One of Sammler's chief issues (the issue on which we originally crossed paths, interestingly enough) is his staunch belief that we're wasting our time sending so many kids to college.

It looks like he may have found an unlikely ally in Hillary Clinton:

Clinton spoke at the Manchester School of Technology, which trains high school students for careers in the construction, automotive, graphic arts and other industries. The school highlighted one of the nine goals she outlined: increasing support for alternative schools and community colleges.

"We have sent a message to our young people that if you don't go to college ... that you're thought less of in America. We have to stop this," she said.

Well, it's not exactly the same argument, but variations on a similar theme. One that I agree with. I much prefer this route than the more typical policy of expanding college education to an ever-increasing pool of Americans.

While I'm not sure that there is much that can be done about the number of kids attending college, I do believe that there is a lot that states can do to help guide kids towards more economically useful courses of study. One thing that I would advocate is actually increasing college tuitions a great deal, but then offsetting it with scholarships in areas of study that are geared towards jobs.

Most majors I can think of fall into one of three categories:

Vocational - These are degrees that would leave people ready to enter the workforce in a specific line of work. Examples: Engineering, computers, education, medicine, finance, and so on.
Generalist - These are degrees that would leave graduates well-educated and ready to enter the workforce in a number of ways, sort of like a current business degree except more classical or scientific in nature. Examples: Physics, biology, philosophy, political science, language communication, and so on.
Academic - These are more narrow degrees that further the cause of intellectual inquiry but are not immediately appliable to the workforce: Regional history (American history, British history, Russian history, etc), literature, theology, women's studies, ethnic studies, and so on.

Most scholarships would be given to vocational studies. Economically speaking, it would be the default. Part of me doesn't like this because I would prefer that more people get generalist degrees, but for a generalist degree to be useful it requires a degree of intelligence and dedication missing from a lot of today's college students. So the default would be vocational and someone trying to get that sort of degree would be paying the least.

There would be fewer scholarships given for generalist degrees in order to try to select the best and brightest, those that will likely turn their philosophy degree into a law degree down the line or some other line of post-graduate study like medical ethics, social development study, and so on. Competition to get into these schools would not necessarily be horrendous, so those that might not make the grade but are dedicated enough to save for it (or more likely have rich parents) can do it if they want, but they will get little help from the state.

Also difficult to get a scholarship in would be academic study. Some would be more difficult than others. For instance, a degree in history may not be as expensive because they can be translated into teaching jobs (whether teaching jobs would be given to this group or the education vocational group is up for discussion), but others have limited opportunity so there would be limited scholarship slots available. As with generalist degrees, they can be got without the scholarship, but they would be discouraged.

As time progresses the the government would review which degrees are leaving people either jobless, outside their field of expertise, or in jobs for which they should be overqualified, and these degree programs would have their scholarships cut back. Then the government would look at shortages and apply more scholarships there. It would be important to use a time horizon long enough to account for natural fluctuations in the market. Just because environmental engineering jobs are down this year from last does not mean that they won't be up again next year.

There would naturally be a lot of young people that wouldn't fit into this arrangement. They'd be uninterested in a vocational major but not have the grades or money for one of the other options. I consider this a feature rather than a bug. They would be forced to make the tough decisions before all the money is spent. They would have a number of options:

1) Some people excel at the college level and don't do quite as well at the high school level. I would make scholarships dependent on more than just a high school transcript. If the GPA isn't good enough, I'd like to see some scholarship exams that would allow people to prove their dedication and intelligence by studying and learning independently. This would also give opportunities to people that goofed off until they hit the real world and then learned why school matters. There would be an opening here for people to "game the system", but that's more a matter of designing the right test as much as anything. The downside is that writing and administering these tests would not be inexpensive.

2) They can forego higher education and enter a career path that does not require any formal education past high school.

3) They can get jobs and save up money so that they don't need the state's help.

4) They can try to get a loan. This is not desirable and could become an arms race in itself, but as long as there are students in need of money for college there will be student loans. I would think that private loan companies would take into account the student's need for the money is closely related to poor academic performance and/or choosing an uneconomical major. Both of which would suggest that they are a potential default risk.

Part of me doesn't like this plan because it puts an awful lot of social power in the hands of the government. Degree programs would be encouraged or discouraged for political rather than market-based reasons. On the other hand, this is a form of government accountability. Not so much telling people what they can and cannot do but rather economically looking at how it allocates its limited resources.

Not that it really matters because this model is something of a pipe dream. The government hates telling middle class kids "No!" and in a way that's what this would probably come across as doing. There is also a significant faction among those whose opinion matters that almost all higher education is good education. Nonetheless, in my little perfect world, this is how I would likely go about it.

Via Q&O, we find this depressing news:

The study [of 48 news outlets, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism] also found that nine out of 10 stories focused on campaign tactics or the relative popularity of the candidates.

This is truly contemptible. This distribution of stories partly reflects the media's bias toward easily researched, simple stories with a patina of spurious cleverness, like analysis of a publicly visible advertising campaign; but such an extreme result must also be driven largely by demand. Media consumers have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for stories with little more content than "My candidate can beat up your candidate."

The only plausible explanation I can see is that most people are natural betas, who are more interested in watching the alphas struggle with one another than in trying to understand or influence the issues behind the personalities.

It has been suggested that George Bush's determination to increase immigration and access to American citizenship is morally motivated: he values the welfare of non-Americans as well as of Americans, and the benefits to the former may greatly outweigh the harm to some of the latter.

There are two problems with this moral calculus. The first is that it opposes President Bush's duty to serve the interests of those who elected him, rather than of the whole world. The second is a simple question of efficacy: can the flame of freedom best improve the cold morass of human misery by being submerged in it?

I've mentioned in the past my disapproval of the tendency of some Republicans to emphasize the middle name of Democratic presidental contender Barack Hussein Obama. Like most presidential candidates, Obama does not go by all three names and few of them ever referred to Bill Clinton by William Jefferson Clinton. So I'm left to believe that some Republicans, conservatives, and Obama-haters have decided that it's supposed to be revealing to note that his middle name is what it is.

I would say that it reveals one of the more negative aspects of the Republican Party, but then I see Democrats doing something quite similar in my wife's home state.

Bobby Jindal, most likely the next governor of Louisiana, has run into a potential stumbling block:

WASHINGTON -- Mention the name "Bobby" in Louisiana political circles these days and most everyone will assume you are talking about Bobby Jindal, the popular second-term congressman now running at the top of the polls for governor.

But some Democrats would like to remind voters that Bobby Jindal has another name: Piyush.

In news releases, interviews and small talk, they frequently refer to Jindal by his Indian, given first name. Last week, "Piyush" popped out of the mouth of former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who briefly considered running for governor.

Democrats say it's a way of throwing back the curtain on what they say is a "manufactured candidate" who has carefully crafted a public image that doesn't measure up to reality.

Jindal brushes it off as a "silly schoolyard tactic." Others, however, say it is a blatantly racist appeal that seeks to score political points by stoking biases many had hoped were on the wane in the Deep South.

"It's making fun of someone's name with a veiled reference to race," pollster Bernie Pinsonat said. "Republicans have played games with this. It's the first time I've ever seen Democrats resort to it."

Many believe that Jindal's heritage cost him the election in 2003. As the Fred Barnes outlined, a surprising number of generally Republican rural voters that went for David Duke several years back inexplicably crossed party lines to vote for Blanco in that contest. As went the Bubba vote, so goes the election.

So is that what they're trying to do here? Well, either they are or they are unfamiliar with how common it is for Americans of non-European heritage to often take on an "American" name. This is particular true of Indian Americans, and interestingly enough both of the examples that come to mind have taken to being called "Bob". I asked one of them about it recently and he said that there wasn't any tradition about using that name in particular, though. In any case, if you have a difficult to pronounce or foreign-sounding name, it makes a lot of sense going with something similar so that it doesn't become a sticking point when meeting people.

But, just as with emphasizing Obama's middle name, calling him Piyush is just slick enough that they can't be tacked outright racists.

Fortunately, whatever it is precisely that they're trying to do, it's unlikely to work.

One of the oft-heard comments on American society is that lawsuits are overburdening it. I, for one, see both good and bad in this lawsuit.

The valid parts of the lawsuit:
- The bar should not have kept serving a drunk man, or at very least not allowed him to drive home knowing he was drunk.

The invalid parts:
- Suing the driver of a car that has stalled on the road: one would think that common sense indicates a stalled vehicle is difficult to move.
- Suing the tow truck operator who was in the process of removing that vehicle from the road: bad move in general.

First of all, you can do all the routine maintenance and preventative work on a vehicle you want, and there is still a chance it will stall. Parts break down.

Second - read this portion:

Police said Hargrove noticed the stalled vehicle and stopped to help. The report said he told officers he was there five to seven minutes before his truck was hit by Hancock's SUV. But Kantack said the tow truck may have been there up to 15 minutes, yet failed to get the stalled vehicle out of the way.

"Were the police contacted?" Kantack asked. "Why weren't flares put out? Why was the tow truck there for an exorbitant amount of time?"

Looking into the circumstances, we see a vehicle that was both spun out and stalled (not as easy to remove as a vehicle that simply has stalled: note that the tow truck was hit and not the vehicle, indicating it had spun at least sideways if not backwards). It takes time to hook up a tow truck (especially to load a vehicle onto a flatbed, as opposed to the more common two-wheel lifters).

Add to this a drunken idiot with twice the legal blood-alcohol limit and marijuana in his vehicle, and I think the portion of the lawsuit against the tow truck driver and owner of the stalled vehicle ought to be laughed right out of court.

To paraphrase the Bard: "To Limit, or Not to Limit, That is the Question."

If copyright were forever, I couldn't have just done that. Or at very least, doing that, I'd risk getting sued. Yet in the New York Times, Mark Helprin tries to make us think that copyright should live forever; that 500 years or more from now, someone looking to republish, or rewrite, or simply print and hand a copy of, say, a Hardy Boys novel should need to go get permission.

Helprin tries to equate this to property rights. I'll just quote him here, lest I be accused of twisting his words:

Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.

That is, unless you own a copyright. Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren.

Where he goes wrong is that copyright is not a physical object, or a business entity. If (for the sake of argument) you were to build a business on selling books, for right or wrong, you will eventually need new books to sell. A business that sells widgets must produce a new widget for each customer, and theoretically must periodically re-work and update their product. A house maintains "ownership", but if your heirs don't pay their property taxes or the government exercises its right of Eminent Domain, it will be taken away from them.

Copyright is not a physical object, nor a business entity. It is instead like the other system that operates, as Helprin quotes, "for limited Times". That other system is patent, and patent and copyright are very similar to each other.

The patent system is based upon a simple premise: that an invention is valuable, but that the value does not come solely from its maker, but from what the maker draws from society and the public domain. No invention is crafted simply by itself; the inventor has the input of previous inventors, be they of the wheel, or fire, or TNT, or smokeless gunpowder, or the process to extract propane from crude oil, or to extrude silicon into a form upon which a computer chip can be printed. In short, no matter what invention may be patented, it is not created alone, but rather built upon the building blocks of inventions that have passed previously to the public commons. It therefore makes sense that, after a certain period of time, any new invention should then be "paid back" to the commons, in order to encourage future inventors to improve upon it or add to it, or use it in a new and creative way that will itself be patentable and of improvement to society.

Helprin, of course, has a stake in this. As a writer, he wants to hold onto what he calls 'his", blind to the contribution and presence of the now-publicly-available work of others that is inevitably a part of his own. Philosophers and Doctorates of literature will tell you that there are only 6 archetypal stories, and that any more "complex' stories can always be reduced and analyzed to find that these six archetypes are merely inserted or overlaid upon each other.

Nowhere is this truer than in the "storytelling juggernaut" of the 20th century, the behemoth known as Disney. Take a look at the works of Disney, and what will you find? The vast majority of their stories are shamelessly culled from the public domain, appropriated, twisted a bit, and sold out - and yet the Disney corporation claims copyright over these, and even has been known to file frivolous lawsuits against other companies that produced material based on the same publicly-available stories. Sleeping Beauty, The Sword and the Stone, Pocahontas, pretty much the whole library of Disney works from the very beginning (Steamboat Willie's music comes from various then-public-domain sources such as the folk tune Turkey in the Straw).

Copyrighted and patented ideas are drawn from the public pool. It is in repayment of this debt to the public pool that they must necessarily be returned, so that others can improve and change them to bring new ideas to the next generation. That copyright has been extended to obscene extremes - at the behest of juggernauts like Disney that could afford to shamelessly bribe legislators - is a terrible loss to all of society.

The CBC's got a great article on what Corn Ethanol is doing to the price of food worldwide.

It's amazing how many things have corn in them - cornstarch, corn protein, and so on. Either we've added corn to it, or it's been fed on corn in the case of pork, beef, and chicken.

What's worse? The verdict on whether Ethanol is actually helping things at all is in - and it's not good. The 10%-blended ethanol gasoline (destructive to engines and fuel injectors already) turns out to be, mile for mile, no more efficient and no less polluting than regular non-Ethanol gasoline.

But in Canada, just like in the US, the corn lobby are getting all sorts of subsidies based on false promises that Ethanol would somehow help stop people from needing gas. It's just shameful.

For the time being, comments by non-members are being moderated. If you have an account you can log in and comment immediately. Otherwise, I'll be checking the moderation queue and approving comments several times a day. If you do not have an account but would like one (and I know who you are), let me know by leaving a comment saying such on this post.

Before I get started on this post, I want to mention that I am not interested in debating the merits of the "immigration reform" (bill's full text here) that looks like it just might become law. I don't want to hear about the alleged nefariousness of the immigrants nor the alleged racism of the border hawks. I am more interested in this as a procedural matter. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the current bill is a really, really bad one.

Over at Instapundit and in other border-hawk circles, a whole lot of anger is directed at Bush and the Republicans in congress. That's fair enough since without their support it the bill wouldn't be able to go through. I see conservatives asking what the point of voting Republican is when they let things like happen. I hear claims that 2006 should have been a wake-up call on the issue, but that the Republican leadership isn't listening.

Frankly, I agree. If they'd been stronger against immigration congressional Republicans might have saved the Republican majority (temporarily, anyhow).

It's worth point out, however, that there is no reason to believe that this bill would be going through if the Democrats hadn't gained control of congress. Bush has been rallying on this issue for some time now. Suddenly, within six months of a Democratic congress, things are starting to happen. Coincidence?

How many conservatives stayed home in 2006 or even voted Democrat because the Republicans "aren't any better"? How many got on their high horse about refusing to support a party not strong enough on this and other issues, only to hand congressional control over to the other party?

This should serve as a reminder that elections matter. Unless I can be convinced that a Republican congress would have passed this (and the record says otherwise), voters that stayed home or hedged their vote share the blame for this getting through.

For my part, I voted Democrat in my congressional election. But then again, I oppose the "conservative base" on this issue. Even though I think the bill is a bum deal, too (albeit for different reasons), I'm not losing nearly as much here. And the bitter pill of a bad law is at least washed down with a certain amount of satisfaction of the agony of people that want to turn the Republican Party into something I refuse to be a part of.

Update: Well. No sooner do I write this than the Senate puts it on hold. Since I don't like the bill I don't consider this an altogether bad thing. It does seem increasingly lightly that something that the border hawks detest is going to pass. The question at this point is how bad the bill is going to be.

A couple weeks back, I questioned whether Ron Paul's claim of being "the taxpayer's best friend" was true. We had a Ron Paul groupie come in to try to change our mind... which meant not providing any substantive info, but just leaving what looked very much like a form letter.

After seeing Ron Paul's followers in action since, I'm starting to wonder what it is about him. I have received some amazing emails from people who hunted down my real-life email address, and started sending me masses of "information." Plus some threats (not to me but about what the future would be like without Ron Paul as President). Plus, a whole lot of "if you dont suport Ron Paul your not a real conservtive"[sic].

One of the parallels I remember from my college days was a table that would get set up every day at UH, operated by a fanatical supporter of a man who pretty much runs a cult: Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouchies are borderline insane. They hang on every word of LaRouche. At the table, they had publications that said he'd predicted things like stock market fluctuations and other events (the quotations could never be sourced and weren't even sourced to their own publications for verification purposes), and they were crazy. One of the more entertaining things at UH was to sit down with them and work out what they were actually thinking, which usually was "LaRouche is my god."

Interestingly, LaRouche supporters and Ron Paul supporters have an interesting number of parallels, even with some differences.

- Both claim to be from an established party (Ron Paul a Republican or Libertarian RINO, LaRouche claims to be a Democrat)
- Both run very much on a cult of personality
- Both make sweeping statements and accumulate people who set up their entire worldview around what the cult leader says.
- Both make claims about things they've said that aren't necessarily verifiable

- Both are complete freaking lunatics

The key difference is that the Republicans have somehow allowed Ron Paul to maintain office, while the Democrats don't have to deal with that.

It is an interesting thing that Ron Paul has been allowed into the televised debates for the Republican nomination. One imagines that it is partly because it allows the rest of the candidates (Guiliani especially) to shoot down a man who, in many ways, is the perfect strawman of the Democrat position on certain issues (9/11 and terrorism for examples).

One imagines that it's also partly because if they didn't, there would be Ron Paul hecklers, just like the Democrats had to throw out a LaRouche heckler from each of their debates back in 2004. It's probably easier to let the loon have a couple minutes on stage, and destroy him, than it is to have to check for hecklers at the door.

[Update]: MSNBC's comment on their poll, where Ron Paul came in dead last? "Just please stop e-mailing us. Thanks.

After being spammed by Barack Hussein Obama's campaign, I followed their unsubscribe link. I figured a political campaign ought to get the message: you don't spam people.

Nope. Another message, subject "Not playing by the rules", from one David Plouffe (again at the info@barackobama.com address) hits my inbox. This one is trying to get people to convince Republican Senators to help Obama's effort to override the Presidential veto.

Obama can go screw himself.

As the City of Houston prepares to crack down on sexually-oriented businesses, the Chronicle reports that SOB owners have found a little loophole:

Facing a looming city crackdown on sexually oriented businesses, some strip clubs in Houston have a fallback strategy to keep their operations open: requiring their dancers to cover up.

A little.

Topless and fully nude clubs could avoid regulation altogether if their dancers wear bikinis, or even skimpier opaque coverings, allowing them to get around the "sexually oriented" classification, police and city officials acknowledged.

That would allow the clubs to remain open at their current locations, despite an ordinance now prohibiting them from operating within 1,500 feet of churches, schools, parks and residential areas.

The Chron's portrays this as "dancing around the law", the same way that they might report the gun show loophole in anti-gun legislation. But saying that nudie bars are "skirting" SOB laws by having their employees wear bikinis is akin to saying that someone skirted anti-marijuana laws by selling cigarettes instead. We're talking about completely different things!

As for the law itself, my main problem with it is that, as far as I can recall, there is no grandfather clause protecting the investment of people who opened those clubs back when they were not regulated into a difficult business model. Then again, it's difficult to have too much sympathy for people that decide to make a living exploiting young women, exploiting the sexual frustration of men, and profiting off an overly-sexualized culture.

In a short new paper, economists Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy make the case for addressing income inequality by working to lift the bottom, rather than penalize the top, earners. I suppose this is a worthy goal. In the course of arguing against steeply progressive taxes, they say:

For many, the solution to an increase in inequality is to make the tax structure more progressive; raise taxes on high-income households and reduce taxes on low-income households. While this may sound sensible, it is not. Would these same individuals advocate a tax on going to college and a subsidy for dropping out of high school in response to the increased importance of education? We think not. Yet shifting the tax structure has exactly this effect.

[Semicolon sic; emphasis mine.] This is manifestly false. Progressive taxes, penalizing high earners in every field, are presently combined with government subsidies for higher education. The typical high earners described by Messrs. Becker and Murphy are rewarded at first, then penalized; while overeducated failures are purely rewarded, and -- most crucially -- those who succeed without reaching into the goody bag of state-subsidized education are purely penalized. In short, the present situation is worse, not better, than the strawman constructed by the authors.
The crucial test of the case for more education is whether it truly increases productivity, or merely provides a credential which signals the graduate's desirability. The authors do not address this problem at all. Their graphs, while cheerfully colored, are perfectly consistent with a world in which those who were going to earn a lot of money anyway were first obliged to waste several years getting a diploma to signal their status. More government-imposed pressure toward credentials -- which will be the inevitable result of making government, rather than employers, the judge of how much education is desirable -- will only exacerbate this problem and further reduce real economic freedom.

The latest brainchild from England's meddlesome Labour government is the "Single Equality Act" now being drafted. This is meant to combine several anti-discrimination provisions into one overarching law, forbidding every kind of discrimination in one swoop. Further, discrimination is to be prohibited not only in employment but in the "provision of goods and services". The story made the papers when Saga Cruises, open only to those over 50, was informed that it would have to abandon its business model:

Saga has been told that the law would require it to offer all cruises, resort and touring holidays and numerous financial products to everyone irrespective of age, unless ministers make some services exempt.
Saga has warned ministers that the company will go under unless it can restrict its services to the over50s. Company insiders said that ministers seemed not to have considered the effect of the law until it was pointed out to them.

But don't worry -- there will still be room for the right kind of discrimination:

The new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights chairman told MPs that his body should have sweeping powers to permit positive discrimination to prevent jobseekers from migrant communities being disadvantaged.

Freedom means nothing if it does not include the freedom not to do as other people might wish. Freedom means freedom to choose one's associates, and even sometimes to say mean things about people. This is what the nanny staters cannot stand: the idea that someone might use their freedom in a way different from their preferences. They will choose equality over freedom, every time.

Those who know me know I'm no supporter of Barack Obama. I'm no fan of the racist church he attends. I'm no fan of the behavior of his campaign in the theft of an unofficial fan-support myspace profile and their subsequent attempts to lie about and vilify their former supporter after the stunt.

So, so far, I considered Obama the usual sort of politician, leaning towards "lying jerk."

Today, that changes. Obama's the worst kind of person, save perhaps for a serial murderer or serial rapist. He's a spammer..

I have never contacted the Obama campaign.
I have done nothing to give them my email address.
I have done nothing to indicate to them that I would ever want to support Obama as a candidate.

What do I find in my email box today? An email from the Obama campaign titled "Taking it to the streets." Sender ID is "Barack Obama <info@barackobama.com>", ID of mailer is mta2.bluestatedigital.com (IP address 207.234.209.148). This is most definitely from the Obama campaign.

The gist of the email is a form email trying to get me to be an organizer for their supposed "Walk for Change" campaign to happen in June. They are "offering" to send me informational packets to set up a "neighborhood walk" in support of getting Barack nominated for the presidency.

I don't want this spammer nominated for dogcatcher, much less the presidency. And I may just look up a walk in my area so I can show up and pass out a few pamphlets on what Obama is REALLY like, rather than what his campaign says he is.

One down, Dems. 7 to go, unless someone else jumps into the race. My offer still stands. Give me someone I can trust to do the right thing 70% of the time - I'm willing to drop 3 out of 10 serious issues here - and I'll support them and vote for them.

But don't you dare give me Obama any more. Put him in your nomination, and I don't care if the Republicans nominate a Freddie Kreuger/Jason Vorhees ticket, they'll get my support against Barack "The Spammer" Obama.

In the face of the current controversies surrounding the death penalty (whether we should have it, whether Lethal Injection needs to be reworked, humaneness concerns, whether the system of appeals needs fixing) TIME throws in another good question on whether repeat sex offenders warrant the penalty. They focus on enhanced "Jessica's Law" statutes which some states have passed, allowing for the death penalty in the case of those who have repeatedly molested children.

Setting aside whether people think the state should have a death penalty option or not - if a state is to have one, who should qualify for it? It becomes an interesting question.

In the category of murderers, is every murder equal? Obviously not. There is a difference between premeditated murder, planned and executed, and murder committed in the course of a fight. There is a difference between those, and murder that happens in (for example) a vehicular accident on the road or some other event that a rational human still might not expect.

I'd say that a serial murderer - one who targets a segment of the population, and murders multiple people - ought to be eligible for the death penalty. Likewise with the masterminds behind multiple killings, like Charles Manson. Likewise with those who commit incredibly gruesome murders in which they had no possible rational fear for their own lives.

While there is a case to be made for the "thoughtcrime" aspect of a death sentence for the murder of police officers, I feel that they deserve whatever little extra protection such a law might give to them. They are taking the burden of trying to protect society, after all.

These kind of murderers, I would argue, invariably deserve the death penalty.

After murder, what about those who attempt murder? It's an odd question; for some reason, society offers a lesser punishment to a criminal whose intent was the same as a murderer, but who lacked the competence to successfully end the life of another. I can't say that this ought to be the case, save that rarely is there an attempted murder (I say rarely because there's always an exception) that is as heinous or brutal as some of the serial and savage killers society has seen. What worse if they attempted multiple murders, but were just inept about their methods? Attempted murders, like successful murderers, come in two groups - and while there is a case for those who were in a rage and came to their senses before striking the killing blow in a fight to get a lesser sentence, I find it hard to offer a case that someone who deliberately planned a murder but weren't smart enough to come up with a successful plan, should get less of a sentence than someone who didn't make that mistake somewhere. After all, is a poisoner any less of a poisoner because someone got the victim to medical care in time? Is a shooter any less of a shooter because they have lousy aim?

And then we get to this third group - those who commit crimes that are heinous, but not actually intended to be deadly (though possibly leading up to deadly crime later as they get bolder). "Jessica's Law" provisions are based on the problem of recidivism in child molesters, a recidivism rate that seems alarmingly high. Supporters would argue that, if someone fails to be rehabilitated, trying to rehabilitate them again is the insanity of doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Opponents think it might actually encourage molesters to kill their victims in some insane attempt to hide the evidence.

Is a repeat child molester so heinous as to warrant society's ultimate punishment? I can't say for sure. I know that if they re-offend, they've likely proven that they are beyond any rehabilitation - especially knowing perfectly well that they were caught at least once before. I know that the damage they do is going to last a lifetime, and is done to a segment of the population that we already deem worthy of extra protections. And as RAW pointed out earlier, criminals don't necessarily have a great future-time orientation in their thoughts... so perhaps society ought to. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, or so the saying goes.

As a side note, Texas law adds another interesting wrinkle; the lack of a "statutory rape" on the books. According to Texas law, an 17-year-old high schooler who has sex with a 16-year-old boyfriend/girlfriend can be charged with the same crime, and subject to the same after-release conditions (monitoring, testing, restrictions on where they can live), as someone who rapes a child. Something strikes me as wrong about that. Theoretically, that 17-year-old could be put out on probation, "re-offend" with the boyfriend/girlfriend, and be eligible for the death penalty. Worse yet, it's not the parents or the "victim" who get to decide whether it's prosecuted or not; the state prosecutor takes care of that themselves. In the zeal to toughen the law, it appears someone left no room for a bit of common sense.

[EDIT]: It appears I spoke too soon. After a review of the law, it appears there is a small fail-safe clause: Texas penal code section 21.11(b) states:

(b) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the actor:
(1) was not more than three years older than the victim and of the opposite sex;
(2) did not use duress, force, or a threat against the victim at the time of the offense; and
(3) at the time of the offense:
(A) was not required under Chapter 62, Code of Criminal Procedure, to register for life as a sex offender; or
(B) was not a person who under Chapter 62 had a reportable conviction or adjudication for an offense under this section.

Fox News covers this story: the rest of the media seems to be intent on covering it up.

Hamas's TV station, "Al Aqsa TV" (aka The Squatters Mosque Station) is teaching kids all about how they're going to have a glorious uprising, kill the jews, murder anyone who isn't a totalitarian islamist, etc... and they're doing it with a Mickey Mouse lookalike.

Europe just gave these disgusting terrorists 60 million Euros in aid.

Bush has greenlit sending them money as well.

I can't be alone in thinking that as long as this kind of stuff goes on, they don't deserve one red cent.

I'm not sure how I missed this story from 2005:

Like many shoppers, attorney Stephen Diamond buys lots of stuff online. But unlike other consumers, he sues retailers that don't charge him state and local sales taxes -- and is making a profit doing it.

Using a state whistle-blower law, Mr. Diamond since 2002 has filed about 95 suits in Cook County court here against retailers that failed to charge him taxes on Internet sales, alleging that they broke the law. In cases where the state of Illinois joins the suits and prevails, he is entitled to up to 25% of the financial damages, with the rest going to state coffers.

"This is a no-brainer," says Mr. Diamond, a veteran class-action attorney who has a scenic view of Lake Michigan from his downtown office. "I started going on the Internet and discovered to my astonishment that companies like Target Corp. and Wal-Mart were not collecting taxes on their Internet sales. I was like, "Wow!"

Wow indeed. The article mentions a movement by the states to coordinate sales tax collection. Considering that we're approaching midway 2007 and the article was written in late 2005, I'd imagine that it wasn't very successful.

CNN's got the doctor who came up with the "Lethal Injection" method of execution saying maybe it's time to rework the drug formula. He also says he thinks the Guillotine is the simplest and most effective.

Of course, over time, there have been all sorts of methods for working with the death penalty. Some were designed deliberately for pain, some were simply working with the tools available at the time, some were attempts at making the process "humane."

On the truly barbaric side, you have options like drawing & quartering, burning at the stake, waterboard drowning, and tying someone out in the wilderness to die of exposure/starvation/dehydration. Nasty ways to go, very visible for the most part, and if you're looking for something that will make others who might commit crimes think "I really don't want to risk it", most capable of driving home the point.

In the middle, you have things that were just trying to use the best stuff available at the time. Hanging was supposed to be a quick death, and it doesn't take more than a rope and something to hang the rope from (whether a constructed gallows or otherwise). Keelhauling - another form of drowning death - is somewhat necessitated by the tight quarters on a ship and rather neatly sidesteps the worry of carrying the body for later disposal, especially since those who died of disease or other natural causes would likely be "buried at sea" anyways. Killing someone with a sword or spear using a "killing" strike - be it through the heart or neck - was intended to be more humane than just chopping at someone until they died, but it has a tendency to be messy.

And then we get to the "modern" versions. During the French Revolution, one Dr. Joseph Ignace-Guillotin went into medical records and came up with a device that had been used in earlier centuries to execute Italian royalty; this was later improved on by Antoine Louis to come up with the "modern" device that the French Revolutionaries are infamous for using. At the time, the Giullotine was indeed considered "humane"; it required only one stroke (instead of the several that a sword or axe usually require to get through a human spine and sever the neck) and the death was thought to be as close to instantaneous as possible.

With the introduction of guns, another option came in the firing squad; you take men who are reasonably good shots, arrange them at point-blank range for maximum accuracy, and administer a killing shot with a gun. Problem: a killing shot is either to the heart or head, and it doesn't look very nice.

The next option was the electric chair; rather than something which caused major bodily damage, an electric shock would (ideally) destroy brain function and stop the heart. Unfortunately, it sometimes goes wrong, requiring multiple shocks or causing small fires.

So, the idea came to have lethal injection. Administer a "painkiller" to be humane, and then drugs to kill the patient. Adopted overall, but now death penalty opponents are going after it by claiming it's not "humane enough."

Part of me wonders if "humane enough" really matters for someone who's done something egregious enough that society needs to get rid of them so completely. Many victims' rights groups argue that even if it's not completely painless, it's much less painful than the deaths most death penalty recipients gave their victims. And in truth, if the death penalty were not so hidden away from the public - done at night, done in a private room with no visual record to the outside world, done in a way that didn't appear quite so "peaceful" - that it might have a larger deterrent effect. A perhaps not strange irony of the situation is that as methods have become more 'humane', opponents have been more successful in arguing that the new methods didn't have much of an effect for deterring other crimes; I'd posit that someone who knew they could be drawn and quartered for killing another human being might, just perhaps, be less likely to go through with it than someone who knew they could sit in prison for 30 years before going in and getting strapped down for "endless sleep."

On a larger issue, however, is the possibility that the search for 'humane' death for these people isn't so much for them, but for the people who may or may not watch this. There's a portion of the population that supports the death penalty in theory but still finds that the visual consequences are not appealing to the eye. It is somewhat striking that the more 'humane' a method supposedly is, the less visual impact it's supposed to have upon the corpse - and perhaps it's that portion of the population that the newer methods are intended to appease.

An interesting thing caught my eye when checking a link posted by an earlier poster regarding the right of felons to vote; at the beginning of the formation of the US, voting rights were restricted to landowners.

While I don't think that this ought to be the case, there is one scenario that I noticed that the change does seem to impact; the highway robbery system that is the property tax.

In the original system, landowners voted. A property tax would likely not become all that harmful, because those who were voting would know that they, too, were subject to any form of a land tax/property tax that they voted for.

Enter the new century; now, most people don't "own" their home. Apartments house a large number of the populace, dormitories for college students, and rental properties are very common.

I'm reminded of a scenario I was told of in a county that bordered a reservation; the property taxes for the few non-Indians in the county were astronomical, because the reservation land (where most of the populace lived) was not subject to property taxation. Every single property tax hike that ever came before the voters passed... because less than 10% of the voting population had taxable homes.

I'm starting to wonder if something similar is going on today in Texas. Property taxes are being hiked at a truly alarming rate. I rent, and indirectly pay a portion of my roommate's property taxes - but I've seen the numbers, and the taxes are getting truly outrageous.

People who have no kids are having their housing subjected to ever worsening taxes, to pay for the schooling of people who have kids and don't own homes. Something's wrong with this.

In "This is War" below, Art Sammler offers an interesting point that I agree with, but gives no rationale (unlike other sections which he quotes): "We can finally act like adults about nuclear energy."

In fact, the real issue with nuclear energy is twofold. First, there are a bunch of ecological crazies (the same ones who would oppose a coal plant, or oil plant, or anything but their pet projects) who pop up to "protest" whenever a new nuclear energy plant is proposed. The end result is that getting a nuclear energy plant is a nightmare. This despite the fact that nuclear energy is the cleanest of all fuel-based energy technology.

The second problem - nuclear waste - is only a problem because of the Worst President in the History of the US, one Jimmy Carter. On April 7, 1977, Carter banned nuclear waste reprocessing in the US on the theory that it would "encourage" rogue nations like Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, China, Russia, and others not to reprocess fuel and thus stave off the threat of nuclear arms falling into their hands. Whoops! Score one for Clueless Carter.

The end result is that instead of a responsible nuclear energy program, the US has a limping one, and the crazies searching for so-called "renewable" energy resources have been going gonzo, Al Gore among them. The problem is that every one of their so-called "renewable" resources either has a significant drawback, reliability issues, or just doesn't work.

#1 - One of the least talked-about ideas (mostly because people figured out the low gains it provides) is tidal power; when the tide comes in, and when it goes out, the water level in a tank rises, and the intake/outflow of water causes turbines to spin. The problem? It takes a ton of beach space, reliable placing of the pipes, a LOT of maintenance (salt water causes corrosion and builds up clogging deposits fairly regularly), and generally doesn't produce all that much energy. Plus, while it's "regular" in that nobody can stop the tides, a storm swell can overload it and it only produces meaningful power during an active tidal shift.

#2 - Solar power. For a lot of low-power uses, it's become commonplace; you'll see it on crossing signs in rural neighborhoods, warning lights, powering lighthouses, and occasionally installed on someone's house. The problem for solar power production on a mass scale, however, is not to be taken lightly. First of all, the production of any silicon-based items (yes, including the boards in your computer) produces a lot of toxic waste that needs to either be denatured or disposed of somewhere. Now imagine enough silicon to cover your roof. There you go; lots of toxic waste to deal with.

Second, solar power just isn't that efficient yet. The normal solar cells available today, we're talking production-level that consumers can buy, are around 12% efficient. In the lab, 20% has been achieved, but getting that into mass production will take a long time. Solar power fanatics like to talk about the theoretical gains if they got "everyone" to put solar cells on their rooftop, but they fail to factor in the fact that at least half of those cells would be getting less-than-direct sunlight for at least half the day (e.g. overnight), they fail to consider the cost of maintaining the panels on everyone's house through rain, sleet, hail, squirrels, pooping birds... in short, the idea of blanketing everyone's roof in solar cells is probably not feasible.

Plus, just wait for a couple days of rain and heavy cloud cover. If you're relying on solar power, better hope you've got a backup.

#3 - Hydrogen. Early in his term, Bush liked to talk about the "hydrogen economy" that would replace oil. This was one of the first indications Bush doesn't know what the heck he's talking about - hydrogen, while naturally occurring, does not just get harvested. You either need to extract it from the air, or produce it from hydrogen-bearing molecules (such as water). Doing either takes energy, usually more energy than you get back from burning the hydrogen. Net result? Hydrogen is not a source of power, it's just a storage medium for transferring generated power. You still have to generate the power somewhere. Cross this one off your list.

#4 - Geothermal. In certain areas, this could work - but again, the maintenance can be a problem, and it's not usable everywhere.

#5 - The worst of all: Biofuels. Worse than snake oil, but they keep popping up thanks to the corn lobby.

Why are these the worst? Because they come with so high a cost - and not just in money. The US has gone to a mere 10% insertion of Ethanol into cars. As a result, fully half of the US's corn crop has gone to producing Ethanol. The result so far is that the cost of corn has gone up, and with it the price of meat and dairy products. Milk, healthy staple of childrens' diets, is over $3/gallon and climbing.

Meanwhile, the Ethanol has been cutting fuel efficiency, and as a corrosive agent it's devastating to internal combustion engines. It rots fuel lines, leaves nasty deposits in combustion chambers and valves, and clogs injectors, causing maintenance headaches. You may have noticed how many gas stations and service shops are carrying "engine treatments" and "injector cleaners" that are injected either into the oil or fuel reservoir? Ethanol is the reason why; combusted ethanol leaves a gummy residue behind. A car on 10% Ethanol gasoline can "run", but the best numbers I've seen have it dying or requiring engine replacement a full 50,000 miles sooner than a car on standard gas.

The net gain from Ethanol? Zero. Yes, the emissions look better "per gallon", but by the time you spend the extra 10% of fuel, the emissions per mile are about the same.

At the same time, it currently takes more than 1 unit of energy to grow, harvest, and transport 1 unit of energy (in the form of corn-based Ethanol) to the pump to go into a gas tank. A net loss of energy.

If someone did manage to get "cellulosic ethanol" working - ethanol made not from the fruit and edible portions of plants, but the "leftovers", the stems and other portions, it could get better but it's still not great.

I applaud people who are searching for alternative energy sources, but anytime I see one of them talking about how their pet one is "THE" cure for energy needs, I have to roll my eyes. Perhaps, one day, we'll get there - but as Sammler said, we really ought to be acting like adults about Nuclear energy, which is not "THE" cure either but is much better than coal/oil/gas for energy production.

Mike Ahlf, in "Burro and Monoceros" below, argues that George Bush has been terrible for the Republican party and complains graphically about the poor choice offered in the 2004 Presidential election. I think that he is grossly overstating his case.

Mr. Kerry has largely faded from view, but that does not mean we should wax nostalgic over him. He was, and remains, a self-styled war hero who returned home and slandered his own army; a self-appointed peace activist who discussed strategy with the North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris peace talks; and a self-proclaimed victim of slander who somehow could never sign the form 180 that would have settled the issue. Aside from that, though, he seems like a perfectly normal doctrinaire liberal.

It seems that most people are quick to claim laws that they like as inherently constitutional and laws that they dislike as unconstitutional. I'm not much different, in that regard, but periodically I do find laws that I don't really have a problem with but that I find pretty difficult to defend from a constitutional standpoint.

One such law is that of felons being denied the right to vote once they've served their sentence. When incarcerated, prisoners lose all sorts of rights, so I don't have a problem with that. But once they've served their sentence and have been released, it seems to me that there are no constitutional grounds to deprive them of the right to vote unless that was expressly a part of their sentence to begin with. I think that democracy as a whole may benefit from such laws.

For instance, if a felon were to commit a crime in Maine, which allows felons to vote, and then moves to Idaho, wherein felons are disenfranchised, I'm not sure what right the latter has to deny the prisoner of their vote. I could maybe be convinced that Idaho has the right to attach disenfranchisement to the sentence (I'd need to think upon it further), but they shouldn't be allowed to attach an additional punishment onto a sentence applied for a crime committed out of the state.

Absent Constitutional problems, whether or not such laws are a good idea is a different question. It seems that people that can't follow the law are probably not the best people to elect the people making the laws. A little problematic, though, is the expansion of the term "felony" to include all sorts of offenses wherein the denial of voting rights seems out of line. Petty drug offenses come to mind. When it comes to violent felonies and other more serious offenses, however, I think that the civic case for their being assured the right to vote is pretty weak.

One of the terms that's become all too frequently used in describing the problems the Republicans have of late speaks to the disappointment of the Republican Base - the people that the Republican Party can supposedly "rely on" for support. A lot of this has turned around with the introduction of the term RINO: Republican In Name Only.

The term fits amazingly well. Rudy Giuliani, for all his name recognition, has probably a 40% (at best) match with the Republican base's positions. He's big on social programs, highly liberal on social issues, and questionable on foreign policy.

Ron Paul, sometimes referred to as the "taxpayer's friend", is a long-time Libertarian who runs with an "R" next to his name... though chances are he's going to face some serious, stiff opposition in the coming election. In days where there are major issues coming up for Congress, Ron Paul's big thing is... legalizing Marijuana.

Worst for the Republican base is President Shrub (and how it hurts me to use that term for that incompetent, traitorous boob). With this guy the base has every right to feel abandoned. Just about none of his campaign promises were ever fulfilled, and there's actually talk from members of his own party in Congress that he was happy to see the Democrats retake the House, because they were more willing to match him on "certain" issues than the people who voted him into office were.

It's a sad day when that happens, but hey - Bush is a RINO, not a Pachyderm. It's even sadder realizing that my choice, in both 2000 and 2004, came down to either a Rhino vs a Jackass or, perhaps more appropriately, a Douche and a Turd.

The Prince of Wales has apparently decided that present global warming rhetoric is overly restrained:

Britain can lead the fight against climate change using the same spirit of grit it displayed in World War Two, Prince Charles told business leaders on Tuesday.
.... “Just think what they did in the last war,” he said, referring to Britain’s allied victory against Germany. “Things that seemed impossible were achieved almost overnight.”
.... And he used the date to recall his days in Britain’s navy, and evoke the urgent danger posed by climate change.
“When I was serving in the Royal Navy ... “May Day, May Day, May Day” was the distress call used in cases of emergency. It still is - and this is an emergency we face.”

If we are in a war, then we should act accordingly. What are our weapons?
We can actively sequester carbon, as suggested by Gregory Benford:

Yearly, we manage through agriculture far more carbon than is causing our greenhouse dilemma.
Take advantage of that. The leftover corn cobs and stalks from our fields can be gathered up, floated down the Mississippi, and dropped into the ocean, sequestering it. Below about a kilometer depth, beneath a layer called the thermocline, nothing gets mixed back into the air for a thousand years or more. It's not a forever solution, but it would buy us and our descendents time to find such answers. And it is inexpensive; cost matters.

We can reduce the albedo of polar regions, by seeding the high atmosphere with extremely fine particles:

He suggests suspension of tiny, harmless particles (sized at one-third of a micron) at about 80,000 feet up in the stratosphere. These particles could be composed of diatomaceous earth. "That's silicon dioxide, which is chemically inert, cheap as earth, and readily crushable to the size we want," Benford says. This could initially be tested, he says, over the Arctic, where warming is already considerable and where few human beings live. Arctic atmospheric circulation patterns would mostly confine the deployed particles around the North Pole. An initial experiment could occur north of 70 degrees latitude, over the Arctic Sea and outside national boundaries. "The fact that such an experiment is reversible is just as important as the fact that it's regional," says Benford.

We can fertilize part of the ocean, increasing its uptake of atmospheric carbon:

The idea is similar to planting forests full of carbon-inhaling trees, but in desolate stretches of ocean. “This is organic gardening, not rocket science,” said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. “Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We’re about to find out.”
For Mr. George, this is not just science and environmentalism but business, possibly big business.

We can finally act like adults about nuclear energy.

These and other solutions are there for the finding. The situation is well summarized by the awesome Jonathan Rauch:

climate change is real and deserves action, but...the problem is nowhere near as overwhelming as the rhetoric commonly suggests, and the solutions nowhere near as difficult. As problems go, in fact, climate change appears to be one of the most convenient that humankind has ever faced.

Or, of course, we could do what Prince Charles, George Monbiot, and their millions of followers are suggesting, and fight global warming by reducing output, or even humanity itself, flirting with a New Dark Age of economic and scientific stagnation, suffocation of freedom, and zero-sum contention for resources that need not even remain scarce.