Call me crazy

but am I the only one who feels sorry for Eliot Spitzer's call girl, Ashley Alexandra Dupre?


Before you start cracking all the jokes about her, I do not know Ms. Dupre and I do not know anything about her situation, except what I've read in the media, which may not be completely accurate. Based on what I've read, she doesn't exactly seem like my type. (Now Haylie Ecker? Claire Forlani? Emmanuelle Vaugier? That's another matter ...)

I'm certainly no expert but I've known a few women who were at one time in the, uh, "adult entertainment" business. Based on what they've told me and what I've seen myself, the women in this business generally fall into three categories -- the ones who just plain love sex, the ones who do it just to make ends meet until something better comes along (the majority) and the ones who think they have nothing else to offer the world.

Those last ones are the ones I have dealt with most. A few have been close to me personally. They have had a combination of stunning good looks and cripplingly low self-esteem. That can be a tragic, devastating combination for a woman -- making them prey for all too many men who want only one thing. She is all to eager to give it, and as the pattern repeats itself over time she comes to believe she has nothing else of value, until she is practically flinging herself at any male who will have her. Except the nice guys are turned off by this behavior, leaving only the predators to feast on the unfortunate woman, taking everything of value from her and crushing her spirit.

Again, I do not know Ms. Dupre, but based on what I've read and seen, I suspect she fits in this category.

The news accounts I read of Dupre's life after the Spitzer revelations suggest that her life went off track during her teen years. Not uncommon at all, but there is off track and there is off track. Many women in this "gorgeous, low self-esteem category" have been the victims of, to put it delicately, "criminal acts," often during their teen years, that have helped create or maintain this negative impression they have of themselves.

The pictures I have seen of Ms. Dupre show someone who is not confident. They also often show her drunk and/or revealing a little too much (not that I don't like revealing; revealing is good ... to a point, but beyond that point the Law of Diminishing Returns sets in and you've simply revealed too much). This evidence fits the pattern I have observed in others.

Ms. Dupre is having her 15 minutes of fame right now -- "enjoying" might not be the best word for someone in (what I suspect is) her situation. I hope she benefits from it. I hope she milks it for all it's worth, makes plenty of money off of it and, instead of letting it slip through her fingers like so many in (what I suspect is) her position do, uses it to pull her life together.

I hope the best for her in all of this.

I really do.

Don't insult our intelligence

So I just watched my CSI: Horatio ... er, Miami DVD with the episode "Money for Nothing." A bank's armored truck is hijacked in an area near downtown Miami.

Well, supposedly anyway, because in the background I see two buildings that look suspiciously like Aon Center on one side of the street and the Library Tower on the other. In fact, it looks like South Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Look, I can understand shooting your TV shows and movies in Los Angeles, but don't be trying to pass off obvious LA landmarks as something else. Los Angeles is a big place. You can find places to shoot your production there that don't have the Library Tower in it. You don't need to play this game. It's insulting to those of us who notice details.

And it is insulting to Los Angeles itself. I mean, Los Angeles has definite issues, no doubt, but it has exponentially more class than any place in SEC country.

I love my Cleveland Cavaliers

and I love all of their players -- King James, Z, Daniel Gibson, Anderson Varejao, Delonte West, etc. Of all Danny Ferry's acquisitions at the trade deadline, I thought Delonte West was the best, and I think he helped prove that with his clutch three to win the game on Sunday.

But after watching his post-game interview on Sunday, am I the only one who feels dumber for having done so? Like, somehow, listening to Delonte West talk has sucked brain cells out of me and reduced my IQ? Am I the only one feeling this way?

And is it any coincidence that Jeremiah Wright's worst statements came at the National Press Club on Monday, the day after the Delonte West interview? Is anybody researching this?

Not the end of the Republic, but ...

Instapundit points to this post by Jerry Pournelle:

[T]he Democrats seem to be drifting toward the concept of prosecution of former office holders by criminalizing policy differences. That's a certain formula for civil war; perhaps not immediate, but inevitable. The absolute minimum requirement for democratic government is that the loser be willing to lose the election: that losing an election is not the loss of everything that matters. As soon as that assurance is gone, playing by the rules makes no sense at all. (Pinochet learned that lesson. Fortunately for Chile, he was old and was allowed to die in peace; the inevitable -- liberals can always find a good reason not to keep their word -- persecutions after he turned over power on the assurance that he would be allowed to retire in peace were not so severe that his adherents didn't take to their weapons.)

We live in interesting times. Be afraid.

It makes for very interesting times when McCain is the best hope we have of preserving something like a republic rather than a socialist state.

Prof. Reynolds notes this comment from a reader:

The best example of what happens when you criminalize political opposition is the Roman Civil War.

Gauis Julius Caesar was a republican to the core. He believed in the Roman Republic, and its unwritten constitution. When his political opponents, the Optimates, made it clear that they were going to prosecute him and either exile or execute him, the moment Caesar set down his military command they made war inevitable. Especially since it was clear that they were not interested in following the law, except at their convenience.

Caesar was not given a choice between going to war and destroying the republic or preserving it by going quietly to his doom. He could see that the republic was doomed no matter what his choice was. He could either start a civil war or let Rome slide into a tyranny run by the Optimates. Given that choice, let the dice fly and hope you can put the pieces back together after you win. At least, you can die trying.

The Democrats remind me of the Optimates in many ways. William Clinton seems like a 21st century version of Pompey Magnus. That Bush has not played Caesar is a tribute to two things: George W.'s fundamental decency, and the fact that the United States is yet not in as bad a shape politically as the late Roman Republic.

Prof. Reynolds himself notes, "The ability of Presidents to pardon themselves, and others in their administrations, before leaving office is more evidence of the Framers' wisdom. They were not unaware of classical politics."

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of most people today, including those in positions of power.

The obvious cause for this comparison is the repeated threats by the Dems to prosecute or impeach George W. Bush for his activities as POTUS, particulary his handling of the Iraq Qar and the lead up to it. The analogy is flawed, however. For one thing, Julius Caesar was the epitome of coolness, while Bush is not. Ceasar's political cunning was coupled with military talent and, when necessary, utter ruthlessness. Bush has shown none of these abilities. Compare Caesar's treatment of Vercingetorix with Bush's handling of Moqtada al Sadr.

For another thing, Caesar's activities as consul that might at best be termed legally dubious were a major factor in giving Gneaus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey) the ability to turn the Senate against him. Bush has not committed any activities as POTUS and is not alleged to have comitted any activities that even approach Caesar's. Finally, what spurred the Roman Civil War was the decree of the Senate at the behest of the consul Pompey for Caesar to rteturn and give up his army with noc hance at the consulship - Caesar was a proconsul, under the Senate and the single consul (unusual for republican Rome) Pompey. Bush is in power right now.

All that said, the point Pournelle et al make about criminialization of policy differences is a valid one. And I think it sets a bad precedent, but it depends on one's definition of "policy differences." Beign held legally accountable for bad faith acts as POTUS would not be a bad thing, such as a willful refusal to carry out POTUS' legal duty (not to mention practical and moral duty) to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, or even acting in contravention of that duty.

It would be very hard to find someone whose activities as POTUS fit that definition. As much as I disagreed with Bill Clinton, he would most ceretainly not fit the criteria. Nevertheless, I can think of one who might:

Jimmy Carter.

BTW -- Pournelle had a ship named after him in the coolest sci fi TV series of all time, Babylon 5. How cool is that?

(crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

Question for Thabo Mbeki and the UN

how are those "negotiations" with Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe working out for ya?

Who is Responsible for America's Swollen Prison Population?

Um, the criminals? Not according to this guy. It's almost as if he thinks putting a person in prison is a political decision as opposed to a response to a crime that person has committed.

I for one do not consider America's large prison population a problem in itself, but indicative of a problem in that we have so many people committing crimes. I would argue that much of the prison population consists of perpetrators of "victimless" crimes -- drug possession, prostitution, gambling. Incarceration of these individuals generally serves no one and keeps on the street people who do commit crimes with actual victims -- murder, rape, burglary, car theft, etc. And police focus on these victimless crimes, while easier for them, can have very bad consequences for little or no benefit.

That is as much as I will grant, however. It is the purpose of government to protect its citizens in their life, liberty and property from the predations of others, both foreign and domestic, so that civilization may flourish. Prisons are necessary for government to carry out its mandate. People who threaten that life, liberty and property must be removed from society. It would seem that may of our law schools have made a conscious decision to forget that.

The comments in response to his post generally seem to be far more sensible than the piece itself.

So now we have an answer

to a question I keep asking: what happened on September 6, 2007? Israel attacked a Syrian nuclear reactor built by the North Koreans:

CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.

The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes.

The CIA officials also will say that though U.S. officials have had concerns for years about ties between North Korea and Syria, it was not until last year that new intelligence convinced them that the suspicious facility under construction in a remote area of Syria was a nuclear reactor, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing plans for the briefing.

By holding closed, classified briefings for members of several congressional committees, the administration will break a long silence on North Korean-Syrian nuclear cooperation and on what it knows about last year's destruction of the Syrian facility. Nonetheless, it has been widely assumed for months that many in the administration considered the site a nuclear installation.

It was not clear Tuesday how recently North Korea may have been aiding Syria. But disclosure of the relationship to the committees is likely to bring criticism from conservative lawmakers who already believe that U.S. overtures to North Korea have offered the government in Pyongyang too many benefits without assurances that it will disclose the extent of its nuclear arms effort or ultimately surrender its weapons.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air states the obvious:

This answers a question that really hadn’t generated much doubt. Israel doesn’t usually risk air strikes into hostile Arab nations unless the stakes are significant. Even more revealing, Syria didn’t register any strenuous public objections after the clearly provocative attack on its nation. That could only mean that Syria had something so important to hide that it didn’t want international attention drawn to the site. That either meant a nuclear-weapons site or Saddam’s missing WMD.

Now we have our answer. It looks like Israel prevented another Osirak from completion, and with it a deadly shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

(crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

Carteresque

No, I'm not taking about the despicable former president's visit to Hamas -- that's a subject for a different post -- I am talking about this report:

Most of the missiles couldn’t be fired, and neither could any of the big guns. The Aegis radars key to the ships’ fighting abilities didn’t work right.

The flight decks were inoperable.

Most of the lifesaving gear failed inspection.

Corrosion was rampant, and lube oil leaked all over.

The verdict: “unfit for sustained combat operations.”

Those results turned up by an inspection by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey — commonly known as an InSurv — would be bad enough if they came from one warship.

But they came from two. In different fleets, in different oceans. Within a week of each other. And each ship represents the Navy’s most sophisticated front-line surface combatants.

“This is worse than I remember seeing,” a recently retired surface flag officer said after reading the reports of InSurv inspections conducted in March aboard the Norfolk, Va.-based destroyer Stout and the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii-based cruiser Chosin. “I don’t remember seeing two that stood out like these.”

Copies of both reports were obtained by Navy Times.

“I don’t think I have ever seen anything so bad,” said retired Capt. Rick Hoffman, who commanded the cruiser Hue City, a sister ship of the Chosin.

“The aggregate number of discrepancies is disturbing, particularly in the Combat Systems area,” another former senior officer said.

The retired admiral went further. “There’s enough commonality between the two to make me think there’s an endemic problem in the force,” he said.

Having one ship in each of the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets is indeed a very disconcerting development, and as the unidentified admiral suggests, it does suggest a systemic problem.

The Bush administration in my opinion has been surprisingly weak on national security issues, particularly by the standards set by Republicans, who are normally very strong on national security issues. Let's leave aside for the moment his mislabeling of the war on militant Islam as the "War on Terror," since terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. Let's also leave aside the fact that while the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are most definitely justified legally and morally, Bush has botched both of them. Bush, at the urging of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has wanted to fight a war on the cheap, on a shoestring.

When any organization is pressed for resources, among the first things they cut is maintenance. That was a major issue during the Carter years, and it became an issue again during the Clinton years, though not to nearly the same extent. Even after September 11, Rumsfeld remained adamant about not expanding the military. He wanted our fighting forces to be "leaner," and "more agile."

Except "leaner" certainly does not mean "larger," and we are stretched at the moment, using reserves in places where they were never intended to be used, at least not for this length of time. We don't have enough troops to go around. "More agile" does not necessarily translate to "more effective." We can deploy some troops anywhere we want with relative ease, unlike our European allies. By "some troops" I mean special and other light forces, which was Rumsfeld's intent. What we can't do is deploy a lot of their supporting material -- one reason the criticism of not having enough troops in Afghanistan is without merit is that we simply could never get enough troops or armor there without adequate sealift capacity, which would not be happening in any case since Afghanistan is landlocked.

Having a leaner, more agile" military doesn't matter if it is so lean it doesn't have enough ships to protect shipping on the high seas -- but that is what we have right now. Oil prices spiked at $117 a barrel after a pirate rocket attack on a tanker. you don't need a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser (we don't even have the Ticonderoga itself anymore; it's set to be scrapped) or an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to protect against that. You can use a World War II-era destroyer (heck, you could use a World War I-era destroyer). You just need some big guns and people who know how to use them. But Rumsfeld wanted "lean."

And he got it.

In my opinion, Rumsfeld and his superior Bush have a lot to answer for on this count.

(h/t: the Corner)

Trying on Zimbabwe -- UPDATED

The Bush administration is apparently trying to block the unloading of the Chinese cargo ship with weapons intended for the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe:

The Bush administration is intervening with governments in southern Africa to prevent a Chinese ship carrying weapons for Zimbabwe's security forces from unloading its cargo, The Associated Press has learned.

At the same time, the State Department's top Africa hand, Jendayi Frazer, plans to visit the region this week to underscore U.S. concerns about the shipment. Frazer also will try to persuade Zimbabwe's neighbors to step up pressure on President Robert Mugabe's government to publish results from a disputed election that the opposition claims to have won, administration officials said Monday.

U.S. intelligence agencies are tracking the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, and American diplomats have been instructed to press authorities in at least four nations - South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola - not to allow it to dock, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss delicate diplomatic talks.

The ship, which is laden with large amounts of weapons and ammunition, already has been turned away from South Africa and Mozambique, and is now believed to be headed for Angola, possibly with a refueling stop in Namibia. The freighter left South Africa after a judge on Friday barred the arms from transiting South Africa and it was not immediately clear if U.S. lobbying had influenced authorities in Mozambique who stopped it from docking over the weekend.

Two officials said Washington's effort to block the ship from unloading its cargo was now concentrated on Namibia and Angola and that both countries were being told that allowing the An Yue Jiang to dock could harm their relations with the United States.

There are fears that the arms, which include mortar grenades and bullets, could be used by Mugabe's regime to expand a clampdown on opposition supporters. The government has refused to publish the results of presidential elections held three weeks ago, and there are reports of increasing violence against the opposition.

South Africa's main trade union confederation has called on workers in other African countries to follow the example of South African dock and freight workers who said Friday they would not unload the ship or transport its cargo.

The State Department endorsed that position on Monday.

"Given Zimbabwe's current electoral crisis, we do share the concerns ... that these arms could be used against individuals who are merely trying to freely express their political will," said Kurtis Cooper, a department spokesman.

My solution: let them unload the guns, and give them to Mugabe's opponents.

Exit question: is there any loathesome regime on this planet that is not receiving help from the ChiComs? I mean, North Korea, Burma, Venezuela, Iran ...

(h/t: Instapundit)

UPDATE: The Bush administration was apparently successful and the Chinese cargo ship has been blocked from docking anywhere in Africa.

And there was much rejoicing and dancing in the streets

Isiah Thomas is out as coach of the New York Knicks.

Second Thoughts?

Seven states are looking at lowering the drinking age to 18. Ronald Reagan was a great president, but forcing the states to raise the drinking age to 21 was not his finest moment. Aside from the feds really having no business determining a drinking age for the individual states, the law as far as I can tell has only encouraged drinking among those younger than 21, particularly those in the 18-20 range, and has compliocated drinking on cllege campuses, which used to be the best places to learn to drink properly.

(h/t: Instapundit; crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

The pushback gets serious

The illegal immigration debate (or at least the illegal immigration debate in its most recent form) has not been a left versus right issue so much as an elite versus everybody else, elites that unfortunately include my own Roman Catholic Church (that's ROMAN Catholic Church, baby! All the way back to the ROMAN EMPIRE!!! etc., etc. ...)

One particular hot-button issue has been the crimes committed by illegal aliens (and, yes, I will call them "illegal aliens," as that is the proper legal term for them). Michelle Malkin in particular has been big on exposing the crimes committed by illegal aliens and the protection of those criminals by "sanctuary policies" in several major cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. For those who don't know, a "sanctuary city" is one where the police do not inquire as to a suspect's immigration status. The theory at least is to encourage illegal aliens to cooperate with police in reporting and investigating crimes -- crimes other than illegal immigration, at least.

The unfortunate side effect, though, has been that illegal aliens can get extensive rap sheets without facing deportation. And one unfortunate victim of one of those criminal aliens was Jamiel Shaw, a high school running back in Los Angeles. The problem in Los Angeles and Southern California is especially bad as the criminal aliens are often members of the Hispanic gang MS-13, which appears to be targeting blacks in Los Angeles.

The outrage in Los Angeles has been so great that the city council has been forced to debate the repeal of Special Order 40, which is effectively the City of Los Angeles' sanctuary city policy.

If even Los Angeles is looking at repealing the sanctuary city policy, it suggests that the debate on illegal immigration has shifted significantly towards the enforcement side.

(crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

Mugabe's Madness

The wishful thinking that Robert Mugabe would give up power peacefully in Zimbabwe after his apparent electoral defeat has slowly faded away, and now only those with Jimmy Carter-levels of naivete hold out more than the slimmest of hopes that this particular marriage will end any way but very badly:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe may be forced to face justice by a citizenry that has run out of patience with his regime’s abuses, his main rival said in an interview Thursday.

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s new stance could make it even harder to dislodge Mugabe, who according to some critics is holding onto power because he fears he and his top aides will be dragged to court to face human rights abuse charges if he steps down.

Tsvangirai’s hardened position on Mugabe came the same day Zimbabwean state media reported that the ruling party accused the opposition leader of plotting with former colonial ruler Britain.

“Tsvangirai along with (British Prime Minister Gordon Brown) are seeking an illegal regime change in Zimbabwe, and on the part of Tsvangirai, this is treasonous,” The Herald newspaper quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying.

The opposition leader dismissed the treason charges and said accusations that he was plotting to overthrow the Mugabe regime were “outrageous.”

The text of the original Associated Press story has been edited, but was preserved by Hot Air, where Ed Morrissey comments:

Battle lines are hardening in this confrontation, and Mugabe shows no sign of responding to calls for publication of the presidential vote. It has been almost three weeks since voters went to the polls, and yet the election commission has gone to court to keep the count secret, assisted by Mugabe’s friends on the bench. The widespread assumption is that Mugabe has something to hide, which is that his citizens have demanded his departure, and he will refuse to leave.

In response, Mugabe has determined that criticism of these actions constitutes treason — and his security forces have acted accordingly. They conducted arrests when the MDC called a general strike that so far has gone nowhere. Mugabe sent troops into districts that heavily supported the MDC, intimidating Zimbabweans who dared to oppose the dictator in an election.

That apparently changed Tsvangirai’s mind about Mugabe’s fate. Earlier, he had been careful to remain conciliatory, eschewing what he called a “witch hunt” against the ruler after his departure in order to maintain a peaceful transition. Now, however, seeing little help from neighboring South Africa because of Thabo Mbeki’s denial of a “crisis” in Zimbabwe, it looks like Tsvangirai has decided to get more confrontational to make the crisis a lot more obvious.

Mbeki may have a lot to answer for in this entire affair. Mbeki has consistently block any efforts to remove Mugabe as he has used Khmer Rouge tactics to drive the country into Khmer Rouge Cambodia levels of Hell. The only tactic Mbeki would allow is "quiet diplomacy," which more often than not translates into "doing nothing." Even the Washington Post has tired of Mbeki's position:

[...]Mr. Mbeki's perverse and immoral policy is reaching its nadir -- in South Africa's neighbor Zimbabwe. The government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is inarguably one of the world's worst: It has wrecked the economy, triggering food shortages that have driven millions of refugees into neighboring states, and used brute force to stem what would otherwise be overwhelming opposition. On March 29, the regime staged presidential and parliamentary elections and lost both by a wide margin. Rather than concede, Mr. Mugabe has refused to release the presidential vote count, called for a recount in parliamentary districts won by the opposition and launched another violent campaign to intimidate those who voted against him.

Every Western democratic government has condemned Mr. Mugabe's maneuvering, and even many Africans have appeared to lose patience with the 84-year-old strongman. That he remains in office is due mainly to Mr. Mbeki, who has used South Africa's considerable influence and prestige to bolster Mr. Mugabe. Last weekend, when Zambia's president called an emergency meeting of the Southern African Development Community, which he chairs, to consider the situation in Zimbabwe, Mr. Mbeki flew to Harare for a preemptive meeting with Mr. Mugabe, after which he declared, "There is no crisis." Then he traveled to the regional conference, where he prevented the group from criticizing Mr. Mugabe or supporting the opposition's demand that the election results be immediately released.

If there is good news in this sordid story -- and consolation for the proponents of an alliance of democracies -- it is that Mr. Mbeki's policy is increasingly unpopular in his own country. South Africa's free press has been scathing in its denunciations of the coddling of Mr. Mugabe, as have opposition party leaders. Even better, the new president of Mr. Mbeki's own African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, has distanced himself from the Zimbabwe posture, as have the party's secretary general and treasurer.

Meanwhile, if you didn't think it possible for Mugabe's loathsomeness quotient to get any higher, you thought wrong. Mugabe's security forces have now started "Operation Mavhoterapapi" -- "Where you put your 'X' -- where their thugs are beating the opposition and torching their offices and homes.

You need weapons to provide such government services as Mugabe is providing, and Mugabe is certainly trying to get them. From those noble paragons of humanitarianism, the Chinese. The Chinese sent a shipload of arms to the Mugabe regime this week including mortars, more than 3000 mortar bombs and 1500 rocket-propelled grenades. The shipment was to go through Durban, South Africa, and was approved by Mugabe's friend, Thabo Mbeki. Sounds like the fix is in.

Until the South African dockworkers got word of it:

Opposition to a shipment of arms being offloaded in Durban and transported to Zimbabwe increased on Thursday when South Africa's biggest transport workers' union announced that its members would not unload the ship.

SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) general secretary Randall Howard said: "Satawu does not agree with the position of the South African government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons.

"Our members employed at Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo neither will any of our members in the truck-driving sector move this cargo by road."

He said the ship, the An Yue Jiang, should not dock in Durban and should return to China.

Sounds like those reports of the unpopularity of Mugabe in South Africa are not exaggerations. It's nice to know someone is standing up for the people of Zimbabwe here.

But it will take more than South African dockworkers to stop the descent of Zimbabwe into ever-lower levels of Hell.

(crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

The Ethanol Gambit

Probably about fifteen years ago, Cincinnati radio personality Gary Burbank (my idol growing up, to the extent I have grown up, anyway) once did a bit that was a fake commercial for Archer Daniels Midland. The script was exactly what you would expect from an ADM commercial you would hear during one of these Sunday morning news shows, with statements of what ADM does interspersed with the line "We're the Archer Daniels Midland Company."

Until you got to the end, that is. The closing line was "We don't control the world; we just control the world's food supply. Give us any trouble and you don't eat. Got it?"

With the record high prices for crude oil and the record-high gas prices that come along with it, I have wondered if the US might be positioned to force ... er, "encourage" a drop in oil prices or an increase in supply using similar logic.

Austin Bay describes the under-publicized food situation, as well as some of its causes and its current political effects:

In January 2007, StrategyPage.com published the following short commentary: "Mexican authorities are concerned that a rise in the price of tortillas will lead to civil unrest. The price of tortillas rose 10 to 14 percent in 2006. The cause: international demand for corn." Mexico planned to import "duty free" several hundred thousand tons of corn to stabilize prices.

Corn prices continue to climb, this month hitting an all-time high of six dollars a bushel, up 30 percent since then end of 2007. Take the all-time high, however, with a dose of mathematics. The Iowa Corn Growers Association argues that the $3.20 a bushel of 1981 would be around eight bucks today.

Prices have increased for numerous, complex and often opaquely connected reasons, but producing ethanol "biofuel" (an alleged "green" alternative to gasoline) certainly contributes to the rising demand for corn.

Ethanol is, or at least, was, "good for America" and a "renewable fuel" that will help end America's oil addiction. In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated a "five-fold increase" in bio-fuel production; the bill touted ethanol but also promoted research and development of non-food crop biofuels. However, corn's price spike has generated the sound bite, "Stop burning food."

Ethanol is an easy target for the sensationalists. The pun is more accurate than the accusation: A maze of interrelated factors affect the price of maize and most other foodstuffs. The growing economies of India and China require energy, and demand from these two Asian giants as well as sustained demand from other advanced economies has spurred a long-term rise in oil prices. Higher oil prices bump food prices; it takes energy to raise and transport food.

"Middle class" Indians and Chinese also buy more foods. Lousy weather (in Australia as well as the United States), crop rotation and, in the case of the world's No. 1 food producer, the United States, fewer acres under cultivation (likely culprit: suburbs) also factor in higher food prices.

So the "world food crisis" sprouting bold headlines this week isn't so much sudden as it is vexingly systemic.

Recognizing the problem, however, doesn't feed empty stomachs. Food riots have erupted in Bangladesh, Egypt, Senegal and Ethiopia. Last week, hungry Haitians, rioting over the price of rice, toppled their prime minister.

America is by far the world's leading food donor. President George W. Bush has made an additional $200 million in food aid available for "Africa and elsewhere" in order to feed starving people.

The deal here is Congress decided to push corn to make biofuels for two reasons: 1. as an additive, it helps gasoline to burn a bit more cleanly; and 2. it helps stretch out our supply of gasoline, which is getting more and more expensive. Let's focus on that second point.

The US is the world's No. 1 food producer. We produce far, far more food than we need in this country, so we are a net exporter. But we have had to divert part of our surplus of food to stretch out our supply of gasoline as it becomes more and more expensive. Which drive up food prices for everyone. Not so much for us, because our costs in producing it, storing it and transporting it domestically are far less than for countries that are on the receiving end. But it makes food much more expensive for everyone else, including for countries who produce oil and are pricing it out of our reach, like Egypt, Nigeria and Venezuela.

W is trying to be "nice" about this, as his his wont, by offering that additional $200 million in food aid. But does that really do anyone any good? It might keep some people -- some -- from starving (assuming they are in locations where local authorities don't just steal the food, like Zimbabwe and the Sudan) -- but it would do very little to lower food prices. These continued high prices would in effect keep more people on the edge of starvation.

But higher food prices might actually get my point across, which is:

You raise our oil prices, so we have to raise your food prices.

Or, in other words:

Give us any trouble and you don't eat. Got it?

Does it sound cruel? Absolutely. But it is not the US government's job to be nice to people in other countries. It is the US government's job to protect the interests of its citizens. And its citizens are suffering at the moment from high gasoline prices that are impacting their own ability to put food on the table.

Is that message the intent behind corn-based biofuel? No, at least not significantly. The intention is as I discussed above: to create cleaner-burning fuel and to stretch out our gasoline supplies.

But perhaps if we quietly let it known that this was an effect of the higher oil prices, we and everyone else might see some relief.

(crossposted at Circle City Pundit)

Simulcasting

The bloggers at the Indianapolis blog Circle City Pundit have gracioulsy invited me to join their stable. Their focus has been on local and state politics. As you know, I don't normally discuss state or local issues, but focus much more on national and international politics. It is that focus that I will bring with me to Circle City Pundit.

For that reason, I will being crossposting my pieces on national and international politics, defense and foreign policy issues both here and on Circle City Pundit. Don't worry. I'm only crossposting posts on certain topics. This blog is not going anywhere. There is no single place on the web where you can get a discussion of such diverse topics as US policy towards Venezuela, the death penalty, the juxtaposition of the Fuso and Yamashiro, the Pittsburgh Penguins playoff hopes, Israeli operations in Syria, pantyhose, Star Wars, the merits of Rommel, the uniforms of the San Diego Chargers, the amazing Emmanuelle Vaugier and Latin freestyle music. Not all of that would be of interest to a purely political blog; I wouldn't expect it to be. Everything I post there will be posted here.

But it is nice to see that others have appreciated my writing enough to ask me to join them. And for that, I offer my thanks.

So when you need to get some news on local and state issues and join in whatever discussion my posts bring, give Circle City Pundit a visit. And feel free to chime in as well.

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

You won't get it if you don't have cats of your own, but if you don't have cats of your own, what the hell is wrong with you? I would have to opine, though, that the cats shown here are slackers compared to mine. Mine were aptly described by Muldoon in his missive about the velociraptors in Jurassic Park:

They show extreme intelligence, even problem solving. Especially the big one. [...]That one -- when she looks at you, you can see she's thinking (or) working things out. [...] She had them all attacking the fences when the feeders came.

[...][T]hey never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses. Systematically. They remembered.

(h/t: Varangian Guard and FARK)

This is bugging me

Except for (some) sporting events, I don't watch live TV. I TiVo everything and watch it later, like when I'm eating or have nothing better to do. So I just watched my TiVo'd episode of CBS' Without a Trace. The one where Jack Malone (expertly played by Anthony LaPaglia, though his new haircut needs serious help) gets shot and his FBI team tries to find him.

Without a Trace takes place in and around New York City. There was never anything in the dialogue to indicate that this episode took place anywhere else. The timeline of the episode would not have allowed it to take place anywhere else.

And, yet, when the FBI was questioning the attorney for the villain, they showed a flashback to a phone discussion the attorney had had with his client, at the attorney's office. Not normally a big deal, except the office had a panoramic window that showed an excellent view of a strangely sunny vista of a clump of densely-packed skyscrapers that suspiciously did not look like New York City. The tallest and most prominent of these skyscrapers looked kinda nondescript but strangely familiar. A black box with white edging at the corners and on top.

The climax of the episode took place, according to the episode's timeline, a few hours later, on a helipad near the lawyer's office. A strangely sunny helipad. One that was not surrounded with skyscrapers like you would expect in New York City. The changed camera angles, and same clump of densely-packed skyscrapers seen earlier was there. Same prominent, familiar but nondescript one -- black box with white edging at the corners and on top. There was a second one behind it, roughly cylindrical but terraced, that seemed to end in midair in a strange blur.

It didn't look like New York City. Gosh, what could it be ...?


The prominent black box skyscraper with white edging at the corners and top? The Aon Tower, formerly the First Interstate Tower. The building that seemed to end halfway up in a blur, like a bad Walter Sickert painting (but I repeat myself)? A very bad attempt at hiding the Library Tower, the most prominent feature in the skyline of downtown Los Angeles.

I don't know what's worse -- trying to fool us me into thinking downtown Los Angeles is Manhattan, or the pathetic attempt at hiding the Library Tower. My Gawd, George Lucas can make imaginary worlds in Star Wars look real, Peter Jackson can make the disgusting Gollum come to life in Lord of the Rings; heck, even the 1970's era Pink Panther made the United Nations Building disappear (ah, dare we to dream ...) and the best you can do is turn the Library Tower into a blur?

Look, "Real Men of Genius" TV producer guy. I love Los Angeles. I love New York City. I love them both dearly. And I know them. Don't try to pass off one as the other, particularly as badly as you did here. It's insulting. And it's just wrong.

This was almost as stupid as CSI: NY trying to solve a murder at Yankee Stadium, and somehow ending up at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Stuck in my head

"Allentown," by Billy Joel. I blame Barack Obama, but I'm not bitter ...

In fairness, though, this post might have something to do with it.

Overwhelming, underwhelming or just whelming

The publishers of Military History magazine sent me a special edition devoted to World War II German Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, titled "Killer Angel" and describing Rommel as "the craftiest predator, lionized by friend and foe." All of the articles in this edition are devoted to Rommel.

Apparently in an effort to be "fair and balanced," one of the articles is titled "The Fox's Failures" by military author David Zabecki. The piece (not available online, unfortunately) details the charge that Rommel was an overrated general with a penchant for self-promotion. The criticisms can be broken down into specifics:

1. He went around the chain of command directly to Hitler to get command of the 7th Panzer Division for the invasion of France over others more senior and more qualified for the command.

2. The breakout of the 7th Panzer on the Meuse at Dinant was not the critical breakthrough; Heinz Guderian's at Sedan was.

3. Rommel used his gift for self-promotion to exploit his success politically.

4. Rommel took too many unnecessary risks with his troops, particularly in the Gazala battles.

5. Rommel had no strategic understanding in that he refused to accept German operations in Africa were merely a sideshow, intended to tie down Allied forces that could be better employed elsewhere.

6. He ignored the importance of taking Malta, the dagger pointed at the throat of his lifeline. He successfully argued in favor of the offensive in Egypt over taking Malta. That offensive culminated in El Alamein, and we all see how that worked out.

7. He lost interest in Africa after El Alamein.

8. Rommel's argument on committing the panzers to the beaches in Normandy in the face of Allied airpower was simply wrong, and Oberbefehlsaber West Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt was correct in advocating for a giant panzer reserve to counterattack.

Many of these are fair criticisms of Rommel, but not without some counterargument by supporters of Rommel:

1. The breakout of the 7th at Dinant wasn't as glamorous as Guderian's at Sedan, but Rommel actually faced a heavily contested river crossing that he had to personally supervise because his troops were so shaken at their heavy casualties. Yet Rommel managed to cross and break through anyway. The French forces facing Guderian literally panicked and ran away.

2. Rommel did not share the strategic concept of the African campaign that his superiors held, but who was right on that account? If Rommel had been successful driving the British out of North Africa, he could have gone on to Jerusalem and turned the Mediterranean into an Axis lake, reducing the force commitment necessary there substantially.

3. He certainly did not act with his usual vigor after El Alamein, though health issues were involved as well.

The one criticism I believe is unfair, though, is Zabecki's characterization of Rommel's philosophy in Normandy. Zabecki says:

The debate about Rommel's performance at Normandy in 1944 centers on the conflict between his defensive plan and that of the theater commander, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Rommel advocated rigid forward defense, designed to keep the Allies from establishing a bridgehead. Rundsted favored a flexible defense-in-depth, reinforced with a deep-held panzer counterattack force. The war-fighting experience of the 20th century showed clearly that a rigid forward defense almost always failed, and other panzer commanders, including Guderian, agreed with von Rundstedt that a forward defense as impossible in the face of Allied naval and air superiority.

I do not believe this is an accurate portrayal of the disagreement. First, nothing I have ever read on the Normandy indicates that Rommel wanted a "rigid" forward defense. Far from it: Rommel wanted mobility, and few generals were as qualified or adept at handling a battle of maneuver as Rommel. The problem was that Rommel did not believe he would have that mobility.

Which brings up the second issue: Rommel believe he would not have that mobility because of Allied airpower. Rommel's position as that Allied airpower was so dominant, as his experience in North Africa had showed, that you could not move large numbers of troops where they could be attacked from the air. This large Panzer reserve that von Rundstedt favored could never be brought to bear in Normandy because Allied air attacks would chew it up en route to the point where it would be reduced to ineffectiveness. With no ability to bring up reinforcements such as these, Rommel believed that you had to commit troops to the beaches, because those are the only troops who would end up facing the invasion troops.

I would argue that, if anything, history proved Rommel right on this account. For all of von Rundstedt's and Guderian's qualifications -- and they are many -- they had never faced US airpower and could not fathom its dominance.

If Zabecki wants to talk "rigid forward defense," he might want to look at a field commander he (justifiably) cites positively in his piece -- German Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model. But that is the subject for another blog post ...

So much to blog

so little time.

A couple things have been on my radar screen but I have had no time to do proper posts for them, so I'll just toss a few of them out there:

* Hey, Obama! "I'm not bitter!" is my line. I've been using it since college. Don't be stealing it from me, at least not withouyt paying me some hefty royalties.

* Jimmy Carter is going to Syria to talk to Hams ... er, Hamas. Same difference. Israle is telling Carter "Screw you," more or less ...

* On the heels of Absolut Vodka's despicable Reconquista ad, SKYY Vodka announces its support for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. SKYY Vodka is based in San Francisco, to boot. Somethign to remember when you're questioning the Bay Area's patriotism, as I frequently do ... with good reason ...

* 10 reasons to doubt global warming is man-made. Only ten? I can think of more ...

* W is trying to accelerate construction of the border fence, such as it is. As much as I do not like the slow pace of construction here, building this fence will be like building a road. You need to take people's private property in their land and paythem just compensation for it so yuo can begin construction. This is always a slow process.

"It's the most wonderful time ..."

I love the NFL Playoffs, but sometimes the NHL's Stanley Cup Playoffs rivals the NFL in terms of excitement and teams just turning it up a notch, like my own Pittsburgh Penguins:



Some of my fondest memories of college involve our battles just to watch the Pens during their 1991-92 Cup runs. Hoping the game would be carried on the old SportsChannel and, if it wasn't, going to the Damon's at the University Park north of the Ohio State campus where they would pick up the Penguins broadcast with Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald on KBL.

Mario Lemieux, Ron Francis, Jaromir Jagr, Larry Murphy, Kevin Stephen, Ulf Samuellsson, Peter Taglianetti, Phil Bourque, Bob Errey, Gordie Roberts and -- I'm tempted to forget, since he was such a jerk -- Tom Barasso. Every series was a war, with the loser facing the Apocalypse. The thug New Jersey Devils in 1991. The Washington Capitals both years. The Minnesota North Stars' frustration, with THE Game by goalie Frank Pietrangelo and trying to come back, with the Pens constantly poke-checking the puck away at the blue line and kicking it sloooooowly back down the ice, avoiding icing and forcing the North Stars to chase it. And nothing could top the New York Rangers series in 1992. After Adam Graves knocked out Lemieux with a cheap shot that broke his wrist, Pens fans everywhere swore a blood feud against rangers coach Roger Nielsson and his band of thugs led by Tie Domi, Paul Broten and Jan Erixon. The fans willed a win for the Pens in that series.

With Vince Lascheid, the world's best organist, working the organ at the Civic Arena, and Mike Lange's calls -- HEEEEEEEEEEEE shoots and scores! Oh, buy Sam a drink and get his dog one, too!
Those Pens showed hockey at its best, at its most beautiful: precision skating and passing, tight checking, but none of this neutral zone trap crap. The sense of dread in the opponents when the Pens(even in the New Jersey Devils and the Boston Bruins) when the Pens went on the power play was palpable.

This current group, led by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin. Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal, Ryan Malone, Jarkko Ruutu, Sergei Gonchar. Max Talbot, Petr Sykora, Brooks Orpik and Gary Roberts, is showing the same kind of precision skating and passing, tight checking and wide open hockey.

No one knows how this year's playoffs will turn out, but it's nice to see the old excitement back in Penguins hockey.

Stomach don't turn over now

I saw this on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's home page, unfortunately while I was eating my breakfast:


Kinda makes me wanna burn every Steelers item I own.

If you think missile defense does not work

read this post.

Too good to be true?

Once again, what happened on September 6th, 2007? I keep asking this question, and no one can ever give a straight answer.

We know that on that date Israel launched an incursion into Syria of some sort, probably an attack with jets and commandos. As best as we can tell, these were the basics:

Israeli F-15s took out two targets [...] One contained nuclear weapons components shipped from North Korea; the other Zil Zal surface-to-surface missiles from Iran. Before the fighter-bombers attacked, Israeli commandos inserted by helicopter took out the radars for Syria's Russian-supplied air defense system.

The odd features of this story are that while Syria has not made a big stink about this incident, possibly because of embarrassment, North Korea has. Moreover, Israel ended up with nuclear materials as a result of the incursion.

So what was the target, which was near Dayr az Zawr on the upper Euphrates, about 50 miles from the Iraqi border? A nuclear facility of some type? We don't know. So this short blurb from the Jerusalem Post is very tantalizing:

An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday.

Well, that sounds interesting. But I've also heard the rumor about having found Saddam's big stockpiles of WMD's before. I believe we found at least some of them (hint: think "pesticides"), but relatively few people are with me on that.

Allahpundit is understandably skeptical:

Is the suggestion that the facility bombed by the IAF was itself housing Saddam’s WMD, or that whatever it was that was inside the building — ballistic missiles, a nuclear reactor, a nuclear weapons factory — was built on the back of transferred technology? (The Syrian structure does date to 2003.) If the former, there’s a problem: It’s North Korea, not Iraq, that’s supposedly responsible for supplying Assad, an allegation most recently repeated just a few days ago in a Japanese paper that claimed to have inside information about Ehud Olmert’s conversation with Japan’s prime minister on the subject. If the latter, there’s another problem: The boxy Syrian structure resembled one of North Korea’s gas-graphite reactors, one of the reasons analysts thought it was a nuke facility. If it was actually just a warehouse, that’s a mighty unfortunate coincidence for Assad.

I do not believe that anything Allah says here, however, precludes the possibility of there being Iraqi WMD's at this site. All it indicates is that there is North Korean involvement. Comparing notes, perhaps?

I can think of several scenarios where there would be Iraqi WMD at such a facility with North Korean involvement, but I think it more prudent to wait until this report comes out to evaluate the evidence.

Ethanol as a weapon?

With crude oil prices rising and, as a result gas prices rising -- again (insert my standard rant about how enviro-nazis won't let us drill or build new refineries here) -- I'm seeing a state of new blog posts highlighting an earlier dispute over the efficacy of ethanol as a fuel additive. Some believe that the ethanol is a good idea because it takes something we have in abundance here in the US -- corn -- to stretch our gasoline supplies a little further. I don't know that anyone is contesting this particular facet.

What many have issue with, however, is that it may not be as cost-effective the way the government is conducts it. Moreover, may of our farmers are now switching to produce corn to be used for ethanol, which has two unfortunate side effects. First, corn squeezes out other crops, thus reducing their supplies and driving their prices up. Second, with oil refiners now competing for corn with farmers and food distributors, the price of corn goes up, which in turn increases the cost of meat and milk products, which come from animals that use corn as feed. Finally, since we are, as we did in the horse age, using much of our arable land to sustain our transportation, the overall supply of food will go down. Since the US basically feeds the world in terms of food production, that is not a good thing.

But I think we can turn it around and make it a good thing. We produce enough food in the US to feed the world. If we have to cut back on food production to meet our transportation needs, that cutback ain't coming from the food intended for us, but for what is exported. The food that is produced here is more likely to stay here because of the reduced cost of transport and because American consumers, even after the high price of gasoline is taken into account (insert my standard rant about how enviro-nazis won't let us drill or build new refineries here), have more than enough money to pay for it, and can pay more for it than those in other countries. Usually, it is only the excess that will be exported.

In other words, while the overall food supply is reduced by the increasing turn of American farmers toward corn production as a gasoline additive, the American food supply is not. We will have for the foreseeable future more than enough food to feed ourselves.

But the rest of the world may not be so lucky. If our food exports go down, then the rest of the world will not have as much food as they do now. Food prices will go up. Not necessarily here, because of transportation and storage costs, but everywhere else, at least based on our exports.

In other words, if the trends among American farmers continue, food will become a commodity that will compete with crude oil for the limited supply of dollars in the world today. In America that competition will be much lower, because the cost of food will be much lower. But elsewhere, people will have to choose between gasoline and food. Which do you think they'll pick?

The Arab world and Venezuela (along with countless oil speculators) help to mess up our oil supply, then we in response mess up their food supply. If they don't want us to devote much of our food production to ethanol production to stretch out our gasoline supplies, which in turn reduces their ability to buy food, maybe they should increase the oil supply.

Do the oil producing countries really want this dynamic taking place?

Oh, what tangled webs we weave

when we practice to kiss up to murderous regimes with tantalizingly large but ephemeral markets. Yes, I'm talkin' 'bout China.

Now, Hillary is calling for W to boycott the opening ceremonies. She is right, of course, but I think she would have more credibility in this endeavor if her husband had not sold missile defense secrets to the ChiComs in exchange for campaign contributions. What? Did those contributions dry up at this most inopportune time, Hillary?

For that reason, Nancy Pelosi may be the more effective promoter of this idea. Meanwhile, the protests against Beijing continue, this time in Paris and San Francisco. There is some indication that Beijing used agents to "protect" a torch bearer in London.

First, to the International Olympic Committee: enjoy your bed. you picked a vile, despicable host for your prize event, ignoring their murderous, bullying and totalitarian conduct. Now, you are ordering others to ignore this murderous, bullying and totalitarian conduct as well. Beijing deserved to host these games like Saudi Arabia deserves to hold the international ballet competition. Yet in your see "no evil" view of the world, you ignored it like you did Berlin in 1936. You short-sheeted yourselves.

And what is this about the Olympics are supposed to be apolitical? "It's wrong to protest on the Olympic torch route," they say, "because the Olympics are not about politics." Bullshit. That's exactly why the Chinese wanted them and promoted them the way they do, just as Hitler did. To make a political point about their regime. Don't cry when people use the Olympic torch relay to make a political counterargument. Goose, meet gander.

You say Jimmy Carter's boycott of the Olympics in 1980 over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was an embarrassment and a failure? Well, pretty much by definition anything Carter did as POTUS was a failure. He just had that way about him. Still does. But years of my own research into Afghanistan and the Soviets suggest that to me that the 1980 Olympic boycott was the one punishment they truly felt. Because they wanted the Moscow Olympics to succeed .. for exactly the same reasons the current ChiCom regime does.

And before you ask, I was screaming my head off back when the games were awarded to Beijing. I just didn't have a blog back then.

To the Chinese government: you suck. You are a firm member of my list of countries to be invaded when I become supreme ruler, just to remove your sorry asses from power. I do support the reunification of China, just not under you, but under the Taiwanese government. You could do your country and the whole world a favor if you would just shoot yourselves in the head.

To W and the American business class: why the fuck are you kowtowing to these people? (Oops! Sorry, I meant to say "engagement," as you call it? My bad ...) Most favored trading status? Olympic games? Close military contacts? Buying the old Long Beach navy base? Allowing our software companies to design censors for China's internet capabilities? All for access to China's market of one billion people, right? And what precisely has been the benefit of "engagement?" China still murders its own people and those of Tibet. China is even more of a bully than ever (just Google "Spratly Islands"). China steals practically all of our intellectual property. China harasses our carrier task groups and won't even let our ships ride out hurricanes in their ports. China actively opposes our policies in Iran and North Korea. Our manufacturers now move their operations to China, where they help us import goods poisoned with lead. And our access to that one billion-person market of China never seems to materialize.

What good, precisely, has this policy of "engagement" created?

(BTW, for you supporters of trade with Cuba, how exactly would Cuba be any different?)

Finally, for the Dalai Lama, I love ya, pal. Really, I do, but there is a reason why Tibet has gotten more publicity in two weeks than it has gotten for the last fifty years combined. Your policy of non-violent resistance is a failure. Non-violence will not work when you are facing people with guns who are very happy to use them. The British India model with Mahatma Gandhi doesn't really work in most places. (Heck, if I had been in charge in Britain, it wouldn't have worked in India, either.) Pacifism is a morally bankrupt and practically ineffective philosophy in contexts such as this.

Required Reading

Chicago Boyz, on the coming electricity crisis in the US.

Like I said, the enviro-nazis are like Al Qaida, intent on imposing their religion on everyone. More often than not, they are succeeding. Remember what I said:

The story of human history has been the drive to improve the human condition. Today's environmentalists want to worsen the human condition.

(h/t: Instapundit)

Holding the judiciary accountable

Wisconsin votes just tossed an ultra-leftist rogue justice off the state supreme court. The Wall Street Journal opines:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court certainly bent the rule of law over the past four years, as a 4-3 liberal majority became the nation's premier trailblazer in overturning its own precedents and abandoning deference to the legislature's policy choices. Thus the defeat of Justice Louis Butler at the hands of Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman has national implications. A recent study in the University of California-Davis Law Review found that Wisconsin is the eighth most-cited state supreme court by other judicial bodies. Its rulings play a larger role in shaping court decisions elsewhere than those of courts in states such as New York, Florida or Texas. In addition, 38 states elect all or part of their appellate-level judges by popular vote. Judge Butler's defeat sends a signal that a judge who dramatically oversteps traditional boundaries can be brought to account.

When John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, he noted "judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them." Most Americans agree, but the liberal majority on Wisconsin's Supreme Court made so many suspect calls it seemed intent on rewriting the rules.

These calls began in 2004, immediately after Justice Diane Sykes stepped down to join a federal appeals court. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle replaced her with Mr. Butler, a former Milwaukee judge and public defender who had lost to Ms. Sykes by a 2-1 margin in a nonpartisan race in 2000. Justice Butler soon wrote the infamous decision in Thomas v. Mallet, which created a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach to product liability. Wisconsin became the only state to adopt a "collective liability" theory in lead paint cases: Whether a company actually produced the lead paint that harmed a claimant was irrelevant to its guilt or innocence.

Then came Ferdon v. Wisconsin Patients, declaring unconstitutional the state's cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases. It argued that the caps bore "no rational relationship to a legitimate government interest." That conclusion was bizarre, since the legislature had specifically passed the caps to make malpractice insurance "available and affordable," and the caps worked. In 2004, the American Medical Association judged Wisconsin to be one of only six states not in a medical malpractice crisis. Marquette University law professor Rick Esenberg concluded that under the court's reasoning in that case, "almost any law is subject to being struck down."

The Wisconsin supreme court also expanded the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of search and seizure law. Justice Butler wrote a majority opinion finding that the state constitution provided greater protection to suspected criminals, even though its wording virtually mirrored that of the U.S. Constitution. And so a bloody sweatshirt was ruled inadmissible in a murder case because the suspect told officers where it was before having his Miranda rights read to him.

Judge Sykes, now on the federal bench, felt so strongly about this decision she declared its reasoning "pure unvarnished result-orientation." In a widely noted lecture at Marquette University, she lamented that the state supreme court had "manifested a cavalier, almost dismissive attitude toward the sources of legal interpretation generally thought to be most authoritative: the text, structure, and history of the constitution and laws, and the court's own precedents."

The judiciary has grown drunk on its own power in recent decades. The mythology of a noble and unbiased arbiter has been largely destroyed by the Warren Court (featuring the despicable William Brennan), a 6th Circuit that improperly manipulated the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, a rogue 9th Circuit (featuring Stephen "The Supreme Court can't catch 'em all" Reinhardt and, of course, the disgrace to jurisprudence that was the Florida Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Gore v. Bush.

And yet there is largely no check on their power. The judiciary holds the ultimate legal trump card in declaring a law or act "unconstitutional" and there is usually no way to hold them accountable when they misuse that trump card, as Butler appears to have done in Wisconsin. this was never intended by our Founding Fathers. The judiciary was to have insulation from politics, but never to be unaccountable. Fortunately for Wisconsin, they have a method for restoring that accountability.

We desperately need such a check at the federal level.

Which way will Indiana go?

In an article titled "No Really. Hillary Has a Decent Shot," RealClear Politics breaks down the remaining big primary contests between Hillary and Obama. They include an interesting electoral analysis of Indiana:

People are assuming that Obama will do well in Indiana, in part because of the close proximity to the Chicago media market. We can test this somewhat. Take a look at [Eastern] MO.


NOTE: This is RealClear Politics' map of a county-by-county breakdown of Missouri. The colors of the counties vary from blue (heavily for Hillary) to green (heavily for Obama.)

Looking at this, I am fairly confident that Obama did not enjoy any significant spillover in "home state" support. I can tell much more easily where St. Louis and the University of Missouri are located than I can Illinois. There is some "greening" of the map as we move further North, but we would expect this, given results in IA and WI. This is consistent with what we saw in Illinois as well, except that the state as a whole was biased toward Obama (as one would expect from his home state), so downstate was still somewhat green. NOTE: You could do this for WI as well, but it will be hopelessly biased, since the counties bordering IL comprise the great Milwaukee and Madison areas. But even here, his performance in counties bordering IL runs about 10% below what they did in Illinois counties just across the border.

So I don't accept much of a spillover. Moreover, I suspect that the eighth and ninth districts in the South will go heavily for Clinton, though the University of Indiana may give him a bit of a boost in the Ninth. Moreover, looking at the Ohio maps, she ran about ten points ahead of Obama in the counties bordering IN -- which bodes well for his performance in the Sixth and Third. The Fourth and Fifth are harder to predict, though given their small-town and rural feel, I would guess there would be a good turnout.

Many have speculated that Obama will do well in the First and the Seventh. I suspect he will do well in the latter (Indianapolis). Marion county is about 1/4 black, and much of the inner suburban area is in this district.

But what about the First, with Gary? In truth, Lake County is about 26% black. But the rest of the county is ethnic whites -- not exactly Obama's wheelhouse. Moreover, there is a long history of racial tension here, with the current congressman, Peter Visclosky, defeating an appointed AA representative back in the 80s, much to the chagrin of local AAs. In short, I'm not sure how many votes Obama really gets here.

Which to my mind, shapes up to a Clinton win. I will call it 8%, but that is just a guess, and I am guessing that it is on the pro-Obama side.

Read the whole thing.

From the "you hate to see bad things happen to good people" department

Former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry is "a one-man crime wave":

Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry lost his job while in jail awaiting arraignment on assault charges on Thursday.

The Bengals cut him after his fifth arrest since 2005.

An attorney for Henry, 24, entered not guilty pleas for him after Henry was accused of punching an 18-year-old man in the face and breaking his car window with a beer bottle.

Municipal Court Judge Bernie Bouchard set bond at $51,000 on charges of misdemeanor assault and criminal damaging. Noting Henry's previous arrests involving drugs, guns and alcohol, the judge called Henry "a one-man crime wave." He ordered electronic monitoring if Henry makes bail.

Kudos for Judge Bouchard here, both for lowering the boom on this thug and calling it like it is.

Who called it?

About that hope, after Robert Mugabe's apparent electoral defeat, for that new Age of Aquarius in Zimbabwe:

Raids on opposition party offices and the rounding up of foreign journalists are threatening to push Zimbabwe further toward confrontation between current President Robert Mugabe and the apparent winner of national elections.

Police raided the Meikles hotel, which is used by the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, York Lodge, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.

"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Movement for Democratic Change secretary-general Tendai Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."

The New York Times said that its correspondent Barry Bearak, who won a Pulitzer prize in 2002 for his coverage of daily life in war-torn Afghanistan, was taken into custody by police.

Mmmm-haaaa. Captain Ed adds:

The journalists who remain in Zimbabwe will rightly see this as an intimidation tactic to keep the word on further crackdowns from spreading across the globe. It gives an indication what will likely follow. If Mugabe has already begun arresting reporters and raiding MDC offices, he wants to ensure that he can operate with the greatest degree of latitude in rigging the run-off election between himself and Morgan Tsvangirai.

He may have miscalculated in this instance. Zimbabweans are tired of starvation and corruption, the two most significant achievements of the Mugabe regime. They want change — and if it doesn’t come at the ballot box, it will come at the point of a gun. When that happens, Zimbabwe will become another collapsed African state, and yet another post-colonial civil war will wreak its depredations on millions.

But wait! There's more:

Robert Mugabe's aides have told Zimbabwe's opposition leaders that he is prepared to give up power in return for guarantees, including immunity from prosecution for past crimes.

But the aides have warned that if the Movement for Democratic Change does not agree then Mugabe is threatening to declare emergency rule and force another presidential election in 90 days, according to senior opposition sources.

The opposition said the MDC leadership is in direct talks with the highest levels of the army but it is treating the approach with caution because they are distrustful of the individuals involved and calling for direct contact with the president, fearing delaying tactics.

Those fears were reinforced last night when at one point Zimbabwe's election commission abruptly halted the release of official results from the Saturday's election for "logistical reasons" and the police raided opposition offices.

The MDC's presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, has already claimed victory on the basis of his party's tally of the count at polling stations.

The police arrested at least two foreign journalists, one from Britain and a New York Times correspondent, who are banned from Zimbabwe under draconian media laws.

A senior MDC source said "the ball is rolling" in persuading Mugabe to recognise defeat in the presidential election after negotiations with the security establishment and contacts with high levels of Zanu-PF.

The source said the party was approached by senior Zanu-PF officials who said they were speaking for Mugabe and that he is prepared to resign if there are guarantees that he and senior aides would not be prosecuted.

He said there were other demands which he did not specify but the approach was being treated with caution because officials who negotiated for Mugabe in the past had offered commitments which the president had not fulfilled. The MDC wants to talk to Mugabe directly.

Other, unspecified demands? I wonder what those might be ...

Another MDC official said the party is maintaining a tough negotiating stance in contacts with other elements of the ruling party and had refused a Zanu-PF demand for up to four seats in the cabinet.

He said the MDC had rejected power sharing offers because it had won the presidential race outright even though the electoral commission has yet to start releasing results.

"We cannot share power when we've won. If you've won the cup you don't share it," the opposition official said.

But senior Zanu-PF officials are attempting to pressure the opposition with the threat of a run-off presidential election by ensuring Tsvangirai's proportion of the vote falls below 50% and then delaying the second round. It should be held within 21 days but the ruling party is threatening to postpone it for three months during which Mugabe's term in office would expire and he would extend his rule by emergency decree.

Again, from Captain Ed:

Clearly, Mugabe has no intention of putting himself in jeopardy of prosecution — a tacit admission of his crimes as de facto dictator of Zimbabwe. After 28 year of disastrous rule as Prime Minister and then President, Mugabe has destroyed the national economy, rigged elections, abused his power to maintain his regime, and perhaps committed even worse crimes about which only his victims know. Mugabe knows that Zimbabweans will want justice when he gets weak enough for them to seek it, and that time may rapidly be approaching.

Will the MDC cut that kind of deal with Mugabe? It would almost certainly have to involve exile if they do. That won’t just be for the stability of the successor government, which would fear a Mugabe change of heart, but also for Mugabe’s own safety. One of Zimbabwe’s neighbors would have to agree to give Mugabe asylum so his own people don’t give him an ending like that of Benito Mussolini or Nicolae Ceausescu.

The MDC apparently is willing to negotiate a soft exit for Mugabe. He deserves a lot worse, but getting Zimbabwe on its feet again has to take first priority. That requires Mugabe and his regime’s removal before any improvements can occur, and the avoidance of civil war has to be the highest priority.

It does sound like cracks are appearing between the military/security establishment and Mugabe:

The MDC's leadership has also opened direct talks with the "top, top" of the army according to the source.

The source said that the military leadership is looking for "guarantees for their conditions of service" and to keep farms confiscated from whites provided they are productive. The MDC said it has no problems with those issues.

Another MDC source said the party had assured Zanu-PF and security officials they would not be prosecuted for past crimes.

The opposition believes the approaches mark a recognition by Mugabe that support for him within Zanu-PF has eroded since the election. Now, important elements of Mugabe's party are willing to do a deal because they realise the election results could not be manipulated to overturn a clear opposition victory and that there is little hope of winning a second round of presidential elections without resorting to violence or fraud.

This is all sounding so familiar, almost as if someone I know foresaw this as a possibility. Oh, yeah. That's right. I did:

[N]ow there are allegedly talks underway for Mugabe to resign.

I'll believe it when I see it. Zimbabwe has always been on my short list of countries to be invaded because Mugabe has used Khmer Rouge tactics to drive the country into Khmer Rouge Cambodia levels of Hell, just to maintain his fiefdom. Someone has to save the people of Zimbabwe; Lord knows that dumbasses like Thabo Mbeki in South Africa won't do it.

But thugtators like Mugabe are not the types to go quietly into the night just because the people say their services are no longer needed. Not unless, that is, they go into exile after looting the government treasury.

Yes, I called it. Thangyouveramuch.

A scuttling?

This column by Dan Calabrese on the conduct of Hillary Rodham Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) as a staff member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings is now making the rounds in the blogosphere:

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

Why would the complicity of US president in an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro be a bad thing? Heck, anyone who tried that would be more likely to get my vote. Come to think of it, we should probably be trying to assassinate Fidel Castro today. Sure, he might already be dead, but if he is just dig him up and shoot him. It's just the principle of the thing. But I digress ...

The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Hiding files of public interest in areas inaccessible to the public and then denying their existence? Why does that ring a bell with me ...?

Anyway, I can't say I'm quite clear as to why this story is appearing now. The allegations were apparently originally published in 1999. I did not see that article until researching this piece, but I did see a post in Classical Values that ran this past January. It did not get a fraction of the attention Calabrese's column is now, even though it is the same story. I found the Classical Values post so explosive that I forwarded it to my political friends, though I never blogged on it myself (as you might recall, I had more pressing matters to attend to). I thought it likely someone would pick up on the Classical Values piece. Zeifman himself penned a column on the matter for Townhall on February 5, 2008. I can't say I know why no one did or why Calabrese's column is generating the waves that Classical Values and Townhall did not, but I have always shared Ann Althouse's curiosity as to why Hillary never talked about her experience in the Watergate investigation.

Leaving that aside for now, the reaction?

Captain Ed:

If all she did was to propose that as a tactic, that would not make it terribly concerning — but she did much more than just spitball ideas. When informed that public evidence showed a precedent for the right to counsel, she absconded with the files to eliminate the evidence. Does that remind anyone of later incidents in the Clinton narrative, such as the billing records for the Rose Law offices and the 900+ raw FBI files on political opponents of the Clintons?

Hillary’s advocates could accuse Zeifman of conjuring up these stories in order to draw attention to himself in the middle of a presidential campaign. However, Calabrese reports that Zeifman kept diaries during this period, urged on by friends mindful of the historical nature of the Watergate investigation. No one would have known at the time that this 27-year-old barracuda would have any sort of national significance — which makes Zeifman’s testimony all the more compelling.

I thought that rang a bell.

Wizbang:

Is there anyone who is surprised by this?

Anyone at all?

No?

Me either.

Michelle Malkin:

As if…

…you needed…

…any more evidence…

Power Line:

The allegations are explosive, and they come from the one person in the best position to know that they are true, Hillary's then-boss.

The longer the Democratic primary process goes on, the harder it is to decide which Democratic candidate would be the bigger catastrophe as President.

Remember that Power Line called Barack Obama "uniquely unfit to be President, or, for that matter, to serve in the Senate" as a result of Obama's apparent extreme racism. Hillary's recent spate of misstatements, centered on her allegedly being under sniper fire in Tuzla, has made her a national joke. A political contact of mine said this particular incident destroyed his generally view of Hillary because, though all politicians lie, this was a particularly stupid lie that was easily debunked. Conservatives will point out, however, that they have been warning the world of this part of Hillary's character for years, with all the effect of Cassandra warning Agamemnon. Come to think of it, with all the results as well.

As such, the Democrat primary seems to be devolving into "Hillary the Liar versus Obama the Racist."

But the timing of the story does bother me. Like I said earlier, why is this making waves now, when this story was revealed in 1999 and even earlier this year? Ace wonders as well:

Interesting that this Democrat lawyer sat on this until Hillary threatened to sink a more liberal presidential candidate. Correction: Alex informs me he didn't sit on this; he told David Brock about it for his book on Hillary, way back when Brock was a "conservative." (An Andrew Sullivan conservative.) So a long time ago, in other words.

The correction aside, the theory is valid. Why is this coming out now? Are we being played?

Is someone trying to scuttle a badly-damaged Hillary campaign, Hiryu-style, to free Obama of the continuing damage caused by Hillary?

Whatever the enviro-nazis want, do the opposite

It seems more people are giving the same advice I am giving. The start of a backlash against the envirotards? A movement? We can only hope.

If she keeps this up, I may even start to like her

Nancy Pelosi is telling Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics. Naturally, Bush won't do it.

As I suggested earlier, the Internatiopnal Olympic Committee should be ridiculed for awarding the games to Beijing, its most indefensible decision since the 1936 Olympics -- in Berlin, Nazi Germany. The ChiComs just as bad as Nazi Germany, but Bush and the Republicans can only see dollar signs as a result of trade with China -- dollar signs that have never materialized. Of course, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were no different, except for them the dollar signs materialized -- in their campaign coffers. All trade with China seems to do is suck wealth out of our country.

That the IOC has had to resort to pleading with China to stop blocking the Internet should be a sign to them that they should not have awarded this prestigious event to such scum as the ChiComs, but the IOC is probably too stupid to realize it.

In the meantime, we should do everything we can to strip this event of the prestige that the ChiComs so crave. It is only through arrogance of the IOC and the greed of our own government that China was awarded this prize. We should do everything we can to make it as empty and meaningless as possible.

"A disgrace"

That is what Condolezza Rice called Zimbabwe's thugtator Robert Mugabe. (h/t: Instapundit.) She is just noticing this now?

Since he went into Pol Pot territory a few years ago, I have maintained that Mugabe is a disgrace to Western civilization, as well as Eastern civilization, Northern civilization, Southern civilization, any civilization that exists on other planets that we may or may not know about, any other civilization we can think of or make up, and cultures that have not yet achieved the status of a civilization, such as, say, Islam.

(Don't like what I just said, CAIR? Bite me.)

But Mugabe has apparently lost his latest attempt at re-election. Normally, when Mugabe runs for election, he intimidates opponents, stuffs ballot boxes, rigs the vote counting and generally uses all the tactics one would expect of Lake County. Mugabe's brazen and shameless efforts at stealing elections are rivalled only by Al Gore's attemt to steal the 2000 presidential election.

But Mugabe does not have Al Gore's lawyers or a sympathetic and rogue Florida Supreme Court to help him. Mugabe was apparently so badly crushed in the latest election that no attempt at vote-rigging can cover it up or give him even a fig leaf of electoral legitimacy. (ewww ... "Mugabe" and "fig leaf" are two terms I should not have used in the same sentence. I'll need to watch more videos of Evelyn Escalera and the Cover Girls to get that image out of my head.) So now there are allegedly talks underway for Mugabe to resign.

I'll believe it when I see it. Zimbabwe has always been on my short list of countries to be invaded because Mugabe has used Khmer Rouge tactics to drive the country into Khmer Rouge Cambodia levels of Hell, just to maintain his fiefdom. Someone has to save the people of Zimbabwe; Lord knows that dumbasses like Thabo Mbeki in South Africa won't do it.

But thugtators like Mugabe are not the types to go quietly into the night just because the people say their services are no longer needed. Not unless, that is, they go into exile after looting the government treasury.

We'll see what happens.

Good for the goose is offensive for the gander (or vice versa)

As you know, I have a major, major issue with gender roles and gender stereotypes. To my way of thinking, it is blatantly unfair for women to be celebrated when they do "guy" stuff, but for men to be ridiculed when they do "girl" stuff. If women can wear pants, why can't men wear skirts, the argument goes. It is a valid and in my opinion persuasive argument.

I constantly am bumping against these stereotypes -- sometimes intentionally, just to make the point, but most of the time just being me -- at the serious risk of having my sexual orientation questioned or, if certain Indiana political groups have their way, far, far worse. One reason I look with such fondness at Southern California and New York City is their tolerance with stepping out of such roles, as I have seen on my many visits. Such a viewpoint makes their disagreeable political stances much more tolerable.

So when I see that lack of tolerance out of Hollywood, and see stepping out of traditional gender norms ridiculed by Hollywood, I am disappointed in the extreme.

I just watched last week's episode of CSI: Miami, titled "You May Now Kill the Bride." I'm normally a fan of the show, as David Caruso gives pale, balding northern European types like me hope for the future. (Yes, I actually like David Caruso. Deal with it.) Clearly, the writer's strike has affected this show, as "You May Now Kill the Bride," was both contrived and badly-written, and dare I say, insulting.

The plot of the episode had a bride (played by the gorgeous Jelly Howie) murdered at her wedding, while the baseball-star groom was sped out of the crime scene by his bodyguard (played most capably by former Michigan running back Jarrod Bunch; we'll try not to hold his Michiganness against him). Not to spoil the episode here, but it turns out the intended target was not the bride, but a stripper (played by the also-gorgeous Torrey DeVitto). The stripper was blackmailing the groom. The groom "suggested" to his best man that he take care of the matter. The murder was the best man's attempt to do so.

As I said, the stripper was blackmailing the groom, who was a baseball pitcher. With what? Well, the show does not make it clear, but it involves pictures of the pitcher wearing women's clothing. The pictures themselves are only shown in bits and pieces, or in glimpses, so you do not get a good look at them. Both the stripper and MDPD criminalist Calleigh Duquesne (played with all the emotion of Mount Rushmore, as usual, by Emily Procter) mock the pitcher for his choice of clothing, particularly his affinity for fishnets.

Since the pictures of the pitcher were taken with a stripper, I assumed that they were of something of a sexual nature. But neither the dialogue nor the glimpses of the pictures themselves suggest anything X-rated; more like R-rated at best.

My issue is not so much that the plot had an athlete being blackmailed with pictures of himself in women's clothes as it is with CSI: Miami's treatment of it. The show treated what is apparently crossdressing of a somewhat sexual nature as something toxic, but the nature of that sexual element is never made clear from the dialogue.

When the stripper turns over the photos to the police, she hesitates for a very, very long time, as if she is holding something unspeakable. She hands the photos without comment to Duquesne. When Duquesne sees the photos for the first time, she appears to be struck speechless, as if in horror. The photos are not shown at that point, suggesting they are very, very bad. They are only shown, and then only fleetingly, when Duquesne confronts the groom. She then ridicules the groom for his choice of outfits, as the stripper DeVitto had, for wearing fishnets.

The message I got from this episode was: crossdressing is very, very bad. So bad we can't even show it on TV. It is basically a crime.

To which I say, "Huh?" Like most men, I don't exactly call fishnet pantyhose a part of my everyday wardrobe (though I am willing to learn ...), but I'm certainly not going to hold up for ridicule those who do. And I am not going to justify their being blackmailed or support the foundation of such blackmail, which is the aversion of certain elements of society to men adopting "girl" stuff, whether it's fishnet pantyhose, skirts, music, grooming, cooking, dance, whatnot.

Someone tell me where I'm going wrong here.

Stuck in my head

"Rescue Me" by Raina Paige, the best Latin freestyle song you've never heard of. Of course, given the, uh, quality that is Indianapolis radio, you probably have never heard of anything freestyle. Case in point: Safire.

We unfortunates who grew up in Indianapolis probably have only heard one song by Safire - the ballad "Thinking of You" from 1989. It was only with the rise of various freestyle sites and iTunes that I discovered Safire's far more dominant dance music, which I have never, ever heard here in Indianapolis. Safire's freestyle music is rapidly reaching the Sweet Sensation/Cover Girls zone of "Every song she sings or even thinks about singing is just plain kickass and needs to be cranked up on my T/A's stereo." (Sweet Sensation and the Cover Girls, two other groups I never heard on Indianapolis radio.)

"Don't Break My Heart," "Let Me Be the One" (which always conjures up happy images of Manhattan for me), "Love is on her Mind," and "Boy, I've Been Told" all hold hallowed places in my iPod. They also all date from the time I was in either high school or college. To be perfectly honest, I'm not quite sure precisely when any of them came out. I never heard them, not once, on Indianapolis radio. I supose it is because of the unwritten rule that if you aren't a white male group ... well, don't get me started. The music they play here in Indianapolis, with the fairly recent exception of the 107.9 Track, is boring and depressing. Latin freestyle is dance-paced (120 bpm on average) and fun, but even the Track won't play it.

Below is the video for "Boy, I've Been Told," which features Latin freestyle's trademark syncopated rhythms.



Let's hope Safire can keep the freestyle groove going, and maybe squeeze in Chicago on her concert tour. I don't doubt, given this city's proud lack of interest in Latin freestyle, that Safire will somehow not find the time to visit Indianapolis. I wouldn't either, if I was her.

Just because (or in this case "Gawd, I love YouTube")

Sweet Sensation performing "Never Let You Go." Long time ago, but great music lasts forever, and Sweet Sensation was always at the pinnacle of great music.



The blonde is Betty Lebron, who though Sweet Sensation underwent several changes, was always their lead singer. Aside from resurfacing as "Betty Dee" on a Dynamix recording from a few years ago, a recording that did not do her justice, Betty Lebron and Sweet Sensation have gone the way of Maren Jensen. Our loss. Their music was priceless. It would be fantastic if they could help keep the genre gong and raise a new generation on freestyle like the Cover Girls and Safire are trying to do.

To Betty Lebron, I give the same message I always try to give Maren Jensen -- come back. Your fans want you.