Everybody else is chiming in on the "Texas Sodomy" ruling, so I might as well join in...

There's a lot of talk about the... um... mechanics of the acts involved. As a libertarian, I respect the right of people to do dangerous, immoral, and destructive things to themselves. It's your life; who am I to tell you not to ruin it? And since I don't want you poking your nose into my affairs, I ought to afford you the same courtesy.

However, I'm torn on the larger issue at hand: Should the US Supreme Court be telling the states how to run their affairs? On the one hand, I like the reservation of powers and rights embodied in the 9th and 10th Amendments. Governance in the US was intended to be from the bottom up; not the top down. On the other hand, I don't want things like gun laws written by the loons in Sacramento. In that case, I'd like nothing more than to see SCOTUS use the 14th Amendment to ram the 2nd down their throats.

The garmongous FreeRepublic thread on this is here.

Got that dual boot thing working. (For those who are curious, my old Win2k drive is set up as the master on IDE0 with the new Linux drive as a slave. I let LILO write to the master's MBR and everything's happy.) My next bit of fun is convincing Windows that there's really something to see on that new drive. (Linux sees the Windows drive with no problems.)

Blogger just completed an update. They were down for most of yesterday. Oddly enough, I missed it.

There are some new features to the interface. It ought to be easier to use.

I'm sure that there was something in the news that I could have commented on over the weekend, but I was on vacation. (The mountains were lovely. Thank you for asking.)

I've been playing with Linux this past week. I loaded Slackware 9.0 onto a "new" harddrive. (It came with what was then a new machine; however, it was pre-loaded with WinXP so I stuck to my old drive with Win2k and all my stuff rather than messing with XtraProblems.)

Thus far, I'm impressed. It fired right up, and saw our home network. It's so much easier to monkey with things when the Google is available. LILO isn't happy with how I have the old Win2k drive installed. (Or perhaps Windows is broken.) But I can still see the drive so all my stuff's safely copied to the new drive. (I'll see if Grub can get the old drive to boot later.) For now, I'm having fun tinkering.

The staff at Reason goes after the NY Times and UCLA over a recent study on gun dealers. The NYT headline screamed "50% of Dealers Willing to Sell Handguns Illegally, Study Says". But, as Jacob Sullum writes, reality is a bit different...

The question of an illegal straw purchase was broached with a different, much smaller sample:

The researchers also made 20 follow-up calls to randomly chosen dealers and said they needed to buy guns for girlfriends or boyfriends because they were not "allowed to."

In 16 of those cases, or 80 percent, the dealers responded with unequivocal "nos," indicating that the purchases would clearly be illegal. In the remaining four cases, the dealers agreed to sell the guns, even though they indicated that they knew that would be illegal, the researchers said.

In other words, the percentage in the headline for "Dealers Willing to Sell Handguns Illegally" was off by a factor of two and a half, and that's assuming the sample of 20 dealers adequately represented gun retailers nationwide.

The original study from UCLA doesn't make the headline's claim, but the abstract can easily leave one with that impression. It does make the statement "Most dealers were willing to sell a handgun regardless of the end user", but one has to go digging to find out that in most cases, the dealer was being asked if they'd make a legal sale. Only a small percentage were asked about blatantly illegal sales. And of those, most in the small sample said "no".

Of course, one can brush off the Times as being only a little more reliable than the World Weekly News. When they start reporting on Bat Boy, let me know. I am, however, disappointed with the study's primary author, Susan Sorenson. I know Dr. Sorenson. And while we may not agree on firearms policy, I would have hoped for better. The study is sloppy and the results misleading. The study compared dealer behavior across jurisdictions. What's shady for one dealer may be perfectly legal for another. And in most cases, the dealers were asked if they would be willing to make legal transactions. (What a shocker; they were willing to do so!) Larger samples chosen on a per jurisdiction basis would have been revealing. Also, though I don't know what difference this would make, the study limited calls to dealers in large cities with more than 10 dealers. Los Angeles is mentioned as just such a large city, but there aren't 10 dealers in the city limits. Thus L.A. dealers should have been excluded. Should the handful of dealers in the nation's 2nd largest city have been included? Perhaps so, but the paper doesn't make it clear if they were or weren't.

All in all, the study confirms that gun dealers are willing to sell guns. Some, though we cannot say with any confidence how many, will sell guns illegally. In the same fashion, we can also guess that tobacco dealers will sell cigarettes; and that some small percentage will sell to minors. In short, some part of any population, like the population of gun dealers or tobacco dealers, will break the law. Most, however, do not. The study's claim that a Federal gun registry would solve the problem is unwarranted. Tracking transactions between law-abiding parties will not do anything to affect the behavior of those who break the law.

Separated at birth??

Heh, heh, heh... Ralph Nader is thinking of running for President again.

Go, Ralph, go!

An incendiary temper is one thing, but this is ridiculous...

Have you ever know a person who goes out of their way to be offended? I'm sure that we all know someone like that; the person who thumbs through dirty magazines looking for pornographic pictures. The person who stands next to a smoker and coughs loudly. The person who reads the L.A. Times opinion page on the look out for naked liberalism. You know the type. They seek out that which gets their dander up. Well there's just such a person who found offense on a dirt road in the middle of the California desert. The source of their displeasure? A cross.

Out in the Mojave Desert, on what's now public land, is a cross. The cross was erected in the 1930's by a group of WWI veterans. They built it as a memorial to their fallen comrades. Back then, the rocky outcrop was in the middle of nowhere. Decades later, it's now part of the Mojave National Preserve. According to the ACLU, that makes it a Federal establishment of religion in violation of the 1st Amendment.

Why did this story catch my eye? Because I know the area where the cross is located. I had never seen it so I did a little research to find out where it is. It turns out that it's on a stretch of road that I've travelled before, though I never noticed it. There is, however, an individual who did, somehow, spot it from this obscure road. And this individual was "deeply offended" by the sight of it.

At this point, you might think that the "deeply offended" party is a local resident. That would explain how they noticed something that I so easily missed. That's not the case, however. The guy who filed suit to have the cross torn down lives about 3 hours away. He reportedly saw it while driving from Rialto, CA to Las Vegas, NV. But as I said, I know the area. He would have driven miles and miles out of his way on a dirt road to see the 6' tall cross in the Mojave.

For the moment, the cross is covered with a tarp. There was a Federal judge who ordered it torn down, but that order has been stayed pending appeal.

This morning, Dennis Prager had an interesting thing to say about Mr. Deeply Offended and his allies at the ACLU. He compared them to the Taliban. And he compared their wish to destroy this cross to the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afhganistan. He said that both the Taliban and the ACLU were motivated by the same thing: Religious radicalism. And he's correct. Both are radical adherents to their respective religions; The Taliban to Islam and the ACLU to Secularism. Both seek to destroy anything that offends their religion. (And neither shrinks from vandalism, which is why I haven't said exactly where the cross is!)

It's June now. I really ought to update this blog more often.

I noticed something odd when I read this AP story
about Kentucky Governor Paul Patton. The Guv may have had his hand in
the cookie jar, and a few other places as well. But as I said, there
was something odd about the story; something missing.

There was no party affiliation mentioned.

I did a little more digging and finally turned up this UPI story.
UPI begins their piece with the words "Democratic Kentucky Gov. Paul
Patton has formally denied..."; nothing left to guess here! But this
UPI piece seems to be a rarity. Several local news outlets (WTVQ Lexington, Courier-Journal, Louisville, WAVE, Louisville) also fail to mention the Governor's party; something that would be automatic were he a Republican.

Using Google's news search, I looked up the terms "Republican governor"
and "Democratic governor". The former turned up 504 stories while the
latter only turned up 362 uses of the phrase. While this isn't as
dramatic a difference as searches of the terms "Arch-conservative"
versus "Arch-liberal" would be, it is still interesting. Reporters are
more inclined to identify GOP politicians by their party than they are
Democrats. Also, a quick glance at those stories that use the phrase
"Democratic governor" shows that in most cases the story was about
politics or elections; cases where one would expect to see party
affiliations mentioned.

(I've started this thread on FreeRepublic for discussion.)

It looks like Instapundit has the same href="http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008912.php#008912"
style="font-weight: bold;">nervous feeling about Dubuya that I do.



Why the nerves? Because someone in the White House is href="http://www.charleston.net/stories/041203/wor_12bushguns.shtml"
style="font-weight: bold;">toying with gun owners by suggesting that the President would support the continuation of Bill Clinton's soon-to-sunset Assault Weapon ban. (I just can't
bring myself to believe that this come from the top. It just style="font-style: italic;">has to be someone else's idea of
"strategery".) Will we be seeing another one-termer named "Bush"?



This "strategery" is a horrible idea. Gun owners put Bush over the top
in 2000. That's not my opinion, nor does it come from the NRA, nor from
any other group seeking to make some political hay. style="font-weight: bold;">Bill Clinton gives gun owners the
credit for Gore's defeat. And he's right. Gore lost his home state and
West Virginia largely because gun owners feared his anti-gun policies. style="font-style: italic;">Had he won either of those normally
Democrat states, "chads" would not be a part of the American political
lexicon. Hillary(!), the presumed '04 Democrat candidate, will
need to pick up only one of these states to win. If Bush pisses off
enough gun owners, they simply won't vote. If they stay home,
especially in states like Tennessee and West Virginia, he's toast.
He'll go from conquering hero to one-term loser as quickly as his
father did.



Dubya, it's time to dance with the one what brung ya.

I've noticed no shortage of Chicken-littles since the fighting has started. They go into a near panic at news of the slightest setback in the Iraq campaign.

Helloooooo... IT'S A WAR!

People get killed in war. Some get taken prisoner by the enemy. The enemy doesn't necessarily play by our rules or follow our game plan. "Stuff" happens. It's to be expected.

Some of the Chicken-littles were, for some reason, expecting a cake walk. If things were going to be that easy, Bush would have sent Rumsfeld by himself armed with a baseball bat. No one expected this to be easy. Fast, perhaps, but not easy. Why? Because a considerable chunk of the Iraqi population have hitched their fortunes to Saddam's. If he goes, they're ruined. They've made their way in the world by torturing and oppressing their countrymen. They could find their necks stretched when this is over and thus have nothing to lose by fighting.

However, they will be overcome.

The stiff resistance in places like Basra and Umm Qasr are being led by Iraq's societal elites. They are, ironically, the most westernized group in Iraq. This is why they're able to function without command and control from Baghdad. But the troops fighting under them are not so westernized. They don't do well on their own; they need to be told what to do and when. When the Special Republican Guard and other Baathist elements in these pockets of resistance are taken out or their communications disrupted, the resistance will falter. The troops under them cannot function independently at those moments and are vulnerable.

These stories of Iraqi resistance aren't worth all the running around and screaming that some are doing.

There's more than one way to skin a camel...

Live feed page at MSNBC

The feeds from MSNBC are hopping around about every 20 minutes. Thus, you may not be seeing that night vision SaddamCam feed.

Another reason why the cam may not be visible is that it could be damaged. Some stray Iraqi AAA almost hit it! The crew picked up the camera for a bit a moved it out of harm's way.

Here's the CBS feed, for the moment...

(I'm undoing the embed. I guess that CBS thinks that the war's over! 4/14)

...or click here

It's the SaddamCam!

MSNBC has been streaming that night-vision equipped camera in Baghdad. When I catch it running, I'll embed the player. Otherwise, I'll have the SkyNews feed running...

Update: I had just proofed the HTML code for this when the AAA started during this last raid. It's being reported that this was another "target of opportunity".

Update: I've switched over to SkyNews from the UK. When MSNBC re-establishes the link to the live cam, I'll put it back on.

Update: OK... so two players at once might be risky. Stop one if you have to!

Let's get ready to RRRRRRRRUMMMMMMBLLLLLLE!!!!!

It's official: The UN is an irrelevant "talk shop". (To borrow Tony Blair's words.) The UN has refused to live up to its obligations and the US must do the job of disarming Iraq "alone". (Just us and our 45 friends!)

This leaves me with a question that was at the back of my mind as I wrote last Tuesday's post. Perhaps Bush was doing a Br'ar Rabbit all along with the UN. Perhaps the purpose of the negotiations wasn't to give the UN one last chance to redeem itself. Perhaps the aim was to give it one last chance to hang itself. In any event, that's precisely what it did. The UN has proved what many of us have been saying for years. It's a paper tiger with lots of fierce words but no resolve. It's good at producing anti-Israeli or anti-American bluster, but little else. In short, it's a waste of US tax dollars.

Why Conservatives should be
spitting-mad at George W. Bush about Iraq and the UN



"They should be mad?" you're asking. Yup. And not for a
reason you'd expect. There are plenty of 'em who are mad; mostly mad
that the war hasn't already started. They're mad because the Bush
administration keeps trying to get the UN to give Saddam his actual
"last" chance. (i.e. one where "last" really does mean "last"!) But in
actuality, Bush isn't trying to give Saddam one last chance. He's
giving the UN one last chance.



And that 's what should be putting a
twist in any conservative's knickers!



George W. Bush is making a heroic effort to save the UN from itself.
He's trying to make it relevant. Most conservatives think, correctly I
should add, that the UN has been the "Unimportant Nations" for quite
some time. It has been America's liberals that have been keeping the
life support plugged in for all of these years. Now, when a
conservative has a chance to kick the plug out of the wall, he's
greasing up the paddles to give the ol' gal another shock or two.



Here's the way things stand in the UN. We're going to kick the snot
outta Iraq whether the UN's bureacrats like it or not. This is an issue
of America's national security. UN votes don't matter here. We cannot
allow the Baathists to provide weapons of mass destruction to our
enemies. Period. UNproductive babbling not withstanding, America will
attack Iraq. It's just the right thing to do. The UN style="font-style: italic;">should be standing by a member
nation who's under attack, namely us. They're not. They're standing
with Saddam, Osamma, and the other aggressors. They're on the wrong
side.



Bush is trying to lead the UN back to the right path. He's giving them
a chance to do what's right. If they can be led back, then the UN will
have been brought back from the grave, something that most
conservatives agree is not a desirable outcome. style="font-weight: bold;">