January 27, 2001
The Virginia Senate last week voted 20-19 in favor of a bill to allow Fairfax County to ban residents from sleeping anywhere but their bedrooms. It's obvious idiocy for the government to decide which room of your house you may sleep in, but even beyond that, Fairfax County will have some strange problems trying to draft an implementing ordinance.
For instance, what constitutes "sleeping" and what's just a cat-nap? If I fall alseep watching a football game could I be fined? What constitutes a "bedroom" and what's not? I have a convertible sofa - does the presence of a bed in the living room make it a bedroom? What about the bedroom we've converted to a study (complete with LAN and broadband access)?
Idiocy. Supposedly this law is aimed at large groups of people living together in excess of housing capacity - but surely the fire code and/or housing code already offer sufficient legal tools for the government to make that decision about how people should live - why do they need another? In any event, opponents of the provision have apparently forced a parliamentary re-consideration of the bill set for Monday.
I heard about this on the radio and found the link through RandomWalks. W
» posted by Mike
January 26, 2001
Aides present during the 1985 interview of Paul Offner deny Offner's accusation that Ashcroft asked him about his sexual orientation.
"I certainly can assure you that Governor Ashcroft never asked a question like that," said Duncan Kincheloe... Kincheloe said he sat in on all interviews that the Republican governor conducted with job applicants, including the interview with Paul Offner that is at center of the current controversy.
Interestingly, Offner was a member of Hillary Clinton's Health Care Task Force in 1993. Perhaps he should apologize for being affiliated with a known Socialist organization? W
» posted by Mike
In the interest of balance:
"This is an outrage for taxpayers," said Sean Rushton, media director for Citizens Against Government Waste. "We should not be using general revenue to pay for vandalism. The individuals who did this should pay." Mr. Rushton said the "unprecedented" trashing of the White House "surpasses even the normal excesses of the Clinton administration. What a gross ending."
The new adminsitration is "cataloguing" the vandalism but seems inclined not to prosecute the vandals, citing "a different way of governing." We should hope so. W
» posted by Mike
I typically don't post links to profane material. She does. W
» posted by Mike
January 25, 2001
More tales of children spared the rod:
Some White House phones remain disabled owing to the confusion created by Clintonites who switched the face plates. The career veterans from the General Services Administration were reportedly shocked at the state of some offices in the Old Executive Office Building, where phone lines were cut and offices trashed with the contents of cabinets and draws thrown on the floors. In a particularly fitting legacy from their predecessors, Bush aides have found printers programmed to include pornographic pictures in their memos and reports.
Of course, we know that pictures of the latter variety were in no short supply in the Clinton White House. Fortunately, OfficeMax does its part to undo the damage, and earn a whole lot of free publicity in the meantime. W
» posted by Mike
John Fund looks at Why Gore Lost:
But in an election in which Al Gore actually won slightly more votes, Republicans can ill afford any sense of satisfaction or smugness. If the vote totals for Mr. Gore and Ralph Nader are added together, candidates of the left won 51.3% of the popular vote in 2000.
In an otherwise excellent analysis, Mr. Fund glibly asserts that one can add together the votes for Gore and Nader and get the total vote for the "left." However, a deeper analysis shows that there is probably no single candidate of the "left" who could have amassed that 51.3% total.
First, consider the surprising fact that George W. Bush was the second choice of many Nader voters - I've seen estimates as high as 25%. While I can't imagine what issues Nader and Bush overlap on, there are apparently some Republican-leaning voters who chose to register a protest vote rather than vote for Bush.
Second, consider the not-surprising fact that the second choice for most Nader voters was "none of the above" or "stay at home." These folks either were drawn to the polls by the raw force of Nader's charisma or the extreme left-ness of his postitions. For the latter, Gore was an unacceptable sell-out to the middle.
Had Gore run more towards the center, he would lost even more of the Nader-fringe left. Had he run more towards the left, sufficient to gain most or all of the fringe, he would have alienated even more of the fringe, some of whom voted for Gore even as they despaired their own act of selling out.
So the monotlithic left envisioned by Fund really isn't the threat that it seems, especially now that the chicken has been, at least temporarily, rendered headless. W
» posted by Mike
Not all the protestors at the inauguration were liberals. According to Roll Call, one sign read: "Jesse Jackson Needs to Recount His Children." W
» posted by Mike
January 24, 2001
...which reminds me. Have I mentioned that my wife has become a super-cybersquatter killer? Simply put, she rocks. W
» posted by Mike
A fantastic resource for spies, PIs, and enemies of cybersquatters everywhere: Check out the Universal WhoIs. W
» posted by Dineen
So is the sky falling yet? Not quite: the new global warming hysteria is just as baseless as the old.
"The catastrophic warming projections are based on one set of scenarios that are way off the chart," says John Christy, a professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
The computer models used by the IPCC have never been able to predict the actual observed data. Clever readers may conclude that their models might be wrong. One possible reason? They don't make any account for clouds - which are, incidentally, composed of the single most common greenhouse gas, water vapor.
The IPCC summary openly acknowledges that current models can’t account for clouds. This is vital, since clouds act as shades during the day and as blankets at night; they lower daytime temperatures while increasing nighttime ones. The IPCC finds that cloud cover has increased by 2 percent in the last century and that nighttime daily minimum temperatures are going up at twice the rate of daytime high temperatures. What appears to be happening in reality, though not in the models, is that most of the warming over the last few decades is occurring during winter nights. This means that growing seasons are lengthening in the temperate zones, as frosts end earlier in spring and start later in autumn.
So yet again, the "scientists" screaming alarms, the same ones who warned us three decades ago about the impending Ice Age, just don't know what the hell is going on.
Link from Reductio Ad Absurdum. W
» posted by Mike
Roger Pilon pulls back the curtain on so-called campaign finance reform:
The first thing to know about campaign-finance reform is that, whatever they say, the bottom line is incumbency protection — and "they" includes congressional supporters, media promoters, and anyone else belonging to the "party of government." ...It's no wonder, as one wag put it, that there was greater turnover in the old Soviet Politburo than there is today in the U.S. Congress.
Senator McCain will strenuously deny that it's about incumbent protection - which should be the first clue that it really is. W
» posted by Mike
Holman Jenkins recognizes the Reverend Jackson's week in the wilderness as a unique contribution to the American political process:
But the reverend's greatest innovation will probably turn out to have been his pioneering use of drive-by penance.
Welcome to redemption in the 21st Century. W
» posted by Mike
January 23, 2001
An idea from anil dash:
So I know there's some reason this shouldn't be done, but I can't think of it right now... Why can't we make parents whose children are convicted of a crime (or maybe even whose children fail in school) pay higher taxes?
Well, it's a great idea from the viewpoint of promoting parental responsibility, but that mind-escaping reason is that pesky Constitution of ours, which prohibits the deprivation of any person's "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." (the same language in the Fifth Amendment applies to the Federal government). The problem is that such a "tax" would be seen for what it really is, a penalty for criminal behavior - so in order to impose such a penalty, you'd have to give the parent a trial. In effect, you'd have to make it a crime to have a criminal child.
Besides the serious constitutional infirmities of such a plan, I'd bet that a high percentage of the target population don't have jobs, don't have any income, and consequently pay no tax, nor could any tax be extracted from them. This might actually be the most regressive tax ever proposed by anyone, anywhere. Anyone care to crunch the numbers? W
» posted by Mike
New! (for me, anyway...) Fancy scrollbar shading inspired by SNoT and Bluishorange. I think it doesn't work in Netscape. W
» posted by Mike
Tevi Troy, an Orthodox Jew, praises John Ashcroft's religious tolerance: My Boss, the Fanatic:
Once, I stood up during a Friday afternoon briefing and said I needed to leave. He asked me where I was going, as it is unusual for staffers to walk out of briefings. I told him that the sun was setting, and he immediately understood and ordered me to hurry along.
The depth and nature of Ashcroft's religious faith is really not much different from Lieberman's, yet Democrites embrace one and loathe the other. W
» posted by Mike
USA Today reports that Justice O'Connor may retire at the end of the term:
O'Connor, more than any justice, has seemed disturbed by the public wrath directed at the court. People who know the 70-year-old justice's personality and politics believe the election fallout — and a desire to spend more time with her husband, John O'Connor, as he faces health problems — could lead the nation's first woman justice to retire as soon as this summer, when the 2000-2001 term ends.
I have some thoughts on criteria for the perfect replacement for Justice O'Connor. I may share them later. W
» posted by Mike
They were juvenile delinquents to the very end:
In an apparent prank carried out by departing Clinton administration staffers, Bush aides discovered that dozens of computer keyboards were missing the 'W' key.
According to a story on WTOP News Radio, the White House responded: "The only 'W' that matters is firmly installed in the Oval Office." W
» posted by Mike
The Fairvue Bloggie Awards have categories for blogs of certain geographic origin - Africa is completely missing. This got me to thinking - are there any African blogs? I couldn't find any on several pages of Google.
I'm also mildly disappointed that there's no political blog category, since I think MetaFilter could use another award. W
» posted by Mike
January 22, 2001
Brad asks:
What if I could select a piece of music that would be played, for the next four or eight years, whenever I attended a public gathering, event or state funeral? With the whole catalog of popular, classical, martial and other music at my disposal, what would I choose?
I've been giving it some thought, and while I can't come up with one that I would pick, I have managed to come up with several for the Reject pile. Here are some of the leitmotifs on the scrap heap:
- Bad to the Bone - George Thorogood: Because I'm only bad to the around the subdermal fascia, not all the way down to the bone.
- Welcome to the Jungle - GNR: A good rockin' tune with nostalgic high school overtones, but it loses something in the orchestral arrangement.
- Illegal Alien - Genesis: Born and raised in the U.S.A. Can't relate.
- Prison Sex - Tool: Never been to prison, never plan to. Next!
- Wake Up - Rage Against the Machine: Another slammin' tune, but anyone who knows me knows that I like to sleep in.
- Can't Touch This - MC Hammer: You most certainly can touch this.
If I think of one, I'll let you know. W
» posted by Mike
The inauguration of Dick Cheney as Vice-President will likely result in the ebbing importance Majority "Leader" Trent Lott:
Armed with vast power in the halls of the White House and a tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 Senate, Dick Cheney is widely expected to be one of the most influential vice presidents in history.... Another reason why Cheney is likely to be embraced by his new Senate colleagues is that he developed a reputation during his five terms in Congress and four years as Defense secretary as being an honest person who other lawmakers could trust to keep his word.
This turn of events will be widely welcomed by conservatives who have been suspicious of Lott since 1996. W
» posted by Mike
Peggy Noonan notes the absence of pathology:
But by not explicitly lauding bipartisanship, he stayed clear of the murky waters of its meaning and mutuality, not to mention what one-way bipartisanism did to his father's administration. Now, when the Democrats of Congress assault his motives as he puts forth his program, he can sigh, shake his head, and refer to his high hopes for greater civility. This is so clever I would call it Clintonian, except it isn't sick.
She has lots more to say - go read. W
» posted by Mike
» archives «
