July 27, 2001
July 26, 2001
When you cut back on insecticides, what do you get?
Another explanation for the resurgence of bedbugs is that bug exterminators no longer indiscriminately spray poisonous chemicals, pest-control experts said.
Infestations! W
» posted by Mike
Now that they have the power of investigation, the Senate plurality has a newly-discovered interest in overseeing the integrity of the executive branch.
The very day that U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the agency to preserve all such records, Browner had everything deleted from her computer files. The judge has demanded an explanation. Oddly, Sen. Lieberman has shown no interest in this episode.
Alas, this interest was nowhere to be found even seven months ago. W
» posted by Mike
July 25, 2001
Departing Ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson has filed papers to run for governor of Florida. The move was hailed by some Florida Democrats:
Miami attorney and Democratic fund raiser Chris Korge [said], "Peterson is without a doubt the best candidate that the Democrats can field for governor."
If that's the case, Florida's Democratic party is in deeper trouble than anyone might have thought.
Peterson, former POW in Vietnam and later Congressman from Florida's first congressional district, is barely coherent. In 1995, he spoke to my graduating law school class for what seemed like days but may have only been 45 minutes, rambling and babbling to the point where audience members elbowed each other and asked in whispered tones if Peterson was off his medication. Peterson makes our current President sound like Winston Churchill by comaprison.
I've heard that Peterson now has better aides who rein him in better when he's on the stump, but he'll have to work a lot harder to cover up his deficiencies if he wants to wrest the Governor's Mansion away from Jeb. President Bush should have won this Republican-dominated state by a landslide, but just squeaked by. Peterson doesn't share any of the advantages that put W over the top, and his race therefore looks a whole lot grimmer. W
» posted by Mike
July 23, 2001
Monkeyfist on the Genoa killing:
Today in Genoa a protester, 23 year old Carlo Giuliani, armed with righteous rage against repression and injustice and what appears to be a roll of packing tape on his right arm, was killed, shot twice in the streets by the Carabinieri. Then, in a fit of excessive cruelty, the kind of excess that capitalism is best known by, the Carabinieri ran over his dead body with a heavy police vehicle.
Kendall apparently wrote this before he saw the pictures showing that the masked man was armed not just with packing tape, but with a fire extinguisher he was preparing to launch at the car. Other pictures, in this weeks' print edition of Newsweek, show Carlo's fellow masked hooligans battering the car's occupants with long wooden planks. Is it any wonder they shot? Is it any wonder they drove over the body in their rush to escape the violence? Everyone knew this one would blow up - it was too hot even for radical groups like EarthFirst, founded by convicted eco-terrorist Dave Foreman.
“I’m very glad I am not there,” said Angharad Penrhyn-Jones, an Earth First activist... Hooligans, she said, “have come along and hijacked the whole thing."
Hijacked? There's nothing to indicate they weren't driving the whole time.
I've heard people drawing analogies to the Kent State tragedy. This was no Kent State, and to say so cheapens the memeory of those who died in Ohio. Carlo Giuliani was a hooligan in a mask, a convicted criminal, and if he becomes a martyr, it will be the most powerful statement of purpose the opponents of globalization can make. W
» posted by Mike
July 22, 2001
Deroy Murdock rebuts the cover article in the print version of the National Review, by looking rationally at gay marriage. Murdock takes the libertarian slant on things, asking, why do we need the government's permission to tell us how to marry?
Since gay people will not go away, social conservatives should welcome a strategy to advance homosexual fidelity and stability. ...It should not be government's concern which individual a person identifies as an heir, hospital visitor or recipient of Social Security survivor's payments.
Murdock is right when he says that homosexual couples making lifelong commitments to each other pose no threat to like-minded heterosexual couples. If a gay man down the street finds the man of his dreams, that is no way lessens the mutual devotion between me and my wife. In fact, having stable families in the neighborhood (whether they are "family" or not) is more likely to strengthen my community and provide a stable environment for my own family.
Marriage and our society intersect in two primary places: government and God. Our government sanctions marriage in all sorts of ways. This is even true of taxation when one looks at all the myriad ways government taxes its citizens and gives small breaks to married couples. Once we replace our income-distribution model with a fair tax system, singles and married couples will enjoy equally low taxes anyway, so that point will be moot. Almost every other spousal privilege can be handled through durable powers of attorney, many of which are easier to obtain than a marriage license. (When's the last time you had to get your blood drawn before the government let you obtain a durable power of attorney?) So the best answer, the libertarian answer, is to get government out of marriage entirely.
As for God, well, who are we to say He doesn't approve of gay men and women pledging their lives to each other? If God is love, isn't God there, too? The old argument about Leviticus 18:22 has been pretty thoroughly debunked as the province of hypocrites and absolute literalists. (Unless, perhaps, you have indeed sacrificed a bull to the Lord this week?)
Link wrangler: Reductio ad Absurdum. W
» posted by Mike
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