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The Washington Times writes: During the Civil War, for instance, President Abraham Lincoln extraconstitutionally summoned an army, expended unappropriated funds, unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and suppressed speech friendly to the Confederacy. Congress belatedly ratified Lincoln’s legislative usurpations.

Keep in mind this is being said in defense of President Bush’s own extraconstitutional actions. This is why I have no respect for Abraham Lincoln, one of my childhood heroes. He was a dictator; regardless of whether you approve of the Civil War or not, Lincoln was no friend of freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation notwithstanding. Like Bush, he had his own Guantanamo Bay and then some, jailing more than 10,000 New Yorkers for daring to speak out against the war and the draft.

I’d never questioned that Bush would be re-elected, but this travesty of an amnesty program may yet sink him. When thinking die-hard conservatives like Michael Savage and John Derbyshire are against you, your base is looking a little shaky. The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are over, and unless the president has a new invasion in mind, we could see again how wartime politicans don’t tend to fare too well once the guns fall silent. See George Bush Sr. and Winston Churchill for details.

Is there anyone else who finds this wild-eyed frenzy to dismiss O’Neill at all costs to be rather remniscent of the Clinton defenders? I carry no water for Paul O’Neill, he’s the classic moderate Republican big business big government poobah that is the epitome of much that I dislike about the Republican party. Ronald Reagan didn’t want him. “Paul O’Neill is considered a menace by those who want to trim federal spending.” –Human Events, November 22, 1980, commenting on rumors that O’Neill was being considered for a senior post in the incoming Reagan administration.”

And yet, the compassionate conservative Bush did. Now, wouldn’t NRO conservatives such as J. Goldberg, P. Robinson and R. Ponnuru scoff at the same defenses that they’re currently spinning for President Bush if it were Bill Clinton in office and Robert Rubin were leveling such charges?

Let the chips fall where they may. I don’t think there’s anything there – military planners are required to plan for every contingency, after all. I do, however, think it is the height of naivety to think that there is not something a little odd about this administration. Can Bush do no wrong, even when he’s betrayed conservatives on Medicare entitlements, spending increases and now quasi-immigration amnesty? I wonder, if Dick Cheney or Colin Powell were to make similar charges in the future, will they be scoffed at in the same way?

I always thought Das Partie uber alles was a Democratic phenomenon.

Heard from the syndicate today… the Dallas Morning News is not going to run my column after all, since they apparently have too many editorialists and too little space. It’s too bad, but this will only set back the masterplan by a few months. I have no less than three novels to complete this year, so shed no tears for me. And they did say that they’ll revisit the question in six months.

So much for the libertarian perspective there, at least for the nonce.

The most informative source on mass government murder – for which RJ Rummel coined the term “democide” – is the University of Hawaii professor’s Freedom, Democide, War site. It’s definitely worth doing some poking around in.

The statistics that I cited are by no means precise, but they are reasonable. The 4x estimate is the easiest, as it was derived by dividing the number of total 20th century victims of democide (169 million) by the number of people believed to have been killed in all the wars and civil wars taking place during that same time (38.5 million).

The comparison between murder and democide is tougher, as it can be calculated in a variety of ways. One significant challenge is that estimated murder rates often include government killings, another is that relatively few countries keep record of such statistics. I derived the number as follows:

– The United States has 19,000 murders in a population of 290 million. This is 6.55 per 100,000, or 0.000065517.

– This is considered to be high by US historical standards (1991 US Senate report) and by world standards as well. For example, Japan’s murder rate is 11 times lower, the UK 4 times lower, Ireland 9 times lower. Since the current US rate is high by both world and historical standards, estimating the 20th century global murder rate by dividing the US rate by 4 seemed a reasonable educated guess, which gives 1.64 per 100,000, or 0.000016379.

It’s hard to know how precisely how many people lived in the 20th century, but looking at a number of demographic sites indicated that the number was somewhere around 18 billion people on the high end. Dividing the 169 million victims of democide by 18 billion, we get a 20th century democide rate of 0.009388889, or 938.88 per 100,000, which is 570 times higher than the 1.64 per 100,000 estimated annual global murder rate. (Update – of course, multiplying the latter number by 100 gives a direct comparison of 938.88 per 100,00 with 164 per 100,000, or 5.72x.)

This seems too high, especially since Rummel himself estimates the average annual domestic democide rate at only .00235 per year for the countries where democides took place – in a little over one-third of the countries belonging to the UN.

How to rectify these differences? The problem likely stems from not comparing apples to apples, by comparing a percentage calculated from a total to an annual rate. But we can get a ceiling on the global 20th century murder total by multiplying the number of annual US murders by 100, then multiplying again by the global population divided by the US population. (19,000 x 100) x (6 billion / 290 million) = a maximum 39,310,394 murders in the 20th century. Since as was mentioned before, the US rate is high on two accounts, plus the global population is much higher now than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. The divider could therefore be increased somewhat, but since I prefer to be conservative here, using the previous divider of 4 gives us a best estimate of 9.83 million criminal murders in the 20th century, compared to 169 million legal democides.

Thus, I conclude that one’s chances of falling prey to a homicidal government in the 20th century ranged from 4.3 (low estimate) to 54.5 (high estimate) times that of being murdered by an individual acting on his own, with the most reasonable estimate being 17.3 times.

Some of these will surprise you. France, for example, murdered over 100,000 of its Algerian citizens, which at the time was a legal and constitutional part of France.

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Austria-Hungary, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Liberia, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Rwanda, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe

But of course, it can’t happen here, right? And don’t you feel better about the United Nations, knowing that the governments – not the people – of all these countries may have sovereign power over you if the internationalists in the Democratic and Republican parties get their way?

This week: 1-3. NFL Playoffs: 4-4.

Where did I go wrong?

1. Assuming that Mike Martz would not outsmart himself. 45 seconds with a timeout in the red zone is enough time for 5-6 cracks at the end zone. Or zero, assuming you’re cut out of the Big Game Denny Green mold. The Rams should go ahead and start looking for a new coach now if they want to win playoff games; Martz has proved that he’s a poor game tactician.

2. Thinking that Peyton Manning would revert to the mean. He is a star, bordering on greatness and superstardom. Let’s see him reach a Super Bowl before conferring it upon him, though. If he’s on fire, they can beat New England. Badly. Can he do it three weeks in a row? Maybe. You’ve got to love Tony Dungy’s Grant-Landry demeanor. He may not be a chess master, but there’s nothing as cool as Old Skool coaching.

3. In the battle of the smooched buttocks, Mike Sherman got cute and Brett Favre got stupid and the Packers gave the game away. Ahman Green got his 150 yards, Ralph Wiley notwithstanding, which makes the two third-and-short passes in Eagle’s territory all the more bewildering. Incomplete – punt, incomplete – punt. And then there’s the failure to drive it in on first and goal inside the five. Gee, a field goal in any of those possessions would have come in handy, don’t you think?

Was I impressed by Donovan McNabb – sure, he never quit. The scramble-and-throw to Pinkston was fantastic. But do I think he’s a superstar quarterback now? Never. If he rushes for 100, throws for 250 and no interceptions against Carolina’s defense, then I’ll consider it.

Great games, all told. Nothing like the NFL. I’d originally picked Rams-Patriots before the playoffs, and I definitely like Carolina’s chances, but Peyton has got me thinking the Colts could get there. Have to think on that one.

Those who were brave enough to try to explain did so honestly. Painfully honest. As honest as this stat from Elias Sports Bureau: The Chiefs are the first team since the 1975 Vikings to start 9-0 and lose their first playoff game.

Ever notice that it’s always the Vikings who show up in stats like this? And by the way, that pass by Brett Favre that cost Green Bay the game? That would be Metrodome Brett, the evil twin brother of Brett Favre, Superstar QB. It’s a little known fact that the Philadelphia Eagles kidnapped Brett and substituted MetBrett before the overtime kickoff.

Excerpt from actual Christmas letter. Names have been changed to protect the long-suffering.



“Chilliette and I are teaching ourselves Latin, and will pun away in that supposedly dead language for hours. Our astronaut training is progressing nicely though my duties as test pilot have prevented me from getting as much time on the shuttle simulator as I’d like. Chilliette, on the other hand, has just completed her second book on gestational depression in embryonic rabbits, and I understand it has set the animal behavior community on fire.”

This was actually only the second funniest Christmas letter Space Bunny and I received this year. First prize goes to our good friend, the former swimsuit model, who wanted to make sure we were all kept up to date on the current state of her breasts. You probably think I’m kidding, don’t you.

I’m just wondering, has there ever been a playoff game between two quarterbacks whose posteriors have been so often smooched by so many sycophantic sportswriters? I can’t think of one. Not even Montana-Aikman, with 7 Super Bowl rings between them, ever received this kind of fawning coverage. Not Staubach-Tarkenton, or Stabler-Bradshaw. It is now considered outright heresy to bring up the point that Donovan McNabb has a career completion rating* almost identical to – and one less Super Bowl ring than – QB legend for the ages and certain first-ballot Hall of Famer Trent Dilfer. And this parody of Peter King’s friendship/obsession with Brett Favre barely manages to surpass the average broadcaster’s genuflection towards the man who’s “always having so much fun out there.”

I am with Brett Favre on Saturday morning, somewhere deep in the backwoods of Mississippi. We are hunting for a big game — namely, our belated Thanksgiving meal to stuff in an oven in Kiln, home to Brett and Deanna Favre. Brett, armed with bow and arrow, echoes of Burt Reynolds from Deliverance, quietly stalks his prey through the brush. I, outfitted only with a Ned Beatty gut, struggle to keep up. I follow behind Brett, step for step. I am so close to Brett right now, I can feel his breath. I can’t help but think, I bet Deanna is jealous right about now.

What a quarterback. What a man.

Brett is a throwback all right – a throwback to Perseus, sculpted from the Greek gods. How his rugged Russell Crowe Gladiator beard accentuates his full, buxom lips. The way Brett’s hips undulate, and gyrate, and undulate – oh, how they undulate – when Brett talks to me on the driving range. Or the way Brett’s nose twinkles when I ask him pointed questions like “Why are you such a good football player when it’s cold, Brett?” In a past life, this nubile young man must have been some sort of explorer. Hernando de Soto, perhaps.

Naysayers might have asked Brett at some point about his Thursday performance. But pay no mind to that fourth quarter pick that lost the game for the Sons of Sherman. Brett is a gunslinger. Always has been. Always will be. Those things happen. Brett was just trying to make a play. Brett can quarterback my team any day.

– from Football Outsiders

*McNabb’s career passing rating is 8 points better than Dilfer’s. However, his completion rating is only 1.5 percent better, and his performance over the last three seasons is strikingly similar to Dilfer’s two good seasons in Tampa Bay. McNabb may become a great quarterback someday; he’s still young. But to say that he’s a superstar is ridiculous. Elway and Marino were the last true superstar QBs, although Favre can make a solid claim for such status if he can lead the Pack/ride Ahman Green to another Super Bowl. Only Manning, Brady and Culpepper appear serious superstar candidates in my book, and in that order.

Economically, that is. This article mocking Ol Doc Howie’s junior high school comprehension of economics doesn’t go anywhere nearly far enough in laying the wood on him. The biggest problem with starting a trade war with Asia is not that we’ll increase production costs and lose jobs, it’s that we’re utterly dependent on Chinese and Japanese capital inflows in order to fund our massive debts.

“… only central bank buying of dollars – or, buying U.S. dollar assets, such as Treasury bonds, thus lending money to the Bush administration – has kept the dollar from destruction. In September, for example, while the rest of the world was dumping dollar assets, the Bank of Japan was spending $40 billion to support the dollar. “Without this Herculean effort by Japanese authorities,” Terry Reik of Clapboard Hill Partners continues, “foreign flows would have been an unthinkable negative $35.8 billion. Debt has reached $33 trillion, with annual interest of nearly $2 trillion – even at today’s Eisenhower rates – and it’s growing seven times as fast as the economy itself.”

It’s a bad idea to piss off your creditors when you desperately need to borrow more money from them. Of course, we’ve already begun the process of inflating our way out of it, but in the interest of avoiding total social cataclysm, it would be nice not to have to do it all at once.

I would never vote for Howard Dean but the man is far more of an idiot than George Bush – for whom I also won’t be voting – is at his grammar-bending worst. The man who thinks he knows everything about what he knows nothing is always a danger to himself and others.