As a birthday present to myself, I bought the latest Jars of Clay album yesterday. Over all, it’s pretty good, but I have to say this is one of my new favorite songs (titled “Heart”):

HuffPo managed to find a spectacular piece of postmodern asininity at Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College.  From the course descriptions of the Critical Theory and Social Justice program:

180. STUPIDITY.

Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beavis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.

CORE REQUIREMENT MET: UNITED STATES

Congresswoman Diane Watson (D) California. Good Lord Almighty.

. . . it wasn’t until 1988 that a group of U.N. ambassadors was able to visit Cuba for 11 days and documented “137 cases of torture, 7 disappearances, political assassinations and thousands of violations” of human rights. This trip was summarized “in a 400-page report, which was the longest report ever to appear on the agenda of the U.N.”

This report provided irrefutable proof of what Valladares had recounted in “Against All Hope.” But academia and the media successfully passed over both the book and the report.

This 1988 report included “locking political prisoners in refrigerated rooms; blindfolded immersions in pools; intimidation by dogs; firing squad simulations; beatings, forced labor; confinement for years in dungeons called gavetas; the use of loudspeakers with deafening sounds during hunger strikes; degradation of prisoners by forced nudity in punishment cells; withholding water during hunger strikes; forcing prisoners to present themselves in the nude before their families (to force them to accept plans for political rehabilitation); denial of medical assistance for the sick; and forcing those condemned to die to carry their own coffins and dig their own graves prior to being shot.”

Against All Hope

Donald McClarey links to Melissa Lafsky’s bit of sheer lunacy.  Lafsky touches upon Mary Jo Kopechne’s death and writes:

Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

I refer you to Robert Stacy McCain’s full account of what precisely happened that night.

Mary Jo didn’t “drown,” but died of asphyxiation. The passage of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption dealing with Chappaquiddick (pp. 38-43) was researched and written by my co-author Lynn Vincent, who was emotionally traumatized to discover this reality. Mary Jo did not drown, a horrific enough experience, but one which would have killed her in barely a minute. Rather, she remained alive, underwater in Teddy’s Oldsmobile, breathing the oxygen trapped inside an air pocket at the rear floorboard of the upside-down car. So, while Ted walked back to the regatta party at the Martha’s Vineyard cottage and tried to concoct an exculpatory cover-story (as his own cousin, Joe Gargan, later explained), Mary Jo was still alive, frantically hoping for a rescue that never came, until finally she breathed her last.

Mary Jo Kopechne was a dedicated young liberal woman of tremendous potential. This was pointed out by Jimmie Bise’s co-blogger Paula at the Sundries Shack. Mary Jo had gone to Alabama during the civil rights era, having the courage to live out her own convictions. You don’t have to be a liberal to say of her that, at least, she was neither hypocrite nor a coward. Nor could anyone rightly describe Mary Jo Kopechne as a lightweight bimbo, just another bit of womanizer Ted’s incidental arm candy. Had Mary Jo lived . . . Well, the women’s movement was just then coming into its own, and one could easily imagine an experienced Democratic political operative (for that’s what she was) enjoying a long and successful career in her own right.

By the way, you know what was one of Ted Kennedy’s favorite joke topics?  Chappaquiddick.

George Will, I think, captures eloquently the sagacity that everyone can admire in Kennedy:

In the Senate, as elsewhere, 80 percent of the important work is done by a talented 20 percent. And 95 percent of the work is done off the floor, away from committees, out of sight, where strong convictions leavened by good humor are the currency of accomplishment.

Convictions. Humor. Hard Work. That’s the key formula for success that anyone who wishes to make a mark on this world must learn.

Our great, glorious and most esteemed Founder is on fire in the blogosphere. Over at First Things, he has passed along this wonderful Green Bag review of the latest term of the Supreme Court. And before you make it to the article, let me make a pitch for the Green Bag: it’s a wonderful and entertaining journal of legal humor and history, re-founded by Ross Davies over at GMU School of Law. The Green Bag has been known, more often than not, to send you a Supreme Court Justice Bobblehead as a treat for the subscription. It’s not guaranteed, but who WOULDN’T want a mini-Niño nodding away on your desk to your self-proclaimed brilliance! To quote the article: (more…)

Via Rod, reading this letter of the late-Senator Kennedy’s to a constituent on abortion always makes you ask, well, what happened? At the same time it should be a sober-reminder to pro-lifers that while many on the right and in the Republican Party might mouth support for life, their actions (or more realistically, inaction…) place them functionally closer to the late-Senator’s position than they’d like to admit: (more…)

Another Scott Sumner gem:

When we form a mental image of another democratic country, we don’t typically think in terms of the current leader, but rather a much deeper set of characteristics, what you might call the character of a country. France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan; the names of each of these countries trigger complex mental images for most of us, but how many readers of this blog could even name the leaders of Switzerland and Japan? I could name the current leaders of France and Italy, but I don’t think that these individuals have much to do with my mental image of each country.

For our own country things are much different. (more…)

But the art of “Borking” a judicial nominee is something for which our public square is much, much poorer. It is not a good thing that our Judiciary has become so divided and this Kennedy clip ought to live in infamy:

…or so says our great, glorious and most esteemed Founder this morning over at First Things:

his question, plainly put, is this: At what point does it cease to matter that a prior Supreme Court decision is nonsense on stilts?

For those of us in the (Clarence) Thomas Camp, the answer is: Never. A Supreme Court decision that has no basis in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution is always and forever a judicial abomination, no matter how much time passes (e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson). For the Burkean originalist (see, e.g., Scalia), the answer is: It depends on whether the line of jurisprudence is no longer controversial (i.e., it has essentially become woven into the fabric of the Constitution—whatever in the heck that means). Finally, for the living constitutionalist, the answer is: It depends on whether the decision in question enshrines into the Constitution a preferred policy preference (e.g., Roe v. Wade=Stare decisis is sacrosanct!; Bowers v. Hardwick= Stare decisis is fo’ suckas!). In comparing the foregoing approaches to constitutional interpretation, it doesn’t take a law degree to recognize which one is concerned with, well, actual interpretation of the relevant text.

In the wake of the electoral nightmare that took place last November, Republicans attempted to comfort themselves with the idea that the party would bounce back in the midterm elections.  Visions of a repeat of 1994 danced in their heads.  Barack Obama and his Congressional minions would overreach, and the American public would soundly reject the onslaught of socialism.  Personally I did not have such an optimistic outlook and thought it just as likely that the Democrats would further entrench their power in the coming years.

As things stand now, the optimists look like they may have been right.  President Obama’s approval numbers are sinking to where is favorability index is now at -14, and the outlook is grim for Democrats in many House and gubernatorial races.  And here’s Dick Morris suggesting that the Dems could lose a hundred seats next year:

Unfortunately the clip cuts off just as he makes the comment about the hundred seats, so I have no idea if he qualified that, and I’m sure he did.  But I can’t locate a full transcript right now.

Undoubtedly things look bad for the Democrats, but let’s keep the champagne on ice.  We are fourteen months away from the mid-term elections.  That is several lifetimes worth of time in an election cycle.  At this time last year only 2 months out from the election it seemed possible if not likely that John McCain would prevail over Barack Obama, and then the bottom fell out of the economy.  Anything can and probably will happen, and it is the height of folly to try and predict what will happen at such a distance out.

That being said, I do think that the Democrats will probably lose a significant number of seats.  Even if the economy improves dramatically, a lot of moderate Democrats will be in electoral trouble.  Republicans, unlike the past two election cycles, have recruited well, and I think that they can sway enough right-leaning voters to oust some of the Blue Dog Democrats.

But that leads me to the main cause for concern: we’re talking about the Republican Party here.  If there is any political entity in the world capable of shooting itself in the foot, arm and face, it’s the GOP.  Somebody will do or say something incredibly stupid and erase all of the potential gains.  Luckily, we seem to have an even bigger idiot in charge on the other side for once.

(Cross-posted at Crankycon)

By libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok. Basically he argues that while the criticisms of private insurers leveled by Krugman et al may not be true now, they will be if the bill gets passed:

The major proposals would require insurance companies to take all customers regardless of pre-existing conditions, offer guaranteed renewability and no dropping of coverage for the ill, impose no annual or lifetime caps, and offer coverage of preventative care with no-cost share, among other requirements. Finally, if insurance companies must take all customers regardless of pre-existing conditions it is obvious that sooner or later and probably sooner the government will require that everyone purchase health insurance. (more…)

It occured to me with all these townhalls going on, that not enough people are REALLY hitting the Democrats from the left. In other words, the right is getting PWND by the mainsteam media for brining up death panels and abortion, but no one is asking these guys to really defend and zelously advocate for their belief in abortions. I’d love to see someone ask this question of a congressman:

”

Congressman X, enough is enough! I’m hearing all this about death panels and abortion and I think it’s high time we recognize abortion is here: why can’t we just be civilized and help a woman out who is in trouble and give her access to the services she needs? Isn’t that compassionate? Why are we afraid of all the boogeymen out there demogoguing on this issue? Isn’t this an important part of any compassionate and true health care?”

The question is, I believe, vague enough so that the person asking it doesn’t necessarily have to feel like he or she is advocating abortion (“services she needs” is certainly a euphemism, but it is one step back from “reproductive services”). I’d love to see one of these guys either a) vigorously defend a pro-abortion or proto-euthanasia regime; or, b) get real flack from their base for backing down.

Why not fan the flame? We didn’t start the fire.

Well, anything is brief compared to that insipid read.

In short, my feelings about the book are akin to those of Officer Barbrady. Though I will not discontinue reading for all eternity, the book did nearly sap me of my life precious.

I did have a few positive reactions to the book.  It wasn’t nearly as dry or dull a read as I had expected.  In fact, Ayn Rand’s prose style is eminently readable and somewhat engrossing.

Did I say a few?  Okay, I really only had one nice comment because this book is both an artistic and philosophical nightmare. (more…)

This is video of a brief talk I gave yesterday at a gathering of conservative Republicans.

My talk to the RALC

My sister, Elizabeth Beckwith, is now a blogger. She is blogging on the Psychology Today website in conjunction with the October 6 release of her first book, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation (Harper Collins, 2009) You can find Lizzie’s blog here. Here’s an excerpt from her latest post:
(more…)

I was reading another account of Bob Dylan’s recent run-in with the law and it occurred to me that his response to the situation was everything that the reaction of Professor Gates to his own was not: calm, polite, gracious and humble. (For a discussion of Prof. Gates’ arrest on SA, click here).

The facts leading up to the two encounters were quite similar. (more…)

Well, the book by the same name is, anyway.  The End of Secularism is now in stock at Amazon.com and should be available in stores, too. Help me, faithful readers.

I don’t think I’ll disappoint you. Francis Beckwith, David Dockery, Russell Moore, Father Robert Sirico, Herb London, Jennifer Morse Roback, and Glenn Stanton all liked it. I hope you will, too.

(Just kidding Lord.) Obama, “The One” we’ve all been waiting for, has now admitted he can’t do it all alone. He’s partnered up with the Lord. Yeah, I’d like to have heard those negotiations.

“We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” Obama said, according to Moline (paging Sarah Palin…), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided “who shall live and who shall die.”

More here. God’s “partners”? Wow. I always viewed God more in a CEO role than that of a “partner”. Of course, that was before “The One” came along.

I can’t recommend too highly a piece in the most recent Atlantic Monthly provocatively titled “How American Health Care Killed My Father.” The author, businessman David Goldhill, begins by recounting how his father died after being admitted to the hospital when he caught a hospital borne infection. Around 100,000 people die of such infections every year in American hospitals, more than die in car crashes and by homicide combined. Shortly afterward, Goldhill read a story about Peter Pronovost, a doctor who’d developed a new set of protocols which could drastically reduce deaths from hospital borne infections at little to no cost. Yet despite this fact, many hospitals were reluctant to adopt the protocols, leading the doctor in question to mount a one man campaign in favor of the plan.

This naturally enraged Goldhill, but it also left him perplexed:

How was it possible that Pronovost needed to beg hospitals to adopt an essentially cost-free idea that saved so many lives? Here’s an industry that loudly protests the high cost of liability insurance and the injustice of our tort system and yet needs extensive lobbying to embrace a simple technique to save up to 100,000 people. (more…)

Glancing over the New York Times Book Review Sunday, one finds three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives — columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.

At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O’Reilly’s memoir.

No. 1 best-seller in paperback: Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense.”

Moreover, the altarpiece of the transformational presidency, universal health insurance, is on life support, as huge crowds pour into town hall meetings to denounce it. Responding to the protests, the Obamaites have dumped the end-of-life counselors (aka “Death Panels”) and declared the government option expendable.

Obama should have profited from Clinton’s experience. The similarities are rather eerie. Arrogance and hubris come with a heavy price. Only fools ignore the lessons of history. Proverbs 16:18  More here.

The Alabama PACT Program (Pre-paid Affordable College Tuition) is in trouble because it does not have enough money to pay the tuition of all of the folks who enrolled in the program due in part to the decline in the stock market.  There have been some reports that the program never had enough money to pay for all of its commitments.  The PACT Program is run by a separate 501(c)(3) with a number of government officials serving on the Board of corporation including the Treasurer and the Lt. Governor.  Once it was suddenly discovered that there was not enough money, the PACT went running to the State seeking a bailout.  The Legislature asked the Retirement System of Alabama (RSA) to do a study regarding what it will take to fully fund the program.  The report is back and it doesn’t look good.  According to this account from the Huntsville Times, there are 4 options. 

The PACT options range from an 18-year financing proposal to an immediate cash infusion of $641.8 million in fiscal 2011 to make the program fiscally sound. A third option would require the state to provide $100 million a year over the next seven years. A fourth option would allow the state to pay nothing until fiscal 2015, when as much as $1 billion would be due, depending on the rate of tuition increases. 

I feel sorry for the folks who invested in the program but they took a risk just like anyone else who invests their money in a mutual fund or buys stocks and/or bonds.  My tax money shouldn’t go to pay for the kids tuition unless the State intends to pay my kids college tuition when they get ready to go to college.  The plan is not backed by the State.  It is run by a separate entity and if the investors didn’t read the fine print that is not the taxpayers of Alabama’s fault.  Both the Treasurer and the Lt. Governor are candidates in 2010 and all of the Legislature is on the ballot as well so expect to see alot of pressure on the State to come up with a solution.

President Obama addressed the VFW in the normal liberal attempt to appear as a strong commander-in-chief and a supporter of the military.  We’ve been through the uproars about Bill Clinton’s draft dodging and George W’s National Guard service (memos anyone?), but now we have a commander-in-chief to whom it would never have occurred to serve in the US military.  We have less controversy with a post-Vietnam president, but the contrast with the audience remains stark.

Obama, given the times, had to work in the normal appeal for health care: “’Since there’s been so much misinformation out there about health insurance reform, let me say this: One thing that reform won’t change is veterans’ health care,’ Obama said, drawing a standing ovation from some at the annual convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars.’

No, Mr. President, your reform won’t change veterans’ health care, it will bring the entire American health care system down to the sorry level of the VA hospitals.

A propos of my post last week on single payer and the public option, here is University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler making a similar point:

Here is a thought experiment: Can you think of a domain where a government-run business competes successfully with private-sector companies? In a town hall meeting last week, President Obama mentioned one such example: the market for overnight shipments. This market now has two main private suppliers, FedEx and UPS, and one public one, the United States Postal Service. When you have to send something overnight, which one do you use? Most shippers choose one of the private companies. (Indeed, even the idea that we need a government-run postal service is doubtful. Sweden has successfully privatized its postal service. Sweden! And the European Union will open mail service to competition in 2011.)

(more…)

Also via Rod Dreher,  the EEOC has evidently decided the best use of its time and resources to go after Catholic colleges not funding abortion and contraception. The EEOC has found Belmont Abbey College, a small Catholic school near Charlotte, NC, in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws because its health plan does not pay for oral contraception.  They are discriminating against women, saith the EEOC, since only women take birth control pills.

The real problem, of course, is not paying for contraception and elective sterilzation–this has nothing to do with discrimination against women.  The focus on birth-control pills is simply a way to justify the intervention of the EEOC, much like the ever-elastic ‘interstate commerce’ clause covering federal intervention in most anything.   Since Belmont Abbey is a Catholic insitution, they can’t simply charge religious discrimination outright, although I’m sure they would love to.

(more…)

Via Rod Dreher comes Eric Giunta’s article, which is probably going to get a lot of play in the blogosphere, over why he thinks JP II ought not be canonized. Giunta basically concedes that JP II fits the traditional framework for canonization—personal holiness and heroic virtue—but he shifts the goal-posts citing that his papacy was all-in-all a failure: (more…)

Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.

Story here .

Yes, I know, some will argue that these school officials aren’t threatened with jail over praying specifically, but rather for “breaching the conditions of a lawsuit settlement reached last year with the American Civil Liberties Union.” Only lawyers think like that; at least ones who lack common sense. Most of us know, instinctively, what this is really about.

My fellow Virginian and anti-federalist, Patrick Henry (a lawyer with common sense), once entered a courtroom where three Baptist preachers were being tried for preaching the gospel without approval of the Episcopalian church in Virginia. In the midst of the proceedings he interrupted with: “May it please your lordships, what did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these men, whom you worships are about to try for misdemeanors, are charged with preaching the gospel of the Son of God?”

The same argument could be made with this case. These preachers weren’t facing jail for “preaching the gospel of the Son of God” but for preaching without “approval” – i.e., license. Patrick Henry knew better.

The charges against the preachers were dismissed. The same thing should happen with this case against these Florida school officials.

(HT to Shawn Floyd)

This following is authored by John David Lewis, a visiting associate professor of politics, philosophy and economics at Duke University. Here is his analysis.
(more…)