Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Hawaiian Population Explosion?
By Gail Heriot

For the last few months, I've been blogging about the proposed Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, popularly known as the "Akaka bill," which, if passed, will authorize ethnic Hawaiians to retroactively form themselves into the nation's largest Indian tribe. If you still haven't heard about this ill-advised item of legislation, check out my op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune, which explains why ethnic Hawaiian leaders want such a thing. (Hint: They believe tribal status will immunize Hawaii's massive system of special benefits for ethnic Hawaiians from constitutional scrutiny.)

Here is another reason to oppose the Akaka bill: By the year 2050, the number of ethnic Hawaiians in the country is expected to double from approximately 401,162 to 987,602. More and more people will be on the receiving end of special benefits for ethnic Hawaiians, which include special housing, special schools, special home loans, special employment opportunities and special business loans. What is a very bad idea today will be completely untenable in the future.

What I find interesting is that Akaka bill advocates apparently regard this projected population increase as good news for the political prospects of the bill and the so-called Hawaiian sovereignty movement in general. Hawaiian sovereignty activist Lilikala Kameeleihiwa (nee Lily Dorton), former chair of the University of Hawaii Center for Hawaiian Studies, put the matter bluntly in the Honolulu Advertiser:

"'I'm seeing that we need to be a majority of the population if we're going to get political change,' she said. 'We, as Hawaiians, would like to have more control over our land base so that we can raise our children in a Hawaiian manner so we can practice our culture, so that we have land on which we can make our schools that we can use to produce healthy, happy Hawaiians.' Kameeleihiwas said she's disappointed that the Kamehameha study does not show Native Hawaiians growing at a faster clip. At a recent rally attended by approximately 10,000 suuporters of Kamehameha's [racially exclusive] admissions policy, she urged Native Hawaiians to make as many babies as they could. She continues to make that call. 'I don't want to have to wait for 2050 for us to double our population.' she said. 'Instead of the next 50 years, I'd like to do it in the next 20 years.'"

It's curious. A century ago, Americans were told that ethnic Hawaiians were a "dying race." In the 1900 census, for example, there were only about 40,000--a number thought to be less than the number in 1800. During the 1920s, Congress was urged to (and did) pass homestead legislation granting special housing benefits to ethnic Hawaiians -- in part because of the belief that ethnic Hawaiians were dying out as a race. They needed special help just to survice---or so it was thought.

But the 2000 census indicates that just over 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians live in the US--a tenfold increase over 1900. Of course, not all those 400,000 are "full-blooded" ethnic Hawaiians; some are mixed race. But the "dying race" stuff was always a myth. Hawaiians weren't dying off in the 20th century. They were intermarrying with people of other races. While the number of "full-blooded" Hawaiians was stagnant, the number of part Hawaiians was expanding at a furious pace--and still is.

In some ways, Kameeleihiwa is being very sensible to view this as good news. More ethnic Hawaiians means more voting power. More voting power means more political clout. Why wouldn't that be good news for a growing group? But in another sense, it exposes Hawaii's racial benefits sytem for what it is: a raw power grab. It's all about politcal clout. The argument isn't that the Akaka bill is good policy or bad policy for Hawaii as a whole. The argument is that ethnic Hawaiians must do everything they can to become a majority in Hawaiian politics, and that once they do they will be free to impose their will. It's not pretty.

Here's hoping the Akaka bill is soundly defeated.
posted by Gail at 9/29/2005 06:34:00 PM

 
Bring it on
By Tom Smith

Actually, don't bring it on. But if you do, I'll be ready. I am now the proud owner of a Pro-line fire pump, a unit powered by a 6.5 hp Honda engine, mounted on a dolly, with a 3 inch mining grade hose to stick in your swimming pool, and 50 feet of municipal grade fire hose to spew water at 50 gallons per minute. The pump produces 100 gallons a minute, so there's a lot of pressure. Enough to soak down a 75 foot tree for example, or blow the windows out of a house. Not cheap, that's true. But it's beats standing there in your driveway, watching the towering flames march toward you, while the fire hotline operator tells you she really has no idea whether you should evacuate or not, but that you should trust your feelings. It does no good to pound your phone into splinters. Better to buy one unit than to curse the idiots yet again. Now I can send the wife, kids, and dogs to safety, while standing my ground with 15,000 gallons of pool water to command, which is as much as 60 firetrucks carry. I'm no expert, but the thing appears to be lovingly hand-crafted by real men who know about things like lathes and valves. Overbuilt, if anything. Downright beefy. LWJ does not seem that impressed by it, but then fighting fires has traditionally been, well, you see where I'm going.

You can also wash your driveway, knock down birds, and control crowds, which could come in handy given the parties my neighbors have had lately. I could also in theory hit motorcyclists as they rode by. Every man his own fire department. Now I just need one of those funky hats.
posted by thomas at 9/26/2005 10:29:00 PM

 
Public schools
By Tom Smith

Those darn teachers' unions. If we are going to betray our children's futures to make life easier for hacks and incompetents, are glad they are such darn nice folks.

posted by thomas at 9/25/2005 09:09:00 PM

 
Awkward facts
By Tom Smith

This is troubling. Well connected Iranians are fleeing Iran, and money is moving out as well. Inside the country, the new president has spoken openly of developing nuclear weapons. It has been and still is a primary supporter of terror against the US. It is the most plausible candidate for putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists who would use it on US soil. Bush's policy appears to be to hope it all just goes away, or maybe diplomacy will take care of it.

Some awkward facts: Just because the idea of most Democrats being in charge of the GWOT is frightening, does not mean W is doing a competent job. Just because Iraq was a threat, does not mean Iran is not a worse threat. Just because we thought Iraq had WMD's and didn't, does not mean Iran does not or will not soon have, WMD's of the worst sort. Just because we can't afford a war against Iran now, doesn't mean we won't have one. Just because it would be insane for Iran to launch nuclear missiles at Israel, does not mean they would not do it, and Israel would probably retaliate against both Iran and its allies.

The Bush adminstration needs to get a grip on the Iran problem, and they show no sign of having done so.
posted by thomas at 9/25/2005 08:33:00 PM

 
Are some ideas so bad they fail?
By Tom Smith

I know it is an entirely politically motivated decision, but I'm still glad Hillary has come out against the "International Freedom Center" idea. There perhaps should be a museum about man's, especially American man's, inhumanity to man, and there are. Just check out your neighborhood university; chances are good there is an exhibit in which you will learn that America sucks. But the site of 9/11 in lower Manhattan is not that place. Arlington National Cemetery is not the place for a retrospective on American war crimes, either. Some places and events speak for themselves, and a lot of "interpretation" is not needed. Just a recounting of the facts will do. People went to work on a Tuesday morning in the fall. Evil fanatics seized control of two civilian aircraft, cutting the throats of flight attendants with boxcutters. They flew the aircraft into the two towers. Close to three thousand men, women and children from some 90 different countries burned to death, were crushed to death or suffocated in the ensuing inferno, among them hundreds of police and firefighters, who tried to save as many as they could, with apparently complete indifference to their own safety. Many, many bodies could not be recovered. Their ashes are in the ground beneath your feet. Something along those lines.

posted by thomas at 9/24/2005 05:06:00 PM

 
Meat story
By Tom Smith

Often when I think about natural selection, as I did below, it reminds me of this story:

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT
by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?""Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?" . . .

The rest is here.
posted by thomas at 9/24/2005 10:40:00 AM

 
ID update
By Tom Smith

Here's a story about a lawsuit in PA regarding intelligent design.

I probably know more about complexity theory that most corporate law professors who live in Southern California, and the idea that anyone knows enough to claim that they know natural selection as a process is incapable of producing complex organisms, strikes me as pretty insupportable. It may be fair to say there are things we can't explain yet about how natural selection works, and whether there are other important mechanisms at work in evolution, but that is something else again.

It's wrong to say ID is "not science." In a sense it is. It is the claim that a central neo-Darwinist claim, that evolution occurs largely or even entirely by means of natural selection, is wrong, is inconsistent with the evidence. That is certainly a scientific claim. Science consists partly of falsification (though not entirely -- I think Popper is wrong about that). The problem is that ID is not anything like established science, or even slightly well supported science. It is just one of many counter claims floating around. It is rather like the claim that life on earth is the result of colonization by extra-terrestials. It might be true, it might answer some questions if it were true, but the evidence for thinking it is true is, last I checked, pretty slim and dubious.

Some religions have doctrines that commit them to factual theses inconsistent with consensus views of modern science. You can imagine that if various ancient Greek religions had survived, they might view the atomic theory of matter as heresy, for example. Young earth creationists, I gather, insist the Big Bang theory is false, because it involves a creation that occurred 17.5 billion years ago or so, not several thousand, as some people read the Bible to reveal.

There could be some points I'm missing here, but I don't see why or even how science is supposed to be taught in public schools so as to steer clear of contradicting various religious doctrines, where it is just a fact that some of them do conflict with core scientific truth, to the extent such a thing exists. I certainly believe that as a matter of policy, religious belief should be accommodated in public schools. Maybe this means creationist students should be able to graduate high school without taking the usual biology class, or check a box on their exams that indicates they are answering all questions as a matter of what biologists believe, not what the Truth is, so they can answer "Species emerge through a process of natural selection, true or false?" correctly without betraying their religious beliefs. But that is a different thing from putting stuff very far indeed from the scientific mainstream on an equal footing with established, mainstream biological science, in the science classroom itself.

Two other quick points. There is no good reason for including in text books the anti-religious rantings some biologists are prone to. So parents of any religious stripe might reasonably object if some of the writings of Richard Dawkins were assigned in a biology class. Though much of his exposition of biological theory is just that, sometimes he indulges in purely ideological posturing; science classes should not be used to propagandize against religion. But this is hardly the big problem. The grade school science textbooks I have looked at, and I doubt high school texts are much better, are just dreadful, quite apart from any religious objections one might have. Horribly written, bone dry, bafflingly organized and apparently committed to the proposition that science is about arbitrary distinctions and pointless definitions -- that about sums them up. What a disservice to our children, not to mention to science! The kerfuffle over evolution in schools seems like a symptom of the pathology in our schools more generally. Whether we agree about natural selection or not, economic selection occurs, and if science education does not get better, our children will be learning about its harsh laws the hard way.
posted by thomas at 9/24/2005 09:30:00 AM

 
Crowd wisdom and common law
By Tom Smith

Very cool link below by Professor Rapport to Google's crowd wisdom tool.

It makes we wonder to what extent common law decision making could be characterized as a crowd wisdom mechanism. If 100 judges decide on some issue, and their outcomes could be characterized as taking a normal or normalish distribution, the mean decision, you might say, represented the wisdom of that crowd. Do mean decisions turn out to be the rule that emerges from a common law process? I don't know, but I don't think it is a crazy suggestion. If it is a good idea, it has probably already been published and maybe even had a symposium issue about it.
posted by thomas at 9/23/2005 03:05:00 PM

 
Web of Law project grows new nodes
By Tom Smith

In exciting news for me, anyway, what I refer to as the Web of Law project has gotten bigger and more highly powered lately. The team or happy family now consists of Steve Strogatz and Jon Kleinberg at Cornell, Mark Newman at Michigan, Antonio Tomarchio, one of Steve's grad students, one of Mark's grad students who is I think to be involved as well, Eric Rasmussen of Indiana University, through a separate but related project, and me. Jon Kleinberg is a very big name indeed in computer science and networks, and just won a McArthur fellowship (the so-called genius prize). Steve and Mark are also very distinguished in their fields of mathematics and networks, among other things. Eric Rasmussen, the economist at Indiana University, is one of the country's leading game theory experts, among other things. (I was going to put something self-deprecating in at this point, but in this company, it seems superfluous.) I was of the view that high powered scientists needed to be brought in to study legal citation networks (though Mark was already working on it, unbeknownst to me at first), and boy, that has certainly happened.

Preliminary results, assuming they prove out, have already revealed some new and interesting stuff about the Web of Law, even very interesting, depending on how you feel about these things. I think there are insights here for people interested in many different aspects of the legal system. How authoritative cases emerge, how precedents age, what courts follow their own law more and less, differences between state and federal courts, and more. The hardest part may be figuring out how to package it so that legal scholars pay attention to it.
posted by thomas at 9/23/2005 02:31:00 PM

 
Bad words
By Tom Smith

are good for you.
posted by thomas at 9/19/2005 07:48:00 PM

 
Hard Time
By Tom Smith

Eight and a half to twenty five for Kozlowski and Swartz, formerly of the Tyco corporation. They were convicted in NY state court of looting about $150 million from their corporation. I have not followed the case closely enough to have an informed opinion on the justice of the conviction. As harsh as the sentence is, if they are indeed guilty of stealing that much, a harsh sentence is necessary to deter other corporate wrongdoers, or so it seems to me. Worse for the two, they will apparently have to do at least some of their time in a maximum security state prison. That's really bad news for them.

Here's something I don't understand. If you are the sort of person who would steal scores of millions from your corporation, why do you hang around to pick up your eight years minimum in the big house, where trying not to become Big Eddy's new girlfriend is going to be your next career. Why wouldn't you stash ten million in Curacao or someplace, and if need be, disappear onto some smallish yacht or quaint if somewhat filthy tropical backwater? K had a yacht and apparently likes sailing. True, it would be hard to leave behind wife and kids, whom you would see once in a while on visitor's day. But you really have to wonder if the Mrs. Looters will be there when they finally get out. I suppose you could say if he runs, he will be on the run for the rest of his life, and if he does get caught, and it's hard not to, he will never get out of prison. K, however, is 58, and ten years inside at that age is like 20 outside. It's hard to see he'll have much left if and when he finally gets out. I wouldn't loot in the first place, but if I had, I think I would just accept that it was the pirate's life for me, haul up the black flag, take my chances with the fair Spanish ladies, and not let them take me alive. If I ever come up for bail, I'm only kidding.
posted by thomas at 9/19/2005 07:13:00 PM

 
Yahoo?
By Tom Smith

Yahoo needs to get a clue from Google. Don't be evil. Just. Don't. Be. Evil. How hard is that? Short course on moral theory. When the secret police of a horrible tyranny comes to you and asks for help tracking down a brave, but solitary, weak and embattled soul who dares oppose them, don't help them. Don't be evil. Is that clear? Are you geniuses smart enough to get your arms around that? Can your algorithm sort that out? Are any of you Yahoo billionaires going to pony up to, say, hire a lawyer for the freedom fighter who is going to rot in a Chinese prison for ten years because of you, or help support his family, or will we just have to be impressed with how socially responsible you are because you drive a Prius? Unbelievable.
posted by thomas at 9/18/2005 05:17:00 PM

 
Family life update (thank you New York Times)
By Tom Smith

There's something wrong with the pool system. The pump seems fine, so I thought I should clean out the debris basket, a procedure which involves turning off the pump, unscrewing a giant plastic plug, and removing by hand the dog hair, dead amphibians, and small toys that have accumulated in the mesh. You remove the plug with a thingamajig, which was missing of course. Had it been used as a weapon in a kid battle and misplaced? Picked up by the tree trimmers when moving limbs? You just have to deal with these things with the Zen of home ownership. Pounding your head against the edge of the pool does no one any good. But just in case, I went inside to ask the ever capable young William -- an unusual 9 year old, to whom you can give instructions such as "go to the garage and get me the power drill and the 2 1/2 inch deck screws" and he will actually do exactly that -- if he knew where the thingamajig was.

He did not, but he and his brothers were eager to announce their find in the Men's Fashion section of the the New York Times. Here was an ad for Diesel Jeans which showed a young man or maybe woman, it was hard to tell, in jeans only, being whipped by two topless women, each in said jeans. With the whips, they were playing tic tac toe on the man-woman's back, having left the game enscribed there in quite realistic looking welts. Yet the man-woman was smiling; what jolly good fun. "That's just so gay!" said Patrick, in astonished disapproval. "It's not gay, it's just sick," corrected my lovely wife Jeanne. "Gay" seems to be a term of disapprobation for anything sexually suspicious in the school kid set. I decided I might be able to get the plug out with a pipe wrench and went back to the garage. "I guess now we can't leave the Times sitting around," I said to LWJ. "We have to move to a cabin in the woods," she said.

The magazine section's cover story in on Bono, the singer for the rock band U2, who spends his time campaigning for aid to Africa. While it was definitely an egregious puff piece, it was not as sickening as it might have been, though I admit I could not get all the way through it. It did cause me to wonder what is so distasteful about celebrity do-goodity. I decided it has to do with people who have their cake and eat it too. As the story makes clear, Bono lives high, with a house on the Riviera, the finest wines, and all of that. Yet he has time to tell the world more money must be sent to the governments of Africa. If the money went directly to feed the starving children, he would probably be correct, though his example would be more impressive if he gave of his financial assets as much as he does of his precious time. The annoying thing is that the advice he gives seems often enough to be wrong, as far as his mandate to increase foreign aid goes. About debt relief, I might agree with him; I'm not sure.

The article depicts the rich and powerful gathered at Davos, just enraptured by their own wonderfulness and good intentions. And yet, if you were just to announce to the Davos crowd that everyone who had a net worth of more than $100 million would be taxed $1 million each to wipe out the remaining amount due from African countries to the US, which Bono wanted Congress to do, you would have raised more than the amount needed, (about 450 million USD) or else caused a stampede for the doors that would have killed a lot of rich people. All those hangers-on would have been left with no one to hang on to. Rich people being rich is easy enough to ignore, their posing as moral giants begins to get annoying, but their doing so by advocating actively destructive policies begins to make me downright testy. Why can't they just settle for being rich and morally trivial and leave the rest of us alone?

The pipe wrench did work, I cleaned out the filter, but the creepy crawler was still very slugish. I did the wise thing and said to hell with it. Something was probably stuck in a pipe, quite possibly one of the frogs Patrick has been keeping in the pool. With luck, it will decompose and professionals will not have to be paid to get the obstruction out.

Postscript: Patrick advises he was not keeping the frogs in the pool; he released them from their tank, and they went to the pool on their own. He offers this link to a remarkable picture of a Komodo dragon eating a monkey. Also, he knew where the thingamajig was.
posted by thomas at 9/18/2005 04:07:00 PM

 
New Math
By Tom Smith

This looks cool.

I am one of those sad souls who loves math, but is abnormally untalented at it. In fact, after fifth grade I was put in a special summer school for retarded children because my math was so bad. It turned out to be really fun. I was the smartest kid in the class. We played with colored blocks which had all kinds of cool geometrical properties. As it turned out, I was not actually retarded, just abnormally stubborn, which evinced itself in my refusal to learn my times tables. This may have been related to my hatred of my sadistic fifth grade teacher, Sister Ambrosia, who was subsequently institutionalized. Yes, fifth grade was late to be learning times tables, but that is when my ignorance of them emerged.
posted by thomas at 9/18/2005 01:03:00 PM

 
UNbelievable
By Tom Smith

UN update. What a charming bunch.

This is just my opinion mind -- but why not move the UN to some godforsaken spot in the Third World, and auction off the site to the highest bidder. Donald Trump could take it over. I see a retro-chic residential building with great views of the East River.
posted by thomas at 9/18/2005 12:49:00 PM

 
A new Times correction policy
By Tom Smith

The poor New York Times. Paul Krugman publishes an op-ed piece with falsehoods in it (concerning the 2000 election in Florida media sponsored "recounts") and Professor Krugman won't correct them. Well, I guess he did once, but that correction was itself incorrect. But there has not been an official, on the record, correction.

This is all rather complicated and inconvenient. I suggest that lawyer's tool, the broad disclaimer. Duh! Just print at the bottom of the op-ed page a statement along these lines.

It is the policy of the New York Times to allow our op-ed writers to make false statements, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Readers should not rely on any factual statements, claims, assertions or averments. General statements about what has happend in the past or may happen in the future should not be taken to be true.

Voila. Need for corrections eliminated.
posted by thomas at 9/17/2005 06:51:00 PM

 
Icky science alert
By Tom Smith

Possible lines:
I think I once kissed a girl like that.
Check your fish before eating.
Nature is a beautiful thing.

posted by thomas at 9/16/2005 10:24:00 PM

 
Fixing global warming with technology
By Tom Smith

Ideas.

posted by thomas at 9/13/2005 04:22:00 PM

 
Second biggest bang
By Tom Smith

Here. So that's what gamma ray bursts are.
posted by thomas at 9/13/2005 02:50:00 PM

 
Getting rid of Holocaust Memorial Day
By Tom Smith

Here we see that some of Tony Blair's advisors want to get rid of the UK's "Holocaust Memorial Day" because it is said to make some Muslims feel excluded. It is a fair point. To balance things out, we might also want to consider establishing a day to commemorate people who kill other people for political reasons, because they hate them, or both. Especially if you throw in Africa and all of Asia, there are a lot of people out there who have engaged in genocidal killing, or quasi-genocidal killing, or at least some sort of violent hate crime. Are we to exclude them entirely from the human family? Do not they not also have feelings? How do you expect they feel on Holocaust Memorial Day, being villified and such? It's really not very fair. So if we had a, say, "Genocidal Murderers Day," we could have parades with Nazis, suicide bombers, Rwandans wielding machetes, Cambodians trodding on eyeglasses, folks dressed up in Mao jackets waving little red books, some stern Soviets, and yes, to be fair, some Colorado militia ruffians carrying Indian scalps. It could be a rather long parade. It would be downright multicultural.
posted by thomas at 9/13/2005 11:29:00 AM

 
New and really disgusting hope for asthma sufferers
By Tom Smith

Icky science marches on.

posted by thomas at 9/08/2005 11:57:00 AM

 
Oh Dear
By Tom Smith

You mean, it's not Bush's fault? Not to jump to conclusions, but to me it looks like major failures at city and state levels. In fact, I'm not sure it's even right to say NO and Louisiana have govenments in the normal sense. If you are in a big classroom, and everybody is just fighting, selling drugs, doing whatever, is the guy at the front really a "teacher"?

But the NYT treatment of "Governor" Blanco is unbelievably tender, a la, "some critics have tentatively suggested that perhaps she might have considered requesting aid somewhat sooner, in the event that the worst predictions proved truer than initially anticipated by the most pessimistic blah blah blah . . . " The Times just ain't rat.
posted by thomas at 9/08/2005 09:45:00 AM

 
Are there no limits to human depravity?
By Tom Smith

Yuk.

posted by thomas at 9/07/2005 06:54:00 AM

 
Yahoo hosts phishing sites
By Tom Smith

It's nice to know Yahoo! is doing what it can to bilk widows and orphans out of their few remaining pennies.

posted by thomas at 9/07/2005 06:40:00 AM

 
New Orleans caused by our lack of faith
By Tom Smith

Thanks to Paul Krugman, we are learning the true cause of the horrible events in New Orleans. It is not rain, or wind, or water. It is lack of faith. You heard me, brothers and sisters. It is you. It is me. It is deep in our hearts, our lack. Our lack. of. FAITH! Faith in what? Why in government of course. If only we had believed, and believed in time. If only we had not questioned, and argued, and bitten the hand that feeds us. Then government would have reached down, like the loving daddy it is, and protected us from those awful waves and those terrifyin' winds . . .
posted by thomas at 9/06/2005 02:59:00 PM

 
This is what I was trying to say
By Tom Smith

Steyn is right again.

Sorry to be the one to mention this, but as long as we are on the topic . . . if there are sleeper cells in the US with anything big and nasty to deploy, now would be the time to do it.

Check out the video here of cops looting.

Blanco should probably be sentenced to at least five days in a fetid cell with no food or water. But why didn't Bush federalize the Guard on, oh, Wednesday?
posted by thomas at 9/05/2005 11:35:00 PM

 
In the midst of tragedy, laughter . . .
By Tom Smith

Sean Penn goes to NO and makes more of a fool of himself than you would have thought possible, even though you know he is a complete idiot. Click through to the photo. For those of you who are rushing to NO to help--probably best to leave your entourage at home.

And the weird thing is, he really is an immensely talented actor; he really is. As a final act of generosity, I think he should leave his brain to science, and perhaps settle once and for all whether there is some kind of biological conflict between being a good actor and your brain working OK in other respects.
posted by thomas at 9/05/2005 05:19:00 PM

 
Smaller penises discovered in Canada
By Tom Smith

Not good news.

Start taking Vitamin E? LWJ says no, the human studies show negative results. We are not mice, at least many of us are not.

Religious meditation works better than secular meditation. God agrees.

And if you disobey it, it gives you an electric shock.

Those darn parasites.

Robotic space penguins. Really.
posted by thomas at 9/05/2005 11:09:00 AM

 
Violating the 11th commandment
By Tom Smith

Which is, you may recall, "thou shall not criticize a fellow Republican." I always vote Republican, except when I vote Libertarian, and I worked in the Reagan White House, though technically I was not a political appointee. But I don't see any reason to pull punches on the federal response to the Katrina disaster. I'm reading as much as most people, and I understand that the causes of the failures are complex. But step one is to recognize a failure when you see it. If you don't end up getting off the beaches, or whatever the appropriate military analogy is, all the excuses in the world do nobody any good. It seems to me Newt got it exactly right, as he often does, when he said it is hard to believe we are prepared for a surprize terrorist attack, when we were obviously so ill prepared for a storm that gave us days of warning. My working hypothesis is that our disaster response model assumes a vigorous and skilled response by state and local government, with federal backup, and that model is wildly inappropriate for many parts of the US, but especially the Gulf coast. I sure would not want to rely on San Diego local government for relief, and last year's Cedar Fire shows why. I did get some valuable psychological advice when the operator told me to trust my feelings on the question of whether to evacuate or not.

Anyway, this is an example of defenses of W on the blogosphere. I don't really object to it, and I suppose somebody has to do the work of defending Bush against nutty left wing attacks, such as his not caring about black people. But more important is seeing the evidence before our eyes that our disaster response capabilities have been revealed to be woefully not up to the task. We need clearer lines of authority, more expansive emergency powers, better follow through on preparedness, better civilian defense, especially in vulnerable areas (like Southern California). We need this, whichever political party it helps or hurts.
posted by thomas at 9/04/2005 04:26:00 PM

 
Off with their heads
By Tom Smith

This seems about right to me. There are a lot of political opportunists trying to score points against Bush in the wake of Katrina, but that should not obscure the fact that the response of the federal government to this disaster was grotesquely inadequate and, certainly to all appearences, utterly incompetent. Four years and billions of dollars on homeland defense does not seem to have been terribly well spent. You can go here; read and weep. I know the city government of NO is a dead loss. Good lord, buses left in parking lots instead of used in evacuations. But then you have the National guard saying they can't get into the city while Walmart manages to bring in truckloads of food and water. The state government of Louisiana appears criminally incompetent. They may have even stood in the way of some federal efforts to help.

Now is not the time for it, but there needs to be a very thorough investigation of this disaster after the disaster. People need to be fired (even though some of them deserve to be shot). There may be a need for new federal legislation that will give clear authority to the feds to step in when the city and state cannot or will not respond adequately to the disaster.

THIS is distrubing. Federal officials should not have to ask state approval to federalize the response, when things get as bad as they were. The Post makes it sound as if the La. state government was a major bottleneck.
posted by thomas at 9/04/2005 08:40:00 AM

 
Roots of NO chaos
By Tom Smith

Here.

posted by thomas at 9/03/2005 10:52:00 PM

 
Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies
By Gail Heriot

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died this evening. The New York Times report is here.
posted by Gail at 9/03/2005 08:41:00 PM

 
For the blogger who has everything
By Tom Smith

This is sick.

posted by thomas at 9/03/2005 11:25:00 AM

 
This is just wrong
By Tom Smith

This is inexcusable. What on earth does it mean when some official says that the national guard can't go in to the convention center yet because they might be going "in harm's way." Last night on MSNBC, a reporter in NO said she saw a bus turn away a mom and kids because it was reserved to take police out of town. Helicopters aren't landing because somebody shot at them.

This is, excuse me, just bullshit. It is the job of the national guard to go in harm's way. That's why they carry guns. The police should leave last, not first. I know there are many heros in NO and I respect them, and praise them. But this idea that the city has to be made safe before the people who should be making it safe can go in, has to stop. Does the NYFD and NYPD have to go down there to show them how it is done? And what is this nonsense about, oh, I was shot at, so I guess I can't go anywhere near there. I've been shot at, by some druggie redneck lowlife. He missed. I was glad. Life went on. Most people miss. It is very hard to hit anything at any distance with a gun. It's not TV. For heaven's sake, send in the helicopters, put some kevlar vests on the crew, send in a few guardsmen with them, and get to work. Get the national guard in there. Start shooting a few looters. Get a grip. This is driving me nuts. OK, I will stop now.
posted by thomas at 9/01/2005 12:47:00 PM