Vox Popoli

Another court miraculously sees reason:

Writing for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Richard Suhrheinrich said the ACLU’s “repeated reference ‘to the separation of church and state’ … has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state. The ACLU… does not embody the reasonable person.”

It never ceases to amaze me that “Congress shall make no law….” has been successfully transmuted into “Nothing funded by any government authority, state, federal or local, shall make any reference to anything even remotely Christian” in the eyes of the ignorant. It’s nice to see a court finally begin to point out that the ACLU king is as naked as a porn star without her belly ring.

Orac again demonstrates that he doesn’t know very much:

Vox seemed to be making excuses for the Nazis….Even Orac, who normally cared little for the affairs of humans and was interested in finding the Hitler Zombie more as an intellectual exercise to understand how historical analogies could be twisted beyond recognition and how a sense of proportion could be utterly lost than because of the horror that it caused, couldn’t help but be repulsed by such “reasoning” that equated a struggle to attain equal rights with the activities of a bloodthirsty tyrant and the genocidal regime that he spawned. Vox seemed to be making excuses for the Nazis on the basis that they sincerely believed the Jews were undermining Germany and that most of the Jews the Nazis murdered were adults who apparently in his mind could have defended themselves. (Had he never heard of the bravely suicidal Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 and what the result was?) But that wasn’t all…. He definitely seems to admire the Nazis.

Yes, most ASL players and Leon Uris readers are completely unfamiliar with the Warsaw Ghetto. It’s also to amusing to note Orac’s inability to apply logic, as he cites the bravely suicidal Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto while rejecting my similar characterization of National Socialist Germany (population 80 million) taking on the United Kingdom (48 million), France (41 million), Poland (35 million), the Soviet Union (195 million) and the United States (130 million). If he’s arguing that the Germans had a better chance of defeating the Allies than the Warsaw Jews had of defeating the SS, he knows nothing about military history. Indeed, the numerical German advantage over European Jewry (6.6x) is not dissimilar to the numerical enjoyed by Germany’s enemies (5.6x). Call it nuts, call it bravely suicidal, but either way, it was never going to work even if the National Socialists tried it one bite at a time.

Furthermore, Orac’s citation of the 1943 uprising supports my earlier point. The Endlosung began in 1941. Jews didn’t begin trying to defend themselves for 18 months, at which point it was unfortunately much too late.

Orac’s use of weasel words indicates that he knows perfectly well that as a libertarian extremist, I am far less sympathetic to historical National Socialist policies than he is. I don’t support public schools, social security, national parks, central state authority or laws taking race into account, whereas most liberals and Democrats, like their National Socialist intellectual kindred, do. This is just a particularly feeble attempt to tar an ideological opponent with the dread “Nazi” label.

It’s simply a tremendously silly point. I admire Lenin’s ability to completely turn Marx’s explanation of communist inevitability on its head and somehow get away with it, but I’m not a Leninist. I admire the Soviet T-34 tank and the resilience of the Red Army, but I’m not a Soviet apologist. I have neither patience nor respect for those who demand a Two-Minute Hate of others. Just as one can find evil in the best of things, one can find a silver lining even in the darkest, most evil cloud.

So, I stand by my words. To call a feminist a feminazi is an insult to the German National Socialist Worker’s Party. It’s a very low bar, true, but at least murdering children was not a definitive aspect of their self-identity.

UPDATE: Orac is apparently upset that I didn’t link to him when I quoted a small part of his long and meandering post. Okay, here’s some links. Happy now? FYI: if what I’m quoting is only a small part of someone’s post, I’m not going to bother making anyone else wade through irrelevant material to find that which is related to mine.

An intriguing Illinois decision:

Docket No. 98932-Agenda 7-September 2005.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appellant, v. VALDY OLENDER et al., Appellees.
Opinion filed December 15, 2005.

CHIEF JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the court:

At issue in this case is whether the General Assembly violated the single subject clause of the Illinois Constitution of 1970 (Ill. Const. 1970, art. IV, §8(d)) when it enacted Public Act 88-669 (Pub. Act 88-669, eff. November 29, 1994). The legislation in Public Act 88-669, entitled “An Act in relation to government regulation,” amended, among other statutes, section 1301 of the Illinois Income Tax Act (35 ILCS 5/1301 (West 1994)), to state that a first violation of that section is a Class 4 felony and each subsequent violation is a Class 3 felony. The defendants, Valdy and Malgorzata Olender, had been charged under the amended version of section 1301. Defendants moved to dismiss the indictments against them on the ground that section 1301 had been unconstitutionally amended by Public Act 88-669 in violation of the single subject clause. The circuit court of Cook County granted defendants’ motions to dismiss. The State appealed directly to this court pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 302(a) (134 Ill. 2d R. 302(a)). For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the circuit court and hold that Public Act 88-669 violates the single subject clause.

Well, that’s quite interesting. Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.S. Supreme Court had the same regard for the U.S. Constitution that the Illinois court demonstrated for the Illinois state constitution.

In reading the decision, it was interesting to note that the state made the usual attempt to argue that the defendants had no standing rather than attempt to defend its illegal actions.

CG is hoping to get a George W. Bush vibrator for Georgemas:

It’s hard to believe a member of MENSA would hold the warped views you espouse. But you got one thing right….don’t shoot the messenger just because you don’t like the message. That seems to be what you left-wing Bush-hating liberals want to do to President Bush. YOU are the anti-American one and should be fired from your job, and have your tongue cut out for lying.

Yes, I’m a left-wing liberal… anyone who doesn’t have a poster of Dear Leader on their bedroom wall is a left-wing liberal, and they deserve to be physically mutilated because of their insufficient love for the bestest and handsomest man that ever defended the country from evil.

DG’s nightmare came true:

Thank you for the article “The anti-American president.” After I heard the news about Bush’s authorization of the NSA eavesdropping on domestic communication my blood began to boil. I was not one of those Republicans who “twice voted enthusiastically for George Bush.” However, I did vote for him with a shaking hand and with a bitter taste in my mouth. I was motivated by the normal ”lesser of two evils” philosophy.

Now I fear I may be culpable for helping this man undermine our constitutional rights more quickly than at any time in American history. Worse still I am sickened by how silent conservatives are on this issue today. Contrary to a conservative outcry, instead I hear apologists like Limbaugh trying to defend the Bush administration and demonize the democrats. Now there are plenty of reasons to demonize democrats but this boldface spinning by conservatives has gotten me feeling truly sick.

RF demonstrates his Three Monkey credentials:

Our President is not perfect and does have faults, but he is a whole lot better than ANY left-wing NAZI DEMOCRAT. You are no different or better than the rest of the Democratic Party who want to sell out, pack up and surrender to Islamic radicals. I can tell by your article that you are not a Christian and you would like nothing better than the failure of our President.

Well, it’s true, I have committed the obvious blasphemy of failing to bow my head before the lawd and saveyah, Sweet White Gee-orge, who warn’t nevah a yaller dawg. Meanwhile, DG regrets his past actions:

I voted for Bush II twice, now I wish I could take these votes back. I have said for a long time he has violated his office oath, lied & is tearing our country down. You hit the nail on the head with your viewpoint.

It will be interesting to see if RF manages to remember who established these ugly new government powers when the Lizard Queen is wielding them three years from now.

GU writes:

You are truly ignorant and immature. Go read your Bible…preferably a Companion Bible with a Strongs Exhaustive Concordance. You have much to learn about what a Christian is and what GOD wants His children to do, have done, and fail to do.

I suppose he’s right, my column today was simply reprehensible, considering how we will be celebrating George Bush’s birth later this week. RM adds, in like vein:

You’ve fallen into the trap like so many others. Making temporary sacrifices of liberty to preserve that same liberty for the long term only makes common sense. No one would have even noticed these slight losses of liberty if not for the fools leaking highly secret information to the communist press, much to the approval of our enemies. So few people are affected, it is of no business of the masses to know what our government is doing to protect us from an unscrupulous enemy for these losses are minimal and only temporary. I would much rather have a president like Bush who is doing these things to save our nation as a whole instead of Clinton who used these methods to spy on political opponents and to coerce so called friends and allies to take the heat to save his political ass. You’ve lost your mind and allowed the demonic forces to alter your perception as have too many weak souls in the world today.

It’s amazing how people are still falling for the “temporary” and “slight” loss of liberty argument. It’s been around since the second consulship of Marius, truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

George Bush speaks:

Since the removal of Saddam, this war – like other wars in our history – has been difficult. The mission of American troops in urban raids and desert patrols – fighting Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists – has brought danger and suffering and loss. This loss has caused sorrow for our whole Nation – and it has led some to ask if we are creating more problems than we are solving.

The war is undeclared – unlike most other wars in our history – but whatever. The question is fair.

That is an important question, and the answer depends on your view of the war on terror. If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone.

Nice little bait and switch there. The statement is true, but fails to answer the question. The question was not if George Bush believed that terrorists would become peaceful if America stopped provoking them, but if we are creating more problems than we are solving, which is a paraphrase of Rumsfeld’s proposed metric of success.

This is not the threat I see. I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims – a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed. Terrorist operatives conduct their campaign of murder with a set of declared and specific goals – to de-moralize free nations … to drive us out of the Middle East … to spread an empire of fear across that region … and to wage a perpetual war against America and our friends. These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield – and they seek to attack us wherever they can. This has attracted al Qaida to Iraq, where they are attempting to frighten and intimidate America into a policy of retreat.

Retreat from what? Having our troops stationed in every corner of the globe in a misguided, quasi-imperial Pax Americana? We don’t belong in the Middle East and the Islamic empire has stretched across the Middle East since the 700s. I further note that we did retreat from Saudi Arabia post-9/11, that there’d be no need to retreat from Iraq if George hadn’t ordered 160,000 troops there in the first place, and that George still hasn’t answered the question he raised.

The terrorists do not merely object to American actions in Iraq and elsewhere – they object to our deepest values and our way of life. And if we were not fighting them in Iraq … in Afghanistan … in Southeast Asia … and in other places, the terrorists would not be peaceful citizens – they would be on the offense, and headed our way.

This is a weird argument which assumes that because America is attacking Iraqis, non-Iraqis can’t attack America. It makes no sense. Sure, foreign terrorists can go to Iraq and Afghanistan if they want to attack American troops, but they remain just as free to walk across the Mexican border if they want.

September 11th, 2001 required us to take every emerging threat to our country seriously, and it shattered the illusion that terrorists attack us only after we provoke them. On that day, we were not in Iraq … we were not in Afghanistan … but the terrorists attacked us anyway – and killed nearly 3,000 men, women, and children in our own country. My conviction comes down to this: We do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them. And we will defeat the terrorists by capturing and killing them abroad … removing their safe havens … and strengthening new allies like Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight we share.

This is spin worthy of a Clinton. The facts are that we were in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabians attacked America because, according to the Saudis supposedly responsible, they didn’t want American troops in Saudi Arabia. This is just a wildly dishonest paragraph, as even Rumsfeld has freely admitted that we do create terrorists by fighting them, the important question – which George Bush avoids – is whether we create them faster than we kill them.

What’s sickening is the way that this is cited as being “terrific and important” and “a great address” by Three Monkeys like NRO editor Katharine Lopez.

Huckleberry watches the cows jump up and down:

All the women working out with us in the free weight area are incredibly fit and slender, yet when the step classes get out, we watch nothing short of a brigade of bovines meandering from the classroom through to the exit, most having taken the classes for years with no visable effect.

It never ceases to amaze me how many clueless women will say that they don’t want to lift weights because they don’t want to get big and muscular, when with one or two seriously hard-core exceptions, the women in the free weight room have bodies that resemble fitness models and swimsuit models, not the Governator in his prime.

For the most part, women can’t get big and muscular without going on steroids or having abnormally high testosterone levels. Spacebunny has been lifting hard and heavy for ten years, but even benching her own weight is an iffy proposition. She has lovely definition, but absolutely no bulk whatsoever.

I only know two women who can bench 135, one is a champion powerlifter and the other is the most extreme gym rat I have ever met. Both of them are slim, very attractive women, although the ripped contours of their arms and legs betrays their unusual muscular development.

A simple glance at one of the women’s fitness magazines should be enough to dispel this common myth. The fitness babes always spend far more time in the weight room than they do doing cardio.

Kathleen forgets that Science regards the What, not the Why:

“If the human race ever exterminates itself through war, it will be because of ideas in scientific textbooks, not religious or ideological texts.”

Right. I can see it now. Nations attacking each other in the crusade for String Theory … martyrs sacrificing themselves in the holy name of the Genome Project.

The ideas to which I was referring refer to the concept of the atom and its splitting, of biochemistry, biogenetics and their deadlier potential applications. The religions of which Harris and Dawkins complain have been around for millenia; the danger of self-extinction which frightens them is entirely the result of science.

As the history of warfare and secular democide demonstrates quite clearly, even a complete absence of all religion would not appreciably reduce this risk.

I knew my chances were somewhat slim, based on the matchups. Only a week after beating up the first-place team, nearly all my starters were on the road and facing tough defenses. I did what I could using up the last of my pickups to grab Ryan Moats and start him instead of Willie Parker, Lamont Jordan or Michael Bennet. He scored, Steve Smith came through again and it proved to be wise to sit Bledsoe, Rothlisberger, (and to dump Brad Johnson) in favor of picking up and starting David Garrard, but all that wasn’t close to being enough.

I knew the WB’s Seahawks-heavy team had an easy matchup, but they’d had an equally easy matchup the week before and only scored 24 points. So there was hope. But then Cooley, of all people, went off, the Seahawks blew up, and even if Marvin Harrison hadn’t dropped three potential TD passes, I wouldn’t have gotten within ten. It’s 48-22 right now, so unless the Atlanta defense scores nine touchdowns, I am done.

It was an unexpectedly good season and finishing 11-4 is no shame. But in the end, it’s just another year without a ring.

MG sees and hears no evil

Beyond the certain measures of the Patriot Act, how has the president violated his oath?

So the president is spying on Americans. Big deal. What is your alternative? I know that this war is real. I wonder if you do. Granted, I am curious as to why the president has not secured the borders, but I know how the enemy works, and I know what they are capable of. I wonder if you do. So, how is the government, and in particular, the President of the United States, is supposed to defend this nation and the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic? Can’t he direct intelligence assets to spy on Americans? Why not? If what these agencies are doing is not going to be used for prosecution, but instead going to be used for counterespionage and counterterrorism, why not?

George Bush has violated his oath by supporting the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, by signing the campaign finance reform bill and by taking no steps to stop the immigration invasion.

My alternative to spying illegally on Americans? Pretty simple. Don’t spy. One does not defend Americans by destroying America. It is laughable to assert that a government which has knowingly allowed an actual invasion of millions of immigrants should be permitted any leeway when it suddenly claims that it needs to violate the rights of American citizens to deal with a problem it caused.

This reasoning is ludicrous. One might as easily argue: “So the president is killing Jews, big deal, I know this war is real.” No amount of domestic spying is going to prevent the hundreds or thousands of potential terrorists the government has allowed to enter the country from doing whatever they decide to do when they decide to act; one need merely read the reports from Israel or Iraq to ascertain that.

The reason that George Bush wants the government to be able to spy on Americans is to expand central government control over the population. Why? Because that is the nature of central government, to expand whenever and whereever possible. These oft-stated concerns about terrorism are mere window dressing, meant to offer cover for government agencies and officials in the event of another attack so they can claim that they were doing everything possible to prevent it and so should not be held responsible for failing to do so.

BT offers a theory:

I am married to a man that has no respect for women other than his own mother. I have come to believe that this is very common. It seems that men 30 and under have an extreme contempt for women. If a woman is more sucessful than them then they are jealous, and if a woman is less sucessful it is to be hung over her head. I am in no way a feminist, actually I was raised in a southern home in which only my father worked, but I am confronted with examples of what creates feminists everyday. While I believe that feminist = male sexist, I also believe that feminist are women with the extreme competitive nature of men. I do not believe respect is the issue I believe the problem lies in the competiveness of men. If you ask a so called sexist man why he has contempt towards women he will imediately list why he believes he is better than the women he is confronted with on a daily basis, and vice versa for feminist. So, maybe a better article would be “The Competitive Nature Between Men and Women, and Why it Exsists.”

BT makes an interesting point and makes an interesting observation here. And in fact, the two are most likely connected. It’s interesting how women often assert that feminists are created – presumably by oppressive or patriarchal male behavior – and yet even those observing that it is the younger men who are far more contemptuous of women than their “sexist” forefathers fail to note how this contempt has been created.

The young man’s attitude towards most women can be boiled down to this: “you’re equal to me, but you suck.” Unlike older men, who were taught to regard women as the weaker sex, young men have been indoctrinated to believe that women are the same as they are. So, a woman who is weaker, more emotional, less sexually driven, less ambitious or otherwise less capable in some significant way – at least one of which applies to almost almost all women – is treated the way an inferior man is treated, with open contempt.

One of the many ironies of feminism is how it has replaced the patriarchal male who believes that women deserve to be treated better because they are the weaker sex with the equalitarian male who believes that women deserve to be treated worse because they are weak individuals.