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Comments by YACCS

 

Coining a new term

I just wanted to give credit to Damian Penny for his important contribution to political theory:

Allow me to announce the discovery of Penny's Law: no matter how crazy a person may appear, there's always someone crazier.

And if you read some of his other entries, you'll see what he's talking about.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/31/2002 04:39:00 AM |

 

A matter of perspective

While everyone else is holding up FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley as a hero for exposing the Bureau's incompetent failure to follow through in investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, law professor Jonathan Turley holds a different point of view:

What is astonishing is how little of her memo actually has been read or quoted beyond its most sensational suggestions, like the notion that Rowley and her colleagues might have been able to prevent one or more of the Sept. 11 attacks. Rowley's criticism of the FBI largely turns on disagreement over the meaning of probable cause. Rowley insists that there was probable cause to secure a search warrant for Moussaoui's computer and personal effects. The FBI headquarters disagreed, and it was right.

On Aug. 15, 2001, Moussaoui was arrested by the Immigration and Nationalization Service on a charge of overstaying his visa. At that time, the Minnesota office only had an "overstay" prisoner and a suspicion from an agent that he might be a terrorist because of his religious beliefs and flight training. If this hunch amounted to probable cause, it is hard to imagine what would not satisfy such a standard.

[...]

Rowley also places importance on a French report that "confirmed [Moussaoui's] radical fundamentalist Islamic" affiliations. This report was extremely vague and discounted by the FBI and other intelligence and foreign agencies.

Turley argues that the 9/11 attacks provided the probable cause which was lacking before. Of course, unless Turley knows far more about the French information than he's saying, I don't see how he can possibly come to a conclusion about the existence of probable cause. Moreover, Turley ignores the complaint by Rowley that the FBI didn't even try to get a warrant.


Note: the memo in question, written by Rowley, is here.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 07:58:00 PM |

 

Central air, central planning

The New York Times is annoyed (what else is new?) at the Bush Administration.

An administration staffed with aggressive corporate executives might normally be expected to embrace cutting-edge solutions to the country's energy problems — especially when those solutions are accessible and affordable.

So what's a "cutting-edge solution," from the viewpoint of the editors of the New York Times? Why, federal regulation. What could be more cutting-edge than that? Aside maybe from a papal edict, I mean.

The Times is upset because the Bush Administration committed the unforgivable sin of proposing a mandatory 20% increase in fuel efficiency for central air conditioners. Why is that cause for alarm? Because one of Bill Clinton's eleventh hour decisions was to require a 30% increase. And thus, somehow, to the New York Times, a requirement that manufacturers increase efficiency by 20% reflects an "ideological suspicion of anything resembling top-down government." And ideology is always bad. Unless it's a liberal ideology.

And one of the main tenets of liberal ideology, incidentally, is that no cost is ever too high, as long as someone else is paying:

Most manufacturers have the ability to produce the more efficient units. But except for the second-largest maker, Goodman Manufacturing, none of the big companies wanted to proceed with the Clinton rule. They argued, and the Bush administration agreed, that the Clinton standard would make air-conditioners too expensive for low-income families and discourage others from replacing older systems. In actual fact, the up-front cost difference between the 20 and 30 percent standards is about $100 per unit — an amount that could be recovered through electricity savings in three to five years.

Well, no big deal then. I wonder if the editors of the New York Times are willing to front me $100 now. I promise to pay them back in three to five years.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 10:29:00 AM |

 

Opening shots

Public defenders in Washington D.C. are challenging the city's virtually-complete ban on handguns on behalf of two of their clients who are charged with carrying guns without a license. This is the result of the Attorney General's recent pronouncement that he considered the Second Amendment to protect an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Of course, we get the obligatory whining from the anti-gun crowd:

Mathew Nosanchuk, litigation director for the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control advocacy group, said it was inevitable that criminal defendants would use Ashcroft's arguments to challenge gun laws.

"People have been thinking about this as an abstract legal theory when it's been clear that Ashcroft's interpretation would have real-world consequences," Nosanchuk said.

I don't know which people were thinking of this "as an abstract legal theory"; I think most people who have thought about the issue at all realized that this was about the real-world right to own guns. Note the slanted description of the issue as "criminal defendants" challenging gun laws, as opposed to "citizens" challenging them.

Still, you should expect slanting; what you shouldn't expect are blatant lies:

The Second Amendment -- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939 to apply only to militias and not to individuals.

It's one thing to disagree with a particular policy, or a particular Supreme Court decision. It's quite another to rewrite these decisions. The Miller case (the 1939 case that newspapers never seem to identify, perhaps so that readers can't fact-check them) does not say that the second amendment applies "only to militias and not to individuals." Rather, it clearly discusses the right as an individual one, because the individual rights interpretation does not conflict with the militia interpretation.

Given the Bush Administration's position, as well as the increasing acceptance in the legal community of the individual rights interpretation, the District's ban looks extremely vulnerable. That won't necessarily help the particular defendants involved in these cases, both of whom have criminal records which might justify restrictions of their second amendment rights. But it would be a major victory for the gun rights community. And if crime decreases in Washington as a result -- as John Lott's research suggests that it should -- it could turn out to be the gun control industry's Waterloo.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 09:51:00 AM |

 

Better than the Weather Channel?

Just in case you had far too much free time:

First Ozzy. Now Anna Nicole Smith.

The former stripper who married a millionaire and posed nude for Playboy magazine is about to get her own reality TV show.

The daily life of Smith, 33, will be televised on E! Entertainment Television's new "The Anna Nicole Smith Show," network officials said Wednesday. The show is scheduled to debut in August.

Its creators promise the half-hour program will provide an inside look at the woman who in March was awarded $88 million from the estate of her late husband.

Okay, I know what Smith's appeal is. But after the first two episodes, what would you focus on?
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 08:31:00 AM |

 

No good deed goes unpunished

The United Nations is finally doing something right, and some people are complaining about it.

U.N. war crimes prosecutors have been providing the United States with evidence of international terrorist activities they come across during their investigations, according to senior U.S. and U.N. officials.

Officials declined to characterize the nature or quality of the evidence. But the assistance underscores the deepening cooperation between U.N. agencies and the United States on anti-terrorism matters since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The assistance has alarmed some U.N. officials, who fear it may feed a perception that the United Nations is an instrument of U.S. military and foreign policy. They voiced concern that the assistance may compromise the United Nations' efforts to establish democracy in such places as Bosnia and endanger the lives of U.N. employees, particularly in the Middle East, where they would make an easy target for Islamic militants.

Well, certainly, we wouldn't want U.N. employees to be targets. That's what Israelis and Americans are for, right?

I didn't realize, incidentally, that fighting terrorism was merely "U.S. military and foreign policy." I thought it was pretty well accepted that it was a worldwide priority -- at least outside the Muslim world. And if providing information about terrorism compromises other U.N. efforts, then perhaps those other efforts ought to be reconsidered.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 08:06:00 AM |

 

Bad government employee. Don't assist terrorists. Well, don't do it again.

Opinionjournal linked to the story of an FAA whistleblower who got his job back. He had warned his supervisors, and later the FBI, "that an airport security trainee might be linked to a Sept 11. hijacker." For doing so, he was fired(!)

That's absurd enough. But the part that didn't get emphasized:

"We concluded that his whistle-blowing activity was a contributing factor in the decision to fire him," said special counsel spokeswoman Jane McFarland. "The supervisors are going to get a letter of caution into their personnel file. When you reasonably believe that you're raising a matter of national concern or public health and safety, you should be protected."

A letter of caution?!?!?!?!? How about a demotion? Or immediate termination? Or better yet, how about if they're taken out and executed for treason? Remember, this is after 9/11. Just two days after. And these people are obstructing attempts to check for airline security problems? And nothing happens to them? Ain't civil service protection grand?
posted by David Nieporent at 5/30/2002 06:17:00 AM |

 

Fat chance

Last week, the New York Times wrote a story about schools that are removing, or considering removing, so-called "junk food" from their cafeterias and/or vending machines. Then, in response, they printed six letters to the editor. What were those six?

1. Junk food is bad, and schools need to provide recess for children.
   
2. We must teach nutrition in schools. (by a professor of nutrition).
   
3. The content of junk foods need to be regulated more by the government.
   
4. Kids need to be taught about nutrition.
   
5. Junk food needs to be banned from society.
   
6. Junk food needs to be banned. Commercials for junk food should be, also.
   

Not a single letter saying, "This isn't the concern of schools, or the government. This is the concern of parents." No letters saying, "What someone chooses to eat is a private matter, not the business of anybody else." Of course, letters to the editor aren't the views of the editors -- but the choice of which letters to print does reflect their biases.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/29/2002 07:39:00 PM |

 

Not to sound all Pat Buchanany here, but...

The Justice Department is accusing at least three Florida counties of violating the Voting Rights Act, as part of the 2000 election fiasco fallout.

Also in the third county, the Civil Rights Division's investigation "indicated that a lack of bilingual poll workers resulted in considerable confusion at the polls, and that some poll workers were hostile to Hispanic voters."

In previous documents, the government has said that Orange and Osceola counties failed to have enough Spanish-speaking poll workers and did not provide election information in both Spanish and English.

The government alleges that Miami-Dade officials did not do enough to help Haitian American voters understand the ballot, according to a copy of a proposed agreement between the county and the Justice Department.

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have to be a citizen to vote? Why are we letting people become citizens if they aren't proficient in English? And when I say "proficient," I mean minimal competence, really. After all, how hard is it to translate "Ralph Nader" into Spanish? (Though apparently plenty of English speakers had trouble with the instructions, which said, "Don't vote for Pat Buchanan, stupid.")
posted by David Nieporent at 5/29/2002 05:39:00 AM |

 

And blind people probably shouldn't fly planes

The Supreme Court sensibly refused to hear the appeal of a dental hygienist who was removed from his job after his dentist-boss discovered he was HIV-positive. The Eleventh Circuit had held that the risk of passing the disease to patients justified the dentist's decision.

Waddell's lawyers argued that the appeals court ignored a previous Supreme Court decision and conflicts with rulings from other federal appeals courts. They asked the high court to use the case to underscore that an employer must have objective medical evidence to claim that an employee poses a risk to the health or safety of others.

Otherwise, ``a host of imaginable disasters could be hypothesized to exclude virtually any individual with a disability,'' Waddell's lawyers wrote.

Hmm. Fatal, communicable disease. Wheelchair. No, sorry, I don't see the slippery slope there.

``If left uncorrected, the 11th Circuit's decision threatens to undermine the public's confidence in the safety of dental treatment and the nation's health care system,'' the American Dental Association said in a friend of the court brief filed in Waddell's case.

So letting someone with AIDS treat patients won't cause problems, but banning this person from treating patients will "undermine the public's confidence." Uh, yeah.

There might be reasonable arguments against the dentist's decision -- but if that's the best one people can come up with, there obviously aren't. In fact, come to think of it, any political position justified on arguments about "undermining the public's confidence" is clearly a losing position. It doesn't really mean anything. Why can't people own cell phones? It might undermine public confidence in the nation's communications infrastructure. (See how easy it is?)

Sure, you have to feel sorry for the poor dental hygienist -- but it's easy for advocacy groups who will never be treated by this guy to insist that other members of the public ought to be guinea pigs to see how safe it really is. These are the same people, ideologically speaking, who endorse the "precautionary principle" in government regulation, which says that new technologies (genetically modified food, for instance) ought not to be allowed until they're proven safe. But when it comes to someone in a protected class, all of the sudden the principle gets reversed.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/29/2002 05:37:00 AM |

 

Well, duh

Headline in the Washington Post: Chandra Levy Ruled A Homicide Victim . Glad we cleared that up, for the three or four people who thought she was killed by a swarm of killer squirrels.
posted by David Nieporent at 5/29/2002 05:35:00 AM |