The bugaboo of the left (and their organ the Democrats) in the US is the "religious right," and my comments in the paragraph above are directed primarily to this bugaboo. Aside from religiously driven moral concerns, though, the major driver of real social/cultural conservatism in this country is the puritan streak that has been handed down through the ages as the antithesis of the hedonistic American thesis.

In recent decades, this puritanical impulse has been mated to the statist impulse, yielding such unholy offspring as the radical environmental movement, the anti-smoking crusade, the nascent anti-fat crusade, and of course the drug war. You will note that the puritans reside comfortably all across the political spectrum in America, and have had a much greater impact on state activities than religious devotees. Neither the Republicans or the Democrats has really made any effort to take on the puritans, who in many ways have become a major bulwark for the cult of the state.

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There were two articles on the Rittenhouse Review which rather interested me:

Firstly the blog's author, James Capozzola, displays what I can only describe as a very healthy disdain for democracy (which I certainly share) by applauding the fact that people in Pennsylvania will not be allowed to vote for Ralph Nader for President of the USA. I have commented on this subject before on Samizdata.net.

Now if only Kerry and Bush could also be disqualified...

Secondly, there is an article which mentions that the 427th Transportation Company (based in Pennsylvania, hence being of particular interest to Philadelphia based Rittenhouse Review) was deployed to Iraq with insufficient body armour and GPS sets. He approvingly notes that after he reported on this, one of his readers privately purchased a GPS set and intends to mail it out to Iraq for the unit to use. I too heartily approve of this and would love to see a significant proportion of the military's funding gradually replaced with voluntary subscriptions, something I would happily contribute to myself. However I must take issue with the phrase:

Imagine it: The U.S. military, notably reservists, relying on family, friends, neighbors, and perfect strangers to fill gaping holes in the Pentagon supply chain.

I would prefer to think of it as 'members of society with a vested interest in survival and an affinity for the people defending them', rather than the more pejorative 'perfect strangers', filling the spaces left in the Pentagon's supply chain which are theirs to rightly fill.

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Does anyone believe that Michael Moore actually had this conversation?

I mean, with an actual live human being, and not just in his own head.

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Alice Cooper, that paragon of conservative values and restraint is... backing George Bush! Methinks the more wingnut elements of the Republican Party will probably have rather mixed feeling about that particular endorsement.

Well at least his reasons are hard to fault. Why? Because so many musicians are backing Kerry and...

If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal. Besides, when I read the list of people who are supporting Kerry, if I wasn't already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that's a good reason right there to vote for Bush.

Not quite enough to get me swooning for Dubya, but damn, one can find strangely compelling wisdom in the most unlikely places.

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I recall, shortly after I first got myself on-line, frequently seeing the phrase 'ROFLMAO' appear on various chat rooms and fora. I had not a clue what this term meant but, after a little judicious detective work, I discovered that is was an acronym for the phrase 'Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Arse Off'.

Well, I was ROFLMAO when I read this:

TORY leader Michael Howard has been barred from the White House and told he will never meet President George Bush, it emerged last night.

The bombshell ban was slapped on Mr Howard after he called for Tony Blair to quit over the Iraq War....

What particularly upset the White House was Mr Howard’s comment: “If I were Prime Minister I would seriously be considering my position.”

They were also angered when the Tory leader accused the PM of "serious dereliction of duty".

Mr Rove, who speaks with the President’s full authority, said: "You can forget about meeting the President full stop. Don’t bother coming, you are not meeting him...."

And it has deeply damaged the decades-long alliance between the Republicans and the Conservative Party.

Senior US Right-wingers blame Mr Howard for undermining the coalition in Iraq and say they are privately rooting for a Labour victory in the next election.

A Tory source said: "They see Tony Blair as a true ally against terror and the Tories as a bunch of w*****s."

Wherever would they get that idea??!!

Although the cause of this spat is laid at the door of Mr Howard's apparent equivocation over Iraq, I get the feeling that the real friction lies elsewhere. Strange as it may sound, I have been reading what sound like reasonably reliable reports in the UK press about squadrons of young British Conservative activists hot-footing it off to the USA to work in the Presidential election campaign...for the Democrats!.

In the interests of accuracy, I think it ought to be said that this is far more about the Tories trying to pull some sort of rug from under 'Teflon Tony' than establishing any sort of link with either the US Democrat Party or Mr Kerry. But in any event, it is still a deeply ill-judged political blunder. The article alludes to an 'alliance' between US Republicans and British Conservatives and while I think that 'alliance' is too strong a term, there certainly has been a traditional affinity between these two centre-right Anglo-Saxon political tribes.

That being the case, one wonders what these jet-setting young Tories were hoping to achieve by throwing their lot in with Mr Kerry? There is nothing to suggest that a President Kerry would somehow undermine Tony Blair. If the Tories cannot make a dent in him at home, then how are they going to land any meaningful punches on him via Washington? And if they imagine that they are going to be the subject of any outreach by either the US Democrats of the Guardian-reading classes at home then all I can say is that they are even stupider than they look (and they look fairly stupid).

In short, the British Tories have managed to alienate one of their few powerful friends for no gain whatsoever and, since I assume that the leadership either gave their blessing to these transatlantic jaunts or, at the very least, turned a blind eye, then it merely reinforces my view that the British Conservatve Party is in the hands of buffoons and political pygmies.

I understand that the streets of New York will be plagues this week by throngs of the Great American Unwashed wearing 'George Bush=Hitler' T-shirts. I do not imagine that any such items of radical apparel will be making an appearance at the next Tory Party convention. However, I do wonder if would get any sales with a 'Michael Howard = Chief Wiggum' version?

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While shuffling through a stack of magazines at the barber shop yesterday, I came across the August 9th issue of The New York Magazine. While not particularly familiar with the publication, one of the articles caught my eye. It was a conversation between Norman Mailer (NM) and his son John (JBM) entitled What I've Learned About Rage.

If I was more into the political scene in New York I probably would have realized what was coming but I somehow confused the name Norman Mailer with Norman Rockwell (heh), so I read on preparing to receive some fatherly advice about managing emotions. I got a lesson, alright, but certainly not the one I was expecting.

From the article, I gather that the Mailers are insiders with the New York Democratic (Socialist) Party. Besides being further proof that the mainstream media is in the tank for Kerry, the article was mostly how the Democratic Party can arrange protests during the upcoming Republican (Conservative) National Convention in New York. Those protests have already begun. The goal is to cause the most disruption to the Convention while simultaneously gaining the most favorable press for the Democrats. Disgusting, but dirty political tricks are nothing new to either side. The elder Mailer even suggested those sneaky Republicans really, really want lots of nasty riots and so will be secretly stirring up protests against their own Convention. I can not speak for the Republican planners, but that thought certainly gave me a rather nauseating glimpse into Mr. Mailer’s political mind.

Anyway, what really flabbergasted me was a something only a few paragraphs into the article where the younger Mailer dropped this little bombshell:

JBM I feel we've entered a realm where the question is, whose propaganda is better? The left (Democrat) is beginning to figure out that they can't beat the right (Republican) with intelligent argument. They need punch phrases that get to the heart of the average American...

Excuse me? Your party can not win with intelligent argument? Is that because you have no intelligent arguments to make or because the majority of people are too stupid to understand? This suggests either a very deep flaw with your basic tenets or a very dim view of the population in general. JBM continued with:

... If that's the case, what is the future for our country?

What indeed? The elder Mailer had a ready answer.

NM That’s not my first worry right now...

Double excuse me? You do not care what happens to the country as long as you win? I am beginning to understand why your party is bereft of intelligent argument!

Now, maybe I am just naïve. Maybe this is really how all politicos feel. But when was the last time you supported a group who proudly proclaimed: "Our side is wrong. We do not care. If we make enough noise, you idiots will still vote for us"?

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Well, since people don't want to talk about the really big issues (the mainstream media v. blogdom cage match), we might as well give 'em what they do want: the Kerry kerfuffle.

For agonizingly detailed analysis of the blow-by blow, then either Power Line or Captain's Quarters is probably the place to go.

My take:

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what Kerry did as a soldier in Viet Nam all those years ago, just as I don't really care what George Bush did as a pilot in the National Guard. Both seem to have served adequately well, and I would be perfectly happy to let sleeping dogs lie. I am perfectly willing to stipulate that nothing either man did as a soldier has any relevance to their race for President.

End of story? Not really, because the Kerry kerfuffle is not really about what John Kerry did as a soldier. As far as I can tell, the Swifties are not accusing him of war crimes (Kerry handles that all by himself, not that anyone believes him). They are not even accusing him of incompetence, really. Even by the Swifties' account, he brought all his men home, killed a few bad guys, and generally carried out his mission as well as most young officers. Plenty good enough.

No, the current controversy is not about what Kerry did as a soldier, its about what he has done as a politician. Kerry's career as a politician predates and encompasses his brief military career. He was an anti-war activist before the war, something of a glory hound during the war, returned to anti-war activism after the war, and has been a professional politician just about ever since.

Once you put the Swifties' attack on Kerry in this context, they raise some very troubling questions. Kerry's entry into the military, framed as it is by anti-war and anti-military activity, begins to look like opportunistic ticket-punching. His medals look like more of the same, especially when you look at how they have been used by him as props for his political career ever since (he famously pretended to throw them over the White House fence, only he did not, and now hangs them on the wall of his office). Indeed, Kerry has built his career on the foundation of his four months in-country, and has done so in a way that highlights what many see as fundamental character flaws. Kerry has very characteristically tried to straddle the fence on Viet Nam, claiming on the one hand to be a war hero and on the other to be an anti-war activist.

The Swiftie attack is not on his service as a soldier, it is about how he has used that service (cynically and opportunistically, in their view) to advance his political career. The Swifties are saying that the anti-war side of the straddle disqualifies him from leading America in the current war, which is a purely political argument that does not touch on Kerry's service as a soldier.

They are also saying that the war hero side of the straddle is a fraud. Note that their quarrel is not really with what he did on the ground, it is with what he claims he did (in the military paperwork that resulted in his medals, and in his admittedly exaggerated accounts since then). What happened in the actions that resulted in his medals will be hard to sort out, but I would say the Swifties have landed some telling blows. Principally, Kerry has abandoned "Christmas in Cambodia," the critical turning point that allowed his brave soldier and anti-war activist personae to co-exist.

Good lawyers know that nothing is more important than framing the debate. The Swifties, in their rage at Kerry for, in their view, stabbing them in the back, have not done a very good job of clearly framing this debate as being about Kerry the Cynical and Opportunistic Politico, rather than being about Kerry the Brave and Noble Swabbie. That will probably, in the end, rob their campaign of much of its power.

The folks who want Kerry to take power want to frame the debate as being about Kerry's service as a soldier, so they can delegitimize and confuse the issues raised by Kerry's career as a politican. Just because the mainstream media, who are pretty comprehensively in the tank for Kerry, are falling for and enabling this strategy, does not mean you have to.

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President Bush had a chance to make a ringing endorsement of free speech rights, and he muffed it big time. From the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web (which doesn't seem to do permalinks):

Never murder a man who is committing suicide," Woodrow Wilson once said. President Bush seems to be following that advice, refusing to be drawn into the controversy over the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's allegations about John Kerry's Vietnam War record. Yesterday the president did, however, make a procedural criticism of the group, as the New York Times reports:

In response to reporters' questions, the president once again condemned the so-called 527 groups, which can raise unlimited donations and run attack ads, but cannot directly coordinate their efforts with the campaigns. . . .

"All of them," the president said, when asked whether he specifically meant that the veteran's group's ad against Mr. Kerry should be stopped. "That means that ad, every other ad. Absolutely. I don't think we ought to have 527's. I can't be more plain about it, and I wish--I hope my opponent joins me in saying--condemning these activities of the 527's. It's--I think they're bad for the system."

For once we'd have to say Bush is actually vulnerable to criticism from civil libertarians. Does he really mean to suggest that no group except a campaign or a political party has the right to express its political views? And of course Bush is substantially to blame for the rise of 527s as an alternative to campaigns and parties, whose fund-raising and free speech are severely restricted by the McCain-Feingold law, which he signed.

Why couldn't Bush have said "Hey, its a free country. If they want to exercise their right to free speech, put out a book, run some ads, who am I to say no?"

Its hard to say what Bush really believes should be legal campaign discourse - apparently, political parties should have their contributions choked off, campaigns should be subject to strict limits (after all, he signed the McCain-Feingold bill that did just this), and independent, unincorporated associations should be prohibited from saying anything political as well.

Who does that leave? Well, the media and bloggers, I guess. So far, in the cage match between Old Media and the Unwashed Masses (that would be you and me), the Masses are ahead on points, in my book.

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Any regular reader of Samizdata.net has probably noticed that I am no enthusiast for the democratic process, which I just regard as little more than a system of legitimising proxy mugging. I can see a role for democracy as a countervailing force even in a limited-government minarchist state, but as currently practiced it is rarely more than just a way to try and appropriate the money of others, impose restriction on competitors and generally add the force of law to personal prejudices in ways that conflate state and society to the profound determent of the later.

However I could not help but laugh when I read how the Democratic Party, who by their name one might assume were very keen on democracy, have been pulling all manner of legal tricks to keep socialist Ralph Nader off the US Presidential ballots. I expect the Republicans might try the same sort of thing against the turgid US Libertarian Party if they ever become a significent threat (not something I can see anytime soon).

But then that approach to choice is American as apple pie in some circles... "You can have any colour, as long as it is black". This is why so much effort goes into the making the small differences between the two parties in the US seem VASTLY IMPORTANT TO THE FATE OF THE WORLD... otherwise people might start to think it actually does not matter a damn which particular lying parasite gets sent to Washington DC and that election day would be a pretty good time to go to do something really important, like maybe go to the beach or look at the cost of relocating to New Hampshire where voting really might cause something interesting to happen.

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Glenn Reynolds gets in line with Samizdata, bridging the gap between your humble poster's musings on big media and the current kerfuffle over Kerry's account of his adventures in Vietnam.

But this story seems to me to be absolutely fascinating in that it reveals just how in the tank for the Democrats the mainstream media are, and how little the vaunted Cronkitean claims of objectivity and research and factual accuracy really mean when the chips are down.

To me, that's a bigger deal than the underlying issue or even, in some ways, the election itself. Elections come and go, politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be disappointments one way or another. But the "Fourth Estate" is a big part of the unelected Permanent Government that in many ways does more to run the country than the politicians.

Glenn does more than any professional journalist that I know of to bring together the public information on stories that catch his eye. His work on the Kerry "Christmas in Cambodia" story has been first-rate.

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This article from the Washington Post, on the application of the little known Data Quality Act to hobble the regulatory leviathan, is full of unintentional insights. The Data Quality Act is, well, let the Post tell it, and let the insights begin!

The Data Quality Act -- written by an industry lobbyist and slipped into a giant appropriations bill in 2000 without congressional discussion or debate -- is just two sentences directing the OMB to ensure that all information disseminated by the federal government is reliable.

The first insight is, of course, the clonking great pro-government, pro-regulation bias that the Post brings to this story. Note the disparaging terms applied to this piece of legislation, which has a genesis and a pedigree that is totally ordinary - most legislation is the product of interested parties, and most finds its way onto the books via massive omnibus bills that no one reads. However, these routine facts of Washington life are given ominous prominence only when the media outlet is opposed to whatever was done. The rest of the story is riddled with similar bias - in the Post's world, regulation is always good, always to protect the people, never fails a cost-benefit test, always supported by the preponderance of the scientific evidence, etc.

The next set of unintentional insights comes to us when the relatively innocuous purpose of the Act collides with the prerogatives of the regulatory state.

But many consumers, conservationists and worker advocates say the act is inherently biased in favor of industry. By demanding that government use only data that have achieved a rare level of certainty, these critics maintain, the act dismisses scientific information that in the past would have triggered tighter regulation.

First, of course, note who the Post asks for their opinion. Of equal interest is the rather revealing admission that, in the past, regulation was apparently handed down on the basis of information that was, how to put this, of less than adequate quality. Declining to regulate because the data isn't there is, of course, a Bad Thing.

These final comments surely need no elaboration.

"It's a tool to clobber every effort to regulate," said Rena Steinzor, a professor of law and director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Maryland. "In my view, it amounts to censorship and harassment." . . . .

Yet Steinzor, the Maryland environmental lawyer, and other critics complain that the OMB's involvement politicizes the process. The expertise of the handful of scientists hired by Graham, they say, cannot match that of the thousands of experts on agency staffs.

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History is a flexible commodity. More like therapy really:

John Kerry started his acceptance speech at last week's Democratic convention by giving a military salute and saying, "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty." He was introduced, very movingly, by a veteran who lost both legs and one arm fighting in Vietnam. On stage were other Vietnam veterans who served with Kerry on one of the so-called swift boats going up the Mekong river. That swift boat provided the metaphor for Kerry's whole speech. Evoking "our band of brothers" he said: "We may be a little older, we may be a little greyer, but we still know how to fight for our country."

There is plenty of this kind of eulogising in the Guardian.

Stange is it not? The very same people who would have been spitting at John Kerry and calling him a "fascist baby-killer" in the 1960's are the same ones who are now getting all misty-eyed and choked up over his Vietnam war record.

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I am past due to put on the record my prediction about the outcome of the US Presidential election. I know, I know, I should have posted this before the polling started to come out showing that Kerry, rather than getting the traditional post-convention bounce in support, may have actually lost ground during his big showcase last week. Actually, though, my views on how this race will turn out have been pretty well set for the past month or two. Honest.

The following should be taken with the enormous, bone-snapping, soul-crushing caveat that it is subject to events such as a major terrorist attack, aliens (the extraterrestrial kind) landing on the White House lawn, or the like.

In spite of lunatic Democrat optimism and polling that has shown Kerry with a small but consistent lead for months now, I think George W. Bush will be reelected. He will carry a (very small) majority of the popular vote, will lose no more than one state that he won in 2000, and will pick up a handful of states that he lost in 2000.

The Dems and their allies in the press have thrown everything they have at W, beginning in the 2000 election, through the Florida recount, and right up to the present day. They have nothing new left to attack him with, I am quite confident. The persistently partisan and anti-Bush media has managed to inure the public to bad news from Iraq or elsewhere. The Bush campaign has not really activated yet, on the theory that nothing they do before Labor Day will really matter. In short, Bush has tested the bottom of his market for approval and votes, and it is somewhere in the mid to high 40 percent range.

By contrast, Kerry and Edwards are still pretty unknown to non-political-junkie Americans, and the Republican attack machine has (wisely, from a tactical point of view) held its fire on these two. They have enjoyed months of positive coverage and a showcase convention. However, their support even among Democrats is not particularly strong - Edwards never won a primary, and Kerry is notable for not exciting the Democratic base. The Democrats, in short, have tested the top of their market for votes, and it is somewhere in the high 40 percent range.

With the race statistically tied, Bush has nowhere to go but up, and Kerry has nowhere to go but down.

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Senator John Kerry had one of those moments the other night.

For reasons best known to themselves, the Democrats have decided to hold their presidential nominating convention in Boston, Massachusetts. Two findings have emerged from this decision. First, that Americans outside the North-East are being reminded that the Democrats have a liberal New England candidate, with limited appeal outside his backyard. Second, that the traffic chaos caused by the Convention is very unpopular with the inhabitants of that town.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the Republican Governor of Massachusetts has deliberately botched up the arrangements.

So in front of thousands of baseball fans, Sen. John Kerry was introduced to throw the first pitch of the match between the Boston Red Socks against the New York Yankees on Sunday.

First, the fact that the Democratic Convention was happening in Boston was booed by virtually the entire 36,000 crowd. Then most of the crowd booed again (although there were cheers) when Kerry was introduced. Then the macho-man threw the ball short, and the catcher missed. Cue mirth, giggles and fun on the George W Bush blog.

Memo to politicians and actors: never work with babies, animals or baseball fans.

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Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is being investigated for trying to steal classified documents that tend to make him and his boss look a little cavalier in their handling of the Islamist terrorism threat.

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI (news - web sites) agents armed with warrants after the former Clinton adviser voluntarily returned some sensitive documents to the National Archives and admitted he also removed handwritten notes he had made while reviewing the sensitive documents.

However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers told The Associated Press.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

Funny how the documents still missing are the very ones that make Clinton and Berger look like feckless idiots, no? Not only did Berger steal the first copy of the embarrassing reports, when Archive staff made a second copy, he stole that one, too!

Needless to say, Berger is a lying sack of crap:

"In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger said.

He "inadvertantly" stuffed top secret documents into his pants? Suuure, Sandy. Although I have to admit this is an interesting twist on the usual pants-related Clinton administration scandal, it still doesn't pass the smell test.

The punchline? Berger is one of John Kerry's advisors. Since he also has Joe Wilson on his team, Kerry seems to be playing collect-the-set with lying sacks of crap. The Bush team can truly prove their incompetence by giving Kerry a pass on the fact that he is relying on both these clowns for advice on how to beat the Islamists.

But hey, a former national security honcho who repeatedly steals top secret documents by stuffing them down his pants? Give the man a job! He's obviously plenty good enough for government work.

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Attentive libertarians know, of course, that statists routinely lie in the pursuit of their objectives. A couple of revealing posts show how they lie about economic reality in pursuit of a multitude of policies that boil down to the state taking your stuff and giving it to others via various redistribution schemes, just as the need for redistribution is left on the dust-heap of history.

First, Mickey Kaus takes long-time lefty and temporary NYT columnist Barbara Ehrenreich to task for falsely claiming that it is impossible for a single mom to escape poverty by marrying a productive blue collar worker (implying that we therefor need greater transfers of your wealth to single moms and blue collar workers). The annoying facts:

Even at the current minimum wage, a full-time worker earns $10,700 a year and an Earned Income Tax Credit of $2,500 (three person family) to $4,200 (four person family). Add in $4000-5,000 of food stamps and subsidized Medicaid or CHIP health care for the children, and you're well above the poverty line even with a single breadwinner and a stay-at-home mom.

Next, Arnold Kling posts more annoying facts to rebut the commonly heard mantra from the redistributionists that wage earners have lost ground since the '70s. This is, of course, obviously and intuitively absurd, but its nice to have some numbers. While most of the essay defies excerpt, one of the long-term trends is particularly striking:

One of the most important trends of the past century is the reduction in the average work week. Contrary to another popular myth, Americans are working much less than they used to. Fogel writes:

"in 1890, retirement was a rare phenomenon. Virtually all workers died while still in the labor force. Today, half of those in the labor force, supported by generous pensions, retire in their fifties."

Furthermore, Americans work many fewer days than they did a century ago. Using as a benchmark a 365 day work-year, Fogel calculates that in 1880 on average male household head worked 8.5 hours per day, but only 4.7 hours per day in 1995. With less time spent working and somewhat better health, total leisure available has more than tripled, from 1.8 hours per day to 5.8 hours per day.

The policy implications should be obvious: Wealth frees a society from any need for the state to mandate minimally acceptable outcomes (to insure that no one starves or freezes), and so a wealthy society should be able to dispense with the redistributionist state.

However, the incredible wealth generated by the American economy has had the opposite effect, because people with more disposable income are not nearly as sensitive to taxation. One of the many things they can afford more of, in short, is taxes. With no shortage of people willing to take your money and spend it as they see fit, taxes and redistribution have increased just as any arguable need for them has all but disappeared. In the final irony, the most enormous wealth transfer scheme of all (Social Security and Medicare) transfer money from the poorest segment of society (wage earners) to the wealthiest (the elderly).

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Last post for awhile on US Presidential politics. I promise. Having set the table on the domestic side below, a post came along from Mr. Bevan at Real Clear Politics (an invaluable site for US political junkies, by the way) which does a nice job of framing the choice facing American voters this fall on the foreign policy side:

[N]o Democrat, with only one or two exceptions in the entire elected party, would have looked at the exact same intelligence Bush looked at with respect to Iraq after 9/11 and done much of anything - even though they agreed with Bush at the time that Hussein was a serious threat.

And:

Indeed, far more damning than Bush acting on evidence almost everyone in the world believed to be true is to look at a hypothetical in reverse: What if all of the WMD intelligence on Iraq had been spot on and John Kerry were President at the time and chose not to act because of pressure from his party or the objections of allies? I think most Americans would find that prospect deeply disturbing.

Kerry and his fellow Democrats are, for the most part, transnational progressivists committed to having international institutions to deal with bad actors like Saddam. Mr. Bevan provides a useful reminder of how such institutions actually fared, in the real world:

Saddam played cat-and-mouse with the U.S. and the U.N. for nearly a year before finally booting UNSCOM out of Iraq altogether in August 1998.

The response? On September 9, 1998 the UN Security Council passed yet another resolutioncondemning Iraq's lack of cooperation with inspectors.

On December 16, 1998 the U.S. launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day [ineffectual] bombing campaign against military targets in Iraq.

[On December 21, 1998, the NYT reported that:] Sunday in Paris, President Jacques Chirac of France called for a prompt lifting of the oil embargo. His country's major oil companies have for years been eager to return to work in Iraq, although record low oil prices make this less attractive now.

In fact, three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (France, Russia, & China) responded to the limited use of military force against Saddam for his continued violation of UNSC resolutions by calling to lift the economic sanctions against Iraq and disband UNSCOM completely. And that was basically the end of the whole affair.

Americans tend to prefer leaders who take decisive and effective action against known threats. The media, of course, favors Kerry, and is trying to obscure Kerry's catastrophic weakness as a leader with the side issue of whether the universally accepted intelligence on Iraq from several years ago was any good.

No leader can afford to wait for perfect information before acting - in the real world, where inaction has consequences, you have to do the best you can with what you have. It is pretty clear that the best Kerry can do, even with the kind of international consensus that existed on Saddam Hussein two years ago, is look around for someone else to take charge.

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The often intemperate Jesse Walker lists 10 reasons to throw Bush out of the White House. I tend to agree with the majority of his complaints, but his last one really points up the dilemma posed to libertarians by the US major parties.

The Democrats have nominated a senator who—just sticking to the points listed above—voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, McCain-Feingold, and the TSA; who endorses the assault on "indecency"; who thinks the government should be spending even more than it is now. I didn't have room in my top ten for the terrible No Child Left Behind Act, which further centralized control of the country's public schools—but for the record, Kerry voted for that one too. It's far from clear that he'd be any less protectionist than Bush is, and he's also got problems that Bush doesn't have, like his support for stricter gun controls. True, Kerry doesn't owe anything to the religious right, and you can't blame him for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Other than that, he's not much of an improvement.

Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I'm sure he'll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense that I take most personally.

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My former flatmate Drew Johnson has estimated what a John Kerry win in the US would cost American taxpayers (but also points out that Bush's record "includes a 29 percent increase in the size of the federal budget during his first term").

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So the loathesome (second post down) John "interesting" Kerry has chosen John "even less interesting" Edwards as his running mate. This is obviously a bad move as people will confuse them, and maybe even vote for someone else called John Nondescriptname instead, but on the other hand, their policies seem to be mostly about saying whatever crowd-pleaser pops into their heads at the time, so perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to make people so confused they can't keep up with all the turnarounds, and surrender their powers of reasoning altogether (unless that happened already).

Here are some of the things they said about each other in the past. Notice the recurrence of the word "different". Now see if you can spot which statement belongs to which John. Answers on Fox News.

[John's policies would run the country] deeper and deeper into deficit.

This is the same old Washington talk that people have been listening to for decades.

I think he's said some different things at different points in time … So I think there's been some inconsistency.

[John] and I have very different positions on the issue of trade

This one is easy:

No. No. Final. I don't want to be vice president. I'm running for president.

And my personal favourite (remember, John is criticising John here)...

I think that the world is looking for leadership that is tested and sure. And I think that George Bush has proven that this is not a time for inexperience in the White House.

How very unintentionally right he is.

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I recently wrote about Belinda Stronach's Conservative Party candidacy in Canada. Reader Jim Bennett reports:

"Don't know if you noticed, but Belinda Stronach did win her seat in Canada. She'll probably be shadow International Trade minister -- a good place for her."

Canada could use the touch of an Iron Lady. It will be interesting to see if Belinda can grow enough to fill those shoes.

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One way to guarantee Bush's reelection.

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Michael Moore bans Michael Moore?

It seems the new stupid campaign finance regulations in the USA (the result of Michael Moore's years of vomit among others) are about to be used to restrict distribution of Moore's latest wind-up.

Because the law attempts to prohibit all sorts of 'in kind' donations to the Republicans [I meant political parties], making a movie that plugs one candidate at the expense of another in election year could be ruled "interference" by the Federal Electoral Commission. I wonder how Michael Moore feels being felt sorry for by the US Libertarian Party.

Of course it is a shocking abuse of the US constitution. (sigh) How sad!

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James Lileks captures the angst of the social statist in America in this exchange regarding John Kerry's promise to raise taxes by rolling back the rather meager and back-loaded Bush tax cuts:

Then came the Parable of the Stairs, of course. My tiresome, shopworn, oft-told tale, a piece of unsupportable meaningless anecdotal drivel about how I turned my tax cut into a nice staircase that replaced a crumbling eyesore, hired a few people and injected money far and wide . . . . Raise my taxes, and it won’t happen – I won’t hire anyone, and they won’t hire anyone, rent anything, buy anything. You see?

“Well, it’s a philosophical difference,” she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clilcking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. “I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down.” Those last two words were said with an edge.

“But then I wouldn’t have hired them,” I said. “I wouldn’t have new steps. And they wouldn’t have done anything to get the money.”

“Well, what did you do?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”

“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”

Two responses to this last quote. First, it is James' money because he earned it. Second, he has no objection to it becoming the worker's money, so long as they earn it from him. In fact, the money James kept because of his tax cut now is the worker's money. Her point, such as it is, evaporates into thin air.

The only difference? Mr. Lileks, sturdy Midwesterner that he is, believes people should should earn their money. His earnest young interlocutor, following in the sadly well-worn path of Minnesota socialism, thinks money should shower down like manna from heaven.

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Very interesting appraisal of Bill Clinton. I confess I loathe the man and his wife, who strike me as distilling the worst elements of their generation and of the New Ruling Class in America into two near-sociopathic personalities.

Also apropos Clinton and the current President, one of the mysteries of their terms:

The mystery of Clinton is that he was an essentially conservative president -- perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the White House since Grover Cleveland -- and yet he was loathed by conservatives... I'm not sure I can explain it either -- any more than I can explain why George W. Bush has inspired such antipathy from the Al Franken wing of the Democratic Party even while so abjectly pandering to them with his Medicare expansion, No Child Left Behind Act, campaign finance reform and budget-busting spending increases. Here's Dubya expanding the Great Society, and yet he gets accused of dismantling the New Deal. Go figure" -- columnist Max Boot, writing in the Los Angeles Times. (link not provided due to odious registration process, which pissed me off).

Clinton (despite his tax increase and failed nationalization of health care) has a domestic policy legacy that most Republicans would be proud of, and Bush's domestic policy has been largely scripted to satisfy his Democratic opponents. Yet both are vilified by the very people whose policy positions they advanced. Something to ponder.

Of course, neither has done much to increase liberty within the four corners of the US of A.

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Canada's Conservative Party has some new blood. Belinda Stronach recently left a $10 million/year job as CEO of international auto parts manufacturer Magna International. Belinda is 38, single, brilliant, gorgeous, an experienced senior manager and capitalist to her DNA base pairs.

Some other Conservative Party members expect she will be a part of any Conservative government elected in Canada and eventually be Prime Minister.

From the look of things, Canadian Conservatives are on the winning side of history.

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Christopher Hitchens has a fantastically (in a good way) written review of Moore's latest creation Fahrenheit 9/11. This is my favourite bit:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

Hitchens extracts from the turgid and self-righteous on-screen heap of non-sense six points that he then proceeds to fisk with brisk ruthlessness they deserve. Read the whole thing as they say...

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It seems astonishing that the state still gets involve with the content of TV programming in the USA. I expect this sort of crap in Britain and Europe, but in the USA?

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a measure to crack down on indecency on radio and television by sharply raising fines. The Senate also took steps to rein in the growth of U.S. media companies by invalidating new, more relaxed ownership rules.

Can anyone tell me, do these absurd rules in the USA also apply to other non-terrestrial broadcast media companies, such as cable and satellite TV or even internet 'radio'?

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The folks in Iowa have got their market up and running for the 2004 Presidential election. Each contract pays a dollar; as of yesterday, you can spend just over 58 cents on a Bush contract, and around 43 cents on a Kerry contract. As you can see, the futures market is bullish for Bush (hmm, there's a slogan in there somewhere, possibly with an R rated logo) as compared to the opinion polls (right hand column, scroll down a little for a summary/average of current polling - very handy for the political junky).

The Iowa market is worth keeping an eye on - over the last several elections, it has half the forecast error of the opinion polls.

Update: For those hankering to put their money where there mouth is, and perhaps fleece a few rubes, the main page for the Iowa Electronic Futures Market is here. Sadly, there is a $500 cap on positions.

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President Ronald Reagan has just passed away about an hour ago.

One of the few politicians that went into politics because they believed in something. This was a president who in his inaugural address in 1981 said:

Government is not the solution, it's the problem.

He will also be remembered as the Vanquisher of Soviet Communism, whatever the revisionists of all flavours may say.

Rest in peace.

Update: For more information here. Some notable quotations from Reagan here.

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In case anyone was wondering why the Republican Party is known as "the stupid party," it turns out that the Bushies, those erstwhile evil geniuses, have scheduled themselves to nominate W as the Republican candidate after the deadline set by several states for placing a nominee on the ballot.

Sadly, every state but one has scrambled to accomodate these patent screw-up. Now, I can understand Republican state legislatures amending their statutes in this circumstance, but why on earth would anyone expect the Democrats in Illinois to do so?

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I dunno about you, but I was bored stiff. I was driving home from work when it came on the radio, and I damn near dozed off and drove into a light pole.

Sure, the delivery was that kind of Rotary Club tumpty-tump that we have come to expect from W, but really, substance aside, couldn't the text have been a lot better? This is just mediocre writing, the kind of dull crap that I expect from a third-rate consulting firm, not from what should be the pinnacle of any writer's career.

In this particular war, in which all the meaningful battles are being fought between the ears of Iraqis, Americans, and a handful of other nationalities, having such an ineffective communications team on our side is probably worth at least an armored division to the Islamonutters.

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I put up one pissy blog post about how there is no hope for liberty in the American political arena, and next thing you know I see this:

A group of libertarian-minded Republicans in Congress is blocking President Bush’s effort to strengthen domestic counterterrorism laws and reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, which the president has made one of his top domestic priorities this year.

Kind of a good news/bad news thing. Good that there is some opposition to the Patriot Act, which is odious in a number of ways, bad that Bush has made extending it his top domestic priority this year. Legislation is apparently gaining ground that would rein in some of the worst bits of the Patriot Act, although apparently Bush has threatened to veto anything of the sort. I should note that the lead paragraph above is a little misleading; Democrats are carrying more than their fair share of the load on this front.

Bush, who has not vetoed a single bill in his entire Presidency (a record, I believe), would single out a bill protecting civil liberties for veto. I happen to think that, from a broad strategic perspective, the Bush administration has gotten a lot right in the current war. However, they seem to be doing everything they can on the domestic front to encourage me to stay home in November.

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One casts far and wide for any ray of hope in current domestic American politics. The Bush campaign is depressingly, although perhaps wisely, silent on any of the quasi-libertarian Republican issues - gun control, deregulation, privatization of Social Security, tax cuts. As for the Bush record, well, if the rhetoric is depressing (he stated he would sign an extension of the moronic assault weapon ban), the reality is even worse, in the form of a spending binge beyond all precedent or belief. I note the sole exception of Bush's rather anemic and backloaded tax cut, much of which is self-repealing.

The Democrats, predictably, are even worse. Their only real complaints concerning current domestic policy are fiscal - that spending wasn't increased even more, and that taxes weren't raised to pay for all that spending. Sure, you can catch the occasional Dem kvetching about such issues as tort reform or environmental deregulation, but those are dogs that are notable because they are not barking. There is no tort reform, there is no lightening of the regulatory burden. Democratic joke candidate Kerry floats the occasional trial balloon concerning a targeted corporate tax cut or Social Security privatization, but you know that is only so Senator Flippy can say he was for them before he was against them.

There is, in short, no evidence to be found in either major party that limited government and individual freedom (aside from the freedom to have an abortion, of course) have any place in the modern US of A. If it wasn't for the fact that the best thing that could happen to the libertarian movement in the US would be to launch the entire current Libertarian Party into the sun, I would vote Libertarian. As it is, one simply despairs of advancing the libertarian agenda in current US politics.

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I am still out on the road, sitting in the Westin St Francis in San Francisco watching a bit of news after several long, long backstage work days at the JPMorgan Technology and Telecoms investors conference. I've a lovely view out over the bay from here on the 24th floor.

But that is not why I sat down to write this brief item. According to Fox News an airline flight from LA to DC (still in the air) is being watched closely by US security. There has been little detail on what is up.

Feel free to add any news you hear about the situation.

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An interesting question for those concerned about creating a more free society is how such a society, be it a model of constitutional, limited, minimal government, or even an anarchist one, would actually defend itself from attack. What sort of practical ways would such societies employ, and would such societies require armies, navies, air forces and the like?

It seems pretty fair to me to assume that outside some sort of pacifist utopia, any such model requires defence and people with the skills and willpower to serve as soldiers, pilots and the like. That is why in the absence of the draft, which libertarians rightly abhor, we need people who can volunteer to serve in the armed forces, giving up the comforts of home. That is not sentimental military-speak, but hard reality.

Hard reality is something of a stranger to the author of this diatribe, full of twisted logic, presumptiousness and lies against the late American soldier and former NFL star, Pat Tillman.

I will not bother to fisk the piece. The illogicality of it is so glaring, its vile intent so obvious, that a line by line response would merely insult the intelligence of this blog's readership. Suffice to say that a man gave up the promise of a fat paycheck and the comforts of a loving family to go and join the army, knowing that in so doing he might be called upon to fight in situations those moral perfectionists in our academic world would find abhorrent.

Whether one agrees with the war against Saddam and the Taliban or not, on a broader point, it seems obvious to me that we will need people willing, like Pat Tillman, to defend us. This is a point that about which a "chickenhawk" like me who is too old to serve in the forces any more is only too painfully aware.

Remember the name of the woman who wrote this shabby article. As the years go by no doubt she will continue to enjoy the benefits of a world made rich by a model of free enterprise she hates, and defended by "macho" men she despises. But I will not forget. This sorry excuse for a human being has not just traduced the memory of a very brave and good man; she has done so against all those who believed they were fighting to defend the freedoms we enjoy.

(Please post comments on the Daily Collegiate website I linked to. They deserve to hear what you think).

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This story is already being well bounced around the blogosphere. Let me give it another bounce. Here is what Jacob Sullum of Reason online says:

Although prosecutors admitted Paey was not a drug trafficker, on April 16 he received a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for drug trafficking. That jaw-dropping outcome illustrates two sadly familiar side effects of the war on drugs: the injustice caused by mandatory minimum sentences and the suffering caused by the government's interference with pain treatment.

Paey, a 45-year-old father of three, is disabled as a result of a 1985 car accident, failed back surgery, and multiple sclerosis. Today, as he sits in jail in his wheelchair, a subdermal pump delivers a steady, programmed dose of morphine to his spine. But for years he treated his pain with Percocet, Lortab (a painkiller containing the narcotic hydrocodone), and Valium prescribed by his doctor in New Jersey, Steven Nurkiewicz.

Insane.

I got to this by going to Instapundit and then to National Review.

War on drugs: insane; the blogosphere: sane.

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Glenn Reynolds has reported some recent photos purportedly showing flag drapped coffins at Dover Air Force Base are a hoax. According to a NASA headquarters statement, the pictures are actually of the coffins of the Challenger astronauts:

An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia's seven astronauts.

Apparently a number of news outlets fell for it hook, line and sinker.

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I have heard it said that war is politics by other means and, similarly, that politics is war by other means.

However, it appears that some people in the USA are not really much interested in pursuing 'the other means':

It's hard to imagine a greater clash of cultures within America than that between George Bush's Republican party and the New York left.

Ever since the announcement, in January last year, that for the first time in convention history the Republicans would be coming to Manhattan, a multi-layered conflict has been looming.....

This example, from the grassroots conservative site FreeRepublic.com, indicates that animosity is flowing freely on both sides.

"Frankly, I wouldn't be shocked to see real street battles," the piece says.

"The extreme left is angry. Angrier than I've ever seen them. And they will be made angrier still by the harsh security measures which will be required to protect the dignitaries in New York. But the right is angry too, and there will be a lot of conservatives converging in New York City for the event. If the left wants to fight, expect the right to fight back......

Sitting on a sofa, dressed like a Manhattan bike messenger, one student who identified himself simply as William said he was spending the week attending a raft of different group meetings on the protest.

After he was arrested in Miami during the recent Free Trade Area talks while simply walking down the street, he said he was looking for a more meaningful encounter in August with the NYPD:

"If you are going to get arrested, it might as well be for something rather than nothing," he said, with a disturbing cheeriness.

Yes, well, it all looks very strange from this side of the pond where partisan politics is still a remarkably genteel business. The occasional caustic comment is about as confrontational as it gets over here. The very idea of Tory matrons from the Shires fighting pitched battles with delegates from the Teachers Union on the 'mean streets' of Bournemouth is just too hilarious and far-fetched to even contemplate.

Is this a reflection of something very different about the nature of the British polity? Is it because there is much more of a polite consensus over here? Or is simply because there is so much less at stake in the British electoral process?

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It was said that El Sado's (or whatever the man's name is) newspaper in Iraq was closed down because it was "inciting violence". I think that is true - I do not have to read the newspaper to guess what sort of things it was printing "mutilate, kill, feed what is left to the dogs" (and so on) or therefore understand why it was closed down. However, hearing of this did make me think of the following.

One does not have to be a libertarian to think the government of the United States has treated the Constitution of the United States as a bit of toilet paper for at least the last 71 years. And, of course, President Bush far from fulfilling his Oath of Office to "Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States" has added new unconstitutional programs (the 'no child left behind' thing, the extension of Medicare, and so) in addition to all the existing unconstitutional programmes.

Whilst I am not drawing a direct analogue to what is going on in Iraq (for obvious reasons), I wonder what the Founding Fathers would be writing if they were around today - I think they might well be inciting violence (although, I accept, they would not be writing about mutilating or feeding to dogs).

Please no comments about how "time changes how a text should be interpreted" or "the Supreme Court says X is O.K., so X must be O.K."

The Constitution of the United States is not some strange mystical text written in an ancient language - any person of average intelligence (who bothers to read it) would know that most of what the United States government now does is unconstitutional.

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A representative of SMCCDI, an Iranian student freedom movement Samizdata has long supported, will be on the drivetime airwaves in southern California today:

Aryo B. Pirouznia will be speaking, on Monday April 12, 2004, on the widely listened Southern Californian 740 AM Talk Radio. The program is hosted by the famous KBRT's anchor Paul McGuire and will be of half an hour length starting from 05:00 PM PST.

The SMCCDI Coordinator will be explaining the Movement's reasons for supporting President George W. Bush and why millions of Iranians are concerned by John Kerry's controversial position and statements in reference to the Tyrannical and Terrorist Islamic Republic regime.

It is hardly surprising Iranians would feel this way. I have heard similar sentiments expressed by some Iraqi bloggers and commenters. The upshot of this is, the American Iranian and Iraqi communities will be solidly in the Bush camp in the upcoming US elections.

One wonders if presidential hopefuls will in the future have to add two I's to the traditional 'three I's' voting blocks: Ireland, Italy, Israel... Iran and Iraq?

For more information, you can go here for the SMCCDI press release.

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How the Soviets would have loved this kind of technological capability:

A US requirement for visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed is being expanded to include citizens from America's closest allies.

The move will affect visitors from 27 countries - including the UK, Japan and Australia - whose nationals are able to visit the US without a visa.

Though even if the technology had been available to the Soviets they would not have been to afford it. But Western democracies can afford it so these fingerprint-reading machines will be coming soon not just to an airport near you but, in due course, a bank, a supermarket, a sports stadium and just about everywhere else.

I was so impressed with all those books written in the 1990's that confidently predicted that the new age of digital technology would empower the individual and neuter the state. The implementation is having exactly the reverse affect.

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But then I suppose you already knew that. After all, state's often think it is justified to outlaw consensual sex-for-sale (unless it is part of a package involving marriage, of course). Now however, it seems even what you do with your private bits in a non-sexual way is the business of a bunch of priggish regulators.

You think not? Well that is what Georgia's political masters reckon (that is Georgia in the USA not the one in the former USSR). It is now illegal for an adult woman to get a genital piercing. Now I realise that the USA already claims de facto ownership of its subjects (a much more realistic term than 'citizens') even when they wander off to foreign lands, but I though that these notions of owning folks only applied to the fruits of their labour, not their actual bodies (yes, I realise this may be wandering into a touchy area given the USA's interesting history of intrapersonal economic relations, particularly in places like Georgia).

Now if some woman is subjected to non-consensual genital mutilations, I have no problem regarding that as criminal, but will someone tell me how a bunch of legislators can think they have the right to tell a woman what she can do to her own labia and clitoris for her own private aesthetic reasons? To me the law itself is an affront, but far more shocking is that every single one of the members of the Georgia legislature feel they have the right to tell a woman what she may do with her own body for her own private ends.

(via Jessica Lyons: Naturalis)

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Barbara Amiel is someone I frequently find disagreements with but when she is right, boy, is she right. Whilst I am usually rather prone to point the finger of blame at the state as the font of all evils when things go wrong, Amiel makes the reasonable point that even with the best intelligence in the world, the prevailing zeitgeist in the United State (and elsewhere) on and before September 10th 2001 meant that there was very little support for anything which could really have stopped Al Qaeda's infamous arrival onto the world's front pages.

The question is not whether Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush actually knew about the murderous intentions of radical Islam or whether they took what they knew seriously, but what the public mood would have let them do about it before 9/11.

Not much, I wager. What administration could, before 9/11, have sent in American boys to fight a regime in Afghanistan because it was implementing the ideas of an old man with a long white beard, sitting crossed-legged in the mountains talking about Satan America? Had I been in Congress before 9/11, knowing everything that was knowable about the Islamists, I still doubt if I would have voted to send troops to the Hindu Kush to topple the Taliban. Eardrums would have exploded all over Capital Hill from outcries of racism and imperialism if there had been serious efforts, pre-9/11, to round up suspected Muslim militants in the United States and tighten security on Muslims entering the country. As it is, the post-9/11 sensitivity to racial profiling makes travel hazardous for white grannies who dislike body-searches.

All too true. Read the whole article.

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For a good look at what pissed-off Middle America is thinking, check out the invaluable James Lilek's bleat (actually, more of a screed) today.

Immediately below the picture of the protestor with the sign saying "I (heart) New York even more without the World Trade Center,"* Lileks cuts to the heart of the matter:

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a traitor. He may be an idiot, a maroon, a 33rd degree moonbat, but he's still a traitor. That is a man who celebrates the death of Americans (and others) and supports the people who killed them. Oh, sure, he's nuts. But he fits right in. So what were all these people against, exactly?

A free press in Iraq. Freedom to own a satellite dish. Freedom to vote. A new Constitution that might actually be worth the paper on which it’s printed. Oil revenues going to the people instead of Saddam, or French oligopolies. Freedom to leave the country. Freedom to demonstrate against the people who made it possible for you to demonstrate.

Freedom. More freedom now than before, and yes it comes with peril; it always does, at first. But freedom is either in retreat, or on the advance. These people marched to protest the premature bestowal of freedom by exterior forces. Better the Iraqi people live under the boot for 20 years, and rise up and get slaughtered and rise up again and slaughter those who killed their kin, then have Bush push the FF button and get it over with now. Better they suffer for the right reasons than live better for the wrong ones.

As the man says, read the whole thing.

The major obstacle faced by many opponents of the war in Iraq is that already, a year later, Iraq is demonstrably better off in almost every way than it was under Hussein. Even the worst feature of the current scene, the terror attacks, pose less of a threat to most Iraqis than Saddam's regime did. It is very difficult to argue against a war that has been so immediately and obviously beneficial; that is why opponents so often have to resort to abstractions and platitudes about the UN and lack of international cooperation. Underneath it all, it is more important to the committed Left and its new Islamist allies that the US lose than that a nation of millions be given a decent shot at freedom and prosperity.

*= I believe this sign to be genuine, and not a photoshop job. If you believe otherwise, well, comments are open.

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One of the best summaries of the travesty that lead to Martha Stewart being convicted of, well, lying to avoid self-incrimination, can be found on WorldnetDaily by Samuel Blumenfeld:

Stewart was acting on information given to her. She did not build her wealth on a career of insider trading. It was a one-time fluke which involved a relatively small amount of money. When federal investigators questioned her on this transaction, she said that she had a standing order for her broker to sell the stock if the price went below $60.00. Apparently, that was the alleged lie that the jury convicted her on.

Here was the federal government, which couldn't protect us from the terrorist attack of 9-11 in which thousands of people were killed, trying to protect us from Martha Stewart. The alleged lies she told were not told under oath. She did not commit perjury. Apparently it is now a crime to tell a falsehood to a government investigator. That's considered an obstruction of justice.

Whatever you may think of Stewart's action, she did not kill anyone or rob anyone. Her action did not result in anyone else losing anything. In other words, unless you believe that citizens don't have a right to tell a falsehood to a government official in defending themselves from self-incrimination, Martha Stewart committed no crime.

Read the whole thing. The sickeningly self-righteous chortling of the predators of the wealth destroying US legal establishment just makes the whole thing worse and make it clear to me what really makes the legal world go around. If some ambitious prosecutor who thinks nothing of destroying lives and livelihoods in order to advance their own careers decides you are going to be their stepping stone, watch out. The state is not your friend.

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Tired of the orgy of Kerry worship from the British media, not just the BBC, but also from ITV and C4, I turned to the internet for some other news from the United States.

As expected, propositions 57 and 58 passed in California. Prop 57 being approval to borrow billions of Dollars (sorry 'issue bonds') in order to 'pay for' already agreed government spending, and Prop 58 being a promise (sort of) not to borrow money in future.

However, I came upon another proposition - Prop 55. This prop was a request to borrow (again sorry 'issue bonds') - $12.3 billion for government education spending on top of what had already been agreed. This bond debt to be on top of the $73 billion bond debt that the State already has.

The prop passed - I admit that it passed only narrowly (50.6% to 49.4%), but it passed.

So on the same day that Californians agreed (in Prop 57) to borrow another $15 billion (or so) for existing spending and (in Prop 58) overwhelmingly voted not to pile up more spending... they in fact did just that.

"We will not add deficit spending on to the deficit spending we already have"

...except that more deficit spending is indeed added and on the very same day.

That sums up politics - not just in California, but everywhere.

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Nick Forte has some good news in the struggle for ideas in the USA

The advocates for smaller government appear to be winning the war of ideas on this side of the pond if the following Rasmussen poll is accurate. For a long time I believed this to be the case, but I was surprised by the margin shown in the poll.

February 16, 2004--Sixty-four percent (64%) of American voters say that they prefer smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes. A Rasmussen Reports survey finds that just 22% would rather see a more active government with more services and higher taxes.

What is even more amazing is that even a majority of Democrats hold this view. Only the extreme left prefer more government over less government, and even then by not as large of a margin as one might have guessed.

Support for smaller government cuts across just about all demographic lines . It is the preference for 67% of men and 62% of...
[...]
... group, 49% say they want a more active government with more services and higher taxes. Just 40% prefer smaller government

It will be interesting to see how this will affect US politics. So far, President Bush has not been able to capitalize on what should be a Republican issue because he has been seen (accurately) as big spender despite his tax cuts. Somewhat counter-intuitively, an earlier Rasmussen poll shows that more Americans voters view the front running liberal New England Democratic presidential candidate as better able to control spending than the purportedly conservative Texan Republican candidate (42% to 33%).

There is indeed growing discontent among conservatives over Bush's spending record. Last week, House Republicans held a 'mandatory' conference to come up with ideas to curtail runaway government spending. Among the more radical initiatives under discussion are measures to curb the power of House authorizers and appropriators who have routinely ignored budget limits, giving the budget resolution the force of law, and requiring two-thirds supermajorities in both the House and the Senate to pass spending provisions which exceed the budget.

Although some Republican members of Congress are true believers in the need to reduce the size of government, many more are probably reacting to concerns that Americans are turning to the Democrats as the party of fiscal responsibility, undercutting a traditional GOP advantage. Could it be that political pressures for lower spending has finally overtaken the normal election year drive by politicians to buy more votes through higher government spending? Recent actions by Congress suggest not, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

Nick Forte
Falls Church, Virginia

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Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait
Midge Decter
Regan Books, 2003

This sympathetic study can almost be regarded as a pre-emptive strike from the right from someone whose neo-con credentials are impeccable. Her personal motives or incentives to write the book are not clearly and explicitly given, but the Prelude, which comes between the Acknowledgements and the Introduction, gives perhaps a hint that Rumsfeld's appeal to women, even at age 70, might have something to do with it. Perhaps again she views him at the right distance; she has known him for several years, certainly not intimately and through official contact. The inside of the dustjacket has a sub-title, not found elsewhere: The Making of an American Icon. The man himself is not given to self-revelation and the impression is that he knows when best to keep his mouth shut - and those of any others that might be tempted to speak for him.

Born in 1932 and therefore "too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam" (p. 178), the chief influences on his early life, though indirect, were the Depression and World War II; his father, who worked as an estate agent, first for a firm, then for himself, went into the US Navy at a mature age and his mother followed him with her family to each port nearest his assignment. Donald was successful at school; though too lightly built for American football, he became a champion wrestler, continuing to be one when he followed his father into the Navy.

He went to Princeton ( "the most military of the Ivy League colleges" – p. 31) on a scholarship, studying "government and politics" and passed into the US naval air arm, also on a scholarship and hence as an officer, marrying his schoolmate Joyce and introducing her into the same peripatetic way of life his parents had had. During his years of service, 1955-7, he became a pilot trainer and then went to Washington to enter politics as a Republican, working first as a staff assistant for a member of the House of Representatives.

He was elected to Congress himself in 1962. He served for six years (3 terms) and was then invited by Nixon in 1968 to join the Executive in the White House. He was put in charge of the Office for Economic Opportunity, about as far left an organisation as a Republican could stomach and the setting up of which he'd opposed – but Nixon had, after all, been elected after the student riots and general mayhem that concluded Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Even worse was to be put in charge of a Cost of Living Council, a thinly disguised Prices and Incomes Enforcement Body, a concept to which he was totally opposed. Neither of these bodies, both totally of the contemporary Zeitgeist, would work – or survive.

Soon after Nixon was re-elected in 1972, he appointed Rumsfeld US Ambassador to NATO, who thus avoided contamination with the messiness associated with Nixon's having to resign in 1974 because of Watergate. He was recalled to the White House by Ford, an old friend, first to sort out the new presidential team, then to become Ford's Chief of Staff and finally his Secretary for Defence. He was thus involved with the policy of detente with the USSR and the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), but though loyal to Ford's initiatives, clashed with Kissinger about how far to follow them up, making Kissinger characterise him as "ruthless", i.e., someone who stood up to him and carried his point.

Carter and the Democrats came in in 1976 and Rumsfeld, leaving Washington, went successfully into business, rationalising and rescuing the pharmaceutical firm Searle. Just as going to NATO in Brussels had initiated him into foreign affairs, so did becoming Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Searle open his eyes to the realities and urgencies of civilian life. He remarks: "A government agency or a congressional committee can delay something for a week or a month or a year ... To get into a business and get a sense of the things we had been taking for granted in Congress was just fascinating" (p. 84). Incidentally, of course, his forays into the business world have left him relatively well off.

When Reagan arrived in the White House, he had employment for him, but, perhaps because Rumsfeld had ruffled Vice President Bush, only as an overseas envoy on special missions. On one of these, he met Saddam Hussain, to convey US support for Iraq against Iran, seen as the greater threat of the two to Middle East security. He made a serious bid to succeed Reagan, but gave up when he failed to gain any significant popular support. His move further alienated him from Bush Sr., who suspected him of having a hand in Nixon's appointing him to head the CIA, a position from which it was believed, wrongly, no President could emerge; there had also been the suggestion that Reagan might have looked favourably on Rumsfeld as a running-mate.

Rumsfeld was therefore excluded from the White House during the four years of the Bush Sr. and the eight years of the Clinton presidencies (1989-92; 1893-2000), though not entirely from political life, serving on two important commissions. One was on the proliferation of ballistic missiles in the post-Soviet era, the other on the dominating and monitoring of space; neither commission seems to have had much political impact, but doubtless all the facts and their implications had their effect on him. He was also successfully active back in business. Then, twentyfour years after he had left the White House, he was summoned by Bush Jr. to the same position, Secretary of Defence, that he had held under Ford. Disappointingly, we are not told why Bush Jr. selected him; it would seem most unlikely that any recommendation came from his father. He was certainly something of a new broom, intent, as newcomers are, to fight bureaucratic overproduction (the Defence Authorisation Bill, for example, comprised 988 pages, up from 75 in 1975 and 1 page in 1961), obstruction in Congress and a pro status quo military.

An early opponent of the now long abolished draft, he favoured a leaner fighting force, securing which brought controversy down on him during the Iraq War, even when it turned out for the best. It is impossible to tell how successful he would have been in his post if the events of September 11th hadn't changed the attitude of the whole country to one of urgency. Rumsfeld, who had assured the devotion of the Pentagon staff by immediately participating in the rescue of survivors of the attack there, now became a national celebrity with his Pentagon Press Corps briefings on TV after the war in Afghanistan started at the beginning of October. This war elicited minimal opposition at home (it was very economical with US manpower) and very little abroad.

Very different was the problem with Iraq, a situation left over from the Clinton presidency, and which came to the boil a year later. It was during the interminable wrangling at the UN that Rumsfeld let drop, in January 2003, the famous phrase "Old Europe" when referring to the obstructive tactics of France and Germany. In contrast to Afghanistan, in Iraq the US did most of the fighting, but, in accordance with Rumsfeld's strategy, implemented with General Franks, used only about half the troops and far less bombing than in the Gulf War of 1991. But although the war lasted only three weeks, some sections of the media still found something to carp about during most of the time.

Rumsfeld, with the prestige gained by success, has "requested Congress to grant him broad new powers that would enable him to reshape the armed forces from top to bottom ..." and Decter lists some of these, with the caveat "If Congress were to approve", on pages 203-205. She ends with a paean which is unlikely to be echoed on this side of the Atlantic and certainly not by the BBC, which every week during the conflict made a point of holding up a particular quote of Rumsfeld's to ridicule:

The popular 'discovery' of Donald H. Rumsfeld spells the return of the ideal of the Middle American family man, with all that such an ideal entails in the way of vitality, determination, humor, seriousness, and abiding self-confidence, along with protectiveness toward loved ones, neighbors, and country. In the long run, this change may well be more important to the fortunes of his country than the changes he will have wrought in the armed forces.

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In addition to loving skyscrapers I also have a thing about bridges, and I periodically feature a picture of a bridge at my Culture Blog. Sometimes the pictures are taken by me, of one or other of the many bridges of London. Sometimes they are acquired from the infinity of information that is the Internet.

Some while ago I featured the Coronado Bridge, which is next to San Diego. In that connection someone else drew my attention to another splendid bridge in Macao. Commenting on that posting, Phil Cohen has this to say about the Coronado Bridge:

The original design for the Coronado Bridge was a much shorter, and almost straight span to the Island (actually, peninsula). Then in order to qualify for federal funding, (whereby our government pays most of the tab), the City of San Diego curved and lengthened the bridge to meet the minimum length standard that would qualify the Coronado Bridge for Federal funding.

How about that for an unintended consequence of taxpayer funding. They help you if yours is a long bridge, so San Diego builds a long bridge instead of a short bridge!

If you want to see even more clearly what Phil Cohen is talking about, just take a look at this map!

It is very rare that government spending has such conspicuously visible results. Normally, when governments waste money – which is what they mostly do with money, after all - the waste all happens tucked away in offices and in the form of a few thousand quietly invisible salaries for suburbanites. For every Concorde or Space Shuttle or daft piece of architecture there are a hundred bits of wastage that are no more exciting to look at than evaporating water. But this Coronado Bridge story really makes the point.

Personally I prefer the highly visible kind of government wastage. First, it is often, as with this bridge, and as with Concorde, very pretty to look at. Second, it very prettily dramatises how wasteful government spending can be, and I like that even more.

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The daft furor over the outsourcing of job to India (and other places) is just another example of how amazingly primitive the understanding of economics is which prevails amongst the media and political elites in the USA (though no worse than elsewhere I might add).

The same troglodyte notions that lead people to think that cheaper foreign steel being imported into the USA is a bad thing (which is just another way of saying that manufacturing cheaper cars, homes and ships in the USA are a bad thing), lead the same people to in effect say that allowing Americans to purchase cheaper computer programs and requiring them to pay more for call center services is also a bad thing.

President Bush went on the defensive Thursday on the issue of outsourcing after a firestorm erupted over an aide's contention that free flow of jobs, including the migration of services to India, benefited the US economy in the long run.

Although the aide, White House economic adviser Greg Mankiw, was merely echoing what was stated in Bush's economic report to Congress, Washington's political class came down on him like a ton of bricks.

Lawmakers from both parties, including Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, demanded he be fired. The criticism forced Mankiw, a Harvard economist, to clarify that he did not mean to support or praise loss shifting of US jobs overseas.

Sure, if your IT or helpdesk job as just been outsourced to Bombay, it might seem like A Bad Thing for you personally... but then that is just as true if your job in New Jersey has just been taken by someone in Biloxi, Mississippi because your company has just relocated to where costs (and taxes) are cheaper... the overall effect is that companies, and outsourcable functions of companies, will go wherever it makes sense for them to go... and so they should!

However notion that India has such a comparative advantage just because they have produced a reasonable pool of IT and call centre people who will work for far less than their counterparts in California does rather miss the obvious fact that India is far from suitable for all or even most IT or call centre jobs. Troubleshooting a network in Texas is rather hard to do from New Delhi and to think people in Asia will have such a deep understanding of American (or British or European) cultural mores that all help desks and call centres will end up there is rather bizarre. Companies who out-source unsuitable jobs will end up being punished by the market if their quality falls below the point which lower costs can offset such a fall, and some jobs are very quality sensitive indeed.

It should be screamingly obvious that stopping people in India (and elsewhere) from exploiting their competitive advantages does not only hurt them, it hurts everyone who is a customer for those products. Rather than engaging in unbecoming grovelling, George 'Steel & Lumber Tariff' Bush should redeem himself by responding to the Troglodyte faction by pugnaciously asking them "So, what exactly did the American consumer do to you to make you hate them so much, guys?"

If a company is not free to run their business and the location of the people who make it work, to best suit the company's interests, who pays in the end? The company's customers do, of course. And that means you.

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While searching for an article I am absolutely certain I wrote but cannot find, I came across this article. I wrote it not long after 9/11 and I would not change a word of it.

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Let me first of all state my basic position. I love America. There, I have said it. But I think there is a problem. I think the citizens of the United States are deluding themselves that they live in the 'Land of the Free'.

As I write this, in the downtown financial district of Boston Massachusetts, I am a hundred and fifty yards from the site of the historic Boston Tea Party, right here on the harbour lip of Fort Point Channel. In my opinion this site rates as one of the most significant places on Earth, third in my list of inspirational locations which I have personally visited, right behind Avebury and Stonehenge, and even creeping ahead of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Yes, I am one of those obsessive libertarians. I really am that sad.

Because in the future, when all of the current omnipotent state machines of the world have shrunk to nothing, this site in Boston harbour will be hailed as the Mohawk-dressed pinprick which first burst their bubble, the very point in space and time where the idea of the necessity of the state first started to die.

Birthplace of a libertarian revolution

But I fear we have a long road to travel before we reach that heady day, when the final Byzantine Emperor of the state is killed defending its walls of mediocrity, defending its rights to general taxation, and defending its monopoly provision of both justice and security. Because what I discovered, in Boston, admittedly in a state which ought to be renamed Taxachusetts, was a shock.

The first shock came downtown. I was admiring a fine statue of Samuel Adams, the first ever Governor of Massachusetts, and a notable early American Patriot. This liberty-slogan encrusted statue stands out in front of Faneuil Hall, itself known as the 'Cradle of American Liberty', where George Washington himself toasted the first birthday of the new nation. But just look at what they have made Samuel Adams stare at, in statue form, for the last thirty years:

Boston City Hall

I wonder how many American taxpayers it takes to keep the candles burning in this particular concrete monstrosity, of an afternoon. If someone were to offer me a hundred million dollars, and ask me to create a life-size model of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth, I would decline the cash and simply hand my sponsors the address of this statist horror.

Designed with the feeling in mind of 'making the individual look small' and 'making the state look big', this wind-chilled horror also cloaks itself in one of those Red Square style plazas so beloved of socialist architects, one of those communal areas that nobody in any community ever wants to spend any time in, unless 'persuaded' to go there, to wave happily at their leaders, by men with guns in their pockets. Apparently, according to my Bostonian sources, this North Korean style plaza was created by the destruction of an earlier much-missed and much-loved Bostonian cavalcade of buildings, you know the sort, filled with life, character, spontaneity, and individuality. But no, all swept away to create this hideous parasite-drenched edifice. Words alone cannot describe my shock at encountering this cuboid spawn of the Borg, and even now, my jaw is dropping at the incredulity of my discovery, as I turned away from Mr Adams' statue to witness the sharpness of those Gulag-inspired concrete guillotines before me. Nightmarish.

Even my personal old Smeagol chained in his socialist cage in the centre of my mind had to laugh, in sympathy, with the new capitalist me. For we were both brought up as Marxists in a union-dominated 1970s England, and like every other collectivist mind in England, we drank from the milk of the idea that all capitalist evil in the world emanated directly from the Great Satan in the west, from the land of John Wayne, from the land of Walt Disney, and from the land of Davy Crockett.

Little did we realise that even as we washed our developing minds in Das Kapital, there existed places in this same America portraying an undisclosed triumph of the world's collectivist social will.

I wandered up the steps of this terrible building in a daze, wrapped in fifteen cold-protecting layers, to find the City Hall's windswept plaza spreading out before me. And what was the sole building permitted within the confines of this vast empty frozen public arena? Think 'monument to collectivisation', and you may get it. Yes, it was the entrance to a collectivised transport system. Unbelievable.

An entrance shack squatted like a flue pipe directly up from hell, on one side of the plaza. This chimney led down to a dilapidated subway system. One of the escalators was out of order. Surely it can't be collectivised, I thought? Surely not in America? My blessed America? But it came as no surprise, later, to discover that this one-fee-fits-all subway system did indeed 'benefit' from generous government handouts.

It only took one or two long delays on short simple routes to remind me of London's similarly lobotomised Underground system. Though saying that, the staff were far more helpful here in guiding this stranger in a strange land to a remote cinema complex, for his second viewing of The Return of the King.

But that is what I love about America, even though it is more socialised than it apparently realises. The women are still sexier, the men are still handsomer, and everyone is still better dressed. Even the grunge kids are grungier, the lowlifes are lowlier, and almost without exception everyone is far more polite than we precious tight-assed Brits. Even a beggar I met in the doorway of a Wellesley breakfast coffee shop was polite, wishing me a good day, despite my absolute point-blank refusal to give him a dollar. Well, I did not say anything. He just knew by the look in my eye not to ask.

So, getting back to the story, what was the name of this subway station, this dribbling Shelob spider of a station, at the heart of Boston's Transit system? Just to keep the Orwellian motif going, the state-based God of Collectivism had, without the slightest trace of apparent irony, decided to name this particular subway station Government Center. I almost ran screaming from the shack. I looked up half expecting to see the picture of a man staring back down at me, his face bearing a thick luxuriant black moustache, and to hear a distant bell chiming thirteen o'clock. There was indeed a large face on the wall of the City Hall, but I was in no mood to snap it. Fortunately, I can find no pictures of it on the Internet, either. Which is a good thing.

I had to get out of there. So I staggered back down to good ol' Uncle Sam, outside his Cradle of Liberty:

Samuel Adams, Hero of Liberty

Now that's more like it, I thought. For I really do love America, and I am sure this travesty of a City Hall building is still curable. Do yourself a favour, Bostonians, and give Samuel Adams something decent to look at. If in the intervening period of time, before states cease to exist, you still need something to house your city administrators in, and even private city street owners will need some kind of office, knock the whole thing down and replace it with something Greek and magnificent, like the splendid Widener Library in Harvard Yard.

And so, escaping from America's worst building, please God do not ever let me find anything worse, I walked through the financial district, my home for the next five days, down to the Boston Tea Party ship. Again, it came as something as a surprise, in the frozen Arctic air, to discover the following sign:

The Boston Tea Party site is closed, indefinitely

I had expected that being British, they would not let me in, but for the whole thing to be closed to everyone started to worry me, again, on your behalf. For as Wendell Phillips said in his 1852 speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 'Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty'. And if you are going to let a site like this get rundown, and let it get surrounded by castaway concrete from a swathe of ugly federal building programs, you must ask yourselves if your vigilance is indeed slipping.

But maybe I am overdoing the doom-and-gloom thing, mainly because I wanted to be photographed throwing a tea chest over the side. If people refuse to value a thing, such as a constantly open Tea Party site, could it said to be a good thing that the state fails to make taxpayers pay to support it? Well, yes, maybe it could. But of course, the taxpayers of Boston have very little cash left to support Tea Party ships, because for the next 100 years they are going to be paying back the twelve billion dollars it has cost them for The Big Dig, a massively expensive Keynesian pump-prime pork-barrel project to build various tunnels through the cream cheese of Boston's complex soil structures.

Has it been worth it? Only you Bostonians can decide that. I certainly hope all the community outreach programs you've been subjected to, in mitigation of the project, and costing up to a third of the outlay, have proved worth it to you, as well as the tens of millions spent on the preservation of Rumney Marsh. I know I can never let a day go by without logging on to my nearest community outreach activist outlet or squelching through my nearest city marsh.

But before I continue, I really do have to mention the weather. I thought we Brits were obsessed. On my favourite news outlet, NBC channel-7, my favourite meteorologist, Pete Bouchard, spent up to 15 minutes every hour giving me the latest blow-by-blow account of every single snow cloud, or every single possible snow cloud, in the entire New England area. What's more, it took me just two days before I stopped seeing him as Bill Murray, in Groundhog Day, and started seeing him as my very own personal friend, Uncle Pete, helping me through the weather-torn day.

And boy, did we need helping. The day I landed it was colder than the dark side of the moon. On a cold day. In an Ice Age. With the windows open.

To say it was cold, would be like saying a Super Nova is slightly hot. I have never experienced such depraved iciness. How any of you manage to stay living in Boston, when our fine brave Patriot boys can walk around in light sweaters, in Houston, defies me. Yes, you have history, and bendy streets, and autumn, or as you bizarrely call it, Fall, but crikey, such cold. Chill the marrow? I may never be able to father children again.

Your intrepid hero found his future barricade gear great for the cold

Saying that, though, after a couple of days I started getting used to it. Americans started sounding less American, and I suspect that I may have started sounding less English. I once spent three weeks in Vancouver, and when I left everyone there was speaking plain unaccented English, and everyone back in England was speaking like David Niven, old boy. I fear I have a chameleon-like adaptability to foreign culture, particularly when I find it preferable to our own homegrown English chip-on-the-shoulder culture.

Indeed, in many ways, as I wandered around Boston, I increasingly came to think that New England is the England we stupid English threw away a hundred years ago, in our doomed bid to grow our heavenly unions and socialised culture into an Earthly Paradise. And even despite the cold, and the lumpen presence of City Hall, I felt increasingly comfortable, to the point where if you could've got my wife to agree, whisked my children over, and swapped my purple passport for one with an eagle on it, I would have kissed you.

But these little things just kept niggling away at me:

Rauchen verboten

Why are you, in the US, exporting socialism to us, in the EU? That's our job, the other way around. I'd heard New York had a smoking ban. But New York is surreal. It does not actually exist, except that bit where NBC broadcasts from, in Rockefeller Plaza. But to find smoking banned and illegal in private establishments, even in Boston, once again threw me out of kilter.

And then there were all those New Hampshire Primary statements, from the Democrats, along the lines of this:

We're going to find ways to cut Middle-Class health bills

What? By breaking the protectionist power of America's oldest producer-interest union, the AMA? Or by removing all that state subsidy, to enable tax cuts, to help ordinary people pay their medical bills? Oh, no, sir. By robbing successful people via raised tax levels. Not that successful people will pay these tax hikes, of course, because their accountants are too well-paid to allow it. What the Democrats will actually pay for it with will be even greater deficits. Which is free money. Right?

Nobody on the TV debates seemed to challenge the Democratic wannabees on any of this. They just let it go. And removing Bush's tax cut seemed to be stated as a good thing, and yes his deficit is outrageous, but you cure this by cutting government spending, not by abandoning tax cuts. And the questioning audiences and newscasters just let it go. And at that point I let it go, too.

It is not my problem, I thought. It has really got nothing to do with me. But, of course, it does have something to do with me. Because we, in socialised Europe, look to you, in America, as beacons of freedom and as rays of hope in our own feeble fight against the massive forces of collectivisation, as we slide into our death pit of EU taxes and totalitarianism.

But it seems you are getting to be just as bad over there, and in some ways worse, as for example with the smoking bans in private establishments. Even New Labour in the UK will not contemplate that. Just yet. But it is only a matter of time before they will say:

If they've even banned it in America, then it's OK for us to ban it over here, too

For our home-grown socialists to use the good ol' US of A as a beacon of socialised perfection may disturb you. I hope it does, anyway. It certainly disturbs me. And it is happening more and more. I just thought, as a friend, I should warn you. Think of me as Paul Revere, whose splendid horse-borne statue I discovered on a very brisk walk up to Bunker Hill. Think of me as an American Patriot in disguise. I even have a T-shirt with 'New England Patriots' on it, if it makes you feel any better. Not that we Pats fans need such things, any more, with our almost Jonny Wilkinson style late Superbowl win.

The Old State House

The subtle use of language of these Democratic candidates, several of them from New England, also set my mind on edge. It took me a few hours to figure out why. Reading some books on New England history and the Boston Freedom Trail, where I later encountered the splendid Old State House still resplendent under the Lion and the Unicorn of Great Britain, I realised what was causing this edginess.

They have twisted the language of your revolution. The American Revolution was a libertarian revolution, a movement against the state, against taxation, against coercive will, but mainly a liberty from the oppression of political tyrants. But Democrat proto-statesmen now describe it habitually in terms of socialist revolution, in terms of a liberty from the oppression of the rich. They dress it in the blood-drenched colours of the French Revolution, rather than the clear red, white, and blue colours of the true American Revolution. This use of language is very clever, it is very subtle, and it is very dangerous. Beware!

There are two sorts of rich people. Those who serve consumers spectacularly well, and those who serve themselves spectacularly well via the corruption of politics. The early Americans revolted against the second political kind, particularly the get-rich-quick Members of Parliament and landed gentry back over the Atlantic, in Britain. The Democrats are now using this perfectly decent anti-rich motivation to direct an attack against the first kind, the ones who serve society, by using even more political power against them. What you will then receive is more of these second kind of rich, the odious kind, the kind who should be removed, the kind who would suck your bones dry, given the opportunity. What the Democrats would destroy are those rich people who made America great through their innovation and industry, by associating them in their use of language with the power brokers of Washington, the lobbyists, and all the other snouts in the trough of political power. It is a very clever trick. The way to get rid of these people is to lessen and then remove politicians from having any power. Not by giving more of it to them, as the Democrats would have you believe.

Which leaves us with just two more important questions to answer, the first concerning liquid refreshment. Namely, what is the finest beer in New England? Oh, easy peasy lemon squeezy, my friends. How could it be anything other than Samuel Adams, perhaps the finest beer in the world. Let's hope this well-deserved accolade, tested in some depth by your humble correspondent, makes it up to poor old Sam's statue for having to look upon the ghastly Boston City Hall, for eternity. What ever did he do to deserve that? So in recompense, tonight, I shall raise a glass to dear old Sam.

[BTW, I managed to avoid going into the hideous Cheers bar. Those of you in Boston will know where I mean.]

And so finally, we come to the most important question of all, for a man on a five day business trip. That concerning lunch. Which is better? Finagle Bagel or Dunkin Donuts?

After much deliberation, it has got to be Finagle Bagel every time. Those so-called bagels from Dunkin Donuts just suck. Big time.

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Sitting in London and watching the New Hampshire primary is a strange experience. The 'Republicrats' have a disgraceful advantage built into the US election process with different laws applying to their candidates than for those of other parties.

For British readers it is as though the Liberal Democrats had to get up to three or four million signatures on a petition to be allowed to appear on the ballot paper, as opposed to the £150 fee and a copy of the party's constitution to the Electoral Commission and 6,590 voters to sign nomination papers for the whole country.

The good bit about primaries, which have no equivalent in the UK, is that the remote suited class gets a sustained exposure to public opinion, before the voters have to choose which licensed thief to put in charge. In Britain, all the Democrat nominees would be elected to Parliament, however extreme or daft their ideas, because of the way that candidates are appointed. Those that failed to win an election would stand a good chance of being appointed to the House of Lords for life or made the director of some welfare agency.

Apart from the actual hopping from state to state (surely places like Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Idaho must be absolute hell to go out on hustings at this time of the year!) the other complexity for British observers is the campaign money.
In the UK, no declared candidate may spend more than a very small sum of money for his campaign. We are talking about a few thousand pounds for a candidate to the House of Commons. Because our legislation has only just got round to realising that political parties exist, these can spend what they like, provided they don't plug the names of individual candidates. So a £20 million poster advertising campaign saying Vote Liberal would be fine, but a £50 thousand pound leaflet campaign in Sedgefield to promote Tony Blair could get the result overturned and the candidate barred from contesting elections for up to seven years. Oh and apart from oddball experiments, we all mark a box with a cross, and the candidates are listed in named alphabetical order. No 'hanging chads'.

As I understand it, US candidates can either take taxpayers' money to promote their campaign (no way as yet in the UK, free rationed TV broadcast aside), or they can refuse and spend as much as their supporters can afford. The current leader in the race for the Democratic nomination, Senator John Kerry, has apparently mortgaged his house and refused taxpayers' money. This apparently noble gesture means that if he gets donors as a result of his good results so far, he can choose in which states and how the money will be spent.

Having read up on the Democrat candidates about issues that would affect someone outside the US, my current guess is that Senator John Edwards is the least objectionable on tax and foreign trade grounds (I would probably take the majority US view and abstain, in case anyone thinks I have gone soft on socialism). Senator Edwards has apparently opposed the steel tariffs brought in by President Bush and 'only' wants to scrap some of Mr Bush's tax cutting proposals. As far as I can tell, all the other candidates would scrap all tax cuts and introduce the National Health Service to the ruin of US healthcare and as a threat to future medical progress.

I gather Senator Edwards made his money as a litigation lawyer, so I guess there's plenty to deplore there. Would he do more harm in the White House than in the courtroom?

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Thought Mesh has a post that captures the lefty/statist mindset like an entomologist with a nice long needle.

I made the mistake (again!) of listening to the local NPR station. One of their features is a segment where a law professor opines on society and the law. She’s not always a complete loon. Today she was only semi-loony in a paean to an associate of hers who was a crusader for the poor. What he did, according to her, was encourage the "oppressed" to become involved in politics. The view was that this was not only a good thing in itself, but enabled those involved to "take charge of their own lives". But politics is primarily about taking charge of other people’s lives. It is precisely those in charge of themselves that have no need of politics. The commentator then listed the marvelous things that this involvement in politics had yielded - primarily recreational projects built at taxpayer expense. So it boiled down in the end to forming gangs and using the power of that gang to extract money from other people. I was hoping for "started businesses", "got jobs", "became educated" kind of things. But apparently that's not the way the poor and oppressed should improve their lot, by improving themselves and their families. Instead they should get together to get their slice of pork. Not quite the uplifting saga of the American Dream one might hope for.

Of course, the fact that this particular lefty statist found a taxpayer-subsidized outlet on National Public Radio is just the icing on the cake.

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From the Guardian, a perfect illustration of the importance of 'anti-junk-food' campaigning as the newfound cause du jour of the British left. It is hard to tell which aspect of his own report the author finds more disturbing: capital punishment or the lack of healthy food options for the condemned:

Raymond Rowsey got his deadly dose on January 9, in North Carolina. The sole white among these executed men, Rowsey was convicted for the killing of a convenience store clerk - or perhaps his accomplice half-brother did it, no one seemed quite sure at the trial. Their takings? Two pornographic magazines and $54. Rowsey had a history of horrific childhood abuse. His last meal was pizza, chicken wings, two packets of peanut M&Ms, and a Pepsi.

Junk food and judicial killing. Feel queasy?

But would not the offer of a balanced, healthy last meal be a bit...well, redundant?

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A sign of health from the larger body politic spotted at, of all places, the Detroit Auto Show. Brock Yates of the Wall Street Journal notes that the massively cool show features gargantuan amounts of the horsepower so beloved of the masses, and very little of that underpowered PC crap prescribed by our putative betters.

Utopians might expect that the auto makers will offer countless octane-stingy hybrids and zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles to a public seeking to wean itself from all addiction to the cursed internal combustion engine. Sadly, this is not the case. Tree-huggers and Friends of the Earth would be better advised to picnic on the banks of the Love Canal than to set foot in the vast precincts of Detroit's Cobo Hall.

On the pole position, as it were, was the rakish Chrysler ME412, a so-called halo car (read image-builder) coupe that, thanks to four turbochargers pumping high-test into its gasping 12 cylinders, produces 850 horsepower. DaimlerChrysler engineers who developed the monster claim it will generate top speeds approaching 250 miles an hour.

Throughout Cobo Hall lurk dozens of such muscle cars, Ferraris, Vipers, Lamborghinis, BMWs, Jaguars, Audis, Acuras, et al., ready and willing to tear up pavements and strike the fear of God into unwitting passengers at the touch of the throttle. Four hundred horsepower is not unusual. Three hundred horsepower can be found under the hoods of literally dozens of sedans and SUVs. Two hundred horsepower is simply not worth mentioning.

Sounds like fun to me. Chicago is having its auto show in a few weeks. Its been a few years since I went, so I do believe I will drive (yes, drive - probably in my full-size pickup, thank you) down for a look. The larger point is slipped in at the end of the piece:

The lure of the open road increases by the day. With it comes the romance--perceived or otherwise--of a freedom ride at the wheel of an automobile. This is a hateful thought for greenies, social engineers, media elites and intellectuals everywhere, but the lunatic love affair with the car remains in a state of steamy passion.

There is no debating that hybrids and fuel cells make sense in terms of the environment and reducing fossil-fuel dependence. But until these new powerplants can equal current conventional gasoline engines in terms of performance, cost and durability, auto makers will respond to the harsh realities of the marketplace. No amount of government mandates, media pressure or high-minded pontifications can replace the simple laws of supply and demand.

The internal combustion automobile is one of the biggest engines of personal liberty ever created, right up there with the firearm. With it, the individual is free to leave the jurisdiction, free to travel on his own schedule, and free to haul an enormous amount of stuff around with him if he desires. "Mass" transit trains its users to be livestock, and so it is no wonder that our putative betters are constantly trying force us into its cattle cars. The old saw about totalitarian governments making the trains run on time cuts deeper than many think. By contrast, the automobile makes you captain of your own ship.

Enough with the mixed metaphors. The American insistence on bigger and more powerful automobiles, and continued avoidance of mass transit except as an utter last resort, should give lovers of liberty cause for cheer.

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The trial of American businesswoman Martha Stewart is shortly about to get underway. I am, on the basis of what I have read about the charges brought against her, unconvinced she was guilty of insider trading, and in fact deeply disturbed that prosecutors have chosen to go ahead with this case on the basis of what looks like thin evidence, as described in detail in this article in Reason magazine.

I have a problem with insider trading as it is defined by lawmakers in the United States, Europe, and in certain other parts of the world. In all too many cases, insider trading is so loosely defined that any entrepreneur with a quick dialing finger and fast ability to spot information - surely a praiseworthy thing - could, according to some definitions, be found guilty of insider trading. Insider trading has become rather similar to anti-trust in this regard, in that capitalist-bashing lawmakers can use it to cut down the successful.

I do not see any relief coming soon from our legislators. Insider trading is often a way for politically ambitious legislators and public prosecutors to make a name for themselves. And even in those cases where a chief executive or other senior business person has acted wrongly, one usually finds that the act in question amounted to fraud, theft or some other crime already covered in company and in our existing Common law. For example, if say, CEO Fred Smith uses information obtained in secret and in a way that violates his own company's rules, he should be sacked for breaking company rules and the terms of his contract. No broader insider trading law is necessary.

Also, there is no reason why, for example, a market like the Nasdaq exchange could not stipulate that all listed firms adhere to certain standards of corporate behaviour. Exchanges which let companies do what they want may have to pay a "reputational price" in that some investors will choose to migrate to more upright exchanges. This happens to a certain extent already, because stock exchanges in countries with loose regulations and opaque reporting standards - as has been the case in parts of Latin America, for example - lose out to exchanges like the Dow Jones our own FTSE. In fact, globalisation is forcing a "race to the top" in terms of corporate behaviour as stock market leaders around the world seek to attract capital. The market wins again. (By the way, the collapse of Italian food group Parmalat has helped underscore the reputational damage to a whole country - in this case Italy - when a firm is thought to have behaved wrongly).

On a more economically theoretical basis, insider trading, even if one could definite it clearly, usually poses no actual "harm" either to the broader investor if one accepts that capital markets are typically highly efficient in these days, when price anomalies are usually exposed in seconds in this electronic age.

Time to put insider trading laws under the spotlight, and hopefully, in the dustbin.

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Is it still the law in America that a person has to be born in the USA in order to be elected as President?

If so, then doesn't that rather scupper the prospects of this campaign to get Tony Blair elected as US President in 2004?

Between the babbling of George W. Bush on the right, the blathering of the anti-war left, and the cluck-clucking of media hens everywhere, stands Tony Blair, articulate and principled.

Many Americans understand and support Iraqi Freedom because of the leadership provided by Mr. Blair, and many of us would feel much safer if Mr. Blair occupied the White House.

I have chosen to ignore the instincts that are screaming the word 'spoof' into my ear and play along with this for a moment because I can wholly understand where these people are coming from. Would not Our Glorious Leader, a slick, media-savvy (but 'principled') social democrat internationalist with hawkish defence policy credentials, make for the ideal Democrat candidate? Would those qualities not press the all the right buttons in just about every constituency to which the Democrats can possibly hope to appeal? Could he even win?

We will never know. If it was up to me, they could have him. Today. With considerable pleasure and relief. But it is not up to me. Had Mr and Mrs Blair senior taken it into their heads to up sticks and settle in California then I would not be in the least surprised to see Governor Blair as runaway favourite for the Democrat nomination in 2004.

And therein lies the story here. You can pretty much discount all the guff about 'Iraqi Freedom'. Having decided that none of their home-grown candidates stands a cat in hell's chance of dislodging George Bush, this particular faction is seeking comfort and refuge in an acted-out fantasy of what-might-have-been.

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Nobody who has read The Road To Serfdom will have been in the least surprised at the increased use these days of the word "Czar" in political discourse. It signals the quite deliberate, conscious and explicit demand for governmental tyranny, not for its own sake, but to cut through all the crap deposited everywhere by previous government officials. Czarism signals the demand that government cease playing even by its own rules, let alone anyone else's.

To dig a bit deeper into the subject I tried typing "czar" into Google.

I actually didn't get as many different Czarships as I was hoping for. Not really hoping, you understand, but hoping for the purposes of this posting. I had in mind a posting along the lines of this one, which lists all the different ways in which "the public needs to be educated". Googling reaped a rich harvest with that one. But czardoms proved to be in relatively short supply. So, in a way, I have good news to report. Not as many czardoms as you might think.

I found this Privacy Czar and a call, reported on here, for him to be replaced by the current US administration. And inevitably there is this personage, who is genuinely scary of course, to be laughed and sneered at only as part of the deadly serious business of running him out of office and abolishing his job, and strangling the fatuous ambitions it is based on.

There is this cybersecurity czar. Apart from that, very little, apparently. Is there a list of czardoms somewhere that I have missed?

In other words, and I'm really very pleased about this, truly, what I actually discovered was what these people at the Cornell University Computing Science Department, way ahead of me, had long ago spotted, which is that czardom in your average democracy is usually only a word, not to say a poisoned chalice. A czar is a commissioner, an under-secretary with special responsibility for, a "co-ordinator", a gopher, with a grander and scarier sounding title than those, but with none of the means on his desk actually to solve the problem he has been put in charge of, which in any case has only reached the czar stage because it is insoluble.

The Cornell computerfolk would seem to have been watching all this, because they've taken to calling their own functionaries "czars" also.

In their case the insoluble problem is somewhat different to those confronted with czardom by your average government. Their problem is to get people to do boring things without being paid anything. And it seems that the thrill of being a czar doesn't work any better there than elsewhere, as they foresaw.

Replacements have been requested for the following czarships. If you are interested in taking up one of these positions, or would like to have a position listed as available, please contact either the current czar listed for that position or the Czar Czar. Please remember that it is the current czar's responsibility to find a replacement when they wish to give up a czarship, though the Czar Czar can offer suggestions of people who might be available to fill the position.

Czardom as slavery! You have to find some other poor sap to do it before you are allowed to stop. It would seem that the current Colloquium Czar is anxious to replace himself. He's got fed up with doing this.

The Colloquium Czar unlocks the lecture hall for the weekly department colloquium and makes sure that any overhead projectors or other equipment that is needed is available. They also close up the room after the colloquium is over.

Well, at least the job is doable, for as long as you can stand doing it.

But of course, having to replace yourself is only a rule, which can be Cut Through like any other piece of Red Tape. The people in charge of these arrangements can't actually do anything if the slave simply buggers off the plantation while neglecting to entice any other slave to perform his ex-duties. And if there are no volunteers in the first place, what do you do then?

The following czarships are no longer active, due to lack of interest or judgment that they are no longer needed. If you would like to see one of these czarships reactivated, contact the Czar Czar.

That has to be the job description of the century so far:

The overseer of the czarships, the Czar Czar maintains the current list of czarships and their corresponding czars. In addition, they keep track of any information about performing particular czar duties. If a czar wishes to retire from their position, the Czar Czar can help find possible replacements.

The name of the current Czar Czar is Stephen Chong. I know, he/she should be called "Gabor" – glad we've got that out of the way. But how long before a "Czar Czar" pops up for real, in a real public sector, somewhere?

Seriously, I congratulate these Cornellians (?) for having (a) spotted something seriously funny and funnily serious going on out there in the real world, (b) deciding to take some appropriate piss out of it, and (c) doing so by having some fun with their own arrangements, thereby proving that they are not taking themselves and their own activities over-seriously either.

A true understanding of the world? A sense of their own relative unimportance in that larger scheme of things? A sense of humour? Can they really be students at all?

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The fine science fiction writer Orson Scott Card delivers a brutal, and well-deserved, rebuff to the Democratic Party.

[The Democratic candidates] platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

But then I watch the steady campaign of the national news media to try to win this for the Democrats, and I wonder. Could this insane, self-destructive, extremist-dominated party actually win the presidency? It might--because the media are trying as hard as they can to pound home the message that the Bush presidency is a failure--even though by every rational measure it is not.

God knows I am no fan of the Bush administration's domestic policies, but for the most part the Dems promise more of what I don't like about Bush. Fine, I can deal with that, I vote for a couple of Democrats consistently because they are sterling human beings, every political system needs to have legitimately competitive parties to keep the bastards in power honest, etc.

However, the truly disturbing development from the Dem side of the aisle is that they have, in important ways, ceased to be a loyal opposition.

The Democrats are acting in precisely the way they would be acting if their plan was to deliver victory to the Islamists and their transnational progressive allies, who are the enemies of the US. This war will be won or lost in the domestic politics of the US. If the US can stay the course, then I have little doubt that we can crush our enemies abroad and, at a minimum, install successor governments in the terror states that will not repeat the errors of their predecessors. If, however, the US loses its nerve and follows the policy prescriptions of the Democrats, then the Islamists can and will come back bigger and badder than ever, and one of these days, it won't be a couple of planes and envelopes with anthrax powder, it will be nukes and smallpox.

Osama bin Laden's military strategy is: If you make a war cost enough, Americans will give up and go home. Now, bin Laden isn't actually all that bright; his campaign to make us go home is in fact what brought us into Afghanistan and Iraq. But he's still telling his followers: Keep killing Americans and eventually, antigovernment factions within the United States will choose to give up the struggle.

The Islamists are counting on party politics in the US to undercut our war effort and ultimately lead us to pull back, probably under the guise of handing over responsibility to the UN, which has a record ranging from utter ineffectiveness in opposing Islamist terrorism to enabling such terrorism.

Much of the current Democratic playbook could have been written by Osama and Saddam - it is a recipe for US pullback, and thus for Islamist resurgence.

Think what it will mean if we elect a Democratic candidate who has committed himself to an antiwar posture in order to get his party's nomination.

Our enemies will be certain that they are winning the war on the battleground that matters--American public opinion. So they will continue to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can, because it works.

Our soldiers will lose heart, because they will know that their commander in chief is a man who is not committed to winning the war they have risked death in order to fight. When the commander in chief is willing to call victory defeat in order to win an election, his soldiers can only assume that their lives will be thrown away for nothing. That's when an army, filled with despair, becomes beatable even by inferior forces.

And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end.

I would love for the Democratic Party to serve its essential function of loyal opposition, offering constructive criticism of domestic and foreign policies that increase the chances of American success in achieving its long-term, enlightenend self-interest. The current Democratic Party, though, is blinded by hatred and greed for power, and in important ways is serving the ends of America's enemies.

Perhaps this will mean the end of the Democratic Party, and a major shake-up of America's political system that could open the door for a new major party that will be more libertarian than either statist alternative. That is a question for tomorrow, and one that will mean little in an American landscape littered with smoking holes like that left in lower Manhattan on 9/11. You may dislike the current American means and methods of fighting Islamist extremism and its state sponsors, but there are no credible alternatives on the table that will result in victory for our side. Any plan that depends on permission from the UN or the current European allies of the terror states is obviously doomed to fail, but that is what the Democrats propose. There is a fine line between positing such alternatives and undercutting an ongoing war effort, but in my view the Democrats have crossed that line, and I see no prospect of sanity breaking out anytime soon.

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Wonderful editorial in the Wall Street Journal today that spins out one of my favorite conceits - that there is no difference between the Mafia (the mob, la cosa nostra, call it what you will) and party politics. The details are very much American politics "inside-baseball", but I have no doubt that a similar column could be written in England or elsewhere. A taste:

Al Gore's grandly public endorsement of Howard Dean last week confirms my view that the easiest way to understand the Democratic Party today is by watching "The Godfather."

I think of Bill Clinton as the Don Corleone of the Democratic Party. In the organization, there is no one above him. Terry McAuliffe is his Tom Hagen, who talks to the outside world. I leave it to others to fill out the rest of the cast.

It has been talked about among the cognoscenti for some weeks now that the new Dean organization, if he secured the nomination, would challenge the Clintons' control of the party apparatus, meaning mainly the cash flow from contributors and the unions. But I thought it more likely that if Mr. Dean got the nomination, he would be visited over a table in a nice restaurant, the Palm in Washington, by Mr. McAuliffe and Harold Ickes, who would explain that he could win the presidency with them, but not without them.

With this understanding, an alliance of partners would result. The old organization and its traditional sources of income--the patronage mills, the government contracts, the public-bond issues, the legal jobs--would survive, and Mr. Dean's people would be given significant control, maybe half. Now it's not so clear that Howard Dean needs to cut a deal with the Clinton factions, because maybe the factions aren't so close to the Clintons anymore.

I have long suspected that by far the most important aspect of the current Democratic primary is the internal struggle for control of the party that it is part of. Howard Dean has never liked the Clintons, who now control the party, and owes them nothing - he has his own internet-based grassroots and fundraising machinery. If he wins the nomination, he will become the new head of the Democratic Party, displacing the Clintons.

The Clintons have to oppose Dean because they don't have any hooks in him - if you don't understand this, you don't understand power politics at all. The Clintons have always been the primary motivator behind the Stop Dean movement. They must maintain their control of the Democratic Party, or Hillary's Presidential ambitions will come to naught. Wesley Clark, the quintessential Stop Dean candidate, is wholly a creation of the Clintons. The Clintons aren't concerned that Dean will win the Presidency and prevent Hillary from running in 2008 (as the incumbent, Dean would be almost impossible for Hillary to challenge). They are concerned that Dean will win the nomination and control of the party, so that they will lose their only remaining fingerhold on influence, and the wealth and power it brings.

I regard the Clintons as a cancer on my country, and so, even though I think Howard Dean would make a dreadful President, I am all in favor of his winning the nomination.

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The estimable Austin Bay has a midstream assessment of the Iraq campaign and occupation. Grades are mixed. Given Mr. Bay's knowledge of things military and strategic insight (he was a supporter of the Iraqi campaign for hardnosed geopolitical reasons), the mixed grades bear some pondering. Read the whole thing (its not long), but a few excerpts struck my eye:

The number of Free Iraqi police and paramilitary personnel in the field is a rough yardstick, but ultimately Iraqi security is their job. The major U.S. mistake prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom was failing to create a functioning Iraqi constabulary. The United States had 3,000 exiles training in Hungary, but that simply didn't cut it. Interim coalition grade: D.

The March-April military campaign was a huge success. Saddam's regime collapsed quickly, with few civilian casualties. The strategic demonstration of American power was dramatic, and it put teeth in the U.N.'s 1991 resolutions. Some day, U.N. sanctions may mean something again. Final Grade: A (No attack from Turkey, so no A+. A northern attack would have swept Tikrit and the Sunni Triangle, conceivably diminishing the current opposition in these Baathist districts.)

International contributions to Iraqi reconstruction, both in number of contributors and total capital is a strategic political measure. Interim Grade: C-

One measure that he does not address is control of Iraq's borders with neighboring sponsors of terror. Until this occurs, Iraq is not secure. I'm not sure how we are doing on this front, but I read Austin Bay to find out stuff like this!

Interesting, and to my mind somewhat pessimistic, overview of the current situation.

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The New York Times startles today with an editorial that is all in favor of personal responsibility rather than legal diktat. The topic: speed limits.

With the conviction Monday of Representative Bill Janklow of South Dakota for vehicular manslaughter, the West's fondness for fast driving is again in the news, this time as part of a tragedy. Mr. Janklow sped through a stop sign near his hometown, Flandreau, S.D., last August and killed a motorcyclist. He has resigned from the House and faces up to 11 years in prison.

Mr. Janklow's very conviction is proof that Westerners' love of speed has its limits. But the limits are those dictated by duty and personal responsibility, not by law.

Western attitudes about speed limits have always been misconstrued: we do not encourage deviant behavior so much as personal responsibility. It's an antiquated stance, this resistance to limiting individual freedom, and it is often used as evidence of our irresponsibility.

We can hold individuals accountable for bad choices without limiting everyone's freedom.

Needless to say, the author is not a regular staff writer for the NYT, but nonetheless, the publication of these thoughts without a single sneer of condescension by the panjandrums of the Upper West Side is worth recognizing. It is almost impossible to find criticism of the nanny state in the Times, but here it is.

Hat tip to Samizdata reader Mr. Haas for the pointer.

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Today, the US Supreme Court issued a decision that will live in infamy. It upheld the core provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. I confess I have not yet digested the full 300 page turd dropped on the Constitution by our masters at the Supreme Court, but I would observe that any decision of this length is bound to be flawed. It does not take many words to apply the simple phrase "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech" to overturn legislation; it does, however, take many, many words to obfuscate the meaning of that phrase sufficiently to uphold legislation that, in part, prohibits the airing of campaign commercials in the weeks before an election.

I will address one of the fundamental flaws underlying the entire project of regulating campaign finance - the claim that money does not equal speech.

First, though, allow me to state that it is perfectly consistent with freedom of speech to outlaw bribery and other permutations of the quid pro quo that may crop up in connection with campaign finance activities. Outlawing bribery in such circumstances is no more a restriction on freedom of speech than outlawing the fencing of stolen property is a restriction on freedom of contract.

It is a fundamental premise of campaign finance regulation that such laws do not restrict speech, but rather restrict only the raising and spending of money.

This distinction between speaking and expending resources on speaking is utterly fallacious, unless you believe that guarantees of free speech extend only to the fine art of conversation. Any attempt to distribute your thoughts to persons who are not in the room with you when you utter them requires the use of resources, and thus the expenditure of money. Allowing the state to prohibit the use of resources to broadcast or distribute speech means that freedom of speech is no more than freedom to converse.

Speech, for all practical purposes, is the distribution to an audience of your thoughts. In the political realm (and most others as well) this distribution cannot be made to any meaningful audience without applying resources, that is, spending money. You cannot print a newspaper, distribute a flyer, operate a website, or stand on a streetcorner ranting through a bullhorn, without using money to distribute your speech. Even bullhorns cost money, after all. The use of resources, the expenditure of money, to distribute your speech, is an absolutely indivisible part of freedom of speech.

Yet campaign finance regulation is nothing more than state limitations on the use of resources to distribute political speech, which is to say, state limitations on political speech. No one would say that a prohibition on expenditures by a publisher to print and mail a magazine, or on a publisher charging for subscriptions or advertising, are consistent with freedom of speech, yet these limitations are closely analogous to the campaign finance restrictions now blessed by the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: I was grousing about this to one of my partners, and he pointed out that apparently the Supreme Court was just being somewhat over-literal. The Constitution protects "free speech," and they thought that meant it protected FREE speech. If you see what I mean. Sadly, that seems to be about the level of comprehension on display in the opinion.

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If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair:

The Green Party is expected to take control of San Francisco tomorrow and reclaim the city's hippy heritage with a campaign that has relied on mass yoga rallies and poetry readings to overturn 40 years of Democrat rule.

Victory in the mayoral election would provide the party with its first senior official in the United States and the result would confirm San Francisco's status as America's most politically radical city.

Yoga? Poetry readings? So that's how to beat the Democrats!

Among his policies are vast investment in cheap housing and the raising of the minimum wage to the highest in the country.

Assuming, of course, that any Green Party supporters actually have any intention of working for a living.

If he wins he has promised to make the city a "laboratory" for the party's policies.

And where have we heard that one before?

At his campaign offices supporters with Mohawk haircuts mingle with those with facial piercings. Or as self-styled "free-flowing" poet Dave Whitaker, who says he once got Bob Dylan stoned, put it: the campaign's success has been simply "karmic".

That place sounds like a white-hot furnace of cutting-edge political and economic analysis.

"Cast a wide net. Find the common thread. Let life flourish. Then, don't panic. Think organic. It's a race between history and hip-story."

Yup, works for me.

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For a textbook example of rent-seeking, look no further than that pustulent petri dish of corruption, Illinois, for a dandy look at how it is done with affirmative action, casino licensing, and (of course) political connections. It has to do with the troubled Rosemont casino, which would have been located just outside of Chicago. (Sorry, this post has been rattling around in draft long enough for my links to rot. You'll just have to take my word for it).

The State of Illinois licenses casinos, generally under terms that skim off obscene amounts of the profit to various appendages of the state. I suppose the State earns its money; since Illinois licenses very few casinos (Rosemont would be the 10th), it suppresses competition and thus enables those high profits to a significant degree. Regardless, I defy anyone to distinguish this racket from the more straightforward protection racket run by organized crime. Let the record show that the State of Illinois, through its protection racket for casinos, is perhaps the uber-rent-seeker in the whole sordid arrangement.

As part of its licensing requirements, the State of Illinois requires that 20% of the casino ownership be in the hands of certain specified ethnic groups and women. Since it is very difficult to run a casino at a loss in Illinois, these investments are very attractive and thus expensive. Thus, poor folks need not apply, regardless of their genetic backgrounds or personal histories of woe and oppression. Let us dispense, then, with the notion that this set-aside helps the needy or corrects historical wrongs.

No surprise then, that the group of ethnically favored investors consisted of the wives of wealthy and powerful men, the presumably wealthy widow of a deceased professional athlete, and another presumably wealthy professional athlete. This, in the name of social equality. Really, their participation in the deal at all is the second instance of rent-seeking, but we have only just begun.

It turns out that the majority investors were mobbed up. (In a casino deal! In Al Capone's hometown! Imagine!) When this was discovered, the casino license that had been granted was, effectively, suspended. The license, which is still outstanding, will be sold off to pay the construction and other debts incurred in the Rosemont project.

Ordinarily, when a business venture that requires a license loses that license, the license disappears and is not available for resale and the investments made by the ownership group are rendered worthless. If you run a bar and you get your liquor license pulled, well, too bad. Your investment, your risk, your profits, and so also your loss. Anyone who fails to do their due diligence, and gets into bed with folks who should not hold the license, can expect to pay the penalty of laziness.

If the Rosemont deal existed in the real world, rather than the empyrean realm of clout and favors, one would expect the license to disappear so that the considerable investments made would be lost, including those of the ethnically and politically favored.

C'est la vie? Caveat emptor? Non! Rather, the license will be suspended, not cancelled, so that it can be sold to enable some, but not all, of the investors to get their money back. Which investors, you ask? Why, the ethnically and politically favored ones, of course. Not only do they get their money back, they get it back with interest! And are invited to participate in the next deal!

That, my friends, is how it is done. None of this sweat of the brow, do your research, take your chances nonsense for our betters. No, much easier and more profitable to get an invite into a business with government-guaranteed profits, and have your friends in office give you your money back, with interest, so you can try again when you manage to screw up the first time.

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I got dinked out of posting on a Mark Steyn column earlier this week. Fortunately, the prolific Mr. Steyn has lobbed another one my way, this time ruminating on the endemic corruption of Canada's one-party state in response to a reader inquiry. His thoughts are well worth the read, as they explore the many, many byways of political corruption in what is by all accounts a relatively law-abiding liberal democracy.

It’s certainly - how shall we put this? - striking that a fellow [Prime Minister Chretien] who’s spent 40 years in the House of Commons with the exception of a brief time-out in the late Eighties is, by Canadian standards, so phenomenally wealthy.

Let’s just pause there for a moment. In the modern Canadian state, it is not necessary for M Chrétien to do anything illegal. As he has said, after years in government, he’s a well-connected guy with a fat Rolodex who knows the wheels that have to be oiled: he can tell his clients “what is necessary for them to do”. That’s something folks will pay for, as out-of-office politicians in many western democracies have discovered. But very few have the opportunities of patronage that exist in Canada: unlike M Chrétien with Senator Fitzpatrick, Mr Bush cannot install a boardroom buddy from his ball-team days in the US Senate.

Third, it’s interesting to see how M Chrétien’s business deals – like the Grand-Mère - circle back to the government, in the form of one agency or another. He was able to tell M Duhaime “what it is necessary for him to do” – ie, put him touch with the BDC – and also able to tell the bank “what it is necessary for them to do” – ie, pony up the dough to M Duhaime. In a one-party state, he is in the fortunate position of being able to tell all parties “what it is necessary for them to do”.

Canada’s “national identity” is supposedly to be found in its “social programs”; Canadians are supposedly willing to pay higher taxes in order for a more equitable society. Quite where the 50% of income the government takes winds up is hard to see: I can’t help noticing that I see far more beggars on the streets of Toronto and Montreal than in Boston, New York, Chicago, or any other American city I’ve been in recently, whether run by Republicans or Democrats. The hospitals in Canada are so overloaded they’re unable to observe even basic hygiene procedures, a basic failing which covers everything from the Ontario health system’s incubation of SARS to Labrador’s gift of Chlamydia to its gynaecological patients. M Chrétien lectured Wall Street that, while Canada had fewer millionaires than America, it also had fewer poor people. But what you can’t help noticing is that the plutocrats we do have are almost all well-connected Liberal Party types or businessmen whose businesses are either subsidized or regulated by the government. That’s why in the one-party state we wind up not just with one party but one bookstore chain, one media chain, etc. Meanwhile, the gap in income between the governing class – in its broadest sense – and the governed grows ever wider. After 40 years as a guy who knows “what’s necessary” for others to do, M Chrétien is merely the most prominent exemplar of the system.

There are words to describe the kind of society that kicks veterans’ widows out on the street while giving the former riding secretary who approves the decision a $160,000 expense tab, that lavishes billions on corporate welfare on Lib-friendly businesses but can’t wash the instruments between pap smears: “Welfare state”? “Just society”? Try “kleptocracy”.

I find myself with very little to add.

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Some people have far too much time on their hands:

The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived. As such, it is the County's expectation that our manufacturers, suppliers and contractors make a concentrated effort to ensure that any equipment, supplies or services that are provided to County departments do not possess or portray an image that may be construed as offensive or defamatory in nature.

One such recent example included the manufacturer's labeling of equipment where the words "Master/Slave" appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.

Okay, how about we use the term 'Boss-man/Bitch'?

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This is the subheading of Mark Steyn's latest Spectator piece:

Mark Steyn lists the countries that must be dealt with if we are to win the war against terrorism

Okay. But the first regime listed gave me a bit of a turn:

New Hampshire

Does the axis of evil have a new member? Has the Governor of New Hampshire been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction? Is the whole article some kind of joke? Steyn is a funny man. Is this a funny piece?

Steyn goes on to list five further targets for regime change: Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and North Korea.

Profound changes in the above countries would not necessarily mean the end of the war on terror, but it would be pretty close. It would remove terrorism’s most brazen patron (Syria), its ideological inspiration (the prototype Islamic Republic of Iran), its principal paymaster (Saudi Arabia), a critical source of manpower (Sudan) and its most potentially dangerous weapons supplier (North Korea). They’re the fronts on which the battle has to be fought: it's not just terror groups, it's the state actors who provide them with infrastructure and extend their global reach. Right now, America – and Britain, Australia and Italy – are fighting defensively, reacting to this or that well-timed atrocity as it occurs. But the best way to judge whether we're winning and how serious we are about winning is how fast the above regimes are gone. Blair speed won’t do.

That all sounds fairly serious, doesn't it? So what does Steyn have against New Hampshire? Ah. Penny drops. New Hampshire is where he was writing from. The universe makes sense again.

Nevertheless, behind this little joke there is a serious point. Steyn is describing a war against terrorism that does make sense to me. But the opponents of this war say that by the time Uncle Sam has toppled the regimes of Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and North Korea – or by the time it has given up trying to – it will indeed end up governing New Hampshire, and everywhere else in the USA, somewhat differently. War is the health of the state, as somebody once said.

My answer would be that hardly anyone is suggesting that there be no vigorous war fought against Islamic terrorism – and hence that no measures be taken that might infringe the liberties of Americans, or others. The war is being fought and will go on being fought. The only serious argument is about where to fight it. Is it to be fought in places like Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, North Korea, and back home in places like New Hampshire? Or should some or all of the first five be struck off the list?

Either way, New Hampshire is indeed liable to end up a rather different place.

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George Will, of all people, plants a couple of barbs in the leviathan in this column.

On May 24, 1945, just 16 days after V-E Day, Britain’s socialists were sanguine. A Labour Party firebrand, Aneurin Bevan, anticipating the Labour victory that occurred five weeks later, said privation would be a thing of the past because essentials would soon be abundant: "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time."

But socialism rose to the challenge. Two years later, the coal industry having been nationalized and food still rationed, coal and fish were scarce. There are indeed some things that only government can do.

The segue into campaign finance reform is well done:

The government, by its restrictions on the amounts and conduits of political giving, has turned something that exists in wild abundance in America -- money — into a scarcity. As the postwar Labour government did with coal and fish.

Speaking of fish, as in barrels, shooting in, the punchline is of course the hypocrisy of candidates bleating against the exercise of free speech and free association, via campaign contributions, of their opponents, while doing exactly what they decry.

So now [Dean] says that unless he abandons public financing, his money will be gone when the primaries are over. Then Bush could spend to speak to the nation all summer, while he, Dean, would fall silent until after the Democratic convention, when he would get a fresh infusion of public money.

But notice that Dean’s argument concedes what campaign finance regulators deny -- that money is tantamount to speech, and therefore limits on political money limit political speech.

The fact that political speech, the very adamantine core of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and association, is very highly regulated, with the blessing (to date) of the Supreme Court, is perhaps the single most damning indictment of the utility of written Constitutions as a protector of individual rights.

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James Lileks' Bleat, usually devoted primarily to domestic bliss, today gets a little screedy. James has peeked inside the sausage factory that is the US Senate.

The spleen, she hurts. I think it had to do with listening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.

Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!

There's more, on such perennial faves as the French, Michael Moore, and the angry anti-war lot. I started to excerpt, but when your cursor is hovering over "Select All" it is time to just say "read the whole thing."

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Well, well, well. The usually flaky and oft-overturned 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (the regional appellate court in the US that includes California and sits one notch below the Supreme Court) has lobbed a high hard one at the Supremes, a direct challenge to one of the linchpins of jurisprudence permitting the federal government to exercise almost unlimited "police" powers.

The 9th Circuit just ruled that the federal government has no power to outlaw homemade machine guns, because homemade guns are not in interstate commerce. The extraordinarily broad readings of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which permits the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, were adopted in a New Deal era case in which a farmer challenged federal rules dictating how much wheat he could grow. The case was beautifully positioned, with the wheat in question being fed to the farmer's cattle and thus never leaving his farm, much less entering into commerce at all, never mind interstate commerce. The Supreme Court would have none of it, though, and ruled that this wheat was nonetheless in interstate commerce and thus subject to federal control.

Under this reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause, I don't see how a homemade machine gun is not in interstate commerce. After all, it affects the global supply and demand for machine guns in exactly the same way that the wheat did. This case mounts a pretty direct challenge to one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever. Its a rare day when I root for the 9th Circuit, but all things come around in time, I suppose.

The Volokhs have a little more detail. The case (or another on the same principle) will almost certainly have to be taken up by the Supremes, as there is now a conflict between appellate courts on the issue.

The Instapundit, that wag, notes that, while he hasn't read the opinion, any position is defensible with enough homemade machine guns!

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
- 1^st Amendment of the US Constitution

As I prefer to argue matters from first principles rather than on the basis of falsely self-legitimising artefacts of state such as legal documents, I rarely discuss, much less quote, the much vaunted US Constitution. Yet I think any reasonable reading of those lines above would say that the objective at hand when it was written was to safeguard the freedom to express views, particularly political views, in any manner, so long as it was done peaceably.

So I can only assume that Democratic Party Presidential wannabe Wes Clark¹ takes the view that speech and press mean literally spoken word and mechanical press, and thus the Amendment does not actually refer to expression, and thus does not cover anything not literally speech or printed media produced with a honking great press, such as the Internet or anything else not literally speech or press. How else does one explain his support for prosecuting people who engage in political expression by desecrating US flags?

Of course the argument often used is that burning a US flag pisses off some people in the USA so much that it is likely to cause violence. Funny how the same people who make that argument usually also oppose the same argument when it is applied to so-called 'hate speech'... but being a left winger, I guess Wes Clark is at least being consistent in wanting political control over unpopular forms of expression unlike the more inconsistent conservative 'hand on heart' supporters who want to turn the US flag into an inviolate icon whilst insisting on the right to call a fag a fag and a spick a spick.

¹ = British readers will be fascinated to know this is the same clown who wanted to start a shooting war between Russia and NATO in June, 1998. This is the guy who will save us from 'that madman and threat to world peace, George Bush'. Aiyiyi…

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Paul Staines sees the same problem as David Carr... George Soros has gone off the deep end

I have a lot of respect for George Soros, not because he’s a muliti-billionaire, but because of his huge financial support for his Open Society foundations and for his articulating the intriguing concept of 'reflexivity' in financial markets. I found the philosophical excursions of the former student of Karl Popper interesting, even if professional philosophers tended to find them embarrassing. But his 2002 book George Soros on Globalization confirmed what was pretty clear from his 1998 The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered. He was getting messianic and becoming like a bootlegger turned temperance campaigner. Soros would deny that he is anti-capitalist, he is he says against market fundamentalism. Ironic given his phenomenal success in unregulated currency markets.

For the last decade Soros has been preaching a third way for international finance - seeking to update the international financial architecture is an intellectually respectable position. Keynes' Bretton Woods structures have worked more or less, they may have even prevented a few disasters, but they can definitely be improved upon.  Interventionist multi-lateral institutions intervening in markets to maintain the liberal market order may or may not work. After a little over half a century of experimentation it is hard to tell. The IMF, World Bank et al may have made things worse more often than they have been the cavalry coming into save the global economy. Sometimes, his argument goes, international capitalism gets so manically out of control it needs to be saved from itself. The jury is out on that. Soros is, in the tradition of Keynes, not an enemy of capitalism, but someone who wants to radically temper it.

Fair enough, it’s not crypto-Marxism, he means well, he may even have a point. But now according to the Washington Post, Soros is devoting his efforts to defeating Bush in 2004. So far he has given $15m towards anti-Bush campaigns, "It is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death." He goes on to say "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

I think at 74, Soros is losing his grip, his self proclaimed 'Soros Doctrine' is delusional, his one-man foreign policy was fine when he was promoting democracy but is overstretched trying to re-fashion geo-politics. Now he is getting down and dirty in partisan presidential politics he may come to regret it.

Speculation, philosophy and philanthropy are much more gentlemanly affairs, the Republicans are already claiming he has bought the Democratic party.  Soros is in danger of jeopardising his place in posterity. Shame.

Paul Staines

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This sounds exactly like the kind of thing that should have an army of conspiracy-theorists hacking away at their keyboards in a veritable orgy of rumour-mongering. Are they? Will they?

After all, it is not every day that a gazillionaire, international financier buys up a political wing of an entire country:

George Soros, one of the world's wealthiest financiers and philanthropists, has declared that getting George Bush out of the White House has become the "central focus" of his life, and he has put more than $15m (£9m) of his own money where his mouth is.

"It is the central focus of my life," he told the Washington Post in an interview published yesterday, after announcing a donation of $5m to a liberal activist organisation called MoveOn.org. The gift brings the total amount in donations to groups dedicated to Mr Bush's removal to $15.5m.

Other pledges of cash have gone to America Coming Together (ACT), an anti-Bush group that proposes to mobilise voters against the president in 17 battleground states. Mr Soros and a friend, Peter Lewis, the chairman of a car insurance company, promised $10m.

Mr Soros has also helped to bankroll a new liberal think-tank, the Centre for American Progress, to be headed by Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, John Podesta, which will aim to counter the rising influence of neo-conservative institutions in Washington.