Month: February 2010

Tyler Cowen answers critics.

"I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line 'I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska' was very funny. I think the word is 'sarcasm.' In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes," – Andrea Fay Friedman, the actress with Down Syndrome who voiced the fictional character on Family Guy that prompted another explosion from the Alaskan fraud, Sarah Palin.

The New York Times, continuing their inability or failure to truly investigate the truth about Palin, excised the last sentence from Friedman's email in its story. Why am I not surprised? This is a paper that cannot call torture torture because Republican war criminals intimidate them. And they cannot give a person with Down Syndrome an opportunity to expose the cynicism at the heart of Palin's exploitation of Trig.

C'mon, Levi. Fight back.

Mark Shea isn't the only Catholic blogger aghast that Marc Thiessen is defending torture on Catholic grounds. Zippy Catholic confronts Marc Thiessen for twisting Catholic teaching:

[T]he argument that a captured terrorist is capable of launching attacks "by withholding information about planned attacks" is nonsense on stilts. A simple rule of thumb can demonstrate: if killing captured Terrorist Bob right now will not in any way prevent X, then we are not doing what we are doing to Bob because he is capable of doing X. A helpless captive, whatever information he may know, is not capable of carrying out any attacks. Indeed, the fact that we don't kill Bob immediately to stop the putative attacks is proof that it isn't what he is capable of doing, but rather what we want to coerce him to do, that is at issue.

Catholic blog Vox Nova has also covered Thiessen.

From a follow up post:

Arroyo and Thiessen are both Catholic public figures, and Arroyo in particular is a TV personality on a Catholic TV channel, making the scandal all the more grave. They are clearly “obstinately persevering” in support for an intrinsically evil act. Worse, they actually try to justify it on Catholic grounds. Thiessen has made it his life’s work to claim that some forms of torture are virtuous.

Arroyo, again and again, invites defenders of torture onto his show, and instead of confronting them with clear Church teaching, voices his agreement. As Burke says, this is “public conduct” that is gravely sinful. I would go further and argue that it is even more scandalous than support for legalized abortion. Most public supporters of abortion do not go on television extolling the great virtues of abortion for women and society. Their argument is more with how it should be treated under the law. But the Arroyo-Thiessen-Sirico cabal are (i) claiming to the faithful Catholics while (ii) making public pronouncements on the positive value of torture.

When is somebody going to come out and state the obvious? I’m not personally calling for canonical action against Thiessen, Arroyo, and Sirico, but I am calling for consistency. Archbishop Burke, I think we need to hear from you…

Yet another Catholic blogger, John da Fiesole, takes on Thiessen. After reviewing Church teaching, his bottom line:

Torture is always wrong. The Catholic Church teaches that torture is always wrong. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that torture is always wrong.Interpretations to the contrary are wrong.

Joe Carter questioned Thiessen's understanding of torture and Catholicism last month (follow up here):

Christians should be unequivocal in our opposition: torture is immoral and should be clearly and forcefully denounced. We continue to shame ourselves and our Creator by refusing to speak out against such outrages to human dignity. If that means that we will be slandered as radical pacifists, then we should wear the label proudly.

Here's another Catholic blogger, Kyle Cupp:

Contrary to Thiessen, I oppose all coercive interrogation techniques, whether or not those techniques fall into the category of torture. Why? Because coercion is a sin against the person; it reduces the one coerced into a mere means to an end, and does so by stripping him of his capacity to make free, moral decisions. To be sure, we may take away a person’s liberty by putting him in prison, but the prisoner is for that imprisonment no less of a free, moral agent, capable of making free, moral decisions. But to coerce a person is to render them less than a person.

And a final Catholic anti-torture blog, Coalition For Clarity:

The burden of proof of any assertion that waterboarding is somehow not torture is on those people making that assertion. There is nothing about waterboarding which magically makes it avoid using physical or moral violence in a coercive and inhumane way; in fact, in an interrogation situation where the person experiencing this particular horror is wholly in the power of those inflicting it waterboarding takes on a particularly torturous hue. If Marc Thiessen swears that despite all appearances waterboarding isn't torture, it's up to him to prove it.

Where is National Review? Or is that a stupid question at this point? The total corruption of the American Catholic hierarchy for access to Republican political power is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

(Photos: wax reproduction of a stress position used in the Peruvian Inquisition in the Museum in Lima; and a stress position directly authorized by Marc Thiessen's former boss, former vice-president and unindicted war criminal Dick Cheney.)

Chris Crain attended the Wednesday debate on gay conservatism, which is posted above. My short speech begins at 24:00. Maggie Gallagher’s begins at 38:00. The back and forth starts at 52:00. Jason Kuznicki was also in the audience:

I got to ask Maggie Gallagher the question I’ve always wanted to ask her: What do you think that am I supposed to do with my life?

Suppose I found myself in agreement with her. Suppose I concluded that same-sex marriage was corrosive to society. Do I leave my husband? Do I send my adopted daughter back to the state? Enter ex-gay therapy, which isn’t likely to work? Tell my whole family that I’m single now, and that Scott shouldn’t be welcome at family events? Live my whole life alone, and loveless? Hide? Where is the life I’m supposed to live?

I probably wasn’t so articulate at the Cato event, but I do recall Gallagher’s very simple answer: “I don’t know.”

She certainly doesn’t, and that’s the whole problem with gay conservatism — there’s hardly a life to be lived within it. There’s no breathing room. Until social conservatives offer us a better answer than “I don’t know,” until they offer us a way to be gay, and conservative, and respectable in their eyes, they’re not going to find many gay conservatives.

A reader writes:

I see, so now it is the MEDIA who is responsible for Global Warming alarmism? Is James Hansen a member of the media? How about Al Gore? How about the hundreds of other "scientists" who give speeches on C-Span about the world ending? Are they the media as well?

I don't understand, why do you have a horse in this race? Global warming exists, but why is it so hard for you to admit that scientists are human too, that scientists exaggerate to promote agendas, and that scientists want to keep their coffers full by promoting alarmism? The more info that comes out, the less trustworthy all these scientists seem. And you think it exasperates the warm-mongers to see their dire predictions repeated ad infinitum in the media? THEY LOVE IT! The whole point is to scare the populace into action, just like the Right does with terrorism. Sad how easily you give in to the fear, both in your initial support of the Iraq debacle and now your willful refusal to countenance any dissent from the warm-mongers agenda.

For someone who is so adamant about catching the Clintons or Palin in all their stupid lies, you have a remarkable tolerance for the lies of the global warming crowd. Or do you not remember their predictions of a future without winter, and how snow would be a thing of the past? There's a reason people laugh at the warm-mongers after we have these huge snow blizzards. We laugh at how stupid they sound when they try to scare us into thinking winter will be something only old people remember as we're shoveling ourselves out of a foot of snow. And then they try to backtrack by saying of course global warming will cause huge snow blizzards, it's all the extra moisture!!! They only recently discovered what moisture can do? Give me a break.

You deride the skeptics who come out of the woodwork after a huge snow storm, yet I see no similar derision when the warm-mongers come out of the woodwork after some big hurricane or flood. What the hell has happened to you?

A reader writes:

There is an answer to your question. It is called the Myers Motors NmG. I drove one for a month a few years ago. It suffers from lack of scaling so the price is probably double what it needs to be, but the concept is there and actually works.  I had to build in extra time during my errand running just to answer questions by curious onlookers during the day. 

Let's eliminate some of the crushing safety stuff that stifles competition with Detroit.  Hey, if I can drive a motorcycle, why can't a I drive a marginally more dangerous car concept?  Because Detroit and its lobbyists have built it into the system, that's why.

Another reader points to Segway's P.U.M.A. project. Wikipedia on the NmG:

The Myers Motors NmG (formerly the Corbin Sparrow) is a single-passenger, three-wheeled, battery electric vehicle designed specifically for commuting and city driving. It was initially produced by Corbin Motors and now by Myers Motors. It is a Personal Electric Vehicle (PEV) [3]. The Sparrow is powered by a 20 kW (continuous) 156-volt DC or 3-phase AC electric motor and has a range of 32 to 64 km (20 to 40 miles) and a top speed of 112 km/h (70 mph). Fuel efficiency is approximately 130 W·h/km (4.8 mi/(kW·h)), which is equivalent to 162 mpg (US) or 194 mpg (UK) (1.45 L/100 km) using the DOE conversion.[4] Two models were produced: the original "jelly bean" model and then a hatchback model, which was nicknamed "pizza butt" because it was designed for use by Domino's Pizza.

(Photo by Flickr user M Skaffari)

The DC diocese – my own – officially ends its 80-year foster care program over marriage equality:

A Catholic Charities spokesman said the group is looking for ways to provide other services for which it is under contract to the city, including assistance to the homeless and victims of domestic violence, without coming into conflict with the new same-sex marriage law, which was passed by the district council in December and will take effect within a few weeks. City officials said no other faith-based group has mentioned any problem with city contracts.

I despair.

A simple parallel: does the Washington diocese's charities employ any people who have been civilly divorced and are now re-married under DC law? If so, how are these individuals less offensive to the teachings of the Church on the institution of marriage than a member of a gay couple provided civil marriage licenses?

Catholic doctrine is very clear: a remarried person is not remarried in the eyes of the Church, and for the Church to employ such a person would be to recognize a civil marriage that violates one of its core principles. There are infinitely more of these individuals than there are gay Catholics or gay non-Catholics who might want to help the homeless or serve the poor or provide foster care for an abandoned child. Catholic Charities might – Heaven forfend – have to provide spousal benefits to a member of a heterosexual couple violating Church doctrine about matrimony in exactly the same way. And almost certainly, they already do all the time.

Have Catholic Charities ever considered shutting down their entire city contracts for the needy because of the chance that this might happen or might have already happened? Of course not. So why this glaring inconsistency on the question of homosexuals – unless it is driven by animus against them?

I raised this question with Maggie Gallagher at the CATO debate. Her response, as I recall, was that the church should probably seek to "cleanse" more people from its ranks, implying divorcees or the remarried.

Nice word that, isn't it: "cleanse". But at least it would be a consistent position: a defense of any contamination of the church's definition of marriage by the District's City Council.

It's interesting that, once again, it's only the gays the Church singles out for this kind of radical action?  And remarkable also that an institution found guilty of the rape and abuse of so many children for so many years – and a conspiracy at the highest levels to cover it up and perpetuate it – would now seek to abandon other children in need of foster care because it might – in some few cases – just might imply acceptance of the civil rights of gay couples. 

This they take a stand on. Torture by their own government just miles away? Not so much. When Jesus' clear fundamental injunction is to help the needy. The homeless will be the next victims of this madness – for there is no other way to describe the extremity of the position, an act of pique that could actually hurt people genuinely in need, whom the church has served for centuries as part of its core mission.

Why? Because the maintenance of dogma, inconsistently applied, is so much more important than charity.

Yes, that's what Catholicism now seems to mean, isn't it?

These three things then remain: dogma, power and charity.

And the least of these three is charity.

The almost-head of Homeland Security and Rudy’s man in NYC is sentenced to four years in prison.

Business Week reports that the average income of "the 400 highest-earning U.S. households grew to almost $345 million in 2007 [the latest year data is available], up 31 percent from a year earlier." One imagines those households lost a good bit of that income in the subsequent crash. Ryan Avent:

I don't know how people think that this is politically sustainable. It's a massive populist backlash waiting to explode.

People could begin to fly planes into buildings or something. The only thing I know for sure is that the Democratic party is incapable of addressing or channeling this. They couldn't sell a joint in Jamaica.

Icheon, South Korea, 5.30 pm