Semper Cogitans; Numquam Laborans

Senators, While You Are At It . . .

2008-10-01T21:30:00.009-04:00

The United States Senate is in the mood tonight to vote quickly without much debate:

Breaking: Senate Passes Rescue Bill

By a vote of 74-25, the Senate just approved the revised version of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue bill rejected Monday by the House.

The bill now heads to the House for a vote, likely on Friday. Some of the revisions included in the Senate bill were designed to win the support of House Republicans who voted against the first bill.

- Frank Ahrens

Perhaps that august body should, while its in this mood, vote up or down on some other matters within its purview. After it just demonstrated that an up-or-down vote doesn't take much time at all.

Mark to Market Rule is Not the Problem

2008-10-01T21:30:00.005-04:00

Prof. Ribstein writes:

Yesterday the FASB and the SEC relieved banks from marking securities to market prices that reflect “fire sale” values. . . . But wait: mark-to-market accounting just tells us reality. Shutting our eyes to that just kills the messenger, doesn’t it?

By allowing assets to be underreported, effectively the SEC has decreased
reserve requirements of banks without explicitly doing so.

Madame Speaker, at whose feet do you lay blame?

2008-09-30T21:56:00.002-04:00

Speaker Pelosi place blame:

But only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness. When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton’s surpluses — four years in a row, budget surpluses, on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned that around.

And now eight years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today. They claim to be free market advocates, when it’s really an anything goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you will have a golden parachute, and the taxpayer will bail you out.

Those days are over. The party is over in that respect. Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, it can create many good things in our economy. But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged, supported, by the Republicans — some in the Republican Party, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos.

Madame Speaker, at whose feet do you lay blame?

Why the "Rescue Plan" Should Not be Revived

2008-09-29T20:47:00.003-04:00

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron makes sense:

Congress has balked at the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the "troubled assets" of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here's why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration's claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.

If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.

The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

Thanks to Rep. Ron Paul for the link.

Good grief.

2008-09-24T22:09:00.003-04:00

(Initial reactions interspersed.)

Good evening. This is an extraordinary period for America's economy.

Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their finances and their future. I understand their worry and their frustration.

We've seen triple-digit swings in the stock market. Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse, and some have failed. As uncertainty has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets have frozen, and families and businesses have found it harder to borrow money.

We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action.

We boosted confidence in money market mutual funds and acted to prevent major investors from intentionally driving down stocks for their own personal gain.

Most importantly, my administration is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets.

Financial assets related to home mortgages have lost value during the house decline, and the banks holding these assets have restricted credit. As a result, our entire economy is in danger.

So I propose that the federal government reduce the risk posed by these troubled assets and supply urgently needed money so banks and other financial institutions can avoid collapse and resume lending.

This rescue effort is not aimed at preserving any individual company or industry. It is aimed at preserving America's overall economy.

It will help American consumers and businesses get credit to meet their daily needs and create jobs. And it will help send a signal to markets around the world that America's financial system is back on track.

I know many Americans have questions tonight: How did we reach this point in our economy? How will the solution I propose work? And what does this mean for your financial future?

These are good questions, and they deserve clear answers.

First, how did our economy reach this point? Well, most economists agree that the problems we're witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business.

This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions, along with low interest rates, made it easier for Americans to get credit. These developments allowed more families to borrow money for cars, and homes, and college tuition, some for the first time. They allowed more entrepreneurs to get loans to start new businesses and create jobs.

Unfortunately, there were also some serious negative consequences, particularly in the housing market. Easy credit, combined with the faulty assumption that home values would continue to rise, led to excesses and bad decisions.

Many mortgage lenders approved loans for borrowers without carefully examining their ability to pay. Many borrowers took out loans larger than they could afford, assuming that they could sell or refinance their homes at a higher price later on.

Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually, the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell, and this created a problem.

Borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages, who had been planning to sell or refinance their homes at a higher price, were stuck with homes worth less than expected, along with mortgage payments they could not afford.

As a result, many mortgage-holders began to default. These widespread defaults had effects far beyond the housing market.

See, in today's mortgage industry, home loans are often packaged together and converted into financial products called mortgage-backed securities. These securities were sold to investors around the world.

At Tinkerbell's urging, investors wished hard enough for securities NOT backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and, lo, the securities became backed by the United States. How faulty could the investors' assumptions have been?

Many investors assumed these securities were trustworthy and asked few questions about their actual value. Two of the leading purchasers of mortgage-backed securities were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.

The decline in the housing market set off a domino effect across our economy. When home values declined, borrowers defaulted on their mortgages, and investors holding mortgage-backed securities began to incur serious losses.

Before long, these securities became so unreliable that they were not being bought or sold. Investment banks, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, found themselves saddled with large amounts of assets they could not sell. They ran out of money needed to meet their immediate obligations, and they faced imminent collapse.

Other banks found themselves in severe financial trouble. These banks began holding on to their money, and lending dried up, and the gears of the American financial system began grinding to a halt.

With the situation becoming more precarious by the day, I faced a choice, to step in with dramatic government action or to stand back and allow the irresponsible actions of some to undermine the financial security of all.

I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.

Imminent peril looms: Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence, and major sectors of America's financial system are at risk of shutting down.

The government's top economic experts warn that, without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold.

More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically.

And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs.

Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And, ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession.

There are no bounds to what a President and a cooperating Congress can do.

Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen. I appreciate the work of leaders from both parties in both houses of Congress to address this problem and to make improvements to the proposal my administration sent to them.

There is a spirit of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans and between Congress and this administration. In that spirit, I've invited Senators McCain and Obama to join congressional leaders of both parties at the White House tomorrow to help speed our discussions toward a bipartisan bill.

The Incentive effects of the Twenty-Second Amendment.

I know that an economic rescue package will present a tough vote for many members of Congress. It is difficult to pass a bill that commits so much of the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

I also understand the frustration of responsible Americans who pay their mortgages on time, file their tax returns every April 15th, and are reluctant to pay the cost of excesses on Wall Street.

But given the situation we are facing, not passing a bill now would cost these Americans much more later.

Many Americans are asking, how would a rescue plan work? After much discussion, there's now widespread agreement on the principles such a plan would include.

Risk magically vanishes.

It would remove the risk posed by the troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities, now clogging the financial system. This would free banks to resume the flow of credit to American families and businesses.

Any rescue plan should also be designed to ensure that taxpayers are protected. It should welcome the participation of financial institutions, large and small. It should make certain that failed executives do not receive a windfall from your tax dollars.

It should establish a bipartisan board to oversee the plan's implementation, and it should be enacted as soon as possible.

In close consultation with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and SEC Chairman Chris Cox, I announced a plan on Friday.

First, the plan is big enough to solve a serious problem. Under our proposal, the federal government would put up to $700 billion taxpayer dollars on the line to purchase troubled assets that are clogging the financial system.

In the short term, this will free up banks to resume the flow of credit to American families and businesses, and this will help our economy grow.

Second, as markets have lost confidence in mortgage-backed securities, their prices have dropped sharply, yet the value of many of these assets will likely be higher than their current price, because the vast majority of Americans will ultimately pay off their mortgages.

If these assets are such a surefire winner, why won't someone else buy them? Surely, an investment fund be organized to identify and capture these arbitrage opportunities. Or how about if Uncle Sam issues "Rescue Plan Bonds" whereby taxpayers who believe the President, Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernake, and Chairman Cox can put up their money and reap the rewards upon a return to normalcy? That way the rest of us can be left alone.

The government is the one institution with the patience and resources to buy these assets at their current low prices and hold them until markets return to normal.

And when that happens, money will flow back to the Treasury as these assets are sold, and we expect that much, if not all, of the tax dollars we invest will be paid back.

Saddling our children and grandchild with debt

The final question is, what does this mean for your economic future? Well, the primary steps -- purpose of the steps I've outlined tonight is to safeguard the financial security of American workers, and families, and small businesses. The federal government also continues to enforce laws and regulations protecting your money.

The Treasury Department recently offered government insurance for money market mutual funds. And through the FDIC, every savings account, checking account, and certificate of deposit is insured by the federal government for up to $100,000.

The FDIC has been in existence for 75 years, and no one has ever lost a penny on an insured deposit, and this will not change.

Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures. Our 21st-century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th-century laws.

Antitrust implications? No more consumer welfare analysis? A return to "big is bad"?

Recently, we've seen how one company can grow so large that its failure jeopardizes the entire financial system.

Earlier this year, Secretary Paulson proposed a blueprint that would modernize our financial regulations. For example, the Federal Reserve would be authorized to take a closer look at the operations of companies across the financial spectrum and ensure that their practices do not threaten overall financial stability.

There are other good ideas, and members of Congress should consider them. As they do, they must ensure that efforts to regulate Wall Street do not end up hampering our economy's ability to grow.

In the long run, Americans have good reason to be confident in our economic strength. Despite corrections in the marketplace and instances of abuse, democratic capitalism is the best system ever devised.

It has unleashed the talents and the productivity and entrepreneurial spirit of our citizens. It has made this country the best place in the world to invest and do business. And it gives our economy the flexibility and resilience to absorb shocks, adjust, and bounce back.

Our economy is facing a moment of great challenge, but we've overcome tough challenges before, and we will overcome this one.

Partisanship defined: disagreement with the speaker

I know that Americans sometimes get discouraged by the tone in Washington and the seemingly endless partisan struggles, yet history has shown that, in times of real trial, elected officials rise to the occasion.

And together we will show the world once again what kind of country America is: a nation that tackles problems head on, where leaders come together to meet great tests, and where people of every background can work hard, develop their talents, and realize their dreams.

Thank you for listening. May God bless you.

Sadly, the next one won't be any better. Nevertheless, here's another industry to "rescue":
Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Move, Mountain

2008-09-06T20:12:00.002-04:00

Governor Kaine invoked the gospel hymn "Move, Mountain."

Are either of these what he had in mind?

Some things never change.

2008-09-01T18:25:00.000-04:00

Official Olympics 2008 Song

2008-08-09T11:48:00.001-04:00

I would have had no idea what they were singing about but for the helpful subtitles.

The Junior Senator from Illinois

2008-08-03T12:27:00.000-04:00

JFK (the lesser) invokes Joel Chandler Harris

2008-07-26T09:24:00.006-04:00

The junior senator from Massachusetts discusses criticism of the junior senator from Illinois. In doing so, he borrows a term from Joel Chandler Harris:

Is the former presidential nominee and Vietnam veteran racist? Imagine if he had won the White House.

Snake Oil of ISMs

2008-07-20T15:16:00.000-04:00

Conspiracy to evade federal election laws

2008-06-26T22:32:00.002-04:00

So my donors have maxed out what the law permits them contribute to me, and your donors have maxed out what the law permits them to contribute to you. Why don't my donors contribute to you and your donors contribute to me?

The AP reports:

Barack Obama told Hillary Rodham Clinton's top financial backers Thursday that he personally has donated $2,300 to her campaign and more significantly has asked his biggest donors to help pay off her more than $20 million debt.

Obama made the announcement at a meeting with Clinton donors who have been frustrated that the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting had not done more to help her pay the bills even as they are expected to help fund his campaign.

The size of Obama's donation is the most he can contribute under federal law.

But who's counting?

2008-02-09T09:27:00.000-05:00

The WP reports:

Before the legislative session started, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) appointed S. Bernard Goodwyn to the state Supreme Court. Goodwyn is the second African American to be named to the high court.

First, there was Justice John Charles Thomas.

Then, there was Justice Leroy Roundtree Hassell, Sr., now Chief Justice Leroy Roundtree Hassell, Sr.

Now, there is also Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn. I count three.

So WP Staff Writer Anita Kumar exhibits incompetence in basic background research. But Ms. Kumar's error obscures a larger problem. Why does it matter if Justice Goodwyn is the second or third African American to be named to the Supreme Court of Virginia? Should it matter any more that Justice Goodwyn, a male, replaced Justice Elizabeth Lacy, the first female to be named to that court?

"Hit & Run" Connolly's Upper Class Welfare

2007-10-06T11:56:00.000-04:00

The WP reports on Fairfax County public housing recipients with six-figure incomes. No wonder Gerry "Hit & Run" Connolly has hiked taxes so much.

Dr. D. James Kennedy (1930-2007)

2007-09-09T17:43:00.000-04:00

The WP carries his obituary.

Deferred reading

2007-08-29T15:15:00.000-04:00

William Poole, President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, on subprimes;
ABA on post-law school employment; and
John Leo blaming the Roaring Twenties for social ilk.

On hiatus

2007-08-05T16:36:00.000-04:00

Yield Curve

2006-09-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

The New "Deviant"

2006-06-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

Merriam-Webster Online defines "deviant" as "deviating especially from an accepted norm " with "deviate" being defined as "to stray especially from a standard, principle, or topic" or "to depart from an established course or norm."

Robert Smith lost his job for expressing deviant thoughts. The WP reports:

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday fired Robert J. Smith, his appointee on the Metro transit authority board, for referring to gay people as sexual deviants on a cable television show.

"Robert Smith's comments were highly inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable," Ehrlich (R) said in a statement less than five hours after the controversy erupted during a Metro board meeting. "They are in direct conflict to my administration's commitment to inclusiveness, tolerance and opportunity."

At the Metro meeting, board member Jim Graham, who represents the District, had called for Smith to disavow his remarks or apologize or for Ehrlich to remove him. "As someone who cares deeply about human rights, and as an openly gay elected official . . . I cannot remain silent in the face of these comments," Graham said, reading from a prepared statement.

Smith acknowledged after the meeting that he had referred to homosexuals as "persons of sexual deviancy" during a political round-table discussion on a Montgomery County cable show that was shown on Sunday.

"Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant," he said. "I'm a Roman Catholic." Smith said his comments had been part of a discussion about a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. "The comments I make in public outside of my [Metro board job] I'm entitled to make," he said. His personal beliefs, he said, have "absolutely nothing to do with running trains and buses and have not affected my actions or decisions on this board."

Ehrlich appointed Raymond J. Briscuso Jr., who heads a biotech consulting company, to take Smith's place. Briscuso, 46, will serve the remainder of Smith's three-year term, which began June 1, 2004.

Briscuso, who used to ride Metro's Red Line regularly between his Bethesda home and his downtown Washington office, said he is "very excited" to serve on the board. Briscuso managed George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign in Maryland in 1988.

For several months, Ehrlich, who is likely to announce his reelection bid this month, has been working to position himself as a centrist. One recent report about a political advertisement the governor is recording suggested that he is considering the line: "Bob Ehrlich governs not from the right or the left, but the center, where we are."

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, who with Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley is seeking the Democratic nomination to oppose Ehrlich, said that "Smith's hateful and mean-spirited comments suggest that he is unfit to serve the public, and his immediate removal is wholly justified."

Smith, 47, a Gaithersburg architect, could not be reached by phone last night. Earlier in the day, he said he served at the pleasure of the governor.

Almost immediately after he was appointed, Smith drew attention by questioning expenses at the agency, criticizing spending on promotional materials and other items he considered luxuries. He read lengthy budget documents that other board members tend to skim and asked sharp questions of finance managers.

The Metro directors oversee a $1 billion operating budget and nearly 10,000 employees. They set policy for the nation's second-busiest subway and fifth-busiest bus system. Metro carries more than 1.1 million riders a day.

The board is made up of six voting members and six alternates. Maryland, the District and Virginia each appoint two voting and two alternate members. The board has a vacancy for an alternate D.C. member to fill the spot of Dan Tangherlini, who became the agency's interim general manager this year.

After Smith's removal from the board, Graham complimented Ehrlich for his swift action. "The governor appreciated the seriousness of this problem," he said.

After the meeting, Smith accused Graham, a D.C. Council member, of using "high theater" to seek the media spotlight. He called his actions "highly out of order and inappropriate for this forum."

Smith said he has always supported the transit agency's policy against all forms of discrimination.

Asked whether he planned to apologize to Graham after Graham said the remarks were offensive, Smith replied: "I didn't make the comments to Mr. Graham. . . . I'm sorry he feels that way. I don't agree that his lifestyle is an appropriate way to lead one's life."

Smith's comments drew an immediate negative reaction from Dennis Jaffe, chairman of the Riders Advisory Council, who has been working with Smith the past several months on a committee to improve MetroAccess, the transit service for the disabled.

"I know how dedicated Bob Smith is, but his comments that homosexuals are sexual deviants are most unfortunate and reflect poorly on Metro as an agency," Jaffe said.

In an e-mail sent to all Metro employees yesterday, Tangherlini said he wanted to take the opportunity "to re-affirm to all . . . employees that discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated."

Smith said he has been a regular panelist on the weekly political round-table show, "21 This Week," telecast on Access Montgomery cable Channel 21, for the past 12 years. He appears as a "Republican activist," according to Rodney Bryant, the show's producer.

On last weekend's show, Smith interrupted another speaker who was talking about federalism and Vice President Cheney's daughter. The speaker said Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, would not want the government interfering in her life, according to a recording of that portion of the show.

"That's fine, that's fine," Smith interrupted. "But that doesn't mean that government should proffer a special place of entitlement within the laws of the United States for persons of sexual deviancy."

The Independent Institute: "Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens"

2006-05-17T19:15:00.000-04:00

The Independent Institute has released an Open Letter on Immigration:

Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:

People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.

Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally. The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.

Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.

Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.

We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid..

America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

The focus of the letter is the economic benefits of immigration. It does not appear to argue that these desirable benefits of immigration could not be attained if the border were secured -- so that only people who want to participate in the American Dream enter and not those who would destroy it.

Thanks to Alex Tabarrok for the link.

Peaceful Leader: Peacefully Convert or Accept the Peaceful Consequences

2006-05-12T10:03:00.000-04:00

Robert Spencer provides the text of the peaceful letter from the peaceful president of the peaceful Islamic Republic of Iran to President Bush. Spencer notes, "In a Hadith, Muhammad tells his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them ... In light of that, this letter could be -- but is not necessarily -- a prelude to an attack."

Spencer later reports Ahmadinejad's subsequent comments which Spencer believes "suggest that the letter was indeed the call to Islam that must precede any attack, in accord with Muhammad's words (in Sahih Muslim 4294) about inviting the unbelievers to accept Islam or dhimmitude and fighting him only if he refuses both." Ahmadinejad warned, "If the call is responded positively, there will be no more problems to be solved" and that the letter actually contained a clear message of invitation to human beliefs, adding that response will determine the future.

"Hit & Run" Connolly, "Media Whore"

2006-05-12T09:53:00.000-04:00

That's what "Hit & Run" Connolly is being called. He is being criticized for releasing the slain Fairfax County police officer's name to the media before the notification process to the family and the police force was complete. The Daily Whackjob calls for his resignation. Persevando calls only for his public ridicule.

Thanks to Not Larry Sabato for the link.

Post-9/11 Death Toll

2006-05-07T12:57:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Gates of Vienna for the link.

Another Fairfax County Police Coverup?

2006-05-02T09:18:00.000-04:00

The WP reports the facts:

Jatinder Baboota was on his way to one of the five gas stations he owns Jan. 23, making a left turn off Columbia Pike, when a Fairfax County police cruiser slammed into the right side of his Honda Accord. After falling into a coma, the longtime Vienna resident died 13 days later.

Police said Baboota, 61, was at fault for turning in front of a police car with its lights and sirens on. But now, more than three months after the crash, Baboota's family is questioning the police version of the incident and wondering whether authorities are telling the truth.

Among other concerns, the family questions whether the officer, Michael D. Weinhaus, had his emergency equipment turned on and whether he was really going only 45 mph -- 10 miles over the speed limit -- as police have estimated.

Family members say police have given them conflicting versions of the crash, including early claims that Weinhaus was involved in a high-speed chase, and two witnesses said they believe the officer did not have his lights and sirens on. Police say four witnesses told them the lights and siren were on.

Fairfax police did not disclose the crash, or Baboota's death, to the public. It came to light when Baboota's family sent an e-mail in early February to the Dr. Gridlock column in The Washington Post. Police said they did not intentionally withhold the news of the first fatal crash involving an officer since 1993, only that an internal communication breakdown occurred.

"I've been very disappointed with the way they've acted in this case," Deepa Sinha, Baboota's daughter, said of Fairfax police. "I feel like they should have been a little bit more forthcoming, not changing their story three times. He's a member of the county, a member of the community. Tell us the truth. Tell us what happened."

The family notified police Feb. 6 that Baboota had died from his injuries the day before. Police said the nearly two weeks between the crash and Baboota's death led to a lack of communication between the department's traffic division and its public information office, so no news release was issued.

"In retrospect, we should have put out a release on this," said Lt. Richard Perez, a Fairfax police spokesman.

Fairfax police said it was the county's first fatal crash involving an officer in 13 years. That crash, in which a man also pulled out in front of an officer, was disclosed the next day by police.

Police said Baboota was at fault for failing to yield to the officer. Deputy Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said he reviewed the case last month and agreed that the officer should not be cited. He said he would have ruled the same way if a private citizen instead of an officer had been driving and that police had investigated the crash thoroughly.

Although the criminal investigation has been completed, Perez said an internal police investigation is ongoing.

At the time of the crash, Baboota was on his way to the Baileys Crossroads BP on Leesburg Pike that he had owned for 24 years. He took the back way, turning left off Columbia Pike onto Courtland Drive, rather than navigate the busy intersection at Leesburg Pike.

The police car, a 2005 Ford Crown Victoria, was heading south on Columbia Pike when the cruiser struck Baboota's Accord. Weinhaus veered into a signpost and was not seriously hurt.

Police believe Baboota's Accord spun 180 degrees and then shot over a concrete median, across three traffic lanes, over a curb and down an embankment into the front yard of Fares Alnajjar, who was standing nearby.

Based on crash calculations, police said the officer was driving no faster than 45 mph -- or 10 miles over the speed limit.

Officers in emergency situations are allowed to ignore speed limits and traffic signals. Perez said Weinhaus had been dispatched to a fight in which five or six people reportedly were beating one person, so the officer chose to activate his lights and siren and hurry to the incident.

Capt. Jesse Bowman, head of the police traffic unit, said no police official would have told the family that the officer was involved in a chase at the time of the crash because investigators knew from the start that Weinhaus was not pursuing anyone. Sinha and others were adamant that they were told the officer was in a chase.

Bowman could not say definitively how Baboota's Accord traveled over a median and a curb and perhaps 50 yards after the impact but said it wasn't unusual. "I've seen this," he said. "They just do." He theorized that Baboota, who was trying to drive through an intersection when he was hit, may have stepped on the accelerator on impact.

Police declined to make their witnesses available or allow a reporter to listen to a tape of Weinhaus's transmissions to confirm the siren was on, because of the internal investigation.

If Weinhaus did not have his lights and siren on, "that would be a problem," Bowman said.

"It's an absolute tragedy," Bowman said. In addition to Baboota's death, Weinhaus was deeply affected, Bowman said. "It's going to be with him for the rest of his life, not just for the rest of his career." Weinhaus declined to comment.

But Alnajjar said in an interview that Weinhaus did not have his siren on. Alnajjar said he was in his front yard with his back to the intersection, which is directly in front of his house. He did not see the crash.

"If I heard a siren, I have to look," Alnajjar said. "I would have seen the accident."

Enrique Osorio, who was driving on Columbia Pike, also said in an interview that he did not see the impact, but "suddenly I heard kind of an explosion on my left side." He saw the police cruiser strike the signpost and Baboota's car traveling slowly across Columbia Pike. Osorio said he was "90 percent sure" the officer did not have his lights or siren on, both because he didn't hear it and because he said "traffic was fluid" and not stopping on Columbia Pike.

Police said they were told Baboota's injuries were not life-threatening. Bowman said that when an officer went to Inova Fairfax Hospital several days later, Baboota was in stable condition.

Sinha said that her father was placed under forced sedation because of swelling in the brain and that doctors were hopeful it would recede. After 11 days, his condition began deteriorating, and he died two days after that, on Feb. 5.

Fairfax police are involved in about 350 crashes a year, Perez said, from fender-benders to serious collisions. But large police departments such as Fairfax, with roughly 1,300 officers, drive millions of miles in a year. Perez said the Fairfax police crash rate for every 100,000 miles was 2.18 last year and 2.58 the year before.

More than 400 of Baboota's friends and relatives packed a funeral two days after his death. "It's been more than two months since my dad died," his daughter Kavita Baboota said. "Not a day goes by that we don't get a condolence card from people that knew him for 30 years."

Baboota was born in the Punjab region of India and came to this country in 1967. He married his wife, Shashi, in 1970 and raised their two daughters in Vienna. In addition to the Baileys Crossroads BP where he spent most of his time, Baboota owned the Fair Oaks Amoco, Columbia Pike Amoco in Arlington, the Chesterbrook Amoco in McLean and the Lincolnia Gulf.

"He was a very kind man," said Robert Varma, his brother-in-law. "He helped a lot of people in his community. He helped people get their green cards. He helped people fix their cars" and often forgave debts of those who couldn't pay, Varma said.

BAR-BRI

2005-12-03T18:42:00.000-05:00

The N.Y. Times reports:

December 4, 2005
Are Lawyers Being Overbilled for Their Test Preparation?
By JONATHAN D. GLATER

Santa Monica, Calif.

MANY executives dream of dominating their industries the way BAR/BRI does the business of helping law school graduates prepare for bar examinations. Every law student knows BAR/BRI. Hundreds of thousands of them have taken its courses to pass the bar, an essential step in most states before a law school graduate can practice law. Some of the best law professors in the country teach segments of the company's courses, which are offered live in select locations and on videotape at others.

But now BAR/BRI could use a few lawyers itself. Some of the people who paid the fees, took the courses and passed the bar have turned on the company, which is owned by the Thomson Corporation of Stamford, Conn. Represented by an aggressive Los Angeles lawyer named Eliot G. Disner, they have filed a lawsuit charging that the company that helped them to become lawyers has operated an illegal monopoly and has overcharged hundreds of thousands of students by an average of $1,000 each - or, collectively, by hundreds of millions of dollars.

In complaints filed in the spring and summer, different groups of students charged that BAR/BRI has paid competitors to shut down and negotiated illegal agreements with potential competitors to divide the market. In particular, they cite a 2003 agreement with Louisiana State University, which until 2004 operated its own bar review course; under the deal, BAR/BRI promised to pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to the school, and the school promised not to run a competing bar review course.

Lawyers for BAR/BRI deny that the company violated any provision of the antitrust laws and say they plan to contest the charges vigorously. "We believe the allegations have absolutely no merit," said Steven F. Molo, a partner at Shearman & Sterling who is representing BAR/BRI.

The lawsuit is in its very early stages and it is difficult to evaluate the claims fully before all the evidence is available. But much is at stake. Every year, between 35,000 and 40,000 people graduate from the nearly 200 law schools approved by the American Bar Association, and many take a BAR/BRI review course. In New York alone, according to the company's Web site, "more bar candidates trusted BAR/BRI to prepare them for the New York bar exam than all other bar courses combined."

The course is not cheap: next summer's eight-week review for the New York bar exam given in July costs more than $2,600. Given the relatively low costs of providing the courses - while some students attend live lectures, many gather in hotel conference rooms and simply watch videotapes of professors, meaning BAR/BRI's cost is primarily the hotel room, television set and VCR - it is clear that BAR/BRI's business is highly lucrative. Thomson does not break out BAR/BRI's contribution to its revenue or profits, but Stanley D. Chess, a former top executive at BAR/BRI who left to join a short-lived competitor, said: "Bar review is a very profitable business."

BAR/BRI has a long history. According to court documents, Richard J. Conviser, chairman of the company, helped found the Bar Review Institute in 1967 in Illinois. Seven years later, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich acquired B.R.I. and a California bar review course, Bay Area Review, and merged the two to create BAR/BRI.

The combined entity at that time offered courses in dozens of states; now it offers courses to prepare for the bar exams of all 50 states. The company's business model is simple. BAR/BRI advertises its bar review course heavily at law schools and hires law students to serve as its on-campus representatives (they pay no or reduced tuition for the course and have sometimes received cash bonuses). Students who sign up in their first year of law school pay less than students who sign up later, and the sooner a student puts down a deposit, the sooner that student locks in the final cost of tuition.

It is hard to overstate the anxiety the bar exam provokes. Over all, it can take more than 12 hours over two days. The multistate portion of the exam is required by nearly every state and is the same in those states; it consists of 200 multiple-choice questions. Each state's exam, typically the second day, usually consists of essays and multiple-choice questions that focus on the law in that particular state. The kinds of questions often require knowledge of topics that some students might not have learned about in school, adding to the allure of a review course aimed precisely at the topics on the exam.

YOU absolutely have to take a bar review course to pass the bar," said Lisa M. Gintz, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and is now practicing family law in Baton Rouge, La. She graduated from Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center in 2004 and had to take out an additional "bar loan," which was added to the more than $100,000 in student loans she already carried, to help pay the $858 cost of BAR/BRI's course in Louisiana. Ms. Gintz said she had felt great pressure to pass the bar exam, and not just because of the cost: some employers retract job offers and even fire law school graduates they have already hired if they do not pass, she said. "If you don't pass," she said, "you're gone."

BAR/BRI benefits from students' anxiety. In a letter on the company's Web site, Mr. Conviser writes, "When you are ready to tackle the ultimate final exam, your bar exam, BAR/BRI will be there for you with the nation's most experienced, most personalized and most up-to-date bar review course."

Mr. Conviser, through BAR/BRI's lawyers, declined to comment for this article. Mr. Disner and the other lawyers who have filed antitrust lawsuits against BAR/BRI this year hope to depose Mr. Conviser later this month.

This is not Mr. Disner's first run at BAR/BRI. An enthusiastic talker with wavy white hair and a breezy delivery, he filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company once before, in May 1992. He represented American Professional Testing Service Inc., which offered a bar review course in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, and had plans to expand into other states.

American accused BAR/BRI, then owned by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, of mounting a "campaign to forestall competition" by flooding law school campuses with fliers that suggested American was implicated in a federal securities investigation, according to court documents. (The federal investigation forced American's parent company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in 1991.)

A federal appellate court described American's accusations this way: "American claims Harcourt offered its courses at below-cost prices, provided gratuities to law school administrators to obtain preferential treatment, and ripped down American's advertising materials. American also maintains that Harcourt's alleged predatory hiring of American Professor Robert Jarvis, who also taught at BAR/BRI, 'crippled American's effort to compete in the Florida market.' "

At the end of a trial - in which Mr. Disner had no involvement, for he was out of the case by then - a federal jury was persuaded by American's argument, but the presiding judge overruled the decision. In 1997, three years after the trial, an appellate court upheld the decision in BAR/BRI's favor, and through the 1990's, BAR/BRI continued to consolidate its market position.

BAR/BRI has not always been so lucky in court. The Supreme Court found in 1990 that an agreement between BAR/BRI and a Georgia bar review provider did violate antitrust laws. The Georgia review had agreed to operate only in Georgia, to use BAR/BRI materials and to pay BAR/BRI a fee while BAR/BRI agreed to stay out of the state.

In 1994, executives at another enterprise, the West Publishing Company, decided to enter the bar review market. In January 1995 they recruited Mr. Chess, who had worked at BAR/BRI for more than 20 years, to help them. Mr. Chess was willing to leave in part because his base salary had been cut by $250,000 after the General Cinema Corporation acquired BAR/BRI's parent, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, in 1991.

(After Mr. Chess left BAR/BRI, it sued him, charging that he had committed fraud and breached his fiduciary duty to BAR/BRI by negotiating with West to enable it to enter the bar review market and by luring other BAR/BRI employees to join him. Mr. Chess said the suit eventually was settled.)

West Bar Review offered its first courses in the summer of 1995, Mr. Chess said. Its on-campus marketing strategy echoed BAR/BRI's: hire student representatives, give incentives for students to put down deposits on review courses they would take years later, hire cogent professors to teach live in some locations and via videotape presentations at others.

"The mandate was to take it across the country, open up operations, get market share and ultimately make a profit," said Mr. Chess, who now runs more than 100 law-related Web sites, including lawschool.com, an information source for students and professors; and chesslaw.com, a free legal research site. "We bought courses, which helped us grow," he said, "and we opened up a lot of states."

In 1996, Thomson, which did not yet own BAR/BRI, bought West. A year later, West's (now Thomson's) fledgling bar review program enrolled more students than BAR/BRI did in at least three states, Mr. Chess said, but it was not profitable and the new owners decided to get rid of it. The Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan Inc., a large education services company, was "really eager to buy," Mr. Chess said, and at one point West Bar Review sent its employees an e-mail message announcing an agreement to sell the bar review to Kaplan.

Although Mr. Chess had already left West, in anticipation of the shutdown of the bar review program, he said he worked late on a Friday in August 1997 to help draft a statement announcing the sale. Over the weekend, however, the deal fell apart.

What happened over that weekend may be critical to the current lawsuit against BAR/BRI. Mr. Disner's complaint charges that over the second weekend of August 1997, Kaplan and BAR/BRI reached a deal: Kaplan would scrap its plan to buy the West Bar Review and compete with BAR/BRI if BAR/BRI would agree to stop competing with Kaplan in preparing college graduates for the Law School Admission Test. According to the complaint, which names Kaplan as a defendant, BAR/BRI also agreed to pay Kaplan at least $500,000 a year.

There is no dispute that Kaplan did not acquire West Bar Review. Kaplan and BAR/BRI announced a partnership agreement a few months later, to provide courses to help prepare college students for law school. In a statement, Dick Riley, a spokesman for Kaplan, said, "Kaplan's only agreement with BAR/BRI is to market BAR/BRI material to Kaplan students. Such agreements are commonplace and perfectly proper."

If documents obtained from BAR/BRI or Kaplan show that there was also an agreement between the two that divided up markets, Mr. Disner said he expected to win his case automatically. "This is a per se case," he said, grinning expansively as he contemplated the prospect earlier this fall. "If we prove this agreement happened, then we win."

Mr. Disner said he had learned about a deal between Kaplan and BAR/BRI from a person he would not name, and immediately began studying how to build an antitrust case. "It's unfinished business for me," he said, adding that he had thought often about the earlier, ultimately unsuccessful case against BAR/BRI and craved a rematch. "I was determined to finish the job."

But to pursue the case, he realized that he would have to leave the law firm where he worked, Manatt Phelps & Phillips, because partners there were uncomfortable with taking the side of plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit, he said. He left in May 2004 and began to assemble a group of lawyers who had taken BAR/BRI courses and who could be his lead plaintiffs. That October, he joined Van Etten Suzumoto & Becket, a law firm that explicitly agreed to let him go after BAR/BRI, and he is running the case from the firm's offices in Santa Monica.

BAR/BRI has a better market position now than it did when Mr. Disner went after it in the early 1990's. That is largely because Thomson shut down its West Bar Review program - which, remember, had been built by buying several independent review programs that competed with BAR/BRI - and turned over its students to BAR/BRI.

Thomson acquired BAR/BRI and several other businesses in 2001 from another company that had bought Harcourt. The new owner of Harcourt was Thomson's archrival in the information and publishing industries - Reed Elsevier, the parent of LexisNexis, which competes with Thomson's legal research unit, Westlaw.

For Mr. Disner, reassuring young lawyers interested in serving as plaintiffs in the suit against BAR/BRI was not easy. Many worried that bringing a lawsuit would hurt their careers in law firms that generally defended, rather than sued, big companies. Some lawyers had not yet passed the bar. But after two agreed to participate, last April, he filed his lawsuit, causing a small wave of publicity in the legal community. That attracted the attention of others angry at BAR/BRI.

Loredana Nesci, who received a law degree from Quinnipiac University in 2002 and now practices in Los Angeles, read of the lawsuit, called Mr. Disner and joined it. "My initial reaction was, 'Well, I knew that was going to come one day,' " she said, adding that she then wanted to get involved. "I know that there are so many kids out there struggling and I wanted to be at the forefront."

Another law school graduate who read about Mr. Disner's lawsuit told him about an agreement BAR/BRI had reached with Louisiana State University that Mr. Disner thought was also an antitrust violation. He revised the complaint and included the newer agreement.

In 2003, BAR/BRI and L.S.U. agreed that BAR/BRI would provide a bar review course in place of one that L.S.U. offered. BAR/BRI promised to pay L.S.U. $100,000 over a three-year term, as well as $20,000 annually for use of L.S.U.'s facilities. BAR/BRI agreed to charge discounted tuition of between $545 and $645 to L.S.U. law students who had signed up for the school's bar review course. But for new review students, tuition was set to rise to $1,095 in the first year, $1,195 in the second year and $1,295 in the third year.

The agreement also contained this provision: "L.S.U. Law Center agrees that it shall not, without the prior consent of BAR/BRI, undertake for itself or engage any third party to manage or administer any course that could be competitive with BAR/BRI."

THERE is a potential antitrust violation any time a deal divides a market or establishes that two companies will not compete with each other, said Thomas D. Morgan, a professor who teaches antitrust law at George Washington University Law School.

"But if you buy out an existing firm, you can require that the owners of the preexisting firm" not compete, and such a restriction need not violate the antitrust laws, he said. He added, however, that "you can claim that in doing that, they've created a monopoly."

Under antitrust laws, plaintiffs who bring a successful antitrust case may be entitled to three times damages plus legal fees. In the case against BAR/BRI, that could mean $900 million in damages, according to the complaint. Of course, there is a long and uncertain road the plaintiffs must travel before the litigation could lead to such a result.

John J. Costonis, the chancellor of the L.S.U. law center, said the deal with BAR/BRI made sense. Before he arrived at the school in 1998, he said, "The student bar association at the law school in past years had offered a bar review course and frankly it wasn't very good."

He said he tried to overhaul and improve the program, but his efforts rested heavily on the ability to attract students in New Orleans in addition to those at L.S.U.'s campus in Baton Rouge. When few students enrolled, he said it quickly became clear the program was not viable.

Mr. Costonis, who said that as a practicing lawyer he had gotten to know executives at BAR/BRI, called the company to see if they could work out a deal. Raising the percentage of students who pass the bar was a top priority, he added. "My concern was reasonable price and best quality," Mr. Costonis said, adding that the agreement had a three-year term so that if the bar passage rate did not improve, then L.S.U. could get out of the arrangement.

The move did not go over well with students, said Ms. Gintz, the L.S.U. law graduate. "They kind of just announced it to us all of a sudden: 'L.S.U. is no longer going to have a bar review, all you guys are going to have to take BAR/BRI,' " she said. "There was a huge uprising among the students."

Two other antitrust lawsuits have also been filed against BAR/BRI this year; one is now consolidated with Mr. Disner's suit before Judge Manuel L. Real in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. That combined case seeks class-action status on behalf of about 300,000 law school graduates who took BAR/BRI courses between 1997 and 2004. Judge Real, who has denied BAR/BRI's efforts to shift the case to New York, has scheduled a trial to begin in June.

Abortion Doesn't Always Stop a Beating Heart in UK

2005-11-28T12:27:00.000-05:00

The (U.K.) Times reports:

Fifty babies a year are alive after abortion
Lois Rogers

A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.

The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation.

Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.

In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London, a number do survive.

“They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.”

The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. Prenatal diagnosis for conditions such as Down’s syndrome is increasing and foetuses with the condition are routinely aborted, even though many might be capable of leading fulfilling lives. In the past decade, doctors’ skill in saving the lives of premature babies has improved radically: at least 70%-80% of babies in their 23rd or 24th week of gestation now survive long-term.

Abortion on demand is allowed in Britain up to 24 weeks — more than halfway through a normal pregnancy and the highest legal limit for such terminations in Europe. France and Germany permit “social” abortions only up to the 10th and 12th weeks respectively.

Doctors are increasingly uneasy about aborting babies who could be born alive. “If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell, who last year published a book showing images of foetuses’ facial expressions and “walking” movements taken with a form of 3-D ultrasound.

The Department of Health was alerted three months ago to the issue of babies surviving failed terminations. In August clinicians in Manchester published an analysis of 31 such babies born in northwest England between 1996 and 2001.

“If a baby is born alive following a failed abortion and then dies (because of lack of care), you could potentially be charged with murder,” said Shantala Vadeyar, a consultant obstetrician at South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust, who led the study.

A systematic investigation of data collected through the CEMACH indicated that there are at least 50 cases a year nationwide in which babies survive abortion attempts.

“First sight of our data suggests this is happening,” said Shona Golightly, the agency’s research director. She said official confirmation of the figures would be available next year.

It is not known how many babies who survive attempted abortions go on to live into adulthood.

Paul Clarke, a neonatal intensive care specialist in Norwich, has treated a boy born at 24 weeks after three failed abortion attempts. The mother decided to keep the child, who is now two years old but is suffering what doctors call “significant ongoing medical problems”.

“The survival of this child was not recorded in any official statistics,” Clarke said. “There is nothing at the moment to force abortion practitioners to account for their failures.”

The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks.

Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers.

“If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked.

“If people are going to talk about abortion, then it’s important for them to know that these are babies that can be born alive and survive.”

Politics in the Next (Latest?) Nuclear Power

2005-11-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

There appears to be unrest in the Iranian oil ministry (which, of course, begs the question, why is there an oil ministry in the first place?):

IRAN'S POLITICS
The Economist
Nov 23rd 2005

For a third time, Iran's parliament has rejected the nominee for oil minister put forward by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This marks a serious setback for the new president's plans to shake up the Islamic Republic. It may also end up hurting the economy of the world's fourth-largest oil producer.

HE PLEDGES to lay low those "aristocrats" who sit on a dozen managing boards, default with impunity on loans from public banks and drive armour-plated cars worth $300,000. But the fight picked by Iran's fiery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be hard to win--not least because, in Iran's semi-socialist economy, the line between entrepreneur and civil servant is all but invisible and the rot so pervasive. He has already made an enemy of the architect of many of these ambiguities, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who selectively liberalised the economy when he was president in the 1990s.

Early this month, Mr Ahmadinejad sacked the bosses of four of the big public banks that have extended, so he says, 60% of their loan facilities to a privileged 4% of Iranians. He claims to have a "long list" of people who have "dipped into the public purse" but declines Mr Rafsanjani's invitation to reveal it. Most worrying for the president, three months into his tenure, he does not have a grip on the oil
ministry, the linchpin of the system he detests.

Here, Mr Rafsanjani, a grandee who retains much influence over the ministry, has been helped by parliament, which also gets on badly with the new president. This autumn, deputies withheld votes of confidence in two of Mr Ahmadinejad's successive nominees to be oil minister; this week they rejected Mohsen Tasalloti, his third choice.

For some lawmakers, the problem lies with the government's plans for the oil sector. This week, one top oil official criticised plans to spend $3 billion of oil revenues to buy petrol, of which Iran consumes far more than it produces, and its refusal to stop subsidising prices at the pump. Another questioned the existence of what the president calls the "oil mafia".

For others in parliament, however, the real issue is Mr Ahmadinejad's choice of candidates. Lawmakers have questioned Mr Tasalloti's loyalty to the Islamic Republic. He has denied claims that he holds an American "green card" residency permit and that his daughter has secured British citizenship.

Three rejections in a row represent a huge embarrassment for Mr Ahmadinejad, and threaten to cast Iran into uncharted political waters. Parliament is dominated by conservatives, many of whom were happy to see Mr Ahmadinejad trounce Mr Rafsanjani in the second round of the presidential election, in June. But the spats since he took office have shown that only a minority can be relied on to support the president.

Moreover, the timing of the oil saga is awkward: Mr Ahmadinejad is also at odds with America, Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency over Iran's uranium-enrichment activities (though threats to have the matter referred to the UN Security Council have so far proved empty).

A prolonged dispute over the oil ministry could have economic implications as well as political ones. Iran is the world's fourth-largest producer of crude oil and the second-largest exporter in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Some 80% of the country's export earnings come from oil and gas.

In a hydrocarbon-reliant country that Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption lobby, considers to have a "serious corruption problem", it would be a surprise if Iran's oil industry were squeaky clean; in 2003, some top people in Norway's Statoil resigned after it emerged that the company had paid bribes to win the right to develop an Iranian oil field. Still, for all the rumours of rigged tenders, there have been, tellingly, no high-profile court cases in Iran. The industry is enfeebled by American sanctions and politicians' antipathy to foreign investors. Scandal is the last thing it needs.

According to a recent report by the International Energy Agency, Iran's oil industry must attract some $80 billion in investment over the next 25 years if it is to meet soaring domestic energy demand and remain a major exporter. Its fledgling gas export industry needs a similar injection; though Iran has the world's second-biggest reserves, it is a net importer. But foreign deals need strong leadership. Some putative ones, such as India's plan to buy liquefied gas and develop an oil field, are mired in politics and small print.

Mr Ahmadinejad says he wants to bring Iran's oil lucre to the "dining table of the people". Not if he can't find a new oil minister.

Struggling for Freedom in Red China: It Takes a Village

2005-11-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

The WP reports:

In Chinese Uprisings, Peasants Find New Allies
Protesters Gain Help of Veteran Activists

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 26, 2005; A01

GUANGZHOU, China -- By the time Lu Banglie drove toward the village of Taishi that night, his photograph had already been distributed to local police stations. So when camouflage-clad men guarding the village entrance stopped his taxi and peered inside, Lu recalled, they immediately shouted, "It's him! It's him!" and yanked him out by the hair.

After dragging him to the side of the street, the guards set on Lu, kicking him and punching him until he passed out, according to Lu and his companions. When Lu regained consciousness more than two hours later, he said, his body was bruised and hurting, his clothing smelled of urine, he was vomiting repeatedly, his vision was blurred and his memory had gone fuzzy.

What happened to Lu, a slight, 34-year-old peasant activist, was perhaps the most brutal chapter in a four-month struggle over the village leadership. But it was far from the only violence. Residents trying to use electoral law and mass protests to overturn their allegedly corrupt village head and Communist Party secretary clashed repeatedly with riot police in the onetime farming community, long since transformed by China's economic boom into an industrial suburb on the southeastern fringe of Guangzhou.

In the process, Taishi has become a milestone in the peasant uprisings that increasingly are breaking out around China, generating open concern in President Hu Jintao's government and in the Communist Party. In Taishi's rebellion, outraged local farmers for the first time received help from outside political activists and Beijing-based intellectuals whose politics were shaped in part by the 1989 democracy movement.

The cooperation between local peasant protesters and veteran activists pursuing a national political agenda -- pushing China toward democracy -- was hailed by Chinese and foreign civil rights advocates as a significant advance. By helping peasants learn from others, they saw a promise of generating more democracy in China's village elections. And by aggressively promoting coverage in Chinese and foreign media through multiple Web postings and broadcasts of cell phone text messages, they thought they had found a way to pressure the authorities. Liu Xiaobo, a well known Beijing activist and writer, said on an overseas-based Web site popular with dissidents, "Civil elites working together with grass-roots villagers created a new method to safeguard villagers' human rights." He added, "Domestic intellectuals and Internet users have provided tremendous support and also brought massive attention among Western media."

But for the government and Communist Party, the coming together of disgruntled peasants and political activists in Taishi caused alarm. It raised the specter of a nascent national leadership and coordination for what so far has been an unconnected series of violent outbursts, usually over local economic issues, each of which has had homegrown leaders without broader ambitions.

"The Chinese Communist Party, at the beginning, organized workers and farmers and used them to rise to power, but now we represent the workers and farmers, and the party is very afraid of us," said Zhao Xin, a student leader in 1989 and now executive director of the Empowerment and Rights Institute, which advised Taishi farmers.

The official fears were not without foundation. Within weeks, the protests in Taishi began to spread. Two nearby villages erupted with similar demonstrations against confiscation of their fields. In one of them, Sanshan, violent confrontations broke out between peasants and police -- and some of the same activists advised Sanshan's peasants behind the scenes.

The authorities in charge of Taishi cracked down hard. They sent in riot police to break up protests. They branded the activists as "plotters" and threw several of them in jail on charges of inciting social disorder. Lu was detained for a day even before the beating. The offices of some were rifled, they said, and their houses were put under surveillance. Some went into hiding.

Most of all, the authorities made sure that Taishi remained under the leadership of Chen Jingshen, the elected village chief and, simultaneously, the unelected Communist Party secretary. He was the target of the angry peasants, who charged that he bribed his way to victory in last April's vote and siphoned off thousands of dollars in village funds over the last several years.
Connecting With Peasants

Construction cranes and factories have increasingly encroached on the banana plots and rice paddies that for centuries had underpinned the economy of the village of Taishi and the surrounding district. The metropolis of Guangzhou, capital of the Pearl River Delta's booming manufacturing region, has swallowed up the rural surroundings.

Taishi, with just over 2,000 residents, benefited from the development along with the rest of southeastern China. The village administration took in $600,000 last year, triple its income of 2001. Each adult received about $100 in dividends from communal village land given over to factories assembling jewelry, clothing, shoes and electronic components.

But two villagers, Feng Qiusheng and Liang Shusheng, began asking last May why the annual payments were not higher and why the village was deeply in debt. They demanded that Chen, the party secretary who had just taken over as village chief, open the accounts. Feng, 26, an accountant, wanted to go over the books himself. But Chen rejected that idea, along with the rest of their questions.

In July, a new face showed up in Guangzhou, the huge nearby metropolis. He was Yang Maodong, 39, a former philosophy professor and an experienced activist. Yang, a stocky, disheveled intellectual who spoke with rapid-fire intensity and wore the Chinese academic's traditional black-plastic-framed glasses, was a contributor to dissident Web sites and had written a book on the collapse of the Soviet Union. His political beliefs harked back to the democracy spirit of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. A natural organizer and unabashed nationalist, he had last been detained in April for his role in promoting anti-Japanese demonstrations in Beijing.

Given his background, it was not long before Yang made a connection with the angry peasants, including Feng, the young accountant who was challenging Chen's leadership of the village.

At a dinner in July organized by Yang in an inexpensive Guangzhou restaurant, Feng was also introduced to Lu, the peasant organizer who was later to be beaten. Lu was already gaining recognition for his activism. In 2003, he had endured beatings and used a five-day hunger strike to force out the leader of his own village, in Hubei province, on corruption charges. The government-run China Youth Daily had hailed him at the time as a "front-runner of peasant grass-roots democracy." Eager to pursue his activism, he was immediately attracted to the fight over Taishi's leadership.

Lu, whose oily hair and ill-fitting black suit bespeak his peasant background, said he had come to Beijing in April and again in early July seeking guidance from more educated political activists about what to do next. One of the people he met during those consultations in the capital, he said in an interview, was Yang. And the subject of Taishi was already part of their conversation.

An activist leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Beijing-based community organizers had decided to lend support to Feng's cause soon after they heard of his challenge. For them, encouraging farmers to push for more democratic village elections was a longtime national goal, and Taishi seemed to fit the bill. They also reasoned this fast-growing region would be fertile ground, he said, because of its economic development and nearness to the relatively liberal atmosphere of Hong Kong.

Lu, the peasant organizer, moved to Guangzhou soon after talking with Yang. He found a job for about $65 a month in a factory manufacturing plastic Christmas trees. Although earning some badly needed money was his main motive for taking up residence here, Lu said it also meant he was on hand to offer advice when, in Taishi, the two peasants Feng and Liang decided to press a legal case for removing their village leader.

Yang and Lu, two veteran activists, quietly got involved in the struggle. They advised the Taishi villagers on what options were open to them under China's election laws, Lu said, and inspired them by recounting Lu's experience in booting out a corrupt leader back home in Hubei province. Basing their demand on the election law and its recall provision, Feng and Liang filed a formal recall motion on July 29. According to Lu and the district government, the motion was drafted with help from Lu and Yang.

It carried more than 400 signatures, meeting the threshold of endorsement by 20 percent of Taishi's 1,500 registered voters.

Villagers gathered two days later in an open square. From atop a heap of bricks, as local reporters and other witnesses looked on, Feng read a section from Chinese law books saying village accounts must be published every six months and villagers had the right to recall Chen.

"The law will be our guardian," he vowed.
Sit-in Protest Escalates

An alarm bell rang in the village committee office on the evening of Aug. 3. Villagers who heard the noise rushed to the scene and, they recalled, surprised the village accountant and a companion in what looked like an attempt to spirit away the ledgers. Before the two could get away with the books, the villagers told reporters, a crowd gathered and prevented them from leaving. The accounts stayed put.

The next morning, police and district officials came to take the books away -- to protect them, they said. Villagers called the Guangzhou Communist Party Discipline and Inspection Bureau, denouncing what they interpreted as an attempt to cover up malfeasance. But their calls elicited no response, they said. A group of elderly women moved into the three-story administration building and refused to budge. The ledgers would stay, they vowed.

As the sit-in continued, plainclothes security agents detained a protest leader as he rode his motorcycle down a village lane on Aug. 16. On hearing the news, hundreds of villagers poured out of their homes and surrounded the van into which the agents had stuffed the leader, blocking its passage.

After a several-hour confrontation during which the number of protesters swelled to more than 1,000, witnesses said, an estimated 500 riot police drove up in several dozen vehicles and waded into the crowd, swinging their batons. In Internet postings, villagers reported five of their number were arrested. A 16-year-old youth suffered a concussion, they said, and an 80-year-old peasant woman suffered a broken bone and had to be hospitalized. The sit-in continued, meanwhile, with the elderly women still refusing to leave. Within days, their numbers grew.

The district government two weeks later handed down a ruling that the recall motion was unacceptable because it was a photocopy, and the law demanded the original signatures. Outraged, a number of villagers, including elderly women, started a hunger strike outside the district headquarters building.

After several days, some of the hunger strikers were detained and later released on condition they return home, the protesters said. As they left custody about 3 p.m., they reported, officials gave them box lunches.

Despite the gesture, the atmosphere remained tense. As police moved in to make the arrests, one elderly woman threatened to blow up the building by igniting a canister of liquefied gas, according to witnesses. Yang sent messages to Chinese and foreign reporters recounting what was happening and urging them to visit. A reporter from the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post showed up, and two youths smashed her car windows with rocks.
Triumph for the Villagers

From that point on, things moved fast.

On Sept. 5, a delegation of villagers went to the district headquarters to present the original recall motion with the original signatures. But official patience had frayed. Activists later speculated that word had come down from Beijing that the uproar in Taishi -- and the confluence of political activism with peasant outrage -- had to be stopped. Although his role could not be determined, Premier Wen Jiabao visited the region Sept. 9-13 to confer with senior regional and city officials.

Beijing-based activists said they received warnings from the Civil Affairs Ministry about that time to back away from the Taishi dispute. "Everybody was scared," one of them recalled.

Back in Taishi, more than 50 vehicles drove up to the village administration building on Sept. 12 and disgorged hundreds of riot police, witnesses said. Swinging batons and training high-pressure hoses on the elderly women inside, the police cleared the building and made way for district officials to take away the account books.

Nearly 50 protesters were taken into custody. The next day, Yang was also arrested as he drove to meet a crew from the Hong Kong-based Phoenix satellite television channel. Lu was urged to leave, but refused. "You know, he is just like a farmer; he is stubborn," said an activist who has worked with Lu.

Then, in a surprise turn of events, the district government announced that the recall motion was proved valid and villagers should choose an election committee to organize a new vote for village chief, scheduled for the middle of October. The protests should now stop, it said, and activists with "ulterior motives" should be ignored.

On first glance, this seemed like a triumph for the villagers. The official party newspaper, People's Daily, hailed the outcome as a model for village elections and pointed to signs of "a democratic environment built upon rationality and legality."

But then the district government arbitrarily chose all candidates for the seven-person election committee -- and all were local officials loyal to Chen.

Outraged, the still-defiant villagers threatened to boycott the vote. Seeking to prevent more violence, the district government swiftly relented and allowed another slate to run as well. The vote was held Sept. 16; all the unofficial candidates were elected and none of the government's slate.

The seven committee members now had four weeks to organize a new vote for village chief. But somewhere in the government and party bureaucracy -- activists believe it was at a senior level in Beijing -- officials had decided Chen would not be replaced, lest a precedent be set.
The Government Responds

Lu, who was in the village to monitor the Sept. 16 vote, was picked up by police the same day. After a long interrogation and a warning to clear out of the area, he was released that evening. In what they hoped was a farewell gesture, police officers bought him a pair of $12 shoes, he said later, to replace those that had come off during a brief struggle when he was taken into custody.

District officials announced shortly after the new election committee was chosen that their auditors had found no evidence of wrongdoing in the Taishi accounts. Party and government officials swiftly fanned out to persuade villagers to drop the struggle. Unless the recall motion was withdrawn, they suggested, detained relatives might stay in jail and people might lose their jobs.

The threats worked. The district government reported by the end of September that 396 of the 584 signatures were withdrawn. The recall procedure therefore was invalid, it announced, and the vote scheduled for October was canceled.

Then guards wearing camouflage fatigues, but without official insignia, took up positions at streets leading into the village and began screening outsiders trying to enter and villagers trying to leave.

Villagers told activists the guards were unemployed men from surrounding villages paid $12 a day by Chen's head of security. The district government claimed in a statement that they were Taishi villagers upset at the uproar in their community. Two foreign reporters who drove up Oct. 7 to find out why the signatures were withdrawn were attacked by the guards and driven off.

It was the next night that Lu tried to drive in, along with a reporter from the Guardian newspaper, also seeking to learn what had changed since mid-September.

"We never imagined that we would be suppressed like this," Lu said.

In an interview nearly two weeks after his beating, Lu's lips were covered with scabs and his arms with bruises. His eyes were blurry at times and his head ached, he said, but he vowed to persist in organizing farmers to pick their own village leaders.

"I will definitely continue," he said, "but how to do it is the question now."

Marital Privilege & Sanctity of Marriage

2005-11-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

The WP reports on a loving couple, "registered as domestic partners," simply trying to have a marital privilege statute read in a "gender-neutral" manner.

Marital Privilege Sought to Exclude Gay Partner as Witness
Man Fighting Charges He Helped Steal From School System Says Law Should Be Gender-Neutral

Associated Press
Saturday, November 26, 2005; A09

NEW YORK, Nov. 25 -- A gay man charged with helping his lover loot a wealthy school district has asked a judge to rule that state law protecting spouses from having to testify against each other also applies to same-sex partners.

Stephen Signorelli, fighting charges that he stole at least $219,000 from the Roslyn, N.Y., school district, is seeking to bar testimony by his longtime companion, Frank Tassone, the district's former superintendent.

Auditors say that in all, $11.2 million was taken from the Long Island district. It is considered among the largest thefts from a U.S. school system.

Tassone pleaded guilty this year to stealing $1 million between 1996 and 2002. As part of his plea deal, he agreed to testify against other defendants in the case, which meant he might have to take the stand in Signorelli's trial.

In a motion filed before a judge in Nassau County, Signorelli sought to bar such an appearance, saying he and Tassone deserved the same protection as a heterosexual couple.

"Mr. Tassone and I have been loving partners for 33 years," Signorelli said in an affidavit, adding that the two had participated in "a solemn religious ceremony" conducted while they were on a Caribbean cruise "to memorialize our relationship and love for one another."

The two registered as domestic partners in New York City, where they live, in 2002.

"It's our position that the statute should be read gender-neutral," Signorelli's attorney, Kenneth Weinstein, told Newsday. "If a heterosexual couple can assert marital privilege, then a homosexual couple should be able to do the same."

Signorelli is charged with helping in the theft of at least $219,000 by submitting phony and padded invoices for the printing of school handbooks.

Weinstein and an attorney for Tassone did not immediately return telephone messages left at their offices Friday.

Prosecutors have yet to respond to the motion, and Judge Alan L. Honorof has not indicated how he might rule.

But is that really what is going on? If this were about Mr. & Mrs. Jones, it's not clear that Mrs. Jones could invoke the privilege to keep from testifying against Mr. Jones. First, Mr. & Mrs. Jones would be co-defendants. Second, Mrs. Jones would have entered into a plea agreement in which she agreed to testify against Mr. Jones. Failure to do so would appear to be a violation of her plea agreement.

Perhaps in New York, the defendant-spouse controls whether his spouse can testify against him in a criminal proceeding. In many states, that's not how the marital privilege works any more. It is often up to the witness-spouse whether to testify or the privilege is restricted to "confidential communications."

Why is this important? Doesn't it go to the very core of the definition of marriage? Is marriage the coming together of a man and a woman to become one? Can a woman's mouth be compelled (or coerced) to testify against her hand? Can a wife be compelled (or coerced) to testify against her husband? Who is fighting to further the sanctity of marriage? Do those who seek homosexual "marriage" actually seek to preserve marriage? (Or when they cannot obtain the benefits of marriage do they seek to destroy marriage?) Is the Religious Right so preoccupied with preventing homosexual "marriage" that it has become distracted from defending marriage itself?

"Ethnic Europeans" Becoming European Minority?

2005-11-25T01:32:00.000-05:00

I thought this was already conventional wisdom, but the Washington Times reports it as news:

Europe's 'baby bust' signals major change

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published November 24, 2005

In the cradle of Western civilization, the cradles are empty. From the Atlantic to the Urals, in good and bad economies, in Protestant and Catholic societies, the countries of Europe are witnessing an unprecedented decline in birthrates.

This "baby bust," analysts warn, will affect economic growth, social-welfare programs, patterns of immigration and Europe's ability to pull its weight diplomatically, culturally and militarily in the 21st century.

In 1900, according to U.N. estimates, one out of four human beings on the planet -- 24.7 percent -- lived in Europe.

Today, the European population share is a little more than 10 percent. By 2025 -- with the average woman in the European Union bearing just 1.48 children in her lifetime -- the ratio of Europeans to everyone else is projected to be less than one in 14 -- 7 percent.

The dearth of babies, coupled with longer life spans for today's elderly, "have major implications for our prosperity, living standards and relations between the generations," according to a "green paper" on demographic change issued by the European Commission earlier this year.

With fewer younger workers in Europe supporting more older pensioners, the immediate worry has been the fate of generous welfare and social protection systems across the continent.

But "the issues are much broader than older workers and pension reform," said Vladimir Spidla, EU social affairs commissioner.

"This development will affect almost every aspect of our lives, for example the way businesses operate and work is being organized, our urban planning, the design of [apartments], public transport, voting behavior and the infrastructure of shopping possibilities in our cities.

"All age groups will be affected as people live longer and enjoy better health, the birthrate falls and our work force shrinks. It is time to act now," he said.

Outside threat

One direct fallout from the demographic slump was on vivid display during the riots that rocked the suburbs of Paris and a string of French cities this month.

The rioters were overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of young, unemployed sons of immigrant families from North and West Africa. As in countries across Europe, the largely Muslim immigrants were drawn to France to take low-end jobs that the native population could not or would not do.

With large-scale immigration from former colonies such as Algeria, France's estimated 6 million Muslims represent 10 percent of the nation's overall population.

Michael Vlahos, a former State Department analyst now with the Joint Warfare Analysis Department at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, argues that the "Arab boomer" generation now in its teens and early twenties will have an outsized impact on European society.

With native European populations not producing enough children to maintain current population levels, "the bow-wave of the Arab 'boomer' generation, buoyed by aggressive illegal immigration, could still push the proportion of Muslims in France, Italy and Spain up to a quarter or even a third of their population," Mr. Vlahos wrote in a recent analysis.

In the coming 40-year period beginning in 2010, "even if Muslims in Roman Europe still only represent 20 to 25 percent of the total population, working adults may reach 40 percent or more," he wrote. "That era -- from 2010 to 2050 -- could alter the nature of European civilization."

The motives of the French rioters -- economic, social, religious -- remain a subject of hot dispute.

Few think that Islamic fanaticism triggered the riots. But the threat of al Qaeda attacks, such as those against rush-hour commuters in London and Madrid, continues to shadow France and other Western European nations.

In one well-known case, a disaffected Islamic terrorist cited the demographic imbalance in France as one source of his frustration.

Engineering student Kemal Daoudi, the son of Algerian immigrants to France who lived in the isolated Parisian suburbs cut off from mainstream French life, joined Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and was arrested just after the September 11 attacks in 2001 for plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

He told French investigators that he first was motivated to join al Qaeda by the "abominable treatment" he and fellow immigrants received as "subcitizens good only to keep working to pay for the retirement of the 'real' French when the French age pyramid gets thin at the base."

When in Rome

The first wave of Muslim immigrants to France had a birthrate three times that of the native French, a pattern replicated in other EU countries with heavy immigrant populations drawn from Africa and the Middle East.

"With current trends," Bernard Lewis, a leading U.S. scholar of Islam, has said, "Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century."

But other analysts say demographic history suggests that "present trends" are unlikely to continue.

Birthrates in the Muslim world are already falling sharply as well. American Enterprise Institute scholar Ben Wattenberg, author of "Few," a study of declining birthrates worldwide, said the average family size of immigrants in Europe quickly matches that of longtime natives.

The embrace of radical, even violent Islam by disaffected European Muslims is a danger, he said, "but it is not principally a problem of demographics."

Asked whether Europe faced a Muslim "population bomb," Mr. Wattenberg said, "The answer to that, in my judgment, is a flat 'no.' "

On the flip side, the idea that large-scale immigration will reverse Europe's chronic fertility rate decline is also unlikely, said Demetrios Papademetriou, director of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute and a leading authority of global population shifts.

"Immigration, as it is currently conceived, will not provide a solution [to white, Christian Europe's declining birthrate] because the birthrates of permanent immigrants quickly drop to those comparable to natives," he said.

Out with 'Old' -- and 'New'

Even putting aside the question of assimilating Europe's immigrant communities, the population statistics for both "Old" and "New" Europe are sobering.

According to the European Commission Green Paper, population is already falling in the EU states of Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Of the six most populous EU states, only France and Britain are projected to see population increases by 2050. Italy, Spain and Germany all have fertility rates of less than 1.3 children per woman -- compared with the classic "replacement rate" for a population of 2.1 children.

Despite generous social benefits and numerous pro-family policies (including baby "bounties") in individual EU states, overall birthrates have been falling for three decades. Overall EU population, now at 458 million, is expected to peak in 2025 at about 470 million and then start declining.

The situation in Russia is even grimmer. By midcentury, demographic trends suggest that the population of the country could decline by a fifth.

Joseph Chamie, former director of the U.N. Population Division, noted that greater educational and employment opportunities for European women have contributed to a situation in which nearly one in five women in Finland, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in her early 40s is childless.

"The decline of Europe's population is being brought on voluntarily, the result of hundreds of millions of men and women choosing to have fewer children than is needed to ensure population replacement," he wrote in a recent analysis for the Washington-based journal the Globalist.

Complicating the picture is the historical baggage that comes from past European efforts to boost birthrates.

France and Estonia have had limited success with "pro-natalism" programs, but an Italian proposal to pay a 1,000-euro baby bounty to couples who have more than one child raised unfortunate echoes of past racial purity measures proposed by Benito Mussolini's Fascists.

French Employment Minister Gerard Larcher said last week that the government does not track ethnic and religious classifications in the national census because the country was "traumatized" by the experience of the World War II collaborationist Vichy government's role in expelling French Jews to Nazi concentration camps.

On the same page

But the question of Europe's declining population has moved in recent years beyond fringe political movements often linked to anti-immigration and even eugenicist groups.

The United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and even the CIA have published major studies on the economic and social consequences of Europe's baby bust.

The CIA analysis generated headlines across the continent with apocalyptic warnings that Europe's social safety structures face collapse in a little more than a decade if the demographic meltdown is not addressed.

"The current EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of economic revitalization could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU, undermining its ambitions to play a heavyweight international role," according to the forecast released in January.

Even Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on the population drain in an August address, saying the decline in birthrates in Europe "has deprived some nations of the freshness, the energy, the future embodied in children."

Demographers admit that they have failed to identify a single controlling factor that has produced plunging birthrates across the continent.

Sweden, renowned for its generous paternal benefits and employment supports, saw birthrates climb from 1.6 children per woman in the 1970s to the replacement rate of 2.1 percent a decade later. By 1989, combined maternity and paternity leave stood at a full year at 90 percent of the regular salary.

But economic hard times and welfare cutbacks in the 1990s left Sweden quickly reverting to the European norm. The Swedish birth rate fell to 1.5 children by 2000 and now stands at 1.66.

The numbers are just as stark a continent away in Catholic Spain: The Spanish birthrate fell from 2.86 children in 1970 to 2.21 in 1980 to 1.28 today -- one of the 10 lowest birthrates in the world.

Economic uncertainty and a tight job market are considered factors, but the birthrate in the impoverished former East Germany is actually higher than the rate in the wealthier western part of the country.

A German survey released earlier this year found that 15 percent of women and 26 percent of men between 20 and 39 do not want to have children, up from 10 percent for women and 12 percent for men just a decade ago.

Reviewing the findings, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle concluded, "The natural and somewhat obscure longing to have a child has little to do with state subsidies and labor market structures."

The First Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T07:34:00.000-05:00

Volokh Conspirator Lindgren writes of "The First Thanksgiving." Unfortunately, as much as I admire him, he only perpetuates the 1621 Plymouth-first myth without even a mention of Captain Woodlief, Berkeley Hundred, Virginia, or 1619.

FIRST THANKSGIVING WAS HELD (AHEM) HERE Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia) November 23, 1995, Thursday,

Copyright 1995 The Richmond Times Dispatch
Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)

November 23, 1995, Thursday, CITY EDITION

SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A-29

LENGTH: 802 words

HEADLINE: FIRST THANKSGIVING WAS HELD (AHEM) HERE

BYLINE: Ross MacKenzie;
Editors Note: This column, originally written for 'The News Leader,'; last appeared in the TIMES-DISPATCH in 1992.

BODY:
Now begins the season for giving thanks -- something that more of us could profit from doing more often. As an inevitable consequence, this also is the season for refueling the debate about where the first Thanksgiving occurred.

For centuries the New England version went practically unchallenged. Many children know the general story, even in this contemporary culture that so frequently reviles its past.

In 1621, at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims held a harvest festival. The colonists were ever so thankful for their safe passage, for their survival of that first awful winter, and for the good offices of the remarkable Indians -- Samoset and Squanto.

As William Bradford, governor of the colony, described it: ''For summer being done, all things (stood) upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage view.'' They were understandably thankful.

BUT AT THE risk of sounding chauvinistic, the truth is that the right to claim firstness, like so many other ''firsts'' attributed to New England, probably belongs to Virginia. Indeed, it is altogether fitting and proper to conclude that the first Thanksgiving was held here.

The Virginia version is not widely known -- particularly outside the South.

On September 16, 1619, a group of 38 English colonists headed by Captain John Woodlief sailed from England aboard the Margaret. They landed at Berkeley Hundred 10 weeks later. The settlers were sent by the London Company; it owned thousands of acres in the area, and settled and supported Berkeley Plantation.

Exhibit A in the Virginia claim to firstness is this sentence in the company's instructions to the settlers -- instructions to be opened upon reaching Virginia: We ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.

THESE SETTLERS held that Thanksgiving at Berkeley Hundred on December 4, 1619 -- a year before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. Surely Woodlief and his followers were equally as grateful as the Pilgrims -- equally schooled in adversity, equally determined to renew themselves with roots in the land. Surely they were equally devout and equally thankful. To suggest that they were disobedient and did not give thanks requires a superabundance of credulity and moral pretension.

But lest we forget, there were numerous trips to Virginia prior to Woodlief's: the Raleigh expeditions of the 1580s, and the London Company's initial expeditions -- beginning with the one under Christopher Newport that founded Jamestown in 1607.

The London Company's charter of May 23, 1609, was written principally by Sir Edward Sandys with the concurrence of Sir Francis Bacon, the early philosopher of natural right. It probably was the first document to say that government derives its authority from the consent of the governed. It was the closest thing to a constitution and bill of rights that colonists in Virginia had for three years, until refined in 1612. The Sandys charter was written 11 years before the first Pilgrim reached Plymouth.

On November 18, 1618, the London Company issued instructions to Sir George Yeardley upon his appointment as Governor of Virginia; those instructions provided for a liberal form of government. At Jamestown, in 1619, Yeardley convened the first legislative assembly in the New World. That was a year before the landing at Plymouth.

THOSE WERE firsts of considerable magnitude. They, and the events in Virginia during the 35 years prior to the Plymouth landing, tell us a good deal about the Virginia colonists.

They were God-fearing people. Just about every one of their existing documents speaks of their duties and obligations to a God almost always described as ''almighty.''

These also were people of discipline and self-will. Contrary to so many of us today, they were people determined not to tear down the old to make way for the ersatz old. They retained their umbilical ties to the past, as Virginians -- inhabitants of the most English of states -- tend to do still. Their past was England, and central to England were the church and God.

Even without the instructions to Woodlief, is it not logical to assume that the colonists in Virginia regularly prayed and gave thanks prior to 1621? Do we not have to overlook too much to believe they did not?

In 1962, the evidence proved overwhelming to Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., then an adviser to President John Kennedy. In December of that year he repented of ''an unconquerable New England bias'' on the question, and acknowledged that Virginia's claim is ''quite right.''

But despite the evidence, the bias persists.

George Will: The Doctrine of Preemption

2005-11-21T08:15:00.000-05:00

The Doctrine of Preemption

George F. Will George F. Will
Journalist

George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column that appears in more than 450 newspapers and a biweekly column in Newsweek. He also appears regularly on ABC’s This Week on Sunday mornings. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He has published seven collections of his columns as well as several other books, including Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does and Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. Mr. Will was educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and at Oxford and Princeton universities, and taught political philosophy at Michigan State and Toronto universities prior to entering journalism.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 23, 2005, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Dallas, Texas.

What I will say tonight about the war on terror draws heavily on my earlier life as a professor and student of political philosophy. A long life in journalism and around Washington, D.C., has taught me not just that ideas have consequences, but that only ideas have large and lasting consequences. We are in a war of terror being waged by people who take ideas with lethal seriousness, and we had better take our own ideas seriously as well.

I think the beginning of understanding the war is to understand what happened on 9/11. What happened was that we as a people were summoned back from a holiday from history that we had understandably taken at the end of the Cold War. History is served up to the American people with uncanny arithmetic precision. Almost exactly sixty years passed from the October 1929 collapse of the stock market to the November 1989 crumbling of the Berlin Wall-sixty years of depression, hot war, and cold war, at the end of which the American people said: "Enough, we are not interested in war anymore." The trouble is, as Trotsky once said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." And this was a war with a new kind of enemy-suicidal, and hence impossible to deter, melding modern science with a kind of religious primitivism. Furthermore, our enemy today has no return address in the way that previous adversaries, be it Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, had return addresses. When attacks emanated from Germany or Russia, we could respond militarily or we could put in place a structure of deterrence and containment. Not true with this new lot.

Our enemy today refutes an axiom that has governed international relations for nearly 400 years, since the Peace of Westphalia, when the nation-state system began to emerge in Europe. The axiom was that a nation could only be mortally threatened or seriously wounded by another nation-by massed armies and fleets on the seas, and an economic infrastructure to support both. This is no longer true. It is perfectly clear now that one maniac with a small vial of smallpox spores can kill millions of Americans. That is a guess, but an educated guess based on a U.S. government simulated disaster that started in an Oklahoma shopping center. Smallpox is a strange disease; it has a ten-day incubation period when no one knows they have it. We are mobile people, we fly around, we breathe each other's airplane air. The U.S. government, taking this mobility into account, estimated that in just three weeks, one million Americans in 25 states would die from one outbreak like that.

On the other hand, the enemies who attacked us on 9/11 failed to ask themselves the question, "But then what?" That is the question Admiral Yamamoto asked when the Japanese government summoned him in 1940 and asked him to take a fleet stealthily across the North Pacific and deliver a devastating blow against the American navy at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto said he could do that if his government would design some shallow running torpedoes and a few other things. He said he could run wild in the Pacific for six months, or maybe a year. But he asked his government, "Then what?" Yamamoto knew America, and he loved America. He studied at Harvard and had been back to the U.S. as a diplomat in Washington. He knew that after Pearl Harbor, Japan would have an enraged, united, incandescent, continental superpower on its hands, and that Japan's ultimate defeat would be implicit in its initial victory. Our current enemies will learn the same thing.

Preemption: Necessary but Problematic

Meanwhile we have worries-and these are not new worries. In 1946, Congress held what are today remembered, by the few who remember such things, as the "Screwdriver Hearings." They summoned J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, and asked him if it would be possible to smuggle an atomic device into New York City and detonate it. Oppenheimer replied that of course it would be possible. Congress then asked how it would be possible to detect such a device. Oppenheimer answered: "With a screwdriver." What he meant was that every container that came into the city of New York would have to be opened and inspected.

This year, seven million seaborn shipping containers will pass through our ports. About five percent will be given cursory examination. About 30,000 trucks crossed our international borders today. If this was a normal day, about 21,000 pounds of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin were smuggled into our country. How hard would it be, then, to smuggle in a football-sized lump of highly enriched uranium sufficient to make a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon to make Manhattan uninhabitable for a hundred years?

To enrich uranium is an enormous, complex process that requires scientists and vast physical plants. But once you have it, making a nuclear weapon requires only two or three good physics graduate students. And there is an enormous amount of fissile material floating around the world. In 1993, some officials from the U.S. Energy Department, along with some Russian colleagues, went to a Soviet-era scientific facility outside Moscow and used bolt cutters to snip off the padlock-the sum of all the security at this place. Inside, they found enough highly enriched uranium for 20 nuclear weapons. In 2002, enough fissile material for three weapons was recovered in a laboratory in a Belgrade suburb. And so it goes. The Soviet Union, in its short and deplorable life, deployed about 22,000 nuclear weapons. Who believes they have all been accounted for? The moral of this story is: you cannot fight terrorism at the ports of Long Beach or Newark. You have to go get it. You have to disrupt terrorism at its sources. This is a gray area. It's a shadow war. But it is not a war that we have any choice but to fight.

This leads us directly to the doctrine of preemption, with which there are several problems. First, we do not yet have-as it has been made painfully clear-the intelligence capacity that a doctrine of preemption really requires. The second problem with preemption is encapsulated in Colin Powell's famous "Pottery Barn principle," which Mr. Powell explained to the President before the second war with Iraq began: If you break it, you own it. Iraq is broken; we own it for the moment. And we are therefore engaged in nation building.

This is particularly a problem for conservatives, who understand that societies and nations are complex, organic things-not put together and taken apart like Tinker Toys. The phrase "nation building" sounds to many conservatives much the way the phrase "orchid building" would sound. An orchid is a complex, wonderful, beautiful, natural thing, but it is not something that can be built. Conservatives know it took thirty years in this country to rebuild the south Bronx. And now we have taken on a nation to build.

There are those who say that neoconservatives-and most of my friends are neoconservatives, although I am not quite-have exported the impulse for social engineering that conservatives have so rightly criticized over the years at home. There is, of course, an element in this critique of President Bush's policies that echoes in part the contemporary liberal version of isolationism. The old isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s was a conservative isolationism, and it held that America should not go abroad into the world because America is too good for the world. The contemporary liberal brand of isolationism-the Michael Moore view of the world-is that America should not be deeply involved in the world because the world is too good for America. This is not a serious argument, even though seriously held.

The serious argument over nation building is an argument conducted between conservatives of good will with one another. On the one hand, we have a school broadly called the realist school, and on the other hand, there is a school associated with Woodrow Wilson and his crusading zeal for the export of democracy. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, two intelligent and very good men, have in them a large share of Wilson's crusading messianic spirit, a spirit that is quite natural to America. Once you enunciate a country founded on principles that have universality written in them, as our Declaration of Independence does-i.e., "all men are created equal . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"-a kind of universal eligibility for these rights is postulated. What the realists remind us is that over time, it is the details that matter.

President Bush has said, in a phrase he got from Ronald Reagan, that it is cultural condescension to say that some people are not ready for democracy. Tony Blair, in July 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, came before a joint session of Congress and gave a wonderful, generous, good ally speech, in which he said that it is a "myth" that our values are simply "Western values," or simply a product of our culture. Our principles, he said, are "universal," embraced by all "ordinary people." The problem is that this belief-that every person is at heart a Jeffersonian Democrat, that all the masses of the world are ready for democracy-might lead you not to plan very carefully for post-war nation building. If this is true, then nation building should be a snap, because everyone is ready for democracy.

Realists know better. They know there was a long, 572-year uphill march from Runnymede to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Even more sobering, our Constitutional Convention was followed in less than 75 years by the bloodiest Civil War the world had ever seen, to settle some leftover constitutional questions. We know from our history how difficult regime change is. When the president speaks of regime change, he is using a term from Aristotle. For Aristotle, changing a regime did not mean substituting a few public officials for other public officials. For Aristotle, a regime meant the habits, mores, customs, dispositions, public philosophy, and culture of politics that sustain public institutions. Therefore, regime change is statecraft and soulcraft; it is changing the temperament of a people. It is very complicated.

Major League Baseball managers often say in spring training that they are just two players away from a World Series. Unfortunately, the two players are Ruth and Gehrig. Likewise, Iraq is just four statesmen away from sturdy constitutionalism. All they need is a George Washington, a charismatic figure to unify the nation; a James Madison, a genius of constitutional architecture; an Alexander Hamilton, who can create from whole cloth a functioning economy; and a John Marshall, a jurist who knows how to change a constitution from words on parchment into a breathing, functioning document. Most of all, of course, they need the astonishingly rich social soil of America in the second half of the 18th century from which Washington, Madison, Hamilton and Marshall sprang. All of which is to say that Iraq may not be close to constitutional democracy just yet.

The Miracle of America

I say this not to disparage the Iraqi people but to increase our appreciation of what a miracle the United States is. John Adams said that the American Revolution was accomplished before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Everyone used to learn-we do not learn these things anymore-Emerson's great poem about the battle of Concord's bridge: "by the rude bridge that arched the flood/their flag to April's breeze unfurled/here once the embattled farmers stood/and fired the shot heard round the world." But before that shot was fired, according to John Adams, independence had already been accomplished, because the spirit of independence was in the hearts and minds of the American people, a people prepared to shed blood in defense of their God-given natural rights.

One of the mistakes our enemies have made-and one of the reasons I wish our enemies would study American history to disabuse themselves of some of their grotesque errors-is their belief that we are squeamish about defending freedom and about the violence of war. They persist in the assumption that we are casualty averse. Osama Bin Laden said as much after the Somalia debacle when President Clinton, after suffering some casualties, immediately withdrew American forces. Whether or not we should have been in Somalia is another matter, but the means by which we left Somalia clearly convinced our enemies that we were paper tigers. People have been making that mistake since General Howe made it in the Battle of Brooklyn Heights in the Revolutionary War. He chased us across the East River and figured that was that. It was said again after the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862-up to that day the bloodiest day in American history. Many observers thought the North would sue for accommodation and, in the words of Horace Greeley, let our erring sisters go in peace. It did not turn out that way.

A few days after Shiloh, some men were seen on the still corpse-strewn fields of northern Maryland, men carrying strange devices. They were from Mathew Brady's photography studio in New York, and they took pictures. Three months later, these photos became an exhibit of devastating impact in Manhattan called "The Dead of Antietam." It was the first time graphic journalism had brought the real face of war to a democratic public. And it raised the question that to this day affects us and troubles political leaders: Does graphic journalism-first photography and then, of course, television-that brings war into our living rooms, in real time, cause nations to crack when they see the real face of battle?

The First World War produced the worst carnage the world had ever seen, but not once during the war did a picture of a dead Brit or dead Frenchman or dead German or dead American soldier appear in a newspaper of any of those countries. In the Second World War, the first picture of an American soldier dead in the surf in the Pacific did not appear in Life magazine until it had been held up in the War Department (as the Pentagon was then known) for nine months. The war in Vietnam produced more anxiety about graphic journalism, where it was suggested that in fact it was television that caused the American will to break. In fact, the American will never broke-but that is another matter. This has been a constant recurring anxiety in America, as Winston Churchill could have told us-and in fact did tell us when he came to North America immediately after Pearl Harbor. Churchill gave a speech in which he said, "We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy." No, we are not. We are much tougher than our enemies understand.

Character and the Power of Ideas

One hundred years ago, people believed not only that war was inevitable, but that war was good for us. Without it, they thought, we would have to look for strenuous domestic challenges that would be the moral equivalent of war- something elevating that would pull us out of ourselves and into great collective endeavors as war does. Tocqueville said, "war almost always enlarges the thought of a people and elevates its heart." Stravinsky, the great composer, said war is "necessary for human progress." All of these men echoed Immanuel Kant, who said "a prolonged peace favors the predominance of a mere commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminacy and tends to degrade the character of the nation."

There is much to be said for the commercial spirit, because the commercial spirit is a civilizing spirit. It is a spirit conducive to cooperation among peoples and within a political community. We are today engaged in a great race to see if we can integrate China into the community of nations with less catastrophic violence then that which accompanied the attempt 100 years ago to integrate the newly muscular and buoyant and dynamic nation of Germany into the community of nations. In the 33 years since President Nixon went to China in 1972, Republicans and Democrats alike have followed the same national policy, which holds that if we can only suffuse China with the commercial spirit, it can be tranquilized and made civilized. The reason for believing this is that commerce, entrepreneurship, and all the various elements of capitalism form an enveloping, civilizing culture.

Capitalism requires the diffusion of decision-making and the diffusion of information. Capitalism requires contracts-a culture of promise-keeping enforced by the judicial system. It requires banks to make self-interested, calculated, and rational allocations of wealth and opportunity. It sublimates the troublesome passions of mankind into improving the material well-being of people. It is for this reason that what we want to do with the fever swamps of the Middle East that produce our enemies is to try and drain those swamps and bring to them enterprise cultures. It is altogether right that Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war against Iraq, is now going to the World Bank where he can try and help the next stage of development, which is to spread the commercial spirit. In some ways, this is the American spirit.

On the other hand, as Tocqueville warned us, if a people is only concerned with material well-being, only concerned with commercialism, they lack something-they lack the heights of nobility and character and aspiration. But first things first: get people into this enveloping culture of capitalism. Nor is this to say that we Americans are a materialist people. The stupidest political slogan I have heard in three-and-a-half decades in Washington was the Clinton slogan in 1992, "It's the economy, stupid." The American people almost never vote their pocketbook as is commonly said, and almost never vote merely on economics. We are a much more morally serious and complicated people than that.

In the 1790s, our party system began to coalesce with, on the one hand, Jefferson advocating a sturdy yeoman republic, a static society of the kind he lived in, and, on the other hand, Hamilton urging a speculative, entrepreneurial society with a system of credit, a dynamic urban society. Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" was obviously couched in economic terms, but it was not about economics at all. It was about national character and what kind of people we would be. Later, Andrew Jackson defined modern democratic populist politics with his attack on the Bank of the United States. It was not about a bank; it was about morality. He argued that speculators earn their dishonest living through banks. Jackson did not understand much about the modern world or capitalism, but he held that people who earn their living that way are bad people. He thought it was bad for the soul. And throughout our history it has not mattered whether we were arguing about abolitionism, immigration, prohibition or desegregation. All of the great arguments that have roiled American politics over the years have not been pocketbook issues. They have been about the soul of the country and what kind of people we would be.

Well, the kind of people we are is a people who rise to the challenge of the new kind of enemy we have today. Our enemy has ideas. They are vicious, bad, retrograde, medieval, intolerant, and suicidal ideas, but ideas nevertheless. And we oppose them with the great ideas of freedom and democracy, which America has defined better than anyone in the world. And we turn to these people with an energy they could not have counted on. Edward Grey once said, "The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate." And these enemies improvidently lit a fire under us.

We have done this before. In September 1942, General Les McGraw of the Army Corps of Engineers bought for the government about 90,000 acres of Tennessee wilderness. There was nothing there-no roads, no towns, nothing. It was along the Clinch River, in eastern Tennessee, not far from Knoxville. But very soon there were streets and shops and schools and homes and some of the finest physics labs the world had ever seen. And 35 months later, on a desert in New Mexico, there was a flash brighter than a thousand suns and the atomic age began. Thirty-five months from wilderness to Alamogordo. That is what America does when aroused, because, as I say, we are not made of sugar candy.

Today we are the legatees of all the giants on whose shoulders we stand. We live in circumstances our parents did not live in, or our grandparents. We live in a time in which there is no rival model to the American model for how to run a modern industrial commercial society. Socialism is gone. Fascism is gone. Al-Qaeda has no rival model about how to run a modern society. Al-Qaeda has a howl of rage against the idea of modernity. We began in 1945 an astonishingly clear social experiment: We divided the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe, indeed the whole world, and we had a test. On one side was the socialist model that says that society is best run by edicts, issued from a coterie of experts from above. The American model, on the other hand, called for a maximum dispersal of decision-making and information markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are clear: We are here, they are not. The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.

We must struggle today with the fact that the doctrine of preemption is necessary, and with the serious problems it entails. But what we must have overall is the confidence that our ideas are right. I grew up in Lincoln country and I am reminded that in 1859, with war clouds lowering over the country, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the Wisconsin State Fair. In the course of this speech, Lincoln told the story of an Eastern despot who summoned his wise men and gave them an assignment. Go away and think, he said, and come back and give me a proposition to be carved in stone to be forever in view and forever true. The wise men went away and came back some days later, and the proposition they gave to him was: "And this, too, shall pass away." Lincoln said: perhaps not. If we Americans cultivate our inner lives and our moral selves as industriously and productively as we cultivate the material world around us, he said, then perhaps we of all peoples can long endure. He was right. We have and we shall persevere, in no small measure because of the plucky brand of people, true to these ideas, such as those that have formed around the college we here celebrate tonight.

"Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu."

Free Piglet

2005-10-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Lost Budgie Blog via Michelle Malkin for the link.

Sam the Eagle

2005-10-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

You are Sam the Eagle.
You are patriotic and devoted. And extremely anal.

HOBBIES:
Patriotism, Being appalled at what everyone else is
doing.
FAVORITE MUSIC:
The National Anthem of America

FAVORITE MOVIE:
"An American In....America"

LAST BOOK READ:
"Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,
Eagles are from America"

QUOTE:
"Please stop that now! It's un-American!"

What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Ravenwood for the link.

Specter: 22% Minimum Not a Quota

2005-09-07T14:54:00.000-04:00

The WP reports Sen. Arlen Specter's (RINO-PA) views on the ideal composition of the United States Supreme Court:

"Two women are, I think, a minimum," Specter said, though he added he does not favor a quota.

Herndon "Day Laborer" Project Spearheaded by Jihadists?

2005-08-22T00:04:00.000-04:00

Say it ain't so! Is the Herndon Town Council aware of this?

Why would Muhammadans push for this "charity" for a mostly Catholic group?
Why would Muhammadans enable immigration law violations?
Why would Muhammadans not be forthright about the funding of "Project Hope and Harmony"?
Why would Muhammadans seeking to perform acts of "charity" seek $175,000 of Herndon taxpayer funds?
Why would Muhammadans push such a devisive policy?

Northern Virginiastan is reporting:

The [Muslim?] Origins Of Project Hope

Project Hope and Harmony, not yet a nonprofit organization although filing papers for that status are said to be planned, is the organization which insisted that Herndon, Virginia build a center for day laborers. This center will operate at taxpayers' expense and will not check on the immigration status of day laborers who utilize the site.

From the August 20, 2005 edition of the Washington Post comes a bit of information about the origins of Project Hope:

"On a frigid winter day two years ago, Mukit Hossain drove past a 7-Eleven in Herndon and noticed a large group of men, some wearing only sweat shirts, shivering like leaves in the parking lot.

"Something made him stop and ask what they were doing. In broken English, one man explained that they were looking for work. With their chances as bleak as the weather at 3 in the afternoon, Hossain asked why they did not just give up and go home.

"'We don't have much of a home to go to,' Hossain recalls the man telling him.

"From that encounter, a charity was born that ultimately has led to a government-sanctioned day-laborer site that has generated national attention.

"Hossain called a meeting of civic and religious leaders, many of whom had worked quietly for years helping day laborers learn English, find housing and get medical care. He proposed that they join forces and collaborate under a name with a distinct mission: Project Hope and Harmony, whose sole goal would be to create and run an orderly site for itinerant laborers...."

Mukit Hossain, who immigrated to the United States from Bangaladesh some thirty years ago, is a successful businessman here in the United States. According to a PRWEB Press Release:

"Mukit will assume the position of Exe VP & COO on June 1, 2004. Most recently, he has served as the President of ContinewTechnology. Prior to ContinewTechnology, Mr. Hossain served at Teleglobe Communication Company as a senior executive in charge of ‘access’ development, and subsequently, for global buildout of web-hosting, collocation and POP facilities. Before that, he held several executive level positions in charge of Program Management, Marketing, Network Planning, Data Services and Partnership Management at WinStar Communications. He arrived in the DC area with an assignment to start the local telecom venture of LCI (now part of Qwest) – from business/product definition to implementation. Mr. Hossain entered the CLEC industry via his assignment to develop market strategy for Teleport Communication Group (TCG – now AT&T Local). Mr. Hossain also served in technical and marketing positions for Telecommunication and IT services at Ameritech and GTE. Mr. Hossain has Bachelors degrees in Economics, Mathematics and Philosophy from Duke University and a Masters degree in Economics with emphasis in Econometrics and Business Management from North Carolina State University."

He is, then, eminently qualified to have organized Project Hope.

Returning now to the above-cited article in the Washington Post:

"For Hossain, helping immigrants, most from Central and South America, is a Muslim issue. Charity is one of the five pillars of Islam. So he raised money from Muslim businessmen in Herndon to buy 400 winter coats for the laborers, brought them food through another charity he started, called Food Source, and even rounded up day laborers to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at an Iraqi restaurant where falafel, not turkey, was served.

"'I consider them my neighbors,' said Hossain, an immigrant from Bangladesh who came to the United States 30 years ago to attend Duke University....

"Hossain wants to buy bicycles for the day laborers so they can get to the site without taking shortcuts across private property. The All Dulles Area Muslim Society Center, a large mosque in Sterling, has offered to provide a van to transport workers to and from the site...."

A Google Search of Mukit Hossain pulled up lots of information about Mukit Hossain. One Google hit contained this blunt comment:

"Hossain and the other Muslims working with Project Hope and Harmony have been accused of trying to justify illegal immigration, but their commitment to the issue has remained strong."

Another hit stated this:

"The War on Terror suffered another setback when the 'Virginistan' Senate honored Mukrit Hossain, an Islamist who has used his 'charitable' work - for Da'wa and to undermine the interests of the United States. Hossain has not only parlayed giving food and coats to illegal migrants into a federally funded exercise in Da'wa (Islamic propagation), he has assisted those who broke the law with legal aid to help them fight to stay in the US . Hossain exploits his 'charitable' work for furthering his Islamist agenda,and openly proclaims this to be his political mission as well....Hossain is also active in MAS, the Muslim American Society, the group which is in the forefront of campaiging for the release of jailed presidental assassin wannabe Omar Abu Ali. MAS also lauded Hossain as a 'supporter' of their organisation which is directly linked to ICNA and by extension Al Qaeda. The trustee of MAS's Islamic American University is Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi who proclaimed that Muslim women have an Islamic duty to become suicide bombers."

A third Google hit produced this:

"Perhaps most outrageous of all is that the FAITH 'charity' -Foundation for Appropriate and Temporary Immediate Help- which Hossain is being lauded for which helps illegal migrants get around American law and enables him to expose them to Islam, is registered at 500 Grove Street an address which was raided by law enforcement because 'it housed more then 100 interlocking Muslim organisations... which gave material aid to terrorists.' Besides Hossain and FAITH's activities in recruiting illegal migrant converts to Islam, one must also conclude that the potential for these people to become terrorist operatives is just as likely."

Back in May 2005, Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch did a bit of analysis on MAS, the head of which is Mahdi Bray:

"A convert to Islam, Mahdi Bray is not one of those, like Ibrahim Hooper, who has attained national prominence. He is a tireless worker at the local level, however, and in his dual presentation of self, or presentation of dual selves, most instructive. Soft-spoken and smiling and all sweet reason, and with a comfortably American voice, when addressing Infidels, he becomes something quite different for Muslim audiences, where he has been known to chant-and-rant, as in his call of support for Hamas before a crowd in Washington, or whipping up a crowd to show up at a courtroom to mock the proceedings which involved charging a Muslim with plotting to kill the American President. He is also careful, at the local level, to carry out all those carefully-calibrated and well-publicized deeds of supposed charity – to earn Infidel goodwill – that are described as being so useful in the conduct of Da’wa at Muslim sites.

"In his last appearance in the Boston Globe, some months ago, he is seen in a photograph (he made sure there would be a Globe photographer handy) helping to lift a box of donated food for the poor, which we are naturally supposed to believe is disinterested Muslim charity, but zakat, of course, can only be given to Infidels for the sake of promoting Islam....

"The list of those he has chosen to vocally defend is instructive...

"In October 2000 he appeared at a demonstration called in support of Hamas and Hizbullah:

“In American Jihad, [Steve] Emerson notes that when Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now serving a 23-year prison sentence for a terrorism financing conviction, encouraged the Muslim crowd at an October 2000 rally cosponsored by MPAC to declare their support of the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah, 'MPAC’s Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations.' This was just three weeks after Bray 'coordinated and led a rally where approximately 2,000 people congregated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.' Emerson reports that 'at one point during the rally, Mahdi Bray played the tambourine as one of the speakers sang, while the crowd repeated: "Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is calling us, let’s all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews [sic]."

"Mahdi Bray was at another demonstration in December of that same year:

"On December 22, 2000, MPAC's Mahdi Bray organized a rally in Lafayette Park outside the White House to celebrate a 'Worldwide Day for Jerusalem.' In Arabic, the crowd responsively chanted with the emcee, 'Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!' Posters calling for 'Death to Israel' and equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika were openly displayed and anti-Semitic literature calling for the destruction of the Jews and Israel was distributed. Members of the crowd burned the Israeli flag while marching from the White House to the State Department.

"And here is some testimony before Congress about Mahdi Bray:

"United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

"Terrorist Recruitment and Infiltration in the United States: Prisons and Military as an Operational Base.
"Statement of J. Michael Waller Annenberg Professor of International Communication Institute of World Politics

"Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 14 October 2003

"Appendix 2: Key Organizations Involved in Muslim Prison Recruitment
"National Islamic Prison Foundation (NIPF) – Contact: Mahdi Bray; 1212 New York Ave. NW, Suite 525, Washington, DC 20005. This is the same address as the American Muslim Council (AMC).
"• Specifically organized to convert American inmates to Wahhabism.”

Is there a comprehensive list of groups which have funded, or are funding, Project Hope and Harmony, defined in the Washington Post as "an umbrella group, not a nonprofit organization." How closely tied is Project Hope to the Muslim American Society? And why should any group--of whatever civic or religious persuasion--be allowed to promote illegal immigration within the United States?

Could that be a Protest Warrior Sign?

2005-08-18T22:25:00.000-04:00

What a thought-provoking question: Who would Jesus bomb?
It brings another question to mind: Who would Muhammad bomb?

I look forward to the answer.

(I really wonder if it is a Protest Warrior sign.)

ABA Federal Juduciary Committee Chairman's View of the Nomination & Confirmation Process

2005-08-13T17:21:00.000-04:00

The Portsmouth Herald is fawning over one of their locals:

"We do not consider a candidate’s ideology," said Tober. "That’s for the U.S. Senate to consider."

I thought that role belongs to the President.

"Semper Cogitans; Numquam Faciens"

2005-08-07T07:55:00.000-04:00

Prof. Schenck's motto bears a striking similarity to my own.

Will the NCAA Permit the Illinois Fighting Illini to Display "Illinois" on Their Uniforms?

2005-08-06T14:01:00.000-04:00

The NCAA has ordered "derogatory" references to Native Americans to be removed from uniforms or be publicly displayed during certain NCAA events.

The NCAA has already determined the following references to be unacceptably "derogatory":

# Alcorn State University (Braves)
# Central Michigan University (Chippewas)
# Catawba College (Indians)
# Florida State University (Seminoles)
# Midwestern State University (Indians)
# University of Utah (Utes)
# Indiana University-Pennsylvania (Indians)
# Carthage College (Redmen)
# Bradley University (Braves)
# Arkansas State University (Indians)
# Chowan College (Braves)
# University of Illinois (Illini)
# University of Louisiana-Monroe (Indians)
# McMurry University (Indians)
# Mississippi College (Choctaws)
# Newberry College (Indians)
# University of North Dakota (Fighting Sioux)
# Southeastern Oklahoma State University (Savages)

No word yet on whether the NCAA will bar any or all of the following twenty-eight references as unacceptably derogatory:

Alabama -Indian for tribal town, later a tribe (Alabamas or Alibamons) of the Creek confederacy.

Alaska -Russian version of Aleutian (Eskimo) word, alakshak, for "peninsula," "great lands," or "land that is not an island."

Arizona -Spanish version of Pima Indian word for "little spring place," or Aztec arizuma, meaning "silver-bearing."

Arkansas -French variant of Quapaw, a Siouan people meaning "downstream people."

Connecticut -From Mohican and other Algonquin words meaning "long river place."

Delaware -Named for Lord De La Warr, early governor of Virginia; first applied to river, then to Indian tribe (Lenni-Lenape), and the state.

Hawaii -Possibly derived from native word for homeland, Hawaiki or Owhyhee.

Idaho -A coined name with an invented Indian meaning: "gem of the mountains;" originally suggested for the Pike's Peak mining territory (Colorado), then applied to the new mining territory of the Pacific Northwest. Another theory suggests Idaho may be a Kiowa Apache term for the Comanche.

Illinois -French for Illini or land of Illini, Algonquin word meaning men or warriors.

Indiana -Means "land of the Indians."

Iowa -Indian word variously translated as "one who puts to sleep" or "beautiful land."

Kansas -Sioux word for "south wind people."

Kentucky -Indian word variously translated as "dark and bloody ground," "meadow land" and "land of tomorrow."

Massachusetts -From Indian tribe named after "large hill place" identified by Capt. John Smith as being near Milton, Mass.

Michigan -From Chippewa words mici gama meaning "great water," after the lake of the same name.

Minnesota -From Dakota Sioux word meaning "cloudy water" or "sky-tinted water" of the Minnesota River.

Mississippi -Probably Chippewa; mici zibi, "great river" or "gathering-in of all the waters." Also: Algonquin word, "Messipi."

Missouri -An Algonquin Indian term meaning "river of the big canoes."

Nebraska -From Omaha or Otos Indian word meaning "broad water" or "flat river," describing the Platte River.

North & South Dakota -Dakota is Sioux for friend or ally.

Ohio -Iroquois word for "fine or good river."

Oklahoma -Choctaw coined word meaning red man, proposed by Rev. Allen Wright, Choctaw-speaking Indian, said: Okla humma is red people.

Tennessee -Tanasi was the name of Cherokee villages on the Little Tennessee River. From 1784 to 1788 this was the State of Franklin, or Frankland.

Texas -Variant of word used by Caddo and other Indians meaning friends or allies, and applied to them by the Spanish in eastern Texas. Also written texias, tejas, teysas.

Utah -From a Navajo word meaning upper, or higher up, as applied to a Shoshone tribe called Ute.

Wisconsin -An Indian name, spelled Ouisconsin and Mesconsing by early chroniclers. Believed to mean "grassy place" in Chippewa. Congress made it Wisconsin.

Wyoming -The word was taken from Wyoming Valley, Pa., which was the site of an Indian massacre and became widely known by Campbell's poem, "Gertrude of Wyoming." In Algonquin it means "large prairie place."

As Suspected, Mr. Atkins Not Actually Retarded; Execution Date Set

2005-08-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

A Virginia jury found Mr. Atkins not to be legally retarded, the WP reports.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE

Judge Roberts, Sodomite Supporter?

2005-08-06T08:51:00.000-04:00

According to the L.A. Times,

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the scenes for gay rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay rights activists as part of his law firm's pro bono work. He did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before the high court, but he was instrumental in reviewing filings and preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers intimately involved in the case.

Gay rights activists at the time described the court's 6-3 ruling as the movement's most important legal victory. The dissenting justices were those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative ideology: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Roberts' work on behalf of gay rights activists, whose cause is anathema to many conservatives, appears to illustrate his allegiance to the credo of the legal profession: to zealously represent the interests of the client, whoever it might be.

There is no other record of Roberts being involved in gay rights cases that would suggest his position on such issues. He has stressed, however, that a client's views are not necessarily shared by the lawyer who argues on his or her behalf.

The lawyer who asked for Roberts' help on the case, Walter A. Smith Jr., then head of the pro bono department at Hogan & Hartson, said Roberts didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Let's do it.' And it's illustrative of his open-mindedness, his fair-mindedness. He did a brilliant job."

Roberts did not mention his work on the case in his 67-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, released Tuesday. The committee asked for "specific instances" in which he had performed pro bono work, how he had fulfilled those responsibilities, and the amount of time he had devoted to them.

Smith said the omission was probably just an oversight because Roberts was not the chief litigator in Romer vs. Evans, which struck down a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.

"John probably didn't recall [the case] because he didn't play as large a role in it as he did in others," Smith said Wednesday. "I'm sure John has a record somewhere of every case he ever argued, and Romer he did not argue. So he probably would have remembered it less."

Jean Dubofsky, lead lawyer for the gay rights activists and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice, said that when she came to Washington to prepare for the U.S. Supreme Court presentation, she immediately was referred to Roberts.

"Everybody said Roberts was one of the people I should talk to," Dubofsky said. "He has a better idea on how to make an effective argument to a court that is pretty conservative and hasn't been very receptive to gay rights."

She said he gave her advice in two areas that were "absolutely crucial."

"He said you have to be able to count and know where your votes are coming from. And the other was that you absolutely have to be on top of why and where and how the state court had ruled in this case," Dubofsky said.

She said Roberts served on a moot court panel as she prepared for oral arguments, with Roberts taking the role of a Scalia-like justice to pepper her with tough questions.

When Dubofsky appeared before the justices, Scalia did indeed demand specific legal citations from the lower-court ruling. "I had it right there at my fingertips," she said.

"John Roberts … was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue," she said. "He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky said Roberts helped her form the argument that the initiative violated the "equal protections" clause of the Constitution.

The case was argued before the Supreme Court in October 1995, and the ruling was handed down the following May. Suzanne B. Goldberg, a staff lawyer for New York-based Lambda, a legal services group for gays and lesbians, called it the "single most important positive ruling in the history of the gay rights movement."

In the blistering dissent, Scalia, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, said "Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct." Scalia added that the majority opinion had "no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to."

The case was one of several Roberts worked on pro bono at Hogan & Hartson, a prominent Washington law firm that expects partners to volunteer time in community service.

Coulter Warns of Supreme Roulette

2005-08-06T08:15:00.000-04:00

Notable excerpts from Coulter's past several columns:

We had a pretty good idea what kind of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were going to be. Scalia had spoken at the very first symposium of the Federalist Society as a young law professor — before it became a felony to do so — and served as faculty adviser to the group. (By contrast, Roberts is running from the Federalist Society like a 9-year-old boy running from Neverland Ranch.)

Before becoming a judge, Thomas had spent 10 years on the editorial advisory board of the Lincoln Review, a black conservative publication that ran articles comparing abortion to murder. He had given a speech praising an article by Lewis Lehrman calling abortion a "holocaust" that should be outlawed without exception. (There were even rumors, never proven, that during his law studies Thomas had actually read the Constitution.)

That's the sort of nominee we were hoping for! This wasn't a paper trail; it was more like a paper superhighway.

Maybe Roberts will contravene the sordid history of "stealth nominees" and be the Scalia or Thomas that Bush promised us when he was asking for our votes. Or maybe he won't. The Supreme Court shouldn't be a game of Russian roulette.

Roberts would have been a fine candidate for a Senate in Democratic hands. But now we have 55 Republican seats in the Senate and the vice president to cast a deciding vote — and Son of Read-My-Lips gives us another ideological blind date.

Fifty-five seats means every single Democrat in the Senate could vote against a Republican Supreme Court nominee — highly unlikely considering some of those Democrats are up for election next year — along with John McCain, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee. We would still win.

How Long Before WMATA Updates Its Schedules?

2005-05-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

Remember the years it took for them to change their reference to Reagan Airport?

New Name for BWI Selected Decision Made to Honor First Black Supreme Court Justice

By John Wagner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 10, 2005; 2:36 PM

Maryland's largest airport will be renamed in honor of the late Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first black Supreme Court justice, under legislation signed into law this afternoon by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

Brave Seattle Police Officer Donald Jones Uses Lethal Force Against Pregnant Speeder

2005-05-10T10:45:00.000-04:00

What was this guy thinking? Did he really think there was probable cause to believe that Ms. Brooks was dangerous to either him, his fellow officers, or the public?

What a big strong macho man able to subdue a pregnant woman!

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Police used Taser on pregnant driver

Woman convicted of refusing to obey Seattle officers

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

By HECTOR CASTRO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn't think she deserved.

So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts.

"Probably the worst thing that ever happened to me," Brooks said, in describing that morning during her criminal trial last week on charges of refusing to obey an officer and resisting arrest.

She was found guilty of the first charge because she never signed the ticket, but the Seattle Municipal Court jury could not decide whether she resisted arrest, the reason the Taser was applied.

To her attorneys and critics of police use of Tasers, Brooks' case is an example of police overreaction.

"It's pretty extraordinary that they should have used a Taser in this case," said Lisa Daugaard, a public defender familiar with the case.

Law enforcement officers have said they see Tasers as a tool that can benefit the public by reducing injuries to police and the citizens they arrest.

Seattle police officials declined to comment on this case, citing concerns that Brooks might file a civil lawsuit.

But King County sheriff's Sgt. Donald Davis, who works on the county's Taser policy, said the use of force is a balancing act for law enforcement.

"It just doesn't look good to the public," he said.

Brooks' run-in with police Nov. 23 came six months before Seattle adopted a new policy on Taser use that guides officers on how to deal with pregnant women, the very young, the very old and the infirm. When used on such subjects, the policy states, "the need to stop the behavior should clearly justify the potential for additional risks."

"Obviously, (law enforcement agencies) don't want to use a Taser on young children, pregnant woman or elderly people," Davis said. "But if in your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation."

Brooks was stopped in the 8300 block of Beacon Avenue South, just outside the African American Academy, while dropping her son off for school.

In a two-day trial that ended Friday, the officer involved, Officer Juan Ornelas, testified he clocked Brooks' Dodge Intrepid doing 32 mph in a 20-mph school zone.

He motioned her over and tried to write her a ticket, but she wouldn't sign it, even when he explained that signing it didn't mean she was admitting guilt.

Brooks, in her testimony, said she believed she could accept a ticket without signing for it, which she had done once before.

"I said, 'Well, I'll take the ticket, but I won't sign it,' " Brooks testified.

Officer Donald Jones joined Ornelas in trying to persuade Brooks to sign the ticket. They then called on their supervisor, Sgt. Steve Daman.

He authorized them to arrest her when she continued to refuse.

The officers testified they struggled to get Brooks out of her car but could not because she kept a grip on her steering wheel.

And that's when Jones brought out the Taser.

Brooks testified she didn't even know what it was when Jones showed it to her and pulled the trigger, allowing her to hear the crackle of 50,000 volts of electricity.

The officers testified that was meant as a final warning, as a way to demonstrate the device was painful and that Brooks should comply with their orders.

When she still did not exit her car, Jones applied the Taser.

In his testimony, the Taser officer said he pressed the prongs of the muzzle against Brooks' thigh to no effect. So he applied it twice to her exposed neck.

Afterward, he and the others testified, Ornelas pushed Brooks out of the car while Jones pulled.

She was taken to the ground, handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, the officers testified.

She told jurors the officer also used the device on her arm, and showed them a dark, brown burn to her thigh, a large, red welt on her arm and a lump on her neck, all marks she said came from the Taser application.

At the South Precinct, Seattle fire medics examined Brooks, confirmed she was pregnant and recommended she be evaluated at Harborview Medical Center.

Brooks said she was worried about the effect the trauma and the Taser might have on her baby, but she delivered a healthy girl Jan. 31.

Still, she said, she remains shocked that a simple traffic stop could result in her arrest.

"As police officers, they could have hurt me seriously. They could have hurt my unborn fetus," she said.

"All because of a traffic ticket. Is this what it's come down to?"

Davis said Tasers remain a valuable tool, and that situations like Brooks' are avoidable.

"I know the Taser is controversial in all these situations where it seems so egregious," he said. "Why use a Taser in a simple traffic stop? Well, the citizen has made it more of a problem. It's no longer a traffic stop. This is now a confrontation."

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Not Much Love or Reverence for the Mothers of the Commonwealth

2005-05-08T13:02:00.000-04:00

Today, I have seen many flagpoles, even at state facilities, with only the federal flag.

§ 2.2-3304. Display of flags on Mother's Day.

The Governor may issue annually a proclamation calling upon state officials to display the flag of the United States and of the Commonwealth on all public buildings, and the people of the Commonwealth to display such flags at their homes and other suitable places on the second Sunday in May, known as "Mother's Day," as a public expression of love and reverence for the mothers of the Commonwealth.

Here Comes A Slew of Motions

2005-05-06T20:58:00.000-04:00

Audit: Crime lab erred in exonerated death row inmate's case

By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press Writer

Published May 6, 2005

RICHMOND, Va. -- The state crime lab made several errors when retesting evidence in the case of a former death row inmate wrongfully convicted of a 1982 rape and murder, according to an independent audit released Friday.

Although retesting of the evidence in 2000 led to the absolute pardon of Earl Washington Jr., the lab's leading DNA analyst made several mistakes, including prematurely excluding suspects when he should have ruled the DNA sample inconclusive, the audit report concluded.

As a result, Jeffrey Ban has been temporarily suspended from certain cases involving "low level" DNA samples, where the evidence contains amounts of DNA at or below normal detection limits.

Such samples were used in the case of Washington, who spent more than nine years on death row and came within nine days of being executed. He was pardoned by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore in 2000, 17 years after he was imprisoned for the killing of 19-year-old Rebecca Williams of Culpeper.

In 2004, a California scientist concluded that semen found on the victim's body was left by a serial rapist, Kenneth Tinsley. Tinsley is serving life in prison for the 1984 rape of an Albemarle County woman and was twice convicted of rape in Chicago, according to court and prison records. He has not been charged in the Williams slaying.

The audit, requested by Gov. Mark R. Warner, places some of the blame for the errors on pressure from Gilmore's office to definitively answer whether Washington was the killer. It quoted Ban as saying "inconclusive results were not an option."

"The added daily pressures to produce a result ... laid the groundwork for mistakes to be made and procedures to be modified in attempts to gather some useful information," according to the report prepared by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, the national accrediting entity for forensic labs.

DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington's guilt, but did not absolutely eliminate him as a suspect. As a result, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted Washington's sentence to life in prison.

The audit pointed out errors Ban made during the 1993 retesting.

"If he had correctly reported the 1993 DNA results, Earl Washington would have been exonerated seven years before he actually was released," said Debi Cornwall, one of Washington's attorneys. "He's had seven years in prison because of (Ban's) mistakes."

In 2000, the crime lab used more sophisticated DNA tests on the evidence. The results excluded Washington as the depositor of the semen and as a result, Gilmore granted him an absolute pardon. Ban then concluded that DNA appearing on a vaginal swab came from an unknown male--not from Washington, the victim or Tinsley.

But the audit found the results of those tests should have been deemed inconclusive.

"The DNA typing results offered in this case should have, at best, been reported as inconclusive, rather than attempting to make an interpretation from poor quality information," the report said.

In a statement, Virginia Division of Forensic Science director Paul Ferrara agreed that Ban should have declared the sample inconclusive instead of eliminating Washington, Williams and Tinsley. But he also characterized the audit's focus as narrow.

"The audit report criticizes the work performed on one sub-sample five years ago based upon current technologies and standards," Ferrara said. "It also belies the major body of other work performed by this examiner in this case wherein he successfully eliminated Earl Washington and identified a new suspect, Kenneth Tinsley, on evidence found at the crime scene."

The audit included several recommendations, many of which the lab has already adopted. Among them, the audit recommends defining a process that would insulate lab workers from outside pressures in high-profile cases. Ferrara said in the event a similar case arises again, a panel of senior scientists will review any deviations from normal protocols and help with formatting the results of the analysis and conclusions.

The report also recommends a thorough examination of Ban's casework over the past five years, which Ferrara agreed to in his response.

No one at the forensics division would have any further comment on the audit, according to a secretary who answered the phone. A telephone message left at Ban's home was not immediately returned.

The implications of the audit's findings are grave, said one of Washington's attorneys, Peter Neufeld, founder of the Innocence Project.

"It casts a shadow over many of the capital prosecutions and convictions in Virginia with this laboratory and, in particular, this analyst," he said.

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Semper Laborans; Numquam Cogitans

2005-05-01T14:10:00.000-04:00

My neverending project at work has been interfering with my ability to post. But I shall return.

In Memorium

2005-04-02T15:31:00.000-05:00

Lethal Force Used Against Activist at Hospice

2005-03-30T23:45:00.000-05:00

The St. Petersburg Times reports:

Dow Pursley, 56, of Scranton, Pa., dashed through police lines on a beeline for the hospice's front day. Unlike symbolic civil disobedience in recent days, Pursely seemed determined to actually enter the hospice.

Pinellas Park police officers tackled him near the front door, then shot him with a Taser gun when he refused to obey orders.

He was charged with burglary to an occupied dwelling and resisting arrest without violence, and was held Tuesday night in Pinellas County Jail on $20,500 bail.

Toilet Paper Tax?

2005-03-11T13:44:00.000-05:00

The AP is reporting that there is a proposal in Florida to tax toilet paper.

I suppose the attraction is a perceived inelastic demand curve. This, of course, assumes that smugglers don't go across state lines and create a black market in toilet paper. This also assumes that consumers don't substitute away to other products, which may be even less sewer-friendly than toilet paper.

A Democrat is proposing this, yet ...

1. This tax could be described as "regressive"-- I don't think a rich person consumes more toilet paper than a poor person.
2. Don't women use more toilet paper than men? I smell an Equal Protection challenge.
3. This tax sticks it to the sick. It would likely have a disproportionate impact on those suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and similar afflictions.

UPDATE: Let nothing go untaxed, Ravenwood facetiously suggests, refering also to a NJ tax proposal on poker television shows.

UPDATE: Mr. Berthoud of NTU points out the hypocrisy of the NJ tax proposal and links to a CNN article.

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Fairfax's "Hit & Run" Connolly Laments: Taxpayers Bear Burden of Politician's Good Intentions

2005-03-10T09:12:00.003-05:00

Well, not quite.

The WP reports that "Hit & Run" Connolly is complaining:

Fairfax spent $543 million last fiscal year complying with federal mandates to provide cleaner water and air, collect and dispose of solid and hazardous waste, incarcerate illegal immigrants, provide health care for the uninsured, implement new voting rules and pay for No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law. But the government reimbursed the county for just $148 million, leaving taxpayers to shoulder the rest.

It is not that Connolly disapproves of these programs. Connolly says, "You're asking local taxpayers to bear the burden of your good intentions."

I doubt that Connolly actually embraces federalism and really believes that certain policy decisions should be made by the states and their counties instead of the federal government. He is not arguing against the federal mandates in toto. Rather, he wants Congress to write him a bigger check. It seems as though he simply wants more money under his control.

Is the problem really that the "wrong" taxpayers are paying for these programs? Aren't substantially all Fairfax taxpayers also federal taxpayers? If Congress decides to make the farmers in Kansas pay for Fairfax's water, safety, education, etc., will Connolly cut Fairfax taxes accordingly (not just nominal decreases in the rate, but actual decreases in taxes paid)?

Notwithstanding speculation about Connolly's motivations for his subsidized housing policy and his Tysons policy, assuming arguendo that Connolly has good intentions, his question can be generalized to be made applicable to him: Should Fairfax taxpayers bear the burden of Connolly's "good intentions"?

"Courage"

2005-03-10T08:38:00.000-05:00

Whatever. RatherBiased reports.

Trial Lawyers Create Societal Value Tracking Down Al Qaeda

2005-03-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

Prof. Tabarrok points to a U.K. Times article that identifies a South Carolina plaintiff's law firm as "having the best database on Islamic terrorism in the world." Imagine if CIA, FBI salaries were anywhere near salaries at law firms...

Fairfax's "Hit & Run" Connolly's Subsidized Housing Motivations Revealed

2005-03-09T09:04:00.000-05:00

Steve of ThoughtsOnline points to a WP article about a subsidized housing pow-wow "Hit & Run" Connolly attended. Steve provides this on-the-money insight:

And of course, they lament the fact that County employees can't all afford to live in the County. See, they're not really upset over the private sector workers who drive in from neighboring jurisdictions. They're more concerned with getting reelected - all the thousands of county workers who live outside the county and thus can't vote for the likes of Connolly in Fairfax County elections. They want to throw these County employees some more money - through either subsidies or loans - in order to build up their political support base.

Fairfax's "Hit & Run" Connolly Criticized for Conflict of Interest on Tysons

2005-03-09T07:41:00.000-05:00

Scott McPherson questions why Connolly seemed so "giddy" in an interview he gave on the topic of Tysons and the Metro. Finally someone else suspects that the reason for "Hit & Run" Connolly's excitement isn't really a skating rink.

CHAIN MAIL: American Fumbles With Passport Visiting France

2005-03-09T07:23:00.000-05:00

At a French airport...A group of American retired teachers recently went to France on a tour. Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, was part of the tour group.

At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry-on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible!" barked the officer. "Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France."

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look.

Then he quietly explained, "Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in '44 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find any Frenchmen to show it to."

Fairfax's "Hit & Run" Connolly Calls My 30% Tax Bill Increase a "Cut"

2005-03-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

The WP reports:

As Northern Virginia governments cut property tax rates to stave off taxpayer rebellions against high assessments, Fairfax County board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly opened a competition yesterday with neighboring Prince William County over who is proposing the "Biggest Tax Rate Cut."

Even if Fairfax's rate changes from $1.13 to $1.03 per $100 of assessed value, my taxes are still going up. I calculate I will be paying 30% more this year.

Fairfax's School Budget to Increase 82 Times Faster than Enrollment

2005-03-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Fairfax County's school budget is set to increase 8.2%, while enrollment has increased only 0.1%.

Juxtapose this excerpt from one WP article from February 15:

Fairfax's school enrollment will show a minuscule increase this year -- 186

with this excerpt from another WP article from March 1:

Most of the plan's 6.9 percent spending increase would go to schools in a move that could resolve several weeks of tensions between the county board and school officials over the first budget presented by new superintendent Jack D. Dale. Dale's proposed 9.7 percent increase, pared slightly by the school board, far exceeded what the county said it would give the schools next year. But Griffin's proposed school spending increase of 8.2 percent brought the two sides far closer.

(Since the WP failed to provide current enrollment statistics for FCPS, please feel free to check the FCPS website, which reports that current enrollment is 166,275.)

Ohio Woman Arrested for Failure to File Tax Return With 96 Cent Liability

2005-03-07T11:09:00.000-05:00

The interesting quote from this Mansfield News Journal article is the following:

"I bailed myself out of jail."

Somehow, even though Ms. Gould claims she only had $55 of income in 2001, she was able to afford bailing herself out of jail. Maybe her income situation has greatly improved since then. (The article did note pregnancy-related medical difficulties in 2001.) I don't know, but my eyebrows are raised.

Thanks to Prof. Caron for the link.

Prof. Balkin Makes 10 Commandments Prediction

2005-03-06T07:48:00.000-05:00

Prof. Balkin predicts Justice O'Connor will uphold five and strike down five. Perhaps considering the contents of the Ten Commandments, the prediction isn't all that far-fetched.

Thanks to Prof. Volokh for the link.

Does the Constitution REALLY Demand that this Missouri Cannot Execute this Murderer?

2005-03-01T18:08:00.000-05:00

The WP reports. An earlier edition of the article noted that Mr. Simmons bragged after murdering Shirley Crook that his age would prevent his execution.

Vacationing; Will Return Soon

2005-02-08T12:08:00.000-05:00

NPR: Anheuser-Busch Had Best Super Bowl Ad

2005-02-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

I agree with NPR on this.

Turns Out Mr. Atkins Might Not Be Retarded Afterall

2005-02-06T18:07:00.000-05:00

According to the NY Times, "in 1996, [Mr. Atkins] and another man abducted Eric Nesbitt, 21, an airman from Langley Air Force Base, forced him to withdraw money from an A.T.M. and then shot him eight times, killing him." The U.S. Supreme Court used Mr. Atkins's case to "discover" that the U.S. Constitution forbids states from executing the mentally retarded even if they were competent to understand the nature and consequences of their actions (I'm still looking for this clause in my copy). Mr. Atkins's performance on recent IQ tests classify him as not mentally retarded.

Mr. Minor provides brief comments and points to comments by Prof. Althouse.

Wachovia Did What?

2005-02-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

The WP reports:

Wachovia said that, overall, 86 statements or tax forms were mistakenly sent to Pirozzi, including information on 73 individuals. Pirozzi said the number of pieces of mail was significantly higher, closer to 140...

That first month, he said, he received several dozen statements that all listed his address but someone else's name. Pirozzi first called Wachovia, hoping they could quickly resolve the matter and get the mail redirected to its rightful owners.

Instead, he got bounced from person to person, number to number, automated system to automated system.

Apparently, it took the involvement of the WP to get Wachovia to sort this mess out. How many times does this sort of thing happen where the recipient of others' personal information is not as honest as Mr. Pirozzi?

Va. Considers "Single Form of Action" that Preserves Law & Equity Distinction

2005-02-06T09:21:00.000-05:00

Mr. Minor points to legislation making its way through the Senate.

I won't believe it until the Governor signs it, and then I'm not even sure I will.

French Proposal to End 35 Hour Work Week Protested

2005-02-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

From this CNN / Netscape article, I learned the following:

1. Chirac is the "conservative" in France. (I can only imagine what the socialists are like.)
2. France has a 10 percent unemployment rate. (For comparison, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the United States was 5.2% for January 2005.)
3. The E.U. caps the work week at 48 hours.
4. The French have demonstrated they have too much free time. (Imagine all they could accomplish if they harnessed the energy they spent protesting.)

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

NY Times: Why Dem's Choose Dean

2005-02-06T09:09:00.000-05:00

David Brooks observes that membership organizations do not cross class lines like they used to and that Democrats are basically "following the money."

Howard Dean may not be as liberal as he appeared in the primaries, but in 1,001 ways - from his secularism to his stridency - he embodies the newly dominant educated class, which is large, self-contained and assertive.

Pregnancy Center Attacked; Media MIA!

2005-02-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

If this had happened to an abortionist's facilities, this would have been front page news in all major media outlets:

Places like the Bowie center are a front line in the struggle over abortion, and the clinic reported to the police that on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision last month its windows were smashed and it was spray-painted with graffiti saying "Choice."

Instead this news item is buried in a DC Examiner article discussing how Christians are using sonograms to equip women to make a more informed reproductive choice.

Why the Md. HMO Tax?

2005-02-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times reports.

Maryland imposed a tax on HMO premiums "to subsidize doctors' malpractice insurance premiums." HMO's turn around and increase their premiums accordingly. Maryland Democrats are "shocked."

When doctors passed their malpractice premium increases onto HMO's who in turn passed the increases on to consumers, that was bad and required the imposition of a tax that could be imposed on HMO's and passed on to consumers, probably with additional "administrative costs" being leaked in Annapolis.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Sri Lanka & Ski Parkas: Why Cash is the King of Gifts

2005-02-04T10:13:00.000-05:00

The WSJ reports that many non-cash tsunami-relief donations are items "unusable" by the recipients -- "ski jackets, moisturizing gel[,] Viagra[,] cozy winter hats, Arctic-weather tents, cologne and thong underwear."

This reminds me of Prof. Cowen's Christmas post.

Perhaps there was wisdom afterall in the special tax provision Congress passed to permit a 2004 federal income tax deduction for cash contributions (and not non-cash contributions) made in January 2005 for the purpose of tsunami relief.

Freezing Fla. Homeowners Insurance Rates

2005-02-04T10:11:00.000-05:00

The WSJ reports that Florida is considering "freezing" homeowner insurance rates in the wake of last fall's hurricane season.

How soon until Floridians start complaining about insurers unwilling to write policies for them?

I am reminded of a column written a while ago by the Prof. Williams.

Unappreciated Tax Humor

2005-02-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ohio tends not to be the favorite state of tax professionals because of its cumbersome locality-level filing requirements in addition to state-level filing requirements. Thus, Middletown, Ohio's tax superintendent's statement "if we can tax it, we will," though intended as humor, rings quite true. Unfortunately for her, her supervisor was not pleased with her insertion of this and other "humorous" comments in Middletown's tax forms this year and has suspended her without pay.

NTU also carries the story.

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

What's in a Name?

2005-02-04T08:36:00.000-05:00

Prof. Cowen points to remarks by Virginia Postrel and Andrew Sullivan. I read these to suggest that "Semper Cogitans; Numquam Laborans" is an apt name for a blog, especially the one you are reading.

DC Examiner: State Dept. Employee Indicted for Selling Visas

2005-02-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

The DC Examiner reports. Here's my question for my readers, though:

Anesthesia Jeopardizes Freedom of "Choice"

2005-02-04T08:30:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times reports on Delegate Richard H. Black's proposal to require abortionists to provide anesthesia for a fetus at the "20-week stage."

In the words of protestors at the state Capitol, this is just an attempt by Virginia's legislators to make women's reproductive decisions for them.

No word yet on anyone protesting the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service's enforcement of Humane Methods of Slaughter Act as interfering with anyone's freedom of choice. Similarly no word on any protests against the policy of several states and the federal government to permit a condemned man a dose of a sedative before his execution.

Metro To Leave 86 Employees Without Cars

2005-02-04T08:26:00.000-05:00

The WP reports that "as of July 1, the number of employees who are assigned vehicles they can take home and park free at Metro's downtown headquarters would be reduced from 135 to 49." The WP reports the reaction of D.C. Council member Jim Graham:

[He] represents the District on the Metro board and has acknowledged that he drives most places, criticized Metro officials for allowing the policy to last as long as it did.

Sounds like a good start, even though 49 cars remain. Additionally, Metro isn't actually selling off these 86 cars, but rather "the newly unassigned cars will be added to the system's vehicle pool."

While the WP does note that Metro "Board members and all of Metro's roughly 10,000 employees ride buses and trains for free," the WP omits the amount of the taxpayer subsidy Metro receives.

Fairfax's "Hit & Run" Connolly Excited About Proposed Tysons Skating Rink

2005-02-04T08:23:00.000-05:00

The WP reports that when finished "the mall would be ringed by office, residential and hotel mid-rises, essentially increasing the amount of floor space on the property to more than 5 million square feet, or more than twice as much as in the Empire State Building."

Here's the best part, though:

The second hurdle is that only about a third of the project can be built before funding for the $1.5 billion Metrorail extension from West Falls Church through Tysons Corner is approved, according to the terms of the proposed rezoning for the expansion.

What is this nonsense about permitting a third of the construction even before the MetroRail project is funded? Why not require the expansion to wait until MetroRail is actually built (as opposed to merely funded)?

Fairfax County Chairman "Hit and Run" Connolly (D) is thrilled with the project though because it includes "a central plaza with an ice skating rink." Interestingly, the WP omits any reference to financial dealings between Connolly and any parties pushing for approval of this project.

The Extreme Tax Position of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2005-02-03T21:08:00.000-05:00

Prof. Caron comments on the extreme tax position taken by the tax attorneys for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (In short, the value of the improvements are characterized as a type of "short-term rental payment" exempt from income tax). He also points to a forthcoming law review article on the subject.

One argument against imposing income tax on the value of the improvements is that it would be bad P.R. for the IRS since the homeowners lack the liquidity to pay the income tax (assuming, of course, that home equity loans are unavailable). I seem to remember reading in the WSJ a while back (I'll look for the article) that many of these homeowners sell the renovated houses anyway -- to pay for local property taxes! Why shouldn't the IRS be able to tax the payment? (Remember that most gains from sale of personal residences are exempt from taxation, so taxing it at the sale won't "catch" the income.)

Perhaps, though, ABC is onto something. Maybe Publishers Clearinghouse should structure their sweepstakes so that the jackpot is simply a "short term rental payment" for allowing Ed McMahon and his film crew to come inside the winner's house.

WP: Dulles Toll Increase Proposed

2005-02-03T20:14:00.000-05:00

My recollection is that the tolls on the Dulles Toll Road were "promised" to last only as long as necessary to pay off the bonds that financed the construction of the Dulles Toll Road.

My memory must be faulty, though, because the WP omits any reference to such a "promise" when it reports that Virginia's Commonwealth Transportation Board is considering raising tolls on the Dulles Toll Road to pay for MetroRail.

UPDATE: The National Taxpayers Union comments on and provides a communication tool for this topic.

UN Claims Credit for "Free Elections in Iraq"

2005-02-03T14:26:00.000-05:00

This does not appear to be a parody site.

Thanks to HaloScan for the link.

NTU: Congress Ignores Absentee Pay Forfeiture Law

2005-02-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Prof. Caron points to a National Taxpayers Union press release that reminds us of an ignored federal law requires that senators and congressmen not be paid for days they are absent from their chamber without excuse. The 25 worst offenders are identified.

Why Isn't the U.S. out of Iraq Already?

2005-02-03T08:51:00.000-05:00

Volokh conspirator Lindgren reminds us of the "accelerated" timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Germany, Italy, and Japan after WW2 and South Korea after the Korean Conflict.

Va. Considers Lifting Ban on Purchasing More than One Gun Per Month

2005-02-03T08:36:00.000-05:00

The new DC Examiner reports this proposal could threaten "a regional effort to reduce gun crimes" according to Maryland, Northern Virginia and D.C. Democrats.

Combating gun violence must be a multi-jurisdictional effort, said Prince George's County Council Member David Harrington, D-District 5... "That's why if we're going to curb crime, it has to be regional. We can't make a change in one place and dump it on somebody else."

No word on whether Member Harrington is urging the District to adopt the death penalty or advocating that Maryland actually implement it.

NAACP Refuses to Cooperate with IRS Probe

2005-02-03T08:31:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times reports.

What would have happened if the NRA, Heritage Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste had refused to cooperate with the IRS?

Fairfax Seniors: Taxpayer Golf Subsidy Not Enough

2005-02-03T08:26:00.000-05:00

The WP documents the belly-aching.

Senior discounts are a form of price discrimination used to "segment the demand curve" to maximize profits. As seniors become wealthier, the potential for "leakage" increases, so price discrimination may no longer serve to increase profits.

Someone should document all that local taxpayers give seniors. The list includes reduced property taxes, reduced taxi fares, and free education. Comments enabled to continue this list.

U. of Md. Study: Spam Costly

2005-02-03T08:22:00.000-05:00

The WP reports that a study has quantified the annual cost of spam to American businesses at $22 billion.

When will the trial lawyers get involved? Potentially $7 billion in contingent fees are just waiting to be collected.

What is Fairfax Teaching Our Children?

2005-02-03T08:18:00.000-05:00

The WP reports that Fairfax County requires its teachers to "to tell students that 'the reason for same sex attraction is unknown... Although individuals choose their sexual behavior, people do not choose their sexual orientation.'"

School Board Member Hunt had the audacity to question this policy as "homosexual activist rhetoric." Sparks are flying.

Should taxpayer dollars be spent indoctrinating schoolchildren with EITHER viewpoint?

Va. Considers Barring Illegals from State Universities

2005-02-02T22:59:00.000-05:00

It doesn't appear that the bill would prevent private universities from enrolling illegals. Perhaps government should not be "educating" anyone -- illegal or otherwise?

The Washington Times reports.

9th Circ.: "Unconstitutional" for Prisons to Keep Bulk Mail from Prisoners

2005-02-02T22:15:00.000-05:00

Huh? Where in the Constitution does it say THAT?

Reuters reports:

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling and rejected arguments that banning bulk mail makes it easier to run a prison and reduces the risk of fire.

"Publishers have a First Amendment right to communicate with prisoners by mail, and inmates have a First Amendment right to receive this mail," Arthur Alarcon wrote for the three-judge panel.

The "ban on non-subscription bulk mail and catalogs is not rationally related to a legitimate penological interest and is therefore unconstitutional," he added.

What do Sunnis and Democrats have in common?

2005-02-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

When they lose at the polls, they claim the elections were illegitimate.

The WP reports the Sunnis' reaction. Recall typical Democrat remarks as recent as last month.

CHAIN MAIL: Kyle's Friend

2005-02-02T13:59:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the way to tell one's friends that they are indeed one's friends is to e-mail the following "heart-touching" story to them:

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class was walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books.

I thought to myself, "Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd."

I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on.

As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him.

He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes. My heart went out to him. So, I jogged over to him and as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye.

As I handed him his glasses, I said, "Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives."

He looked at me and said, "Hey thanks!"

There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he had gone to private school before now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before.

We talked all the way home, and I carried some of his books. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid.

I asked him if he wanted to play a little football with my friends He said yes. We hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him, and my friends thought the same of him.

Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again.

I stopped him and said, "Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!"

He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends.

When we were seniors, we began to think about college. Kyle decided on Georgetown, and I
was going to Duke. I knew that we would always be friends, that the miles would never be a problem. He was going to be a doctor, and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class. I teased him all the time about being a nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation.

I was so glad it wasn't me having to get up there and speak.

Graduation day, I saw Kyle. He looked great.

He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school. He filled out and actually looked good in glasses. He had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him.

Boy, sometimes I was jealous.

Today was one of those days.

I could see that he was nervous about his speech. So, I smacked him on the back and said, "Hey, big guy, you'll be great!"

He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled. "Thanks," he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began "Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach...but mostly your friends... I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I am going to tell you a story."

I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of the first day we met.

He had planned to kill himself over the weekend.

He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile.

"Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable."

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment

I saw his Mom and dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile.

Not until that moment did I realize it's depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture you can change a person's life.

For better or for worse, God puts us all in each other's lives to impact one another in some way. Look for God in others.

Harvard Study: Illness, Injury Major Contributors to Bankruptcies

2005-02-02T08:46:00.000-05:00

The report claims the following policy implications:

Our data highlight four deficiencies in the financial safety net for American families confronting illness. First, even brief lapses in insurance coverage may be ruinous and should not be viewed as benign. While forty-five million Americans are uninsured at any point in time, many more experience spells without coverage. We found little evidence that such gaps were voluntary. Only a handful of medical debtors with a gap in coverage had chosen to forgo insurance because they had not perceived a need for it; the overwhelming majority had found coverage unaffordable or effectively unavailable. The privations suffered by many debtors—going without food, telephone service, electricity, and health care—lend credence to claims that coverage was unaffordable and belie the common perception that bankruptcy is an “easy way out.”

Second, many health insurance policies prove to be too skimpy in the face of serious illness. We doubt that such underinsurance reflects families’ preference for risk; few Americans have more than one or two health insurance options. Many insured families are bankrupted by medical expenses well below the “catastrophic” thresholds of high-deductible plans that are increasingly popular with employers. Indeed, even the most comprehensive plan available to us through Harvard University leaves faculty at risk for out-of-pocket expenses as large as those reported by our medical debtors.

Third, even good employment-based coverage sometimes fails to protect families, because illness may lead to job loss and the consequent loss of coverage. Lost jobs, of course, also leave families without health coverage when they are at their financially most vulnerable.

Finally, illness often leads to financial catastrophe through loss of income, as well as high medical bills. Hence, disability insurance and paid sick leave are also critical to financial survival of a serious illness.

Thanks to NPR for airing a report mentioning this study.

WSJ: Chinese Putting Chicago's Blind Out of Work

2005-02-02T08:32:00.000-05:00

The WSJ reports Chicago Lighthouse is losing clock marketshare to Chinese importers.

When will the calls for tariffs or quotas begin?

WP: Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church Residents Complain About Higher Real Estate Taxes

2005-02-02T08:31:00.000-05:00

The WP fails to observe that (let alone wonder why) the people of these jurisdictions keep voting Democrat.

UPDATE: WP Concedes Real Estate Tax Increases Lead to Rent Increases

2005-02-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

The WP hides its concession, but it is in there, towards the end:

a rent very likely to rise, if only to cover his landlord's higher taxes.

Recall that Fairfax's "Hit and Run" Connolly (D) proposes to increase "affordable" housing with higher real estate taxes.

Germany: Unemployment Benefits Stop When Prostitution Job Available

2005-01-31T07:29:00.000-05:00

The Telegraph reports.

Don't advocates of legalizing prostitution do so under the guise of giving women the freedom of "choice"?

Isn't one of the policy arguments for government providing welfare benefits that potential recipients will have at least a minimal income so that they won't "have" to resort to selling their bodies?

Thanks to Mr. Drudge for the link.

Sic Semper Tyrannis: Proposed Va. Grocery Tax Cut But a Return of a "Token Drop"

2005-01-30T13:17:00.000-05:00

Virginia sales tax on groceries looks as though it will decrease from 4.0% to 2.5%. Sic Semper Tyrannis aptly observes:

While this tax cut is nice, it is being cleverly used by [Governor] Warner to disguise the way in which he misled the Commonwealth about it's economic health. Now that the tax collectors in Richmond realize they have taken much more of the people's money than they need, they have decided to return a token drop to the empty bucket and keep the rest.

Va. Study: Red-Light Cameras Increase Accidents

2005-01-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

Mr. Minor points to the Virginia Transportation Research Council report and comments by TechDirt.

Recall that Virginia localities' authority to issue citations using red-light cameras expires unless extended this year by the General Assembly.

Is recently indicted Piotr Parlej still employed by the U.S. Department of State?
	yes
	no

Free polls from Pollhost.com