Saturday, March 06, 2004 :::
 

Mickey Kaus has posted a poem by John Kerry, which he got from the Washington Post:

I had a talk with a deer today
we met upon the road some way . . .
between his frequent snorts
He asked me if I sought his pelt
cause if I did he said he felt
quite out of sorts!

Better than I would have expected.

::: posted by Steven at 12:06 PM


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Friday, March 05, 2004 :::
 

Dahlia Lithwick writes about a privacy case. The case centers around a Nevada law:

Nevada law NRS 171.123 provides that the police "may detain any person whom the officer encounters under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime." And that "[a]ny person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer."

The defendant claims that "reasonable suspicion" is an unconstitutionally low standard, and that probable cause should be required. Lithwick goes into the case law a bit, and if you're interested in the legal aspects, go read her piece.

I just want to comment on this:

It would be easier to credit the Cato and ACLU arguments [for the defendent] if we didn't already have to hand over our ID to borrow a library book, obtain a credit card, drive a car, rent videos, obtain medical treatment, or get onto a plane. So the stark question then becomes this: Why are you willing to tell everyone but the state who you are? It's a curious sort of privacy that must be protected from nobody except the government.

Two important distinctions:

1. I don't have to rent videos, and I don't have to provide ID to the video store unless I deem it worth giving up my privacy. Alternatively, I could choose to go to a different video store, to which I'm more willing to provide my information. This argument only applies to some of her examples -- in much of the country, the choice not to drive a car is not a practical choice, and forgoing medical treatment is also, often, an undue burden. However,
2. To quote Homer Simpson, "you have no idea how big this government is. It goes all the way up to the president!" The government must be allowed enough power to preserve the rule of law. But because it has to be so powerful -- and universally powerful -- it's important that this power be limited where it can be. The more that power gets concentrated, the more likely it is to be used in horribly unpleasant ways.

As it happens, I'm not going to be terribly upset if the courts find (as they have so far) that "reasonable suspicion" is an acceptable standard for a very cursory probe. But in a more abstract sense, it's absolutely the case that some practices are more troubling in the hands of the government.

::: posted by Steven at 8:14 PM


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I'm sure you would be surprised if the Republican National Committee hadn't been compiling a list of Kerry flip-flops.

::: posted by Steven at 5:26 PM


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Ashcroft has been hospitalized with gallstone pancreatitis, I think.

::: posted by dWj at 10:29 AM


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College Basketball
Stanford escaped with one against Washington State last night; will be interesting to see whether they have trouble against Washington tomorrow. Mississippi St.'s only loss since mid-January was against Alabama, whom they play again on Saturday. And Duke should feel better about itself after beating North Carolina. (The Malcolm sisters won't be happy about that prediction, my predictions being the kiss of death and all.)

::: posted by dWj at 8:25 AM


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The Seattle Times has an article about the fact that young North Koreans are exceptionally short. Dark stuff, but there was one excerpt that actually made me laugh:

"Grow taller!" instruct banners hung in some schoolyards, defectors and aid workers say.

That strikes me as just so typical of the authoritarian mindset. "Our policies are causing our people to be undersized; how can we solve this problem?" "Let's just tell them to grow taller." It appears that the North Koreans have never heard of King Canute.

::: posted by Steven at 12:53 AM


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I've read on the web about that Bush ad, but I just saw it for the first time on Fox News. The criticism is even more off-base than I had assumed from the descriptions that I read. I can't see how the critics could accept any television commercial that brings up 9/11 without accepting that ad. Which is probably the real point.

::: posted by Steven at 12:08 AM


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Thursday, March 04, 2004 :::
 

On the Bush World Trade Center ad:

So, the new line of attack from the Democrats is that one Bush ad that shows an image of the remnants of the World Trade Center is a cynical and mean-spirited attempt to politicize 9/11.

...

Was reenacting Mr. Byrd's 1998 dragging death for the camera a politicization of his murder? Was that fair?

::: posted by dWj at 4:31 PM


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National Review Online has obtained two new Democratic documents that were downloaded by a Republican staffer sometime in the period from late 2001 to spring 2003.

Ironically, the two documents, apparently written by an aide to Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, concern a Republican memo that had been mistakenly sent to Democrats. In November, 2001, a top aide to Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch sent a strategy e-mail to several other Republicans. One of the intended recipients was a Hatch staffer whose last name was Johnson. But instead of going to the Republican Johnson, the memo went to a woman named Olati Johnson, who was a top Kennedy aide.

Olati Johnson forwarded the GOP memo to several colleagues. Republican staffers asked her to delete the memo, since it had been sent to her in error. It is not clear whether the GOP aides made that request before or after Johnson had sent the memo around, but in any case, Democrats eventually gave the GOP document to the press.

The two newly obtained Democratic documents are fact sheets written for Sen. Kennedy so he could answer possible inquiries about the matter.

Read the rest, and the memos.

::: posted by dWj at 4:28 PM


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College Basketball
The last post from the Kitchen Cabinet is an excited post about college basketball that preceded Duke's loss at home to Georgia Tech last night. Illinois won a game at the buzzer, as did Northwestern; Illinois thereby claims at least a share of the regular conference title in the Big 10, while Northwestern aims at an NIT berth. The Big 10 tournament, with 11 teams, gives 5 teams a first-round bye in the conference tournament; the Big 10 currently has three teams at the top, two dramatically at the bottom, and Ohio State, at 6-9, out of contention for the top 5, but that leaves 5 teams going for two spots; Iowa and Northwestern are 8-7, while Purdue, Michigan, and Indiana are 7-8. Northwestern plays Michigan and Iowa plays Purdue this weekend.

In the Ivy League, Princeton could clinch an NCAA berth tomorrow night, or not at all, but the best bet is they will do so on Saturday by beating Dartmouth.

::: posted by dWj at 3:32 PM


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Along the lines of the Bush quip to which my brother draws our attention is a scrappleface "article" on the remaining two candidates for the Democratic nomination.

(2004-03-03) -- With John Edwards expected to announce his withdrawal from the presidential race today, the contest for the Democrat nomination narrows to two men — Sen. John Forbes Kerry, D-MA, and Sen. John Forbes Kerry, D-MA.

Link from Taranto.

::: posted by dWj at 12:50 PM


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Happy anniversary to Mom and Dad. I got to see their new house this past weekend; now you get to see it, too. They'll move over the next two months; I have pictures of the inside, too, but I haven't bothered to upload them.

::: posted by dWj at 12:44 PM


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Let's go to the New York Times for the story that

Germany's highest court today overturned the verdict against the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and ordered a retrial.

The man, Mounir el-Motassadeq, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in February 2003 after being found guilty of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and of playing a crucial logistical role for the members of the Qaeda cell in Hamburg that produced three of the Sept. 11 pilots.

::: posted by dWj at 10:15 AM


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From the Trib:

An elderly woman who is legally blind was pulled from the path of a fast-moving Amtrak train by a passerby only moments before it destroyed her motorized scooter at a crossing in downtown Downers Grove Tuesday afternoon.

...

Thomas Rutecki, 55, a Lockport resident and Navy veteran who was waiting for a train to take him to work in the Loop, saw Wiedemann get stuck and was on his way to help when the warning lights went on about 2:30 p.m.

"I thought I'd walk down there and give her a push to get her off the tracks, but I got down there and saw the three steady lights of an Amtrak coming," said Rutecki, a self-described railroad buff who has worked for 25 years for SBC. "Right then and there I said, `I better hustle.'"

::: posted by dWj at 10:12 AM


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I won't pressure you to read or not to read this story, but I hope you heard the quip it starts with:

Last week, President Bush offered a wry critique of his Democratic challengers. "They're for tax cuts and against them. They're for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They're for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They're in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts."

Relatedly, the National Journal came out with an analysis of all 100 Senators a few days ago, and claimed that John Kerry was the most liberal. My immediate reaction: since when is John Kerry consistent enough to be the most liberal member of the Senate?

::: posted by Steven at 3:11 AM


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Wednesday, March 03, 2004 :::
 

My reaction to the Campbell news was pretty much the same as Dean's, except that I had to generate the Owens speculation myself.

In local news, the loser of the special election for state senate yesterday has announced that he'll decide by Friday whether to request a recount. By law, he has until Monday, I believe.

::: posted by Steven at 5:15 PM


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Campbell quits Senate race

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, beset by health problems and an office scandal involving a longtime aide, announced today he will not seek a third term this fall.

...

Chris Gates, the state Democratic Party chairman, called it a "beautiful day" and said he expected Gov. Bill Owens to seek the Republican nomination.

Senator Bill Owens? That would rock! Except that being a sitting Senator seems to hurt one's chances in a Presidential race.

Link from the Corner.

::: posted by dWj at 3:19 PM


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Incidentally, Steve, the Tribune appears to be a Reason libertarian:

We can still pass a defense of marriage act, only it should read something like this:

"The state has no power over the right to marry."

::: posted by dWj at 10:54 AM


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David Broder writes

veteran Republicans in such battleground states as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois

Knock it off. Let's go over this one more time: Illinois is not a battleground state. Fifteen years ago, sure, but in 2000 Gore won it by 19% of the vote while losing the general election. If Illinois becomes a battleground state, this will not be, as Broder asserts at the top, "almost certainly a close election".

::: posted by dWj at 10:54 AM


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Leon Kass writes the Washington Post, ostensibly about the intellectual diversity of the President's Council on Bioethics, but he includes a bit more general boosterism of the council than is really needed to make that point.

Incidentally, the chairman of this council under Clinton was Harold Shapiro, also president of Princeton University. When the council issued its first comments on human cloning, a graduate student wrote to the Daily Princetonian, suggesting that few people would be more qualified than a president of Princeton University at making pronouncements on processes for churning out thousands of identical human beings. The undergraduates were uniformly offended.

::: posted by dWj at 9:48 AM


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Here's libertarian columnist Walter Williams:

Same sex marriage advocates argue for a change in the legal definition of marriage so as to include marriage between male couples and female couples. Here's my question: Are homosexuals the only Americans permitted to change the definition of marriage, or do people with other sex orientations have that right as well?

Here's why I ask that question. Suppose a woman and a horse appeared before San Francisco County Clerk Nancy Alfaro applying for a marriage license, or it might be a man and a sheep.

And here's me:

How does a horse give consent?

You can keep your Mr. Ed jokes.

By the way, I was surprised that Williams opposes gay marriage. Most "Reason magazine" libertarians -- by which I mean sane libertarians, or libertarians without tin-foil hats and convictions for tax evasion -- seem to support it. I think the real libertarian position is that there should be no civil marriage, but a lot of self-described libertarians -- me included -- consider it a useful reflection of the culture. The question is, how do we deal with it?

::: posted by Steven at 1:50 AM


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Perhaps I should refrain from gay marriage comments until I've read the Russian novel Eric wrote late last week (against) and the email my sister sent me late last week (for), neither of which I've more than skimmed. But I basically agree with Lily's comments that slippery slope arguments from the right are overblown (I think slippery slope arguments from the left, regarding the FMA, are also overblown, but that's a different question). I don't think this (quite, at least) equates with the civil rights movement -- differences of sex are more substantial than differences of race, and the "civil disobedience" is largely being conducted by government officials. I do wish to comment on this:

The vast majority of marriages will be between a man and a woman. (The divorce rate will remain at around fifty percent, as homosexuals will prove no better at living up to their vows than heterosexuals have been lately.)

I don't know whether homosexual marriages will be more or less successful than the recent heterosexual kind, but I agree that it won't affect the divorce rate much, because they will be such a small fraction of the marriages.

Incidentally, I can't be the only one who's astonished by this:

West and his attorneys have said that New York law is gender-neutral and that he has the authority to solemnize marriages without a license.

Pataki, however, insisted again Tuesday that the state's marriage law is clear. "Marriage is between a man and a woman, and as public officials we should enforce that law," Pataki said.

Is New York state law really so ambiguous that each side can make their argument with a straight face? Or is it presumptuous of me to assume that the reporter would have mentioned it if one of them hadn't had a straight face? Or am I just naive? I'm really not thrilled to be hoping that I'm naive.

On a mostly unrelated matter, did somebody cover the Troggs' "Love Is All Around"? I hadn't heard. I have heard Eric Clapton's version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and I'm a fan of it.

::: posted by Steven at 1:17 AM


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Scott Brown won! Scott Brown won! By 1% of the vote -- I'm sure there'll be a recount -- but it's enough that I'm celebrating.

The downside is, I can't very well call people to celebrate with at this hour.

I believe it's the first time the Republicans have gained a state senator since 1990. We have seven members now, out of forty. That's almost enough to force a roll call vote!

I'm mocking my joy with that last comment, but I seriously can't express how happy this makes me.

::: posted by Steven at 1:06 AM


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I was supporting two candidates for State Committee. One was in my district, and the other was in an other district with a part of Cambridge. Both seem to have won the Cambridge portions of their districts, but lost their races.

There was a special election for State Senate. The last results I saw had Republican Scott Brown behind by 100 votes with two precincts left. This is for a seat previously held by a very liberal Democrat, on an election day which clearly favors the Democrats. Even if Brown ends up losing after Plainville reports -- though I believe is in the district he's been representing in the lower house of the legislature, so there's hope -- this could be a boost for Massachusetts Republicans, who have not had much to cheer about in the last dozen years.

As I mentioned earlier, Massachusetts also elected ward and town committees today. The city committees are conglomerations of ward committees. I'm not planning to run for reelection as chairman of the Cambridge Republican City Committee. I decided this in December, and it hasn't been a secret since early February, but I haven't exactly been telling random people on the street ("I lowered my cholesterol!"). I'm increasingly busy, and decreasingly enthusiastic about the City Committee. I'm relatively optimistic about politics in general -- our new governor seems much more interested in getting a bipartisan legislature than the last few Republican governors have -- and I'm going to stay in the game (as I mentioned, I did run for ward committee). But I don't want to play much of an organizational role right now, and I don't want to feel obligated to give priority to things in Cambridge.

::: posted by Steven at 12:41 AM


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Tuesday, March 02, 2004 :::
 

Instapundit reports problems with voting machines in, among other places, California:

Athena Runner emails from California:

My husband and I went to vote this morning at 7 a.m. in Carlsbad, CA (San Diego County) and the new and improved *cough* electronic voting system wouldn't boot up. I went back twice and at 8 a.m., they still weren't working. Apparently it's a sporadic problem county wide.

When voter turnout is so low already, forcing people to try and come back multiple times is a huge problem. I miss my paper ballot.

Bryon Scott also emails:

At least the machines in Maryland are working. Here in San Diego the local radio stations are reporting that more than a dozen areas in the county can't even get the machines up and running.

Long-time Volokh readers will remember this entry by Eugene, from when litigants were trying to have the California recall election delayed until new voting technology was available:

When the supposed constitutional wrong is that the existing plans will lead to machine error and voter confusion, then we should consider whether the remedy will in fact be materially better. So far, there seem to be good reasons to predict that the lost vote problems in the currently punch-card counties may actually increase with a shift to one of the supposedly technically better systems, given the likely glitches whenever a new system is used for the first time in a jurisdiction...

::: posted by Steven at 5:41 PM


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Mickey Kaus has summed up his misgivings about John Kerry in one place.

::: posted by Steven at 4:50 PM


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I voted today, primarily for Republican state committee. I also voted for myself (and others) for ward committee; I have voted for myself on election days past, and have even been on the ballot once before, but it has just now occurred to me that this is the first time I'm likely to win the race I'm on the ballot for.

I did vote for George W. Bush, for the first time ever (in the general election in 2000, I wrote in Dave Barry; I would have voted for Bush in a competitive state, but I live in Massachusetts). I considered leaving it blank, or writing in someone else, but ended up deciding that if anyone paid attention to the results (which they won't), they'd just see "Bush" votes and "non-Bush" votes, likely recharacterizing my disappointment in his overspending as hostility toward his foreign policy.

::: posted by Steven at 4:45 PM


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KILLINGTON, Vt. -- Voting with a thunderous "aye," Killington residents endorsed a plan Tuesday for the ski resort town to secede from Vermont.

I believe my brother blogged that they were considering it, but they've held a town meeting now, with a voice vote in favor.

::: posted by Steven at 4:11 PM


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Monday, March 01, 2004 :::
 

Once in a while Mark Steyn says something nobody else is saying, but usually he just says it better than anyone else is saying it.

[T]he most salient feature of the party’s primary season is the marginalisation of the war. The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I’ve heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: ‘Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn’t have the coat to keep her warm.’ You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line. Thanks to the cheap textile imports Edwards and Kerry have pledged to crack down on, girls’ coats have never been cheaper. At JC Penney, Edwards’ shivering ten-year-old can get a brand-new quilted winter coat with faux-fur collar and cuffs for $9.99. At my local thrift shop, you can get a nice second-hand girl’s coat for three bucks. If John Edwards can produce, anywhere in the United States, a ten-year-old coatless girl I will personally send her a brand-new one with the Spectator logo attractively stitched on the left-hand side in return for one substantive passage on foreign policy in his stump speech.

As it is, the only reference he makes to the post-9/11 unpleasantness is a pledge to ‘put a stop to this war profiteering that’s going on in Iraq’. For Edwards, the only enemy in the Middle East is Halliburton, which is code (barely) for Bush and Cheney. Unless, of course, he’s implying that German and French firms aren’t getting a fair shot at the reconstruction contracts, which is certainly a tenable position, though not one that a guy campaigning against the rampant ‘outsourcing’ of American jobs can logically make. Edwards has nothing to say about the war, and nobody seems to mind.

You can hunt this up at the Spectator, but they seem not to want links into the site.

::: posted by dWj at 3:35 PM


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Professor Volokh had an odd entry yesterday. Its entire contents:

Only 48 years of piracy left for me.

I think of that as an obscure reference, though I'm sure I'm not the only reader of his to get it. It helps to know that yesterday was his birthday, and/or to be familiar with The Pirates of Penzance.

::: posted by Steven at 2:05 AM


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Clint Eastwood got to meet Randy Barnett. Actually, I got to meet Randy Barnett a few months ago. It was brief.

::: posted by Steven at 1:59 AM


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Racist comments by U.S. Representative Corrine Brown seem to be getting less attention than I would have expected.

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President's policy on the beleaguered nation "racist" and his representatives "a bunch of white men."

Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department's top official for Latin America. . . .

Noriega later told Brown: "As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man," according to three participants.

Brown then told him "you all look alike to me," the participants said.

Here's more.

::: posted by Steven at 1:50 AM


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The entire Martha Stewart case? I thought it was just the securities fraud charge.

::: posted by Steven at 12:50 AM


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Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.