Light posting for a bit

I have a major project that will eat up most of my time for the next few days.

An idea

Does anyone else think that mass transit (in the form of light and heavy rail would) would be a more popular idea in places where it makes no economic sense like Indianapolis and Los Angeles if they designed them like roller coasters, with loops, corkscrews and massive drops?

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

The truth about alternative energy

from Michael Ramirez:


Meanwhile, Michael Barone describes the destructive effects of the envirotards, and how the tide may be turning in favor of the good guys.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Brevity is the soul of a short blog post

And you don't need many words to explain the following:

Patterico: Murderer’s Last Words: Vote Obama!

Michelle Malkin:


(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Whose side is Barack Obama on?

Yes, I know I've asked this question before, but it is a legitimate one, particularly after Obama's speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, which attracted Nuremberg Rally attention in Germany but some negative reviews at home.

Particularly galling is Obama's description of himself as a "citizen of the world." As I state at the top of Pro Cynic:

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.

Those words are carefully chosen. Obama is not running for President of the World. He is running for President of the United States. If elected, his job legally, ethically and morally will be to protect the citizens of the United States, not Germany, not France, not Iran, not Venezuela. The United States.

John Hinderaker sees the problem the same way I do:

[H]ere's where the rubber meets the road on Obama's "citizen of the world" bloviation. Obama has already said that other countries may not allow us to continue using so much energy. As President, he apparently would be sympathetic to the idea that we need to shut down those cars in Boston. But, while Obama may be a citizen of the world, he'll only be President of the United States, so he won't have any influence over factories in Beijing. That's one of many reasons why our President needs to be clear on where his citizenship, and his loyalties, lie.

The duty of loyalty, which any lawyer has to a client. So Obama should have here. He seems to be repudiating that statements calling himself a "citizen of the world"

Some people may be seeing something even worse. Peter Kirsanow, reporting from the Cleveland area:

Judging from the local drive time radio shows, we bitter, religious pistol-packers here in flyover country remembered only two things from Obama's Berlin visit: the phrase "citizen of the world" and Obama's failure to visit wounded troops at Landstuhl and Ramstein.

This morning the radio fairly crackled with callers incensed at what they perceive as Obama's snub of American warriors while ingratiating himself with people who refuse to send any combat troops to Afghanistan. This was not conservative radio but your typical morning traffic and weather blowtorch. And it was in the bluest part of the state (although callers come from much of northern Ohio).

Last evening on a different station, people were put off by Obama proclaiming himself to be a citizen of the world when — according to several callers — he regularly gives indications he's not particularly enthused about being a citizen of the United States. The litany was recited: Obama's making a show of not wearing the American flag lapel pin; his wife's claim that America is a "downright mean" country; Obama's association with Bill Ayers, photographed stomping on the American flag; Rev. Wright damning America; Obama's embarrassment that Americans can't speak German and French; his wife's being proud of America for the first time only because of her husband's candidacy; his condescension toward the purportedly bitter folks clinging to religion; Obama's delegation to the U.N. of the right to tell Americans how much we can eat and how far we can drive, etc — all the greatest hits.

As POTUS, Barack Obama would owe a duty of loyalty to citizens of the United States, not "citizens of the world." Does he understand that? Does he even care?

Whose side is Barack Obama on?

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Required reading

The World Is Powering Up While America Powers Down. Here's the introduction:

The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans’ minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year.

While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the lights on, but right now only 57 gigawatts of power are planned. No matter what Barack Obama and Al Gore tell you, alternative energy sources cannot meet demand. Solar is still only one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Today 97% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power. Wind provides 1% and solar .01%.

The rest of the world knows that green sources of energy are inadequate to keep their people out of poverty. That is why around the world, from Europe to South America to Asia, countries are building coal and nuclear power plants at a dizzying pace while also drilling for oil wherever they can find it. Meanwhile, the United States, crippled by an out-of-control environmental movement, is refusing to develop needed energy sources.

Read the whole depressing thing.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

He knew not what he had found.

Today is the anniversary of archaeologist Hiram Bingham's 1911 discovery of Machu Picchu. Bingham had gone to Peru to locate the major Inca cities and strongholds. He had located their last capital, Vitcos, to which they had retreated after the Spanish had occupied the former imperial urban centers and fortresses such as Cuzco and Ollantaytambo. Bingham moved on to look for Vilcabamba, the last fortress of the Incas somewhere in the Vilcabamba valley. It was at this point that locals showed him some splendidly preserved ruins at the top of a mountain. Those ruins turned out to be Machu Picchu.

At one point they were thought to be Vilcabamba itself, given the difficulty in reaching the ruins and the Spanish influence on the architecture -- some of the windows and doorways were half-moons, which were thought to have been an Incan attempt at creating an arch, unknown in the Americas until the Europeans came. However, Vilcabamba had been raided, burned and captured by the Spanish when the Incas made their last stand, and Machu Picchu showed no signs of such. Bingham eventually decided that Machu Picchu, while spectacular, was not Vilcabamba and kept looking.

Ultimately, he found a rather small, unimpressive village that was known as Espiritu Pampa. It was very primitive and bore little resemblance to the fairly advanced Inca cities and towns. Bingham made a note of it but little else. He died with his search for Vilacabamba incomplete.

Or so he thought.

In 1976, Professor Edmundo Guillen and Polish explorers Tony Halik and Elżbieta Dzikowska confirmed that Espiritu Pampa was, indeed, Vilcabamba. Bingham had indeed found it.

The last trail of the Incas. Cuzco. Machu Picchu. Ollantaytambo. Vitcos. Vilcabamba. Exploring that would be a vacation.

And before you start crying about the Incas' fate at the hands of the "evil" Europeans, the Incas were called an "empire" for a reason. They were just as brutal and power-hungry as anyone, European, Asian or Indian, including the bloodthirsty Aztecs. There are no saints in world history. There is just living and dying.

(h/t: Instapundit)

"Are you working for Big Caribou?"

I may not always agree with the guy's politics, but that is a great line. The Colbert Report takes on the Sierra Club.



(h/t: Hot Air; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

The executive pen

can be mightier than the sword:

Don’t look now, but investors and speculators have taken notice of the political metamorphosis among Americans on domestic drilling — even if American politicians have been slower to do so. Since George Bush rescinded the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling and since demand for higher domestic production has increased in the face of $5 per gallon gasoline, the price of crude has dropped over $20 a barrel in less than two weeks. The stock market has improved and the dollar has strengthened at the same time:

Overseas stock markets were higher and Wall Street index futures pointed to a solid open as the cost of oil retreated further and traders turned a bit more hopeful about the economy.
Light sweet crude oil for September delivery was down $2.17 at US$126.25 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after dropping more than $3 in the previous session as Hurricane Dolly looked likely to avoid oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crude now is down by more than $20 a barrel from its July 11 peak above $147 - a surge that had raised worries that inflation would cripple the economy.

It’s amazing what the promise of more supply can do for market psychology. And it goes beyond a few hundred thousand barrels of oil a day, what Bush tried to beg out of the Saudis earlier this year. According to this Bureau of Land Management release yesterday, the potential for oil shale recovery alone could far outstrip the known reserves in the Middle East:

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States. …
In remarks last month calling on Congress to expand domestic energy production, President Bush noted the “extraordinary potential” of oil shale resources on public lands in the West. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. holds more than half of the world’s oil shale resources.
The largest known deposits of oil shale are located in a 16,000-square mile area in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Shale formations in that area hold the equivalent of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Federal lands comprise 72 percent of the total surface of oil shale acreage in the Green River formation.

Currently, the US uses 20 million barrels of oil a day, 12 million of which we import. We also import refined gasoline, thanks to a lack of refining capacity in the US. The reserves in the Green River formation would supply us with 182 years of what we import now, or 109 years at our total rate of consumption. Once in motion, Green River alone could give us complete energy independence far beyond the time we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels.

Now, how will the Environmental Underpants Gnomes screw this one up for us? Remember their plan:

1. Stop using fossil fuels
2. ?
3. Clean energy

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Good rules of thumb

on foreign and defense policy from IMAO:



Actually, these rules work for a lot of other things, like criminals and environazis.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Here it comes

McCain goes after Obama and the Dem Congress on drilling:



Not a bad ad at all. Safe. Simple. Effective. True.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

More heinous crimes by illegal aliens

More crimes committed against innocents by illegal aliens. Michelle Malkin's blog has the details.

The kicker in this case is that this particular alien was shielded from immigration enforcement by the San Francisco municipal government. He then went on to murder three legal US citizens:

The man charged with killing a father and two sons on a San Francisco street last month was one of the youths who benefited from the city’s long-standing practice of shielding illegal immigrant juveniles who committed felonies from possible deportation, The Chronicle has learned.

Edwin Ramos, now 21, is being held on three counts of murder in the June 22 deaths of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. They were shot near their home in the Excelsior district when Tony Bologna, driving home from a family picnic, briefly blocked the gunman’s car from completing a left turn down a narrow street, police say.

Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors say is a member of a violent street gang, was found guilty of two felonies as a juvenile - a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman - according to authorities familiar with his background.

As I say at the top of my blog:

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.

The municipal government of San Francisco has abdicated that responsibility even turned it on its head. San Francisco appears more interested in protecting the ability of non-citizens to prey on its own citizens.

As Malkin's blog opines:

This is what the feel-good Sanctimony City policies bring upon their law-abiding citizens–and on the rest of the country. San Francisco had two opportunities to deport a violent felon with (if you’ll read a little further in the article) ties to the MS-13 gang, and they didn’t do it. They can’t even plead incompetence–the sanctuary policy worked exactly as it was intended.

Indeed.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

How true

Michael Ramirez hits the nail on the head:

Mmmm-hmmm. A stalling tactic to try to escape blame for high gas prices. The Dems are insisting that oil companies drill on the federal land they currently lease. What they don't tell you is that the oil companies leased that land for exploration and found no oil.

So the oil companies want to look in places where there might actually be oil, but ...

Remember the energy plan of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and the other Environmental Underpants Gnomes:

1. Stop using fossil fuels
2. ?
3. Clean energy

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Not the perfect Joker

OK, I saw it. I saw Dark Knight. It's an excellent movie that I highly recommend. The acting is top notch, the writing is good, the plot is exciting if a little thin in places and the movie finishes leaving you wanting more.

But it is not perfect. For one small thing, Gotham City looks way too much like Chicago; not surprising since much of the movie was shot there. Gotham City is supposed to be dark and claustrophobic. Chicago simply does not have the buildings to pull it off, and several obvious Chicago landmarks just made me think "Chicago" not "Gotham City." That is not the mark of a perfect movie.

Everyone is talking about Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. And they should be. He dominates every scene that he's in and a few that he isn't. Ledger does a great job playing a mutilated, insane, psychopathic, sadistic murderer.

Whether that mutilated, insane, psychopathic, sadistic murderer is the Joker is another matter.

When Jack Nicholson played the Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 version of Batman, he so merged with the character that it was difficult to picture Nicholson under all those facial prosthetics. Everything Nicholson put into the Joker was true to the Joker using those Joker weapons and killing for the sheer entertainment of it. You forgot it was an actor playing the Joker and thought it was actually the Joker. That is the sign of a great actor.

Ledger also makes you forget an actor us under all that makeup -- he was a great actor and his untimely death due to an accidental prescription drug overdoes was indeed tragic -- but he didn't make me think he was the Joker.

I admit I come at this with a bit of bias. I had not followed Batman at all until I saw the 1989 movie -- in 1992. The hype that surrounded Batman at the time of its release was a major turnoff. But when I finally saw it I was hooked -- by Jack Nicholson's Joker. At that point I started following the Joker. I picked up the compendium of Joker comics, along with The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family and enjoyed them all thoroughly.

But I also saw how the Joker developed over the years. He started out as a cold-blooded murder, then became more of a clownish nuisance int he 1950's and 1960's, then finally in the 1970's evolved into what he is in the comics today -- a psychotic, murderous clown, but one with a strut and a sense of style.

But the Joker developed several characteristics over the years. And it seems that Ledger and director Christopher Nolan made a conscious decision to ignore several of those elements.

Let's go through them:

1. Physical deformity. The first Joker comics were based on Conrad Veidt's performance in the silent film The Man Who Laughs. Veidt played a man whose face was surgically altered at the orders of a malicious king to have a permanent rictus grin.

Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs (1928).

The Joker first appeared in 1940. He was simply a murderer who terrorized Gotham City with threats over the radio, ending with "The Joker has spoken."

The Joker's first appearance in Batman #1 (Spring 1940).

He has had several backstories, not all of which are consistent. The major points, discussed once in the comics and reimagined in The Killing Joke (upon which Ledger based his portrayal) is that through a series of events, the man (he is periodicaly named, but not consistently) falls into a vat of chemicals, leaving his face a chalky white and hair green.

The Joker emerges from the chemical bath in the graphic novel The Killing Joke (1988).

Sometimes, his red lips are also a result of this event. Sometimes mentioned is that this accident also resulted in a facial deformity that leaves him with a permanent rictus grin. This is shown in Burton's Batman and is consistent with the "common law" Joker going back to Veidt.

Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman (1989).

The permanent smile feature is not consistent in the comics, however. What is consistent is the white skin and green hair.

Ledger and Nolan have instead made the smile a permanent facial feature and left the white skin and green hair optional. He instead puts white makeup on as "war paint" and his green hair appears more the result of a lack of personal hygiene. This is completely inconsistent with the comics.

Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008)

Which brings me to my second issue:

2. Vanity. The Joker, if not the man from whom he spawned, has always had a sense of vanity. He always wears sharp suits, highlighted by a purple tuzxedo top, thinks he's beautiful and wants his image everywhere. Remember the comic where he dumped a chemical into the oceans to give all fish his grin? Or his attempt at creating a Mount Rushmore-style monument to himself opposite Gotham City? Ledger's smeared makeup, the dirty clothes and the greasy hair are simply not consistent with the Joker anywhere in the comics or on screen.

3. Weapons. To be sure, the Joker has always used normal weapons such as guns, knives, fists and bombs on occasion. But he also has some trademark weapons that fit his style. A flower on his lapel can shoot acid or gas. He has a hand buzzer that can administer an electric shock or poison with fatal effects. He has guns that look like gags but are actually deadly. He will use poison or gas (called "Smylex") that will give his victims the same grin he has. It all goes back to his sense of vanity -- he wants people to know the damage he is causing.

While Ledger's Joker definitely wants Gotham City to know he is responsible for the mayhem, he uses nothing like the weapons we have come to know from the Joker. In Dark Knight, he poisons the police commissioner. But no grin results from it. This is flat-out unlike the Joker. The closest ledger comes is the use of a semi tractor-trailer rig, used for a circus and reading "Laughter is the Best Medicine" which he alters to "Slaughter is the Best Medicine."

4. Laugh. Finally we get to a Joker staple -- his laugh. The Joker has always had a wit about him, popping out one-liners left and right, and Ledger does live up to this standard very well. Ledger also developed a very, very convincing laugh for the Joker. The problem is that it's rarely used. In the comics and in Burton's Batman, the Joker is constantly laughing, sometimes for no apparent reason. Ledger laughs in Dark Knight maybe twice. What you hear in the trailers is all you get in the movie. That simply is not the Joker.

The Joker is "The Joker" for a reason. He may be a psychotic, sadistic murderer, but he has always been one with a warped, black sense of humor and wit, who clearly enjoys what he does and wants to share it. Ledger does live up to the wit, and there are some humorous moments, but it's not entirely clear that the Joker is having fun at creating mayhem. Oh, you are told that. But he doesn't necessarily act like it. And that is a problem.

I still give The Dark Knight an "A" and Ledger an "A" because he does a great job playing a mutilated, insane, psychopathic, sadistic murderer.

But I'm just not so sure that mutilated, insane, psychopathic, sadistic murderer is the Joker.

Now this is completely unfair.

Gary Varvel's cartoon in the Indianapolis Star:

As I commented on the Star's web site, comparing Al Gore to the Joker is unfair and insulting. One is a megalomaniac whose goofy, insane ideas will cause the deaths of innocents. The other is a fictional comic book character.

Really, the Joker has entertained us for decades without ever hurting anyone in real life. Al Gore cannot say the same thing. Nothing the Joker has done in real life can compare in insanity to Al Gore's new trillion dollar carbon tax idea.

The Joker does not deserve to be compared to absolute filth and hypocrisy like Al Gore.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

A defense of Jack Torrance

Last week I watched my DVD copy of one of my favorite movies, Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, featuring one of my favorite actors, Jack Nicholson, playing the role of Jack Torrance. Yes, I know it is not exactly faithful to the Stephen King novel of the same name; King himself commissioned his own miniseries version of The Shining in 1997, and a very nicely done miniseries at that. But the combination of Nicholson's performance as Jack Torrance and the cobbled-together musical score featuring the eerie synthesizers and warped vocals of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind and the haunting, almost piecemeal orchestral pieces of Krzysztof Penderecki make Kubrick's version of The Shining a classic.

(It would have been perfect if you could have combined the two versions. Take King's 1997 miniseries and put in Kubrick's musical selections. Replace Steven Weber as Torrance with Nicholson; while Weber did a good job as a caring, tragically-flawed father having his buttons pushed by the demonic Overlook Hotel, nothing could top Nicholson's performance in the role. Replace Courtland Mead as Danny with the original Danny Lloyd, as Mead simply looked too old for the part. Also replace the monotone Melvin Van Peebles with Scatman Crothers as Dick Halloran. But keep everything else from the 1997 miniseries, most especially keep the strong Rebecca DeMornay as Wendy Torrance instead of Shelley Duvall, who was so obnoxious I was actually rooting for Jack. And keep the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO (Stephen King's inspiration for The Shining) as the Overlook Hotel, replacing the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, OR, which always struck me as far too modern for the part. But I digress ...)

However, I am a lawyer. And going through law school is like eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil -- you are changed forever; your view of things is changed forever. And so, while watching Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, for some reason I asked myself, "How would the law treat Jack Torrance?" Suppose Jack Torrance survived his encounter with the Overlook (in Kubrick's version he is frozen to death in the hedge maze; in King's version he dies when the Overlook's boiler explodes), and he had to face justice for what he had done. We all know Jack Torrance was the villain -- or, more precisely, became the villain -- but how would our legal system view Jack Torrance?

When I considered this question using only Kubrick's version of The Shining, I came out of this with an astonishing answer. My guess is that, even without any plea of insanity (under any of the methodologies for determining insanity), if Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance faces a court for what he had done, he is likely to get off scot-free. In fact, Shelly Duvall's Wendy Torrance committed more crimes and more torts in this movie than Jack did.

Surprised? I know I was. But look at the evidence and how it can be presented.

Jack's first physical confrontation with Wendy came in the Colorado Lounge, after jack discovered Wendy reading his manuscript, filled as it was with repetitions of one line "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Jack was unarmed; Wendy was armed with a bat. After an increasingly heated discussion about Danny, during which Jack continually advances while Wendy physically retreats, ultimately up the stairs of the lounge. Wendy uses the bat to keep Jack at bay, but while Jack is advancing and Wendy retreating, he makes no overt move intended to hurt her.

Eventually Wendy asks to go back to her room to think things over. Jack responds:

You've had your whole f*cking life to think things over. What good's a few minutes more gonna do you now?

Wendy screams at Jack to not hurt her and keeps swinging the bat. Jack smiles and replies:

I'm not gonna hurt ya. Wendy ... darling ... light of my life ... I'm not gonna hurt ya. you didn't let me finish my sentence. I said I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash them right the f*ck in. Ha Ha. Ha Ha.

This constitutes the only actual explicit threat Jack makes in the film. He makes it while he is smiling, laughing and using pet names for Wendy. He also has no present ability to carry out that threat. This makes its legal significance as a threat questionable.

Meanwhile, it is Wendy who is swinging the bat at Jack. Jack repeatedly demands that she give him the bat. She refuses and keeps swinging. Jack reaches up, not at Wendy, but for the bat that she has been swinging at him. She hits him on the had, which drives him back, then she his him on the head, knocking him unconscious and sending him tumbling down the stairs.

At this point, Jack has committed no crime or tort. Wendy has committed assault (reasonable apprehension of immediate harmful or offensive touching) and battery (harmful or offensive touching). Her own affirmative defense of self-defense is compromised because Jack's threat could easily be interpreted as a joke and since he had no present ability to carry out that threat. Indeed, he did not have nearly the ability that Wendy did, because Wendy had the bat.

Next we have Wendy dragging Jack to the food pantry, where she locks him in. That is false imprisonment (affirmative act or omission which confines to a bounded area with no reasonable means of escape). Jack taunts Wendy through the door, but again does not threaten her.

Jack's taunts involve the disabling of the radio and the snowcat, preventing Wendy and Danny from escaping from the Overlook. Well, maybe not, since they both can leave the Overlook; Jack has not locked them in, as Wendy has him. He has just disabled their best means for doing so. But as caretaker of the Overlook, Jack is contractually responsible for the hotel and everything in it. He is well within his rights to prevent unauthorized use of the property, and it is not clear at all that radio and snowcat could not be repaired in short order.

The evil spirits of the Overlook Hotel let Jack out of the pantry, and he is next seen using a fire axe to hack his way into his apartment, where Wendy has barricaded herself and Danny inside, locking Jack out. Wendy and Danny retreat to the bathroom, where Danny escapes out a window, though Wendy is unable to follow. Jack taunts them, then begins to hack his way through the bathroom door with the axe. Eventually, he pokes his head through and bellows his most famous line: "Here's Johnny!" Jack reaches through the door, but Wendy slashes at him with a knife, driving him back temporarily.

I look at this sequence and I see no crime at all on Jack's part. Jack never verbally threatened Wendy or Danny, never attacked them with the axe. Jack used the axe to hack his way through two doors, but he never attacked Wendy or Danny with it. Moreover, he had a perfectly logical reason for using the axe -- Wendy had locked him out of the apartment and out of the bathroom. Jack had not only a legal right to enter the apartment, but as caretaker he had a legal duty to do so, and the axe was the only way to do it.

Once again, it is not Jack but Wendy who committed the crime here -- battery, by slashing Jack with the knife.

Jack is distracted from going into the bathroom by the sound of a snowcat outside. Dick Halloran has shown up at the Overlook to rescue Danny and Wendy. As Halloran is walking through the hotel lobby, Jack plunges the fire axe into Halloran's chest, killing him.

So Jack obviously murdered Dick Halloran, right? Not so fast.

Halloran was walking through the lobby wearing winter clothes that helped hide his identity. It is not clear if Halloran had a legal right to be at the Overlook at that time; remember that Halloran worked there when the hotel was open, and Jack was responsible for the hotel at this time. Moreover, Danny had shown bruises and scratches from a physical attack. Wendy told Jack that "a crazy woman" inside the Overlook "tried to strangle Danny." No one was supposed to be at the Overlook except for Jack, Wendy and Danny, but Danny's injuries were evidence that someone else was indeed inside the hotel, someone with ill intentions, someone who should not be there. So Jack goes down to the lobby and finds some strange person who should not be there.

Can you say "self-defense?" Can you say "defense of others?" Jack can argue that he was in reasonable fear for his life, because he saw someone who was not supposed to be there and he had reason to believe that there was someone inside the Overlook with hostile intentions.

Finally, we have Jack chasing Danny with the axe into the hedge maze in the bitterly cold night. Clearly this is attempted murder, right? Right?

It could be. Or it could be that a father just saw his son run into the hedge maze in the bitterly cold night and wants to find him to bring him inside for his own well-being before he suffers injury from the cold. Jack never verbally threatened Danny, never came at him with the axe, never even saw him once Danny ran into the maze.

Why would Jack need an axe to find Danny? Because of the forementioned "crazy woman." Or because he might need the axe to knock down the hedges to get Danny out.

Nothing more than a mental exercise, to be sure. But it just goes to show that while you and I know Nicholson's Jack Torrance was a dangerous, insane villain with murderous intentions in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, in real life a good defense attorney might convince the law to see it differently.

And if you think this means "the law is an ass," you would be right.

Gun control nuggets

Eugene Volokh asks if SCOTUS' Heller decision created a constitutional right to self-defense.

That we are even asking this question shows how far constitutional jurisprudence has drifted away from the intent of the Framers. Self-defense is more than a constitutional right; it is a human right, which means it need not be enumerated in the Constitution, which is itself a check on government power. The right to self-defense was assumed; the Second Amendment is merely a guarantee of the most practical means for exercising that human right.

My question is if, in fact, Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller did not go far enough. If Heller does in fact recognize an implicit constitutional right to self-defense as a basis for the enumerated right to keep and bear arms, would that also mean that you have a constitutional right to carry that means of self-defense wherever you may need it. This, I would ask, would be the basis for a constitutional challenge to restrictions on concealed carry. Scalia specifically said those restrictions were not implicated by the Heller opinion. That is, I believe, an inconsistency. What good is a right to self-defense if you have no right to actually use the means necessary for the exercise of that right?

The Washington, DC government understands the implication, however, and is doing everything it can to thwart the Heller decision. Michelle Malkin and Hot Air have the details. The District's legal position would be laughable if the lives if its citizens were not threatened by it. As it is, one can argue that the District is engaging in bad faith by trying to thwart Heller. Injunctive relief preventing the enforcement of the new DC gun law is the least that should be expected. The courts should forcefully slap down the District here.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

We need more police officers like this

Cleveland Police Officer Jim Simone shot and killed his fifth criminal last week.

If you think I am encouraging law enforcement to shoot criminals, you're right. I am. Anyone who commits murder, rape, robbery, burglary, car theft and child molestation deserves to be shot. The more criminals shot by police, the safer we will be.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

How now, Red Cow?

President Bush is (finally) doing what he should have done months (years!) ago:

In another push to deal with soaring gas prices, President Bush on Monday will lift an executive ban on offshore drilling that his stood since his father was president. But the move, by itself, will do nothing unless Congress acts as well.

The president plans to officially lift the ban and then explain his actions in a Rose Garden statement, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by former President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.

But Perino said Bush no longer wants to wait. She pinned blame on the leaders of the Democratic Congress, noting that no action has been taken on this issue.

"They haven't even held a single hearing," Perino said. "So we are going to move forward, and hopefully that will spur action by the Congress."

Asked if Bush's action alone will lead to more oil drilling, Perino said, "In terms of allowing more exploration to go forward? No, it does not."

The president, in his final months of office, has responded to record gas-prices with a series of proposals, including more oil exploration. None would have immediate impact on prices at the pump, according to White House officials, who say there is no quick fix. But starting action now would help, they say.

Bush's proposal echoes a call by Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, to open the Continental Shelf for exploration.

Congressional Democrats have rejected the push to lift the drilling moratorium, accusing the president of hoping the U.S. can drill its way out a problem.

Bush says offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also says offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time. In addition, the president has proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

Oh, how will the liberal enviro-nazis respond? The only ones standing between America and new domestic sources of oil are the watermelon enviro-nazis, who will fight any new oil with the ferocity of the Hitler Youth at Battle of Berlin. Minus the panzerfausts.

Allahpundit wonders about the timing:

This is one of the few gimmes McCain has right now; putting the ball in the Democrats’ court forces them to defend an unpopular position. By waiting so long, though, Bush has timed this so that it’s going to get eaten up by Obama’s trip to Europe and Iraq next week, when foreign policy will be front and center. I don’t get it.

I disagree. Americans will be paying more attention to this than they will any of Barack Obama's overseas adventures. While he's overseas, he'll get asked about it. He'll have to somehow fashion his response while separated from many of his staffers and coordinate his response with the Nancy Pelosi-led Dems in Washington. Obama will be forced to take into account his party's extremely unpopular position, with limited communications and policy resources and a very limited ability to think on his feet.

I say the timing couldn't be better.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

This post has been brought to you by the makers of sodium pentothal, who remind you that "The truth hurts."

No, I don't really have anything to add. This cartoon angers Barack Obama, however, which is reason enough to post it.

Byron York opines:

[P]rivately, some McCain types admit they find the cover funny. And how bad can it be for your campaign when a national magazine, in an effort to take a shot at Fox News and talk radio, portrays your opponent like this? Some of Obama's supporters are likely to go over the top in their defensive outrage, sending subtle reinforcements to viewers who already believe that McCain is stronger than Obama on the issue of terrorism. Maybe it's funny, and maybe it's tasteless and offensive — maybe all three — but it will be noticed.

To think that the New Yorker meant this cartoon as an attack on Republicans. In reality, while there are some inaccuracies in this cartoon -- Barack Obama is not a Muslim, Michelle Obama would probably not carry a gun and might not even know what one looks like -- it captures the Obamas' philosophy pretty well.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Just because

More environmental underpants gnome-ism

With the Dems in the Senate now starting to show cracks in their front of refusing to allow increased drilling for oil in the US, for fear of a very angry electorate come November, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to jump into the fray:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday shut the door on expanding oil and gas drilling beyond areas that have already been approved for energy exploration, drawing a clear distinction from her counterparts in charge of the Senate.

“This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax, it’s an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this administration” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. “It’s a decoy to punt your attention away from the fact that their policies have produced $4-a-gallon gasoline.”

Pelosi’s stand may put her at odds with a growing number of members of the Democratic Caucus who have been moving toward possible compromises with Republicans on ways to expand domestic energy production.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday told reporters that expanded offshore drilling is not off the table, and that Democrats will take a look at whether states should be able to choose to drill off their coasts. “I’m not knee-jerk-opposed to anything,” Reid said.

Uh-huh. Keep talking, Nancy. Keep talking.

As pointed out on Michelle Malkin's blog:

Excuse me for re-posting this chart, but…”their (Republican) policies have produced $4 a gallon gasoline”?

“Their policies?”

“Their policies?”

Pelosi is just following the energy policy of the Environmental Underpants Gnomes:

1. Stop using fossil fuels
2. ?
3. Clean energy

The GOP has an actual plan, one that will actually work:


(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

I bet you thought I was joking

when I said things like this:

[Y]ou might be a "racist" (that's "racist" with scare quotes, as opposed to an actual racist) if ...

you order vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate.

And this:

[Y]ou might be called a "racist" if ...

you order white rice instead of brown rice.

And this:

You might be a "racist" if

you think "black out" is a bad thing and "white out" is a good thing.

Well, guess whaaa-aaaaat?

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."

Oh, it didn't stop there:

Partial transcript:

Price: “Can I get an apology, from this day and time (pounding his fist on the table), you don’t sit at a table, where you have diversity, and refer to a black hole!”

Mayfield: Well, sure I do. It’s terminology. It’s a science term!

And it gets worse. Price is not only defending his black hole/white hole protest, he’s gone further and proclaimed “angel’s food cake” and “devil’s food cake” racist terms, too. Oh, and “black sheep” is out as well.

The Fox affiliate has video and a statement from Price.

As Michelle Malkin opines:

This is what the culture of victimhood and racial hypersensitivity has wrought.

Clowns.

Mmmm-hmmmm.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Just because

"Here's Johnny!"

Is this the beginning

of the war over energy? Are we finally seeing a campaign to call out the Environmental Underpants Gnomes for what they've done to us?

First, the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review-Journal blasted Harry Reid for his imbecilic statements of last week, and notes how his own constituents could be devastated if Reid's opinions became policy:

Nevada's own Harry Reid has become a YouTube sensation for continually combining his gloomy disposition with rhetoric that makes even his most partisan supporters cringe.

His latest hilarious monologue came a few days ago on the Fox Business channel when, in trying to defend the exorbitant costs (and federal subsidies) of renewable power, he asserted that money is overrated in debating the country's energy policy.

"Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It's global warming. It's ruining our country. It's ruining our world," Sen. Reid blurted out between pregnant pauses. "We've got to stop using fossil fuels."

Yes, the resources that not only drive the world's economy and rising standard of living, but make life and prosperity possible in his political base of Las Vegas, are "ruining our country" and "ruining our world."

By Thursday afternoon, the video clip had close to 400,000 hits on YouTube. Like an "American Idol" reject who has no idea he can't sing, Sen. Reid serves up speechification that crashes and burns in spectacular fashion. Doesn't the Democratic Party have its own Simon Cowell, someone with enough common sense to cut off the Slipup from Searchlight before he finds all new ways to embarrass his home state?

Funny thing about coal and oil. Before they began transforming Americans' everyday lives by providing electricity and transport that didn't require a horse, average citizens trudged though life with mouths half-full of teeth, fortunate to live past age 40. Far from making us sick, they've powered advances that have extended the country's collective life expectancy to about 80, helped eliminate hard-core poverty and made us the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet.

Today, coal still provides half the country's electricity -- power that allows Las Vegas air conditioners to run 24 hours per day during the soul-searing heat of July, power that lets partygoers enjoy the city's luxuries at all times. And how did they -- and the foodstuffs they ate for breakfast -- get to this otherwise uninhabitable tourist outpost? They drove or flew here on a tank of fossil fuel.

Perhaps we should be grateful for Sen. Reid's uninspiring words. If Congress ultimately gives up on sacrificing our economy and quality of life, Sen. Reid's stumbling, mumbling policy pitches might be his lasting gift to this nation.

Like I said before, the Environmental Underpants Gnomes have adopted the following model for energy policy:

1. Stop using fossil fuels
2. ?
3. Clean energy

Meanwhile, no link, but FSN Pittsburgh ran tonight an ad by the RNC attacking Barack Obama for his refusal to allow increased domestic energy production.

Can we see more of these, please?

(h/t: Hot Air; crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

"So be it, Jedi."

As you know, I do love my Star Wars. But my patience with George Lucas has been worn thin after the prequels. Now, he goes off and calls Barack Obama, of all people, a Jedi:

“Star Wars” creator George Lucas used his expert opinion to compare some of his famous characters to famous politicians Tuesday morning.

Lucas, who was on Capitol Hill to testify at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet subcommittee hearing on universal service, was totally nonpartisan when it came to President Bush, declining to weigh in on our question: “Who is President Bush more like: Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader?”

“It’s up to the viewer,” he responded.

And, of course, we had to ask him what he thinks of Vice President Dick Cheney’s nickname — “Darth Vader.”

Although Lucas wouldn’t say whether it was an accurate description of the veep, he did say that Cheney “seems to like” the nickname.

Lucas did, however, have one definitive answer: Barack Obama would most certainly be a Jedi. “I would say that’s reasonably obvious,” he said.

Mark Hamill has been getting in on the act, too, much to the disgust of AllahPundit and Jawa Report.

(Yes, there was a reason why I always rooted for the Imperials.)

This means, of course, that Palpatine was right:

Every single Jedi is now an enemy of the Republic.

Do what must be done. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

Environmental Underpants Gnomes

One of the best episodes of South Park (though not THE best, as that obviously is "Rainforest Schmainforest") is the episode "Gnomes." In "Gnomes," the character Tweek is harassed by gnomes who break into his room and steal his underpants. When the South Park gang catches them in the act, the "Underpants Gnomes" explain that they are collecting underpants for profit. When asked how collecting underpants translates into profit, the gnomes have some trouble explaining it, so they show their business model:


The gnomes have a three-phase business model, consisting of:

1. Collect underpants
2. ?
3. Profit

None of the gnomes actually know what the second phase is; they all assume someone else does.

I couldn't help but think of the Underpants Gnomes when watching this video of Harry Reid:



For those who can't get YouTube to run, here is the money quote from the current Senate Majority Leader:

the one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don't see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick; it's global warming. It's ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.

UFB.

OK, Harry. I'll bite. Let's replace fossil fuels.

With what?

Environmentalists like you don't like anything. Not coal. Not oil. Not natural gas. Not wind. Not solar. Not nuclear. Nothing. it's always either NIMBY or BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).

They take about "green" energy, "clean" energy, "renewable" energy, and they have no idea what that is or how it will work or how much it will cost or when it will be available or how we can power our economy with it. All they know is that they want it and they want to impose it on us at all costs ... costs to us, not them.

They are just like the Underpants Gnomes. Reid and the other Environmentalist Underpants Gnomes have adopted the original gnomes' business model:

1. Stop using fossil fuels
2. ?
3. Clean energy

Oh, it gets better. Reid compared coal companies to Hitler:

He accused the coal industry of using “the old Hitler lie — when you say things long enough people start believing them.”

The comparison of the coal industry to Nazis came before his keynote speech, which began and ended with references to “the Jewish sages of yesteryear.”

Reid is a disgrace. To Western Civilization. And Eastern Civilization. And Northern ... Southern ... Borg ... Extraterrestrial ... there is not a civilization in existence (or not) to which Harry Reid is not a disgrace.

Ed Morrissey:

This isn’t some fringe character, some crazy uncle that one has in the attic. This is one of the Democratic Party’s leadership explaining why he and his party will never allow for extensive increases in domestic supply for coal and oil, the two leading sources of energy in the US, along with natural gas. “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”

That would be great, except that no other mass-market solutions exist. Even nuclear power would take several years to implement, and Reid opposes nuclear. He wants wind and solar, even though neither have mass-production capabilities and we still haven’t solved the storage problem for alternative-sourced electricity. He thinks that we’d be better off without energy at all, rather than “making us sick” by producing coal and oil to meet current demands.

Michelle Malkin:

Liberals always claim that even if we start drilling for more oil today, we won’t see the benefits from that exploration for years so we shouldn’t try.

Instead, exactly as Harry Reid is advocating in that clip, they’re all for putting more money into alternative energy products, much of which will never pay off and if it does, we won’t see the benefits for several years.

Well, correction–we won’t see any energy benefits for several years. The Democrats get immediate political benefits, getting to stand up bravely to those shadowy Hitleresque overlords of Mordor Energy, Ltd. who are poisoning the Shire and spewing Carbon and Ringwraiths and Zyklon into the air.

Which is easier than standing up to Iran.

Beltway Snark:

Fossil Fuels Make Harry Reid Sick

What, is he eating them or something?

Please tell me, o wise and all-knowing Mr. Reid, whatever shall I put in my gas tank to get myself to work? I don’t want to make myself/others/the earth/you sick.

But we do have some constructive suggestions. James Lileks:

This made me realize that we really must change our ways, since we’re obviously not going to get any more power from coal or oil, because we’re sick and ruined. Not completely ruined; the process of ruining is ongoing, but ruined we will be. And so we should stop using fossil fuels. Not reduce, but STOP. Thus spake our leaders.

There’s only one sensible response: we have to shut down Las Vegas. Yes, I know, they get their power from hydro, but juice is fungible; the power that goes to light up Vegas could be used to take oil-fired plants off the grid. Closing down Vegas would reduce Nevada’s carbon footprint in other ways: a quarter of all tourists come from California, and I’d wager they drive. (Or drive to wager.) Thirty-six million visit Vegas each year – at least three million people a month arrive and depart from the airport on pollution-spewing fossil-fuel consuming planes.

There is no practical reason for Vegas to exist. Surely this is a luxury we can do without; surely Nevada can find other sources of revenue to fund the government. If Las Vegas does not voluntarily cease operations, I call upon the Senate to either ban flights entirely, or impose a luxury surcharge equal to 110% of the ticket price, because Las Vegas and the waste it represents is ruining the world.

Environmentalism is a luxury. Energy is a necessity. Modern environmentalism treats energy as luxury and environmentalism as a necessity. That reversal is driving us to ruin.

Right now an increasing number of people are deciding that environmentalism -- at least in its current incarnation -- is a luxury we can not afford right now.

Yet Harry Reid and his friends are promising more of the same pain. For us. Not for them.

They want to go to green energy, and have no idea how to get there, but they insist on dragging you on the ground behind their Toyota Prius as they drive around blindly.

In November, vote accordingly.

(crossposted at Pro Cynic and Circle City Pundit)

I love mysteries

and they don't get too much biggeer than Tunguska.