Dangerous Dan

Not surprisingly, I won't be posting much this weekend. I'll write, though, if something catches my eye!

While I'm at it, Riding Sun is against another instance of the state patting the public on the head. The Brits are thinking about putting devices on motorcycles to limit their speed, with the intent that there will be fewer fatalities. Frankly, speed doesn't make a whole lot of difference. If you go flying off a bike, your chances at 30 mph aren't much better than they are at 60. Also, the most common motorcycle accident isn't even the fault of the biker. It's when a car-driving motorist misjudges the speed of the motorcycle and turns left in front of the bike (or turns right in front of the bike, I suppose, for those who drive on the wrong side of the road). This is especially true at night since the lone bike headlight as one reference point is insufficient for properly estimating speed. So perhaps a radar-enabled turn limiter for cars would be more prudent in reducing motorcycle accidents than would a speed limiter for the bikes.

The manner in which Britain continues to emasculate its citizenry is truly astonishing. It's not enough they ban almost all guns, that law-abiding innocents are prosecuted for defending themselves, and that the best advice they can give in the event of home-invasion is to adopt a metaphorical fetal position. Now a group of limey doctors wants to take away pointy kitchen knives. Oh, not all them mind you, just the longer ones. Why? Because ne'er-do-wells are using them to stab people and commit crimes. Now be on the lookout for liberal elitism; the condescension is impressive:

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault – but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.

In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like "cutting into a ripe melon".

I suppose if one wants to cut into a large ripe melon as one would a body, however, they'll be out of luck as paring knives will only cause superficial wounds to the fruit. Thus, the first step is taken in the eventual melon dominance over humanity. We can't let them win!

Seriously, though, this is absurd. A kitchen knife is just a kitchen utensil and I occasionally do find the longer pointy ones useful. I don't need an iron chef telling me I should be using a grapefruit knife instead of the carving variety. Much like other types of potential, but unintended weaponry, the answer is not banning them. The people now carrying the kitchen shivs as weapons are already acting illegally. Telling them the knives are now slightly more illegal than previously won't make much of a difference.

And who would you think they want to help? The children!

The use of knives is particularly worrying amongst adolescents, say the researchers, reporting that 24% of 16-year-olds have been shown to carry weapons, primarily knives.

Of course, they don't say how many of those weapons are knives and how many of the knives are culinary shanks.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

"The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime.

"We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

No, it wouldn't. Banning the sale of these knives would, at best, result in a decrease of violent crime involving long pointy kitchen knives, but not in violent crime in general. If long pointy kitchen knives are less available than before, the same criminals will merely use different weapons or fashion their own. Remember that carrying the knives is already illegal. The only thing this would wind up accomplishing is denying the law-abiding public access to certain knives while the criminals' criminal capacity remains the same. It's a good way to inconvenience everybody but the felons.

For the record, I personally carry around two knives. One is a Swiss Army Swiss Champ. It's the multi-purpose tool that has everything that can possibly be useful, and often is. It has two blades on it. I've had it for about 11 years now. The other one is a Benchmade Griptilian (model 551 plain). It's for general cutting utility and is much more effective and more accessible than the Swiss Champ blades. I've had it for about a year and a half. Thus far, I've yet to stick a long pointy kitchen knife down my pants and for personal safety's sake, I don't plan to do so.

Want more?
Visit Freedom's Trumpet, Rhymes with Right, and Head's Bunker who also has a related post here.

I just realized that the post about Iraq reporting is my official 1,000th post! Yes, the permalink says it's #1,029, but that includes test posts that were deleted or other posts begun and abandoned.

I started this blog in March 2002. When I made the leap from blogger to my own domain in September 2004, I had just 317 posts. So in the nine months I've been at dangerousdan.us, I've had over twice as many posts as I did in the 2.5 years I was at blogger. Interesting.

Fittingly, democracy is about to defeat an autocratic constitution in France. The French electorate, foolish enough to keep Chirac in power, have at least enough sense to defeat the EU constitution. Granted, it seems to be less because it's a horrible document taking power away from the citizenry and giving it to an ever-expanding bureaucracy of Vogonian proportions, than it because the proposed constitution will make the French less Frenchy. Like most good countrymen of the world, they're proud of their culture and, just for them, are also proud of their pre-20th century war history, their easy-living, their government protectionism, etc. One of the main precepts of the Non campaign is that the constitution may lead to less socialism than what France now has and open up French business to greater competition in a larger Euro market.

Whatever the reasons, it's good that this is happening. It's good for Europeans and it's good for America. The triumph of the non-vote will be short-lived, though. As I said a couple months ago, if the constitution is defeated in the French vote, then elites will either keep putting it up for referendum or they'll just bypass the hoi-polloi electorate, who the elites don't think know what's best for themselves anyway, and implement it on their own. They've already deemed the constitution to be a great good, the way of the future, and Europe's natural historical progression. Thus, they won't let something like a vote keep that from happening. And that seems to be exactly what's happening. After all, it's what they've done in the past:

Denmark rejected the Maastricht treaty in 1992. Ireland rejected the Nice treaty in 2001. In both cases the treaties were quickly resubmitted — with only minor modifications — until the right result was achieved.

And for the future:

A "no" vote would leave M Chirac seriously weakened. His rival Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP leader who aspires to become president in 2007, was blaming the Chirac Government's policies for fuelling the voter rebellion. M Chirac is expected to react to a French "non" by promising to listen to the people before making a second attempt at ratification.

He and other "yes" campaigners have said repeatedly during the campaign that there is no “Plan B” if the treaty is rejected and that there would not be a second referendum.

But one option being discussed in senior diplomatic circles is for candidates in the French presidential election in 2007 to promise to ratify the treaty in parliament rather than by referendum.

A third option being floated is that the constitution will be picked apart and its important bits will gradually be implemented by fiat:

The fallback plan is to abandon the constitution, but to introduce as many parts of it as possible without referendums.

Many Europhiles are worried this vote will undo the process of European integration and leave the constitution. Either they're foolish or they're moaning for effect. Similarly, those who are rejoicing because they think the EU and its constitution are doomed due to the vote obviously aren’t thinking in terms of Euro elites. Ultimately, this non-vote will have little impact on Brussels's growing control of the continent. This is but a speed-bump on an autobahn that ends in a brick wall.

Freelance journalist in Iraq Michael Yon has a very interesting post up about the process for reporting news in Iraq. The basic gist is that that media reports are interpretations of brief SIGACTS (significant action) briefs from the military. Watch the flow:

SECRET
TACREP: XXXX
Subject: Smalls Arms Engagement
Time/Date: 2120 L 24 May 05
Narrative: Alpha Company 1-24 INF reports small arms and RPG, vicinity…. Reports 3 friendly WIA (1 litter-urgent, 2 routine). 4 Enemy KIA…

When this SIGACT is translated by a PAO, this might come out: "3 US soldiers were wounded by small arms in Mosul, Iraq. The soldiers were assigned to Task Force Freedom." News agencies that call or request information will get some variation of this report.

Such reports flow from all over Iraq to a place in Baghdad called the CPIC (Combined Press Information Center). The CPIC is like the Uber-PAO for Iraq, serving all branches of the military, and other nations in the Coalition. The CPIC collects those reports and makes a release that might go like this:

"3 US soldiers were wounded in a small arms engagement in Mosul. 3 US soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were wounded by a car bomb in Baquba while conducting convoy operations in Diyala Province. 1 US soldier was slightly wounded by an IED while conducting combat operations in Baghdad. 2 US Marines were killed in a Humvee accident in Anbar Province. A Blackhawk helicopter made an emergency landing near Ramadi. No injuries were reported."

This will hit pages all over the world, but in a newsier voice:

"A US helicopter made an emergency landing near Ramadi under unknown circumstances. An insurgent website claiming affiliation to Al Qaeda in Iraq says they shot down the helicopter with a surface-to-air missile. A US military spokesman would not comment. Elsewhere, one US soldier and two Marines were killed and seven other service members were wounded in Iraq, along with at least 18 deaths from a suicide car-bomber near the Syrian border. This brings total Coalition deaths in Iraq to 1,800. In other news, photos of the former dictator of Iraq in his underwear have infuriated the Arab world and angered the Pentagon, which promised a full investigation…"

He also notes that the many small humanitarian acts of U.S. forces don't get reported because they don't get into the SIGACT briefs and therefore don't work their way down to the media's reporting. That and the media isn't much interested in them:

I write about them when I can, but there's an irony to all of this that is hard to escape. Most of the acts of kindness I witness are done from an instinctive altruism that almost always seeks anonymity. And there is that other problem with catching people doing good–the cynical media is quick to ascribe cheap motivations to soldiers who reveal their humanity through their decency. And does anyone really care about the soldiers who, after having arrested a suspected insurgent, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to find a home for the two little puppies he was keeping?

It's longish but a good read. He's got lots of other good stuff and is hereby blogrolled.

Here's a twist on the old picture time. I'll give you a picture with two captions and you guess which caption is the real one.

A Chinese man looks at a giant wooden chair used as an advertisement at a shop in Shanghai May 25, 2005. REUTERS/Aly Song
or
Jack, who hadn't been up the beanstalk in many years, was surprised to learn that the Giant's house had undergone a communist revolution. He quickly gave up any hopes of finding anything worth stealing. REUTERS/Aly Song
Answer

German monkeys turned fascist recently and starting attacking neighboring primates. The French breed known as the cheese-eating surrender monkey quickly capitulated. REUTERS/Alexei Vladykin
or
A monkey dressed in a costume representing Nazi Germany's military uniform performs during a show in the circus in the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia's Ural region, May 4, 2005. The show called 'Victory's Salute' is dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. REUTERS/Alexei Vladykin
Answer

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is congratulated by Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio after Koizumi beat Mexican President Vicente Fox for the Best Hair on a World Leader award. REUTERS/Junji Kurokawa/Pool
or
Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio (L) shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the prime minister's office in Tokyo, May 26, 2005. Sampaio is in Japan for an official visit. REUTERS/Junji Kurokawa/Pool
Answer

Buildings topple by explosives in Yunong Village in south China's Shenzhen on Sunday May 22, 2005. The demolition, dubbed 'China's No. 1 blast' by Hong Kong media, reportedly covered an area of 51,000 square meters (57,000 square feet) the largest ever in China (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Shubin)
or
In the aftermath of what has only been officially referred to as "a minor incident," the Chinese government announced that it would revise building codes such that papier mache would no longer be a valid building material. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Shubin)
Answer

A few days ago, I discussed the claims two posts on HuffPo made about a connection between thimerosal and autism. Fortunately, a third gentleman posted who makes several of the same arguments I did. And his credentials are much better.

Via Moonbattery comes this story about media outlets complaining about the limitations on them when it comes to showing pictures of dead American soldiers. Why? Because not having pictures reduces the impact of their reporting. Let's take an extended quote and come back to this.

”There can be horrible images, but war is horrible and we need to understand that," veteran war photographer Chris Hondros told the Times. "I think if we are going to start a war, we ought to be willing to show the consequences of that war.

Pim Van Hemmen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., agreed, telling the Times:

"Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn't give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead.

By censoring the photos of GIs as they lay dying, Van Hemmen said, "We in the news business are not doing a very good job of showing our readers what has really happened over there."

Steve Stroud, deputy director of photography at the Los Angeles Times, also thinks the public needs to see more photos of dead American soldiers.

"I feel we still aren't seeing the kind of pictures we need to see to tell the American people about this war and the costs of the war," he explained.

Michele McNally, New York Times director of photography, concurred, observing: "War kills men, women and children, and we would be remiss if we couldn't in some way show that this is what happens in war. … It's our responsibility to bear witness to these events."

There are two motivations in effect here and both are poor. The first is commercial. Let's not kid ourselves, the MSM is an enterprise composed of competing entities and bad news is good news. Second, much of the media don't like the war and want to damage it in any way they can. When the greed of the first is combined with the dislike of the second, you get the MSM wanting to publish photos of dead GIs. I have little doubt that the publishing of such pictures would wind up working against the media. I imagine the public backlash would be such that you'd only see the pictures in the most self-righteous of news outlets that think their publication is some kind of moral duty.

Ideally, of course, such pictures should incite anger at the soldiers' killers and a commitment to crush the enemy. If this were universally the case, though, it's doubtful the reporters would be pleading to publish them. They want to play on people's feelings of despair and fear. They certainly don't want to make the American public anti-enemy because that, in all their confidence in the public, could turn into anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias. Recall that this was the MSM reasoning for not showing graphic images of people jumping from the twin towers on 9/11 or showing the destruction of the day since then.

So if they want to show pictures of dead American soldiers that will demoralize the public, let them also show pictures and video footage that will show Americans what kinds of bastards those soldiers were fighting. Show the videos of terrorists beheading hostages. Show the body parts of Iraqi civilians who were purposely targeted and blown up by car bombs. Show the mass graves of women and children who were executed by Saddam and his lackies. Show video of civilians who made suicide runs at checkpoints for the express purpose of being killed by U.S. soldiers because the insurgents said they'd kill his family if he didn't and they wanted the bad PR his death at American hands would get. Speak of the accounts of terrorists trying to use the mentally handicapped to carry out suicide bombings. These are evil people we're talking about. Why doesn't the MSM desire to talk about and display these deeds?

It’s interesting, actually. One of the facts about violent crimes committed by blacks is that the vast majority of the victims of those crimes are also black. Black-on-black crime is far, far greater than black-on-white crime or white-on-black crime. Whenever police forces act harshly against, say, black gangs, there’s always an uproar about police brutality and the media happily plays along with it. They neglect to mention that acting against the gangs is to benefit of the larger black community. That is, instead of wailing that the police are acting poorly towards minorities, they might consider that not acting forcefully against criminals would be the greater sin towards them

In the same way, the MSM is concentrating on the acts of U.S. soldiers against Iraqi insurgents, even though the Arab-on-Arab terrorism is so great and the destruction of the insurgents would be to the benefit of the Iraqi community. Why be so willing to side with the criminals? Why be so narrow-minded as to think that the criminals are somehow representative of the community?

This link was on The Corner. It's a Lucas County, Ohio, picture of a sexual offender. This dude is really disturbing looking. In fact, he's so freaky looking that I don't even want it showing on this blog, so you'll have to click the link.

I missed this post from Professor Bainbridge about bloggers making their own merchandise. Just a reminder that this blog has its own line of t-shirts, mugs, and such here. I personally ordered a shirt, mug, coaster, and hat and they all look fantastic. Get yours today!

Lest you think ill of me, this was a pet project of mine that I did for fun and I don't expect to make money off of it. Thus far, I've only sold those four items, a mug to my father-in-law, and some other person I don't know bought a hat, although it only had the dangerous logo and not the URL. I don't look at my blog as a money-making venture. I only get so much traffic and don't want to clutter up the layout with a bunch of ads – something I occasionally come across with some blogs. I don't mind ads on blogs, but if you have Google ads, Amazon ads, blog ads, random ads, a tip jar, and some other ads, and you're not one of the higher being blogs, then you might be pushing it a bit. If you're a busy blog, though, with lots of traffic, then the advertising certainly helps to defray the hosting costs. Or even if you're just hosted through blogger or just want to make some extra easy cash and you get a lot of traffic, then ads are fine. If I was getting a ton of visits everyday, you better believe I'd have a few ads up.

I'm shocked, shocked!, that a deal went down last night for avoiding the nuclear option and nobody in the blogosphere has covered it. Eh, what's that? I should hit the refresh button?

Everybody is all a twitter about this deal and the vast majority of the conservative folks are tearing their vestments, moaning tales of woe, and decrying the spinelessness of the Senate Republicans (Professor Bainbridge has a nice rundown of such sites). I'm not one of these people. I think the deal was a fine idea and was a political win for both sides, but was actually a greater loss for the Democrats. What seems to have gotten lost in much of the teeth-gnashing is that the Repubs got the greenlight for putting up three jurists to a vote that had been persistently blockaded by the Dems. That's a definite win for the Repubs and a loss for the Dems as these are the same judges that they had spent gallons of ink and hours of soundbites calling extremist and out of the mainstream. The Dems gave in on these three.

Now it's too true that they've made no filibuster commitments on the other two judges or on any future judges. It's also true that because of this, the Repubs have likely only postponed an eventual showdown. I just don't see this as a sign of weakness on Frist's part. He got three judges in for a vote and if and when the time comes to threaten the nuclear option on future filibustering, he can certainly still do that. That bullet is still in his pocket and he didn't have to give up anything up for those three judges (you may disagree on this last point, but read on).

Others have complained that the Dems got the upper hand on the Repubs because of the clause that says

Nominees should only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances, and each signatory must use his or her own discretion and judgment in determining whether such circumstances exist.

The worry is that this is sufficiently vague so that the Dems can call anything extraordinary circumstances. And they're right, it is vague enough for that. But they also bemoan the following clause in that they think the Repubs have bound themselves to avoid rule changes:

In light of the spirit and continuing commitments made in this agreement, we commit to oppose the rule changes [that would lower the threshold for cloture].

We're talking politics people. This isn't a lease or a legal contract. This agreement will not be judged in a court of law, it will stand before the court of public opinion and it is to that court that the two sides will make their cases in the event of disagreement or a grievance of one party against the other.

The second clause has just as much wiggle room as the first one does; it’s as vague as the first. It can reasonably be interpreted that if the Dems violate the spirit or continuing commitments of the agreement, then the Repubs can execute a rule change. What would violate that? Well, filibustering judges for anything other than extraordinary circumstances, of course! While the Dems have the latitude to call just about any circumstances for judicial filibustering extraordinary, the Repubs can just as easily turn around and claim there's nothing extraordinary at all about them, that the Dems are therefore in violation of the agreement, and that they, the Repubs, can accordingly call up the nuclear option.

The only situation in which this gambit won't work is a Supreme Court nominee, which would be extraordinary by anybody's definition. I seriously doubt, though, that the Dems are going to risk filibustering in this scenario. The Supreme Court nominee gets far too much national attention and the Dems risk a great deal of blowback if they filibuster a reasonable nominee on the grounds that he or she is an extremist. On such a high-profile target, the public will grow impatient with parliamentary limbo tactics, especially if the pick is a popular one. I think the only reason the Dems have been successful with their filibustering so far is that the vast majority of the public is much tuned into the kerfuffle over the appeals court nominees. I imagine they’ll pay more attention when the Supreme Court is involved.

This agreement is all about political positioning and both sides left themselves so much semantic room to maneuver that they haven’t much changed the state of affairs from what it was previously, except that three judges will now get a floor vote. Expect the fun in the future to hinge on that ‘extraordinary circumstances’ bit. The Dems will try to convince the public that the circumstances are extraordinary and the Repubs will try to convince John Q. that they’re not. Whoever is more convincing will carry the day.

Update:
Decision '08 has a roundup of other blogs that also don't think the compromise was a disaster. It's being called the Coalition of the Chillin'.

LGF reports on this resolution that's being proposed by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). The preamble is that religions should be treated with respect, the Koran is an important holy book of Islam, and so desecrating the Koran is showing disrespect toward a religion and is therefore wrong. And so:

Whereas the infringement of an individual’s right to freedom of religion violates the Constitution and laws of the United States: Now, therefore, be it

1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) condemns bigotry, acts of violence, and intolerance against any religious group, including our friends, neighbors, and citizens of the Islamic faith;

(2) declares that the civil rights and civil liberties of all individuals, including those of the Islamic faith, should be protected;

(3) recognizes that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as any other holy book of any religion, should be treated with dignity and respect; and

(4) calls upon local, State, and Federal authorities to work to prevent bias-motivated crimes and acts against all individuals, including those of the Islamic faith.

This is nonsense on stilts. One of the comments on Conyers's blog is most indicative of the mindset that thinks this sort of resolution is a swell idea:

I do not consider the resolution short-sighted in any way. The resolution condemns prejudice and endorses tolerance, precisely what is needed right now. Islam is singled out because it is currently one of the most visible targets.

Condemning prejudice is fine and endorsing tolerance is fine, but I certainly don't want the government doing either. Reason being that the government, of all social entities, has the power of forced coercion. There's a fine line between merely condemning or endorsing and making laws that enforce either or both. What was once condemned becomes banned and what was once endorsed becomes legally obligatory. Doing so comes at the expense of First Amendment liberties. Flushing a Koran down a toilet is abhorrent and should be condemned, but I damn sure have a right to put so many holy books down the john that the plumber who gets called out will be a Religion scholar by the time he's done unclogging the toilet.

This resolution also illustrates a profound ignorance of the First Amendment, or at least a fundamental error. Let's go back to the text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let's compare this with that last 'whereas' clause:

Whereas the infringement of an individual’s right to freedom of religion violates the Constitution and laws of the United States:

What violates the Constitution is not a private citizen infringing on another's religion, it's the government infringing on it. The Bill of Rights, contrary to popular belief, didn't list out a bunch of positive freedoms people have. Rather, it listed the citizenry's negative freedoms in that it spelled out in what spheres the government was not allowed to interfere. The basis for these were positive rights but were written as negative rights so as to protect the populace from foolish resolutions and other government actions. The Founding Fathers wisely realized that the greatest threat to liberty was the government itself and that the government could only protect freedoms if it were expressly prevented from restricting them. My freedom of religion and freedom of speech is supposed to be protected from the gummint, not other private citizens and entities.

Also, strictly speaking, if I were to flush a Koran, I don't see how that's infringing on anybody's freedom of religion. A Muslim is still to practice his faith. I haven't restricted that right in any way. The only way I could infringe on it is if I were to flush his Koran or beat him and tell him to convert, or imprison him until he converts. There, though, the worry isn't my infringement on his religion, but the fact that I've used forceful coercion to do so. This is how freedoms are protected in inter-citizen interactions. Rarely can a freedom be truly infringed on without doing something else blatantly illegal, unjust, or coercive. This is also why singling out any one religion or group for special protection is unnecessary. Anti-bias laws or hate crime laws merely pile on a punishment for something that is already covered by existing law. It throws thought crime onto the original crime and that should be worrisome to anybody.

One last note… can you imagine the uproar from the left had a conservative issued a resolution calling for the protection of Christian symbols from desecration?

(submitted to Wizbang's Carnival of Trackbacks)

I went out and saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith this morning and I like it. It's easily the best of the prequels. Here are a few general observations:

CNN.com's front page headline for this story was, "Syria halts cooperation in war on terror." Given Syria's terrorist predilictions, that sounds like a good thing. It's about time they stopped cooperating in terror! Turns out that Syria is no longer cooperating with America in fighting terrorism.

Hmmm… that sounds a little like having Estelle Getty on your football team and having her sit out the rest of a game. No big loss there.

Maybe that's not quite the right analogy since Syria's role was more than mere ineffectiveness but was active hinderance. Perhaps it would be more like having Iran and Cuba on the UN Human Rights Committee. But that's just crazy talk.