Duck Season

It's not just school vouchers that teachers unions are against:

The district has been trying to re-invent Sacramento High School, a troubled school in the city's largely minority Oak Park neighborhood, a few miles south of the state Capitol. The campus was officially on the list of the state's "low-performing" schools and participated in a state program targeting new resources at such failures. But Sacramento High didn't improve, and faced a possible state takeover.

Instead, the district school board voted earlier this year to close the campus and hand the grounds to a nonprofit corporation headed by former NBA basketball star Kevin Johnson, who graduated from Sacramento High before going on to lead the Phoenix Suns as an all-star point guard.

... Sacramento High would be a public charter school, meaning it would get its funding directly from the state and escape many of the rules and regulations that weigh down traditional public schools. It would be held accountable for its results rather than its processes - and the students would be expected to meet clear academic and behavioral standards. At least at the start, the teachers would not be members of the local union, the Sacramento City Teachers Association.

That's the problem. The union could not accept the loss of membership and control, and has done everything possible to stop the school's rebirth. The harassment started while the district was pondering the change, as teachers at the old Sacramento High frightened their students with horror stories about what would happen if the transition occurred. But the signatures of more than 1,000 parents on petitions supporting the proposal carried the day.

Naturally, without popular support, the union tries to shut the project down in court:

Once the school board voted narrowly to move ahead, the local union, with the backing of the California Teachers Association, took the district to court. The teachers' claim: The school was illegal because it wasn't really new but only a conversion of the old campus. State law, the union insisted, required the support of half the school's teachers for a conversion. If the school was closed and reopened, parental backing would be sufficient.

The first judge who heard the case rejected the union's request for an emergency order blocking the move and told the plaintiffs they had little chance of prevailing at trial. So the union used a legal maneuver to dump that judge for another.

The new jurist, Superior Court Judge Trena Burger-Plavan, issued a ruling blocking the school district from moving ahead. She didn't say the district could not close the school. Nor did she say the district could not close the school and reopen it later as a charter school. She simply said it had been done all too quickly. Her ruling, now under appeal, seemed to suggest that if the district left the campus shuttered for a year or so, all would be forgiven.

Of course, they're doing it only out of altruism:

One subtext to all of this is that the district's teachers are threatening to strike this fall over a new contract. If the new Sac High is allowed to proceed with non-union teachers, it could well stand as the only school in the city to open on schedule in September. That would give it tons of publicity and potentially weaken the union's position in negotiations with the district.

That's the Seventh Commandment of the Elitists.

Remember, you might like Wal-Marts, you might like convience, and you might like buying things at cheaper prices, but these people are smarter, and they know what's good for you, so just sit down and shut up.

Since they perceive themselves as locked in a life-or-death struggle, it's not surprising that the activists' rhetoric tends toward the extreme: One told me that "mega-stores gut the hell out of a town." And it is often explicitly anti-Wal-Mart; that's one of the costs of being the country's most successful retailer. Wal-Mart, with more than 2,000 stores in the United States alone, is "the exemplar of...corporate colonialism, which is to say, organizations from one place going into distant places and strip-mining them culturally and economically," one opponent told The Wall Street Journal. "We're not anti-Wal-Mart," another explained to the Baltimore Sun, "we are anti-pig."

Mickey Kaus wants a candidate in the upcoming Caifornia re-call election of Governor Gray Davis to be picked by a reality show:

... Memo to R.J. Cutler, producer of "American Candidate," the ambitious reality show designed to run someone for President but recently cut loose by Fox: Here's your reality show! Take all your candidate-finding machinery and run some political Clay Aiken for governor in the California recall election. It will be cheaper, faster, and way more suspenseful. And your candidate could easily win.

Wouldn't the final vote, probably between a liberal and a conservative, be highly controversal? Can you imagine the conspiracy theories if the conservative candidate wins because of a late surge in voting? Would someone then sue for a re-count?

Boston University law school professor Randy Barnett hates The Producers.

Howard Dean will be guest blogging on Lawrence Lessig's blog next week.

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy).

More on Liberia and the need for US intervention:

Name the following despot: In 1991, he invaded a neighboring country, where his men committed wholesale looting and massive atrocities. In 1998, he personally met with a senior Al Qaeda operative now listed as one of the FBI's 25 "Most Wanted" terrorists. He is the single greatest threat to the stability of one of the most important oil-producing regions in the world. Saddam Hussein? No, Charles Taylor of Liberia.

Quoted from The New Republic:

For an article last week on Salon.com, Laura McClure did something mischievous: She called the leaders of International answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and asked why they don't care about Congo. ANSWER, you may remember, coordinated this winter's protest against the Iraq war. But its agenda is far broader than that. As the preeminent umbrella organization of the hard left, ANSWER directs its outrage across the globe. This September, for instance, it plans "International Days of Protest against Occupation and Empire, from Palestine to Iraq to the Philippines to Cuba and Everywhere."

But, as McClure found out, "everywhere" does not include Congo. In fact, it doesn't include Africa at all. answer has organized no protests and issued no statements on Africa's four most ravaged countries--Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe--although they contain exponentially more oppression and suffering than the four targeted by the group's "International Days of Protest."

Answer is symptomatic of the left in general. A LexisNexis search going back to 2000 finds not a single reference to the crises in Congo, Liberia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe from Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Michael Moore, Michael Lerner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, or Howard Zinn. In Congo alone, according to the International Rescue Committee, five years of civil war have taken the lives of a mind-boggling 3.3 million people. How can the leaders of the global left--men and women ostensibly dedicated to solidarity with the world's oppressed, impoverished masses--not care?

Being a clear-headed lefty Peter Beinart generally makes me jump-up and cheer with his writing, and this article is no exception. What I particularly like about his reasoning is the emphasis on the Moral Righteousness of the Operation Iraqi Freedom argument. (Isn't it ironic how the undiscovered WMD have those realist dogs who were barking about O:IF being about the national interest running for the security of the Moral argument? And why aren't the liberal-hawks jumping all over this??) Just as O:IF was the morally correct thing to do because we are helping to ensure a better future for those whose suffering we were indirectly responsible for, Liberia is a country with historical ties to the United States that obligate the US to aide it as best we can.

My only objection would be a logistical one. I don't believe that we have the troop deployment currently necessary in Iraq to do the job we promised the Iraqi people we would do, so how do we rectify this with the prospect of sending peace-keeping troops into another country? How do we tell the family of today's lost soldier that their child didn't need additional back-up... that US forces were being deployed to half-secure two countries instead of fully securing one? I'm totally in favor of going into Liberia so long as we're sure our troops are provided equal to but hopefully better support as they're receiving right now in Iraq.

Bono complements Bush while Aaron is away. I couldn't decide which portions to quote, it's just such an amazing interview, so here's the whole transcript:

KAGAN: Has this president surprised you with his interest in Africa?

BONO, MUSICIAN: I think we should really -- this is -- I think this is an extraordinary moment in time for America, for Africa. This is potentially saying we are going to put a man on the moon.

This is a Republican president going to the poorest place on Earth and saying, we want to be part of your story. This is what America's all about. I think it's potentially history. But, of course, if the rocket doesn't have any fuel, if the money doesn't follow the rhetoric, then it's the worst thing of all. It's tourism in people's tragedies. And I don't believe that. I believe President Bush is what he says he is on this one.

I really believe his convictions. I believe the team around him are genuine about this. My friends, people out banging the dustpan lids on the streets, they don't have the same confidence that I do. And when they see what's going on in Congress this week, where they're cutting the president's budget on Africa and on these drugs, they say that I'm being duped. I think they're wrong. I believe the president will keep his word. I think he's a man of his word.

KAGAN: Well, let's talk about some of the skepticism that's out there. First of all, you mentioned Congress. The president is pushing for $15 billion over the next five years. But there's a couple of problems. One, not everybody in Congress supports that. So there's a good chance it won't go through. And then there are those critics who say that money might come forward, but it's just coming from different pots to be put into this place.

BONO: Yes, this has to be new money. We can't be robbing Peter to pay Paul, especially if Peter's broke. There's perfectly good programs that are lacking funding in America.

We have to find this money -- or, rather, the president has to find this money from other places. But it's not big money. For the big impact it will have on these lives, we're talking about $3 billion this year. The defense budget has gone up by $100 billion this year, just to put it in proportion. But the impact is enormous on the way -- not just the moral imperative here, but just the way America is seen by Africa and the developing world.

This story has brought a lot of goodwill to America. I'm just reading it in cynical papers, where people are saying, wow, they can't believe their eyes. And I can. And this is the kind of America I'm a fan of. And I'm sure that there's -- I'm sure there's more visits like this on the way. This can't be the end of the story. It's just the beginning.

KAGAN: Let me flip around. Instead of how America's seen in Africa, let's talk about how Africa is seen in America. And when President Bush made his stop in South Africa, he's dangling the money in front of Mr. Mbeki, the president. But he's saying, we need to make sure this money is well spent.

And the understanding there is that, here in America, there are many people who believe, you can throw as much money as you want at Africa, but the continent is so corrupt, the money is not going to be well spent and not go to good use.

BONO: The corruption argument is, of course, real. But it's often just an excuse for inaction.

And we just got to -- in the light of the size of the tragedy that that AIDS pandemic brings -- I think it's 7,000 people a day. How about that, 7,000 people a day dying of a preventable, treatable disease? We need to stop prevaricating. All these initiatives, the president's Millennium Challenge Account, which is $10 billion over three years, that is predicated on there being -- on government's tackling corruption and there being good governance and clear and transparent process in place.

This is smart of the president. And this is the kind of thing that we have to have in Africa. Of course we've got deal with corruption. But it isn't corruption, finally, that's killing 7,000 people a day. It's a disease called HIV/AIDS.

KAGAN: And let me just ask you this for my last question. When you talk about those huge numbers that are just so mind-boggling, how do you remain so optimistic? How do you keep your passion going? And do you ever have a time when you are ready to throw in the towel?

BONO: Yes. I got very depressed just over the last week about this. I was so excited, elated, at the pictures of the president arriving in Africa and the people who are with him that I respect, like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. And I was very excited. He told me he was going to take this on and he followed through on it.

And then just the sense of disappointment when I hear what's going on in Congress. And it really -- I despair of it, because there's this sense of expectation now in Africa. We've raised the expectations of these people, the most vulnerable people on Earth. And we mustn't raise it, only to dash it. I know people in Congress are -- there's some people who are -- who are minding the purse strings of America. And so they should.

The money has to be well spent. But this is the best thing America could be doing right now. This is rebranding the USA, for the cold, clinical commercial people. Look at it like that. Look at these AIDS drugs as advertisements for the USA. Paint them red, white and blue, whatever. Just think about them. Just get them to the people. Wherever they go, I'll tell you, evil-minded ideas about the United States will be run out of town. This is the best money -- the best value for money, the best bang for your buck you're going to get.

KAGAN: Your passion keeps a spotlight on the issue.

Bono, thanks for joining us.

BONO: Thanks, Daryn.

The emphasis in the last paragraph is all mine, because I think it's a point that must have attention drawn to it. Bono is totally correct on this point, a USA health-intervention into Africa could only serve lift the prestige of the United States amongst the people of the world (unless you're some kind of marxist who'll happily believe that the USA is keeping these people alive only so they can work for and purchase Nike). We *need* to find the dollars to help these people.

Just watched the first two episodes of the new SPIDER-MAN cartoon on MTV, it's pretty spiffy. The animation is this odd hybrid between CGI and traditional hand drawn stuff. The look of the characters has been contemporized, and although Mary Jane has Peggy Bundy hair and a Cher Horowitz vocabulary, the show was very entertaining. The fight scenes were especially awesome, the Spidey movement is real fluid with only a hint of "hey, we're ripping off the Matrix".

I just saw someone slice a banana in half by throwing a card at it from three feet away on ESPN.

No word on when playing cards will be put on the list on banned carry-on items.

It's an invasion:

A floating flock of the bathtub toys — along with beavers, turtles and frogs — is believed to be washing ashore somewhere along the New England coast, bleached and battered from a trans-Arctic journey. Oceanographers say the trip has taught them valuable lessons about the ocean's currents.

The toys have been adrift since 29,000 of them fell from a storm-tossed container ship en route from China to Seattle more than 11 years ago.

(Via Michael Totten).

Nick quoting Sports Guy:

What about Serena Williams? She's a fledgling actress, and the American public is clamoring for more. Wouldn't a shocking nude scene in some suspenseful cop thriller with Taye Diggs send America into an absolute tizzy? And can you imagine Bud Collins' rection?

Is "rection" missing an 'a' or an 'e'?

As Israel have long claimed, Israeli shelling of the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War in 1967 was not deliberate, according to new documents released this week by the US National Security Agency.

(Via Bersteinblog).

Type in the names of people you know and laugh at the silliness.

This is why you have to read the Sports Guy:

I was watching "Swordfish" for the 38th time the other day. I swear that it was for the Travolta scenes, when it hit me that many female stars, who never would have done it before, are surprising us by taking off their tops now. Halle Berry, Rene Russo in the "Thomas Crown Affair," etc. At what point in their career do they need to do this and who is next. I'm thinking either Catherine Zeta Jones or Julia Roberts. -- Kevin from Boston

I vote for Katie Holmes. Yeah, she went topless in "The Gift," but she needs to take things to the next level. She needs a kickstart -- one of those "'Basic Instinct' for the next generation"-type roles. Listen, ladies, Halle showed you the playbook. It can be done. And Jennifer Love Hewitt, I hope you're reading this.

(While we're on the subject, here's a wild card: What about Serena Williams? She's a fledgling actress, and the American public is clamoring for more. Wouldn't a shocking nude scene in some suspenseful cop thriller with Taye Diggs send America into an absolute tizzy? And can you imagine Bud Collins' rection? They'd have to carry him out of the theater.)

Here i'm going on record for the last time. Halle Berry's topless scene in Swordfish was the most over-rated nude scene ever. Big props to her though.

David Adesnik on Oxblog:

The big accusation now floating around is that Bush misled the nation into going to war. For uranium-gate to matter, there would have to be evidence that concern about the alleged uranium sales played an important role in generating support for the war. Yet if we all knew before the war that the uranium story was a fabrication but still supported the use of force, then it is self-evident that no one was misled.

After ripping President Bush for lying telling an untruth about the uranium story, Mark Kleiman makes the following plea to his fellow Democrats:

Note to Democrats: As long as the WMD issue seems to be part of an attempt to discredit the war effort, it's a loser politically.

Repeat after me: "Character issue. Character issue. Character issue."

I guess he's not a Howard Dean fan ...

This could be a big story soon.

Well, not really, but he is happy that the World Trade Organization ruled against the United States on steel tariffs.

Now can someone work on getting rid of ethanol subsidies?

That New Jersey senior who sued her school district to be declared the sole valedictorian of her high school has had her acceptance to Harvard revoked because she allegedly plagiarised on her under-grad application.

While Boston.com hasn't said a word about the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court coming back with a ruling in the gay marriage case today, the topic is still fresh in my mind from Heil Lun's post yesterday. While I agree that gay marriage will not be the end of the world as we know it, i'm wondering what kind of impact any gay marriage ruling may have on the health care industry. Gay marriage will not dilute the sanctity of marriage amongst heterosexuals, I wonder if marriage might be a tool for homosexuals to obtain health insurace through a partner?

Not being married I have no idea what kind of hoops you need to jump through to prove your marriage to a potential insurer. Yet, while the opportunity for exploitation exists, I don't see why the desire to enter into faux-marriages for health insurance purposes would be greater amongst homosexuals than heterosexuals. It really is a "wait and see" issue, the exact kind of thing that drives conservatives nuts.

Kevin Drum calls appeals court nominee William Pryor a "wingnut". Several days earlier, he describes himself as "being in the leftward 20% of the country". Presumably he does not consider himself a wingnut, so his idea of a wingnut would consist of less than 20% of each side of the ideological spectrum (unless he thinks that only the right side has wingnuts). If it's not 20%, then what is it? 10%? 5%? Does being in that 5 or 10% eliminate oneself from being considered as a federal appeals judge, as Drum seem to think of Pryor? Does he also think that Charles Pickering, Priscilla Owen, and Miguel Estrada are also in the rightmost 5 or 10% of the country? If not, does he think they should be confirmed as judges?

J. Geils Band cover of the Supreme's Where did our love go? Two awesome groups.

I'm quoting heavily here from Jonah Golberg's latest column, but everything Jonah says right here can be exchanged word for word as the generic argument of the sports-media in this country, especially Glenn Ordway.

"It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat," Baker told reporters on July 5. "You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. ... We were brought over here for the heat, right?

Isn't that history? Weren't we brought over because we could take the heat?" He continued, "(Black's) skin color is more conducive to heat than it is for lighter skin people, right?"

The good news for Baker is that he's black. And, as if to prove his point, the social heat isn't too hot for him precisely because he is black.

My limited research reveals plenty of sports writers and other commentators condemning Baker for the "stupidity" or "ignorance" of his comments. But nobody seems to think this will cost him his career. In fact, the universal consensus is quite the opposite. Everybody seems to agree that if Baker were white, this would cost him his job, his reputation, his career. But since black is so often shorthand for "incapable of being racist," Baker's getting off with a slap on the wrist.

Consider sports sociologist Harry Edwards. He came to Baker's defense in USAToday declaring, "Dusty and I go back a long way, and Dusty by no means is enamored with ethnic or racial stereotypes." But, he explained matter-of-factly, "If a white manager made those statements, there's no question he would find himself in a group that includes Al Campanis and Jimmy `The Greek' Snyder."

Snyder, recall, made two terrible mistakes. In 1988, the CBS football commentator said that black athletes who descended from slaves had certain genetic advantages over whites -not all that different from Baker's take on history when you think about it.

Now here is where those silly republicans go wrong. Instead of arguing their core beliefs, they're stuck waving flags and setting off cherry-bombs to point out the hypocracy of a black man saying something "racist". As the Big O. kept harping at callers, yes, if a white man had uttered those comments he'd be facing a lot more scrutiny right now.

Here's the fallacy with that argument. These right-wingers are trying to expose the politically correct world of "If you're black you get a pass" based on the politically correct assumption that if Dusty Baker were white he'd be in a lot of trouble right now. Yet, if they held true to their anti PC beliefs, they should be arguing that the Dusty Baker comments are a non-issue and should also be a non-issue if they were spoken by a white man because there is a difference between saying something stupid and saying something that is racist.

Stupid is exactly what Baker's comments are. (To read John Rocker's racist comments, which elicited Rocker a small but vocal support in some very anti-PC sports columns arguing "give the man his freedom of speech" vein, including, iirc, even the Big O. was opposed to MLB penalizing Rocker for his comments in lieu of his 1^st amendment right, click here. ) They're not supported by any scientific knowledge as so many experts trotted into the media have proven, but they are just the words of some old man saying "hey us brothers, we're from the heat, we can handle it better than you white boys from Maine."

Sounds just like Chris Rock to me, and while the subject of "why can Chris Rock make fun of how white people are different, yet its in bad taste for white people to point out anyone else's differences" is the topic for another entry all together, Jonah gets this exactly right when he counsels "Instead of telling blacks they can traffic in racial stereotypes, but whites who repeat them must be tarred and feathered, how about everybody just lightens up?"

bong.

In Coulter's world, there are two types of people: conservatives and liberals. These aren't groups of people with competing ideas. They are the repositories of good and evil. There are no distinctions among conservatives or among liberals. To admit the complexity of political discourse would immediately require Coulter to think, explain, argue. But why bother when you can earn millions insulting?

link.

Hey, we've figured out time travelling: A User's Guide to Time Travel.

Seeing a commercial for the new Lara Croft movie made me realize that she is going to find weapons of mass destruction before we do.

Well, someone else's word on Coulter:

Ann Coulter's become a useful tool for people who don't like conservatives.

So that's why we might be going to Liberia!

Virginia Postrel finds that Esquire doesn't like John Kerry. First, the Esquire photographer on Kerry:

He told me it was an ambassador on the other end and at one point offered me the hang-loose sign with his free hand.

Now Postrel:

... on p. 32 in the same issue, Esquire's list of "Things a Man Should Never Do Past the Age of 30" includes, as item #3, "Flash the hang-loose hand sign, even if he is actually hanging loose." Nope, they don't like him at all.

And even for a photography shoot, Kerry manages to bring up his Vietnam service:

Senator Kerry's initial idea for the shoot was to pose with his wife on the type of gunboat he captained in the Vietnam War.

(Via Instapundit).

I failed the dolphin stress test.

(Via Clayton Cramer.)

Rolling out the wayback machine ...

Let's look at the evidence, shall we?

Actually, there doesn't seem to be any convincing evidence at all. The sourse of all these stories 4 years ago came from allegations in the book "Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President" made by its author J.H. Hatfield. Hatfield cites "a high-ranking advisor to Bush" and a former Yale classmate of Bush's. One, of course, has to wonder why "a high-ranking advisor to Bush" would disclose something that would damage the presidential prospects of his boss. And it's impossible to ascertain the credibility of the other source.

Hatfield, the author, on the other hand, has been proven not to have any credibility. Hatfield admitted that he made up at least one detail in the book. He is also discovered by the media to be an ex-con who was on parole for hiring a hitman to kill a former boss.

The best evidence left is ... that Bush refuses to answer questions on whether he had done cocaine! So in the end it all comes down not to evidence, but to our own intuition.

Americans' changing French fries to freedom fries: immature stunt by ignoramuses reflecting the arrogance of the American people

French government's banning the usage of the American word email by its civil service: necessary action to preserve a culture and prevent encroachment

Good piece on the Buzzwords of George W. Bush on Slate today:

Responsible
Example: "My hope is to change the culture from one that has said, 'If it feels good, do it; if you've got a problem, blame somebody else,' to one in which every single American understands that he or she are responsible for the decisions that you make. …You're responsible for being involved with the quality of the education of your children. You're responsible for making sure the community in which you live is safe" (speech, June 17, 2003).
What it means: You're responsible.
What it hides: Therefore, I'm not.
Subtext: It feels good to blame somebody else for the culture of irresponsibility.

If only all Americans could afford the kind of medical treatment Dubya received in order to overcome his addictions. That's something that has long confused me about the democratic party. Bush isn't ther enemy, he's their greatest example of the unlimited potential held within each drug addict... if only they could receive the medical attention and counseling they require. More government assistance!

There was a party:

EAGLE, Colo. -- Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant talked to and flirted with the alleged victim in the ongoing sexual assault case when he checked into the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera on June 30, according to hotel employees, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

One employee told the newspaper that hotel security, responding to complaints of noise from other guests, went to Bryant's room early in the morning on July 1. A report of the alleged attack was made to Eagle County law enforcement officials later that afternoon, hours after Bryant underwent arthroscopic knee surgery, according to the Times.

A decision on whether to charge Bryant with the assault will not be announced until sometime next week, prosecutors said Thursday. Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert did not immediately return a call, but his spokeswoman said there will be no word until then.

Teenage drinking continues to be a really befuddling issue in society. Take this report in yesterdays Patriot Ledger. It details how police departments in the area can't combat teenagers as well this summer due to shrinking budgets. They just don't have the man power to cover the hot local party spots. My complaint, as detailed in the report, and as I remember from high school, there just aren't any teeth in these teen-drinking busts. If you're going to spend the money and man-power to bust up parties then you've got to arrest these kids, put a good fright into them, so they have a disincentive to return. The way the system works now the cops simply confiscate your beer and call your parents, and unfortunately on this issue most parents take a "how can I tell them not to do what i did?" approach. Just another typical story:

Also this summer, about 30 kids were partying about a quarter mile into woods near Shea Rink, Crowley said.

‘‘They had a bonfire going,’’ he said. ‘‘You could see it from the street. They were all sitting around, having beers. There was evidence they were smoking marijuana.’’

Police in Pembroke suspect it was a campfire or bonfire at a teen gathering in the woods that resulted in a Kingston teenager’s severe facial burns over the weekend. The teen is being treated at a Boston hospital.

‘‘Part of the problem is you can’t keep walking in (the woods) a quarter of a mile,’’ Crowley said. ‘‘We’re busy, we’ve got other calls. We just can’t devote an hour time. It would take a half hour to walk in, a half hour to walk out.’’

John Derbyshire writes about whiteness studies as an academic discipline in American universities. He also links to and takes the "privilege walk" that supposedly measures one's social advantages in life. For each item, the student is instructed to either take a step forward or back. Derbyshire ended up 10 steps back. I, on the other hand, was only 7 steps back. Does that mean I'm more privileged than this white writer?

The instructors are also instructed to ask the following questions after the students take this walk. Questions are in italics. My answers follow.

1) What happened?
A long time ago, some smart people decided to pass their knowledge to others through education. This worked pretty well for a long time. Then idiots took over.

2) How did this exercise make you feel?
That I'm glad I never took a class half as stupid as this.

3) What were your thoughts as you did this exercise?
What does half of these questions have to do with being white? Do all white white people live in nice neighborhoods with loving homes while non-whites live in back alleys raised by hobos?

4) What have you learned from this experience?
We must have gone a long way in race relations if this is the best guilty white people can come up with.

5) What can you do with this information in the future?
Pray that all these idiots move to Canada?

Nick wrote:

Now we're being looked down upon because we're not threatening more regime's in Africa?

It depends on which African country you're talking about. While there were no objections to the U.S.'s sending troops into Liberia, there probably would be if Bush had demanded that Mugabe resign or threatened to intervene. Remember that Mugabe had made a diplomatic visit to France a few months earlier. Bush's refusal to call for Mugabe's resignation can be viewed as a refusal to further antagonize France, which, as fun as it might be, is in the long term counterproductive. And given that we now need France for UN approval of the peacekeeping in Iraq so that other countries such as India and Pakistan would send in troops, it was probably the right move by Bush.

The Daily Telegraph has a story today about President Bush refusing to demand that evil dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, resign. Appearantely Dubya "disappointed millions of Zimbabweans yesterday when he said America would defer to South Africa's quiet diplomacy on changing the behaviour of President Robert Mugabe's regime."

While I generally find The Daily Telegraph to be a great newspaper, this story has me really confused. We threatened that Liberian guy and he said "yes, eventually." The US is now planning on sending in troops to Liberia without a UN security counsel resolution, and the world rejoices. We threatened Saddam and he said "no way jose." The US sent in 200,000+ troops along with several other nations, without a *new* UN security counsel resolution, and the United States got labeled as the most dangerous rogue state on the planet. Now we're being looked down upon because we're not threatening more regime's in Africa?

Talk about mixed messages.

This blog may no be able to edit source code the way GoGoBot can, but techno-jealousy won't keep us from linking to their reports on Pat Robertson defending the regime in Liberia and mysterious hacking of US satellite broadcasts into Iran.

ESPN's latest report provides depth sorely lacking from their other reports, but this case is still a complete mystery. Yesterday the big story was that Kobe had been picked-up by a cab at a hospital emergency room 12 hours after the alleged sex-crime took place. My reaction: so what... what does that mean? It had been reported that Kobe was in Colorado to undergo knee surgery. Was this cab ride his post knee surgery transportation? The media was very unclear.

Today's report is entirely different. ESPN reports that the 19 year old victim was also in the emergency room with Kobe. At that time Kobe donated some of his DNA, most likely so it could be checked against anything found on the victim.

I'm not sure of Kobe travels with a posse like most NBA players, but if I had to write this as a movie-of-the-week, I would imagine this is the story of a star-struck girl who gets invited to party with a famous NBA player, gets totally wasted, and then had sex with one of Kobe's posse. That's still just pure speculation at this point.

As for David Aldridge's whore, the story linked above tells a different tale:

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that the alleged victim is a former cheerleader and choir singer at Eagle Valley High School who was described as "fun- loving, outgoing and emotional" by friends.

A couple that lives next door expressed shock that the alleged victim is the woman they know.

"My husband was just saying this morning that he was a disbeliever of the legal action against Kobe -- he thinks Kobe is a stand-up guy," the wife, who declined to give her name, told the Times. "But my thinking all along has been, 'Why would this woman give a false accusation and open herself up to all this scrutiny unless something happened?' "

Her husband told the newspaper that his position changed upon learning the identity of the alleged victim.

"It's more complicated now," the man said. "My thinking was entirely based on Kobe's clean image. But now, actually knowing this girl and her family a lot more than I know Kobe, I just do not think she would do anything malicious. We're dealing with a young girl here, somebody brought up in the mountains, a trusting person.

Sweltering Danish troops in Iraq get snowploughs instead of sunscreen:

Given their gripes about being given armoured vehicles with no air conditioning in the Iraqi desert, the 380-strong contingent stationed in Qurna, 75 kilometers (45 miles) from Basra, could not believe their eyes when they discovered the lawnmowers, a snowplough and even salt for icy roads.

The gaffe came amid growing complaints from the troops who say they have been shipped bullet-proof vests in the wrong sizes, too few armoured vehicles and vehicles in poor condition that were supposed to be scrapped but were sent to Iraq instead.

In addition, they say they did not receive stakes for their tents nor morphine for the medical service, while some of their other equipment has not been able to withstand the extreme heat, according to a report in the Ekstra Bladet tabloid.

Super hero uses perverted powers, then tranforms into invisible man. You gotta love any daily which ends each story with this disclaimer:

WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.

Geoorge Orwell, a.k.a. my favorite socialist. His list of "crypto-communists", which had been withheld from the public by the British Foreign Office, will be released later this summer.

Gay marriage to be decided in Massachusetts by the Supreme Judicial Court by the end of the week. The SJC will most likely vote to legalize. Mixed feelings from the gay community.

Thoughts:
1. Mostly a positive outcome. It's not likely that the disasters predicted by conservatives as a result of gay marriage legalization will come to fruition. For the most part, the only gays that will marry are those who are believers of marriage. Those who are ambivalent or hostile to traditional marriage or marriage in general will not participate. Furthermore, since gays represent only a small percentage of the population, and not many of them want to get married anyway, the number of gay marriages will be very small. It's hard to imagine that this small minority will have any substantial influence to alter the view of the majority on traditional marriage. I am, however, open to being convinced otherwise.

2. Will this increase support of the Federal Marriage Amendment? I don't know what to think of this amendment since commentators can't actually agree on what it actually does. Right now, 39 percent of the population support gay marriage, with 55 percent opposed. But after the SJC rules this week, opponents of gay marriage might be able to convince the undecided that an amendment is needed to prevent gay marriage from being imposed on the country by the courts. Andrew Sullivan has more on this froma pro-gay marriage perspective.

3. How will this decision affect other states? Is it possible that a gay couple will get married in Massachusetts, move to another state, then sue that state to have the marriage recognized? If so, will this case be argued in the Supreme Court next summer?

4. If so, then this will have a direct effect on the 2004 elections. This is bad news for the Democrats, since this puts the only issue in the gay rights debate on which the Democrats do not command a majority of the public opinion on the table. Is gay marriage to liberals worth 3 more Republican Senators and 4 more years of W.?

From yesterday's Pirates-Brewers game:

Pittsburgh first baseman Randall Simon was booked for misdemeanor battery for hitting one of the Milwaukee Brewers' popular racing sausages with a bat during Wednesday night's game...

Film of Wednesday night's race showed that when the group went past the Pirates' third-base dugout, Simon took a two-handed chop at the Italian sausage character -- portrayed by a 20-year-old South Milwaukee woman -- hitting her from behind and causing her to tumble to the ground.

As she fell, a nearby sausage -- the hot dog -- went down as well.

The National Review has clearly disavowed any endorsement of Ann's work.

"Georgie Porgie, he might buy the whole league, but he doesn't have enough money to buy fear to put in my heart," Martinez said, according to the Hartford Courant." Gotta love Pedro. link.

I'm partially to blame for Jenn I suppose. I banned Jenn from most of my screennames about 10 days ago "and loving it" as Agent 86 would say. I'll probably unblock her soon, before she catches on. I'd worry about someone telling her ... but we'd need a readership for that to happen.

... but this is very amusing.

Jenn: I'M SO SICK OF SCHOOL & EXAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: You should have chosen an easy major with no job prospects like the rest of us.

... from Orin Kerr here:

Section 215 on the whole probably offers more privacy protection in the terrorism context than the law has traditionally offered in the criminal law context ...

and here:

... pre-Patriot Act law did not require a probable cause search warrant. A mere grand jury subpoena sufficed in the criminal context, and didn't even require that a crime be committed. The same is true today-- that very low standard is unchanged by the Patriot Act. Section 215 didn't change the law that governs access to library records in criminal investigations-- rather, it changed the standard in terrorism investigations by lowering it to mere relevance.

and here:

The government has had the authority to conduct sneak-and-peek searches since long before the Patriot Act. The ACLU's advertisement makes it sound like the Patriot Act introduced sneak-and-peek warrants. But it didn't. The courts have interpreted the Fourth Amendment and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow sneak-and-peek warrants since the 1980s.

This is from yesterday:

Apparently the non-rich likes to give more money to Republicans than Democrats:

With its superior donor base, the G.O.P. attracted almost 50 percent more contributors than the Democrats and showed a commanding edge among lower-budget donors who gave less than $200 apiece. Sixty-four percent of them gave to the Republicans, versus 35 percent for the supposed party of the people, according to a detailed study by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

In contrast, Democrats received $36 million in hard money contributions of $1 million or more, compared to only $3 million to the Republicans.

What to make of this? An e-mailer on Oxblog considers this a middle class/lower class dichotomy:

People who actually are small donors still have to have enough excess cash to really consider contributing. The Republicans have always had a strong advantage among a broad section of the fairly rich-- the upper middle class, lower upper class, et al. The Democrats have generally had support from the broadly poor and a relatively small number of highly committed supporters among the superrich.

Another possibility is that Democrats suffer from a free-rider problem. Are middle-class conservatives more likely to give money to politicians than middle-class liberals?

In any case, campaign finance reforms that sought to limit soft money would seem to benefit only Republicans. So why are Democrats for CFR and Republicans against it?

A lot of comics talk in 'The Corner' today. Some good points are made about the state of the comics industry, even though all of the Cornerites questions would be answered by watching some tv tommorow night.

But, for the love of God guys, it's spider dash man..... SPIDER-MAN.

The name of Joe Lieberman's new press secretary: Matt Gobush.

Gobush previously worked for Al Gore.

A few points:
1. Who cares?

2. She was in effect fired from National Review Online for refusing to retract her 9/12/01 column, so at least one leading source of conservative opinion does not consider her legitimate.

3. Whether Coulter is more or less influental than Michael Moore is debatable since it's hard to quantify influence on true believers who buy their books/watch their movies as opposed to casual viewers who might see them on television twice a year for 10 minutes. Can't we just agree that they are both too influental and that public discourse would be better if there's less of both?

Hi, my name is Hei Lun Chan and I will be a permanent guest blogger here on this blog, until I find something better to do. I like crossword puzzles, Harry Potter books, and swiss cheese. Yada yada yada.

Pretty interesting article on the cause of liberal anger. Any culture that makes Ann Coulter a legitimate political figure has a fair share of problems:

For example, here comes Ann Coulter with a new "book" rehabilitating Joe McCarthy. OK, it's only Ann Coulter, and she's a nut. But actually it's not only Ann Coulter; liberal anti-Americanism is the theme of several recent right-wing books (by Mona Charen, Sean Hannity and that 13-year-old boy pundit). Furthermore, wait two or three years for a "scholarly" book or documentary (written or made with right-wing funding) to come out "proving" that McCarthy was a wronged man. And finally, watch The New York Times, in the interest of being either "fair" or mischievously counterintuitive or both, give it a thumbs-up.

So yeah. We're pissed. And being counseled to cool it by conservatives doesn't make us any less pissed. It rings with all the sincerity of a husband smacking his wife for a few years and then lecturing her that anger won't solve anything.

Yes, Hei Lun, I said legitimate. She may not sell as many books to the zealots as Michael Moore does, but Ann has a right-wing air of credibility (before you ask - it smells like geriatric spirit) around her that Michael Moore doesn't. I can't explain why the fellowship of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy adore Ann, but i'm sure her time on Capital Hill as a congressional aide and her former position as a National Review regular (where she published her September 12 plea for the United States to march into the middle east, kill all the leaders and convert the muslims to christianity) as well as her constant tv-gigs give her a legitimacy Michael Moore and his fat man from Detroit act can't ever earn.

I've read two really interesting posts by Orin Kerr on the subject of the PATRIOT act on Volokh today (via The Corner), they can be found here and here.

Orin is right dead on about how absurdly hysterical everyone left of center in the USA is over the PATRIOT act. While i'm certainly a huge proponent of individual liberties, as Ben Franklin says "they who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Amitai Etzioni clarifies this severly misquoted phrase for me, via google) i'm really hard pressed to understand why people are so fearful of the PATRIOT act.

A professor of mine last semester summed her feelings up like this, "there are always going to be terrorists, so why not just give me back my freedoms." While my summation doesn't do that intelligent woman any justice, it does highlight my favorite criticism of PATRIOT act criticizers. "Tell me exactly what you've lost" I ask. The real intelligent ones should knock me down in an instant, but it hasn't happened yet. While I have no knowledge about the real change in criminal procedures due to the PATRIOT act, neither do its accusers! Why? Because most people aren't criminals who're being watched by the government. The PATRIOT act hasn't impinged on their liberty one bit.

First item, this comment made by K.Lo: "It's official: The Jessica Lynch story didn’t exactly happen the way the Washington Post first reported it (in heroic detail). Could the story they painted been motivated by their agenda vis-à-vis women in the military? Shocking, I know. "

Interesting spin, n'est-ce pas? Pretty typical The Corner attitude, to ignore the fact that the military was responsible for the leaks and the video-tape which began the Pfc. Jessica Lynch stories in the first place. Sure, no one forced the media to report this story, but if we're going to assume that the military is an accurate source for news information then how could any media outlet passs up on this story? As reported in the Washington Post story linked above, it was a military camera crew which filmed the "American special- operations forces carrying her broken body on a stretcher from the hospital to a rescue aircraft." Heaven forbid someone in The Corner ignore a chance to criticize the conduct of the Bush administration when they could just assume liberal bias in the media.

Second item, this post by Jonah on the topic of Dr. Strange's sexuality. I'm constantly being surprised yet saddened by Jonah, a man who carries some cache for being able to drop comic and Simpsons references, yet far more often than note bungles things! For someone who's a charter member of the MTV Generation, pop-culture references always liven up any discussion and help to keep my interest, but it's disapointing to constantly see someone err like that. Maybe I need to volunteer to be his "Marvel Comics-guy".

We've been hearing it at least since Jerry Stackhouse came out of UNC back in 1995, "x is the next Michael, y is the next Michael... no, z is definitely the next Michael." I'm still not convinced Kobe Bryant is the next Michael, but if he is, we can rest comfortably knowing that David Aldridge has approached the Ahmad Rashad Memorial Drive and decided to pay the toll. Here i'm quoting from David's latest column on free-agent player movement in the NBA this offseason. Emphasis is my own:

For six, does GP's decision take some of the PR heat off of Kobe? We literally do not know what supposedly happened in that resort on June 30, but we know that something happened bad enough for police to issue an arrest warrant. It may well turn out to be that a liar, or a golddigger, or a star-struck young girl is behind this, but if there's more to this than we know now, it could also be devastating for Bryant -- and by extension, a league that has tied a lot of its promotions and ratings hopes to the Forum Blue and Gold.

I don't live under a rock. I understand the way the groupie system works in the NBA. I understand that the Shawn Kemp's of the world end up with nearly a dozen children in part because a sub-group of young women play, and indeed hope to win, the sperm-lottery. Yet i'm quite sure that Aldridge has crossed the line of decency in this report. Yes, there's a 50/50 chance the woman is lying, but since so few facts have been revealed in this case I think it's flat out despicable to suggest this woman, this victim, is some brand of whore. Sadly, "innocent until proven guilty" appears to be a credo we must adopt not only for those accused of crimes, but for women brave enough to confront powerful men in a court of law.

Ok so maybe i've come a bit more to the right in a year, or maybe not. I blog, you decide.

From: Me
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 9:17 PM
To: My Friend
Subject: yo

so i'm on zmag.org right now and i picked some article at random, (http://www.zmag.org/content/TerrorWar/gerson_war.cfm), and it's pretty much reflective of everything i can't stand in a lot of lefty criticism.

no where does the far left (that i've seen) ever recognize two pretty simple facts:

1) The United States continued to face supreme danger following the 9/11 attacks. We attempted the peaceful negotation route, we asked the Taliban for almost a month to surrender every member of Al Qaida currently in their country and they refused.

2) How does anyone legitimize Sadaam Husseins right to control Iraq? While im not in favor of punching our way through that country, and i think most rational people would agree with me that unless we find a smoking gun (aka sadaam handing terrorists weapons) we won't be going into Iraq.

The facts remain that Sadaam commits far more human rights violations than the US (he used bio weapons against Iran AND tested other biological weapons on his own peoples!), he refuses to sign arms non proliferation treaties, he wont comply with UN requests to allow weapons inspectors into his country, AND (to shut down this conspiracy theory) his oil is of little consequence to the US. Look it up! In each of the last two summers (if i'm remembering correctly) Sadaam has SHUT DOWN his oil production, even though this is his sole source of supplies for his people, and the US hasn't collapsed. He's doing it again this summer, i believe the announcement came on monday.

While the US has backed ugly dictators in the past, i dont see how the writer of this article can denounce dictatorship (US backed and others) and then argue against isolating Iraq from the community of nations. How about we allow a little sanity into our brains, realize that although he may be taking missteps (i disagreed with calling Iran part of the axis of evil as its farily moderate says the NRO, but N. Korea and Iraq are supreme baddys, not to mention N. Korea shut down the sunshine talks before the whole "axis of evil" thing) George Bush may actually be trying nothing more than to kill bad people.

'k this took longer than i had for my break, but i eagerly await your response

That's been tapped.

Two photo-news bits which fit with this blog's philosophy:

1) They don't all hate us in Iraq.

2) Supermodels to play game of contact football during Superbowl halftime.

A little inspiration image: