Month: October 2009

That's HuffPo's headline for the hate crimes amendment to the Defense Appropriation bill. It's absurd. Does anyone seriously believe that a hate crimes federal law will actually prevent gay bashing? How exactly?

What it will do is allow for extra federal penalties for anyone found guilty of such an attack if its victim was selected by anti-gay bias and if local authorities refuse to prosecute. Now recall that Matthew Shepard's murderers were given the harshest sentence allowed under the law (a hate crime provision would have added nothing) and that sentence was passed down in the absence of any hate crime law in Wyoming. So this bill has zero actual relevance to the Shepard case: in fact, the Shepard case is really salient in showing why hate crimes laws are unnecessary.

But, again, the proof of the pudding: Let's see what results this amendment gets within six months, and every six months thereafter. Meanwhile, have some great cocktails at the White House, guys. Get a souvenir.

This is getting more and more interesting. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin took time today to lash out at the father of her grandson, Tripp. By lash out, I mean using the words "malicious", "mean-spirited" and "selling his body for money." Kinda sensitive, isn't she? I wonder why. If Levi has nothing, wouldn't it best to ignore him? This, by the way, is his version of malicious:

"There are some things that I have that are huge. And I haven't said them because I'm not gonna hurt her that way. I have things that can, you know — that would get her in trouble, and could hurt her. Will hurt her. But I'm not gonna go that far. You know, I mean, if I really wanted to hurt her, I could, very easily. But there's — I'm not gonna do it. I'm not going that far."

At this point, it seems to me that Levi has nothing to lose and a lot to gain by telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Next month would be a great opportunity, as Palin's latest vehicle is wheeled out by the marketing company, Harper Collins. If she can make millions off lies and spin, why should he not make some cash by telling the truth and exposing the fraud?

Tim Nudd explains:

Last October, [DirecTV] had the spot with with Craig T. Nelson and Heather O’Rourke from Poltergeist, which was unfortunate, given that O’Rourke (who played Carol Anne) died tragically in 1988 at age 12. Now, a year later (hey, Halloween’s coming up again), we get this Tommy Boy homage, with Chris Farley and David Spade. Farley, of course, died of a drug overdose in 1997. The whole dead-celebs thing is a gray area in advertising. Sometimes it seems less off-putting than other times. But you know there’s an issue when an ad finishes and you hear audible groans from around the room.

I keep coming back to Hayek on this – because government-sponsored health insurance is not government-run healthcare. Maybe it's my British roots that make this so clear to me (if the British Tories proposed a universal health insurance scheme, with care provided by private doctors, nurses and hospitals, it would rightly be regarded as a major shift to the right.) Here's Hayek's discussion of why this is not heresy for libertarians and conservatives of the old school:

Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision.

Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong… Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken," – The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

Demanding and helping people insure themselves in a context where emergency care is already guaranteed is not socialism. It's prudence.

It's worth examining the precise wording he used in front of military leaders this afternoon:

After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we've passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, or who they are.

This simply doesn't make sense. Hate crime laws for most categories, including federal measures,  have been around for a long time. The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered "a decade of opposition and delay" – is the addition of sexual orientation. So the president had a chance to defend gays from being excluded from the usual roster of victims, in front of military leaders, and he had to walk backwards into this strange circumlocution.

Obama's is the support that dare not speak our name. And what exactly is that referendum in Maine about? Not sure. Haven't heard enough. Want another party at the White House?

Packer explains:

The country’s politicians refuse to call the war in Afghanistan a war. Germany’s participation was sold to the public here as peacekeeping and reconstruction, and that’s what it must remain to prevent any further erosion of support—even though it’s becoming more and more obvious that the war has come to the Germans in the north, the first real fighting the German army has seen since 1945. The German politicians and journalists I’ve spoken with want Germany to do more, not less, in Afghanistan, even if that means fighting. Public opinion in this amazingly pacifist country runs otherwise, though only the extreme left and right want an immediate withdrawal.

Doug Short's latest chart on the stock market.

The Awl (via DT) proffers a grim visual picture of what has happened to newspaper circulation these past couple of decades. If you work for a newspaper, this is troubling stuff – so it's after the jump to avoid too much hysteria/panic/depression:

Here's an insight into why the Israelis have no intention whatever of moving toward a two-state solution:

"When we [Israelis] say that this is a political conflict, then we lose the battle," [Major Adrian Agassi] told the Guardian, adding that it should be remembered that the ancient land of Israel is "given to us by the Bible, not by some United Nations". Agassi, one of the most important officials in the military courts wielding authority over large parts of the West Bank, says settling Jews on lands that made up ancient Israel stands above all other biblical commandments and only when it is done can they have "a promised land and a promised life".

"You say that these lands 'passed into Jewish hands'. Others would say that they came back into Jewish hands. Others would say that they are obviously ours, inherently," he said. It was, he claims, a mistake to call it the State of Israel. "If we would have named it the State of Jews, the Arabs would have understood that this land belongs to the Jews."

At some point, what people do is more eloquent than what they say.

The state supreme court rules they have to abide by Maine's laws for disclosing their out-of-state donors. Here's the PDF ruling. Money quote:

Maine is entitled to conclude that its electorate needs to know, on an ongoing basis, the source of financial support for those who are taking positions on a ballot initiative. It will not do to say that a one-time disclosure in the week before the election is sufficient. That would not give the opposing viewpoint the opportunity to point out the source of the financing and seek to persuade the electorate that the source of support discounts the message.