Given what we know about certain elements in the Harvard faculty, in particular those aligned against Larry Summers, this vote of no-confidence should probably be interpreted as a ringing endorsement for the majority of people who are not members of the ‘reality based community’ that is the Harvard left.
Archives for March 2005
Kick ‘Em While They Are Down
PJ takes a swipe at Kerry and Tom Oliphant.
Still Not Getting It
Scalia nailed this:
In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court’s 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty based on “evolving notions of decency” was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said.
“If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again,” Scalia told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. “You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That’s flexibility.”
“Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?” he said.
Of course, some people will never understand this and will instead resort to cheap taunts and accusations of bigotry. And before you call me a bigot, Oliver- I am in favor of homosexual marriage.
Spring Break
I’ll be back…
Not Dead
I am not dead- just taking a quick break. But since I am here, I just thought I would put up this greatest hit from one of the reality-based community’s annointed heroes:
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.
Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address.
Yesterday’s report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched “yellowcake” uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Put that in your “Bush Lied, People Died” pipe and smoke it… (via Tom Maguire)
Disgusting
Lindsay Beyerstein points to this dreadful story:
The would-be teen mother arrived by ambulance last May, her belly bruised, the twin fetuses she carried for five months gone and her lips tightly sealed.
Authorities assumed 16-year-old Erica Basoria had been beaten and charged her boyfriend, 18-year-old Gerardo “Jerry” Flores, with murder under the state’s new law protecting the unborn.
But it wasn’t that simple. Basoria told authorities she had been trying to kill the fetuses for weeks and finally asked Flores to help by stepping on her stomach.
“When I was four months pregnant, I began to show, and at that time I decided that I should have gotten an abortion,” Basoria wrote in an affidavit.
Although Flores faces prosecution, Basoria can’t be charged because the new law – like many others across the nation – bans prosecution of mothers on the grounds that they have a legal right to end pregnancies. The case has attorneys on both sides questioning the fairness of a statute that considers one person’s crime another person’s constitutional right.
“How can two people conspire to do something like this and only one of them be punished? How can that be fair?” defense attorney Ryan Deaton asked.
I agree. They both should be charged with something, perhaps not capital murder. I am nominally pro-choice, but this is absolutely disgusting. I am sure the choice at all costs crowd finds this distressing, but if someone is going to be a test-case for this legislation, these two scumbags are as good a candidate as any.
And no, I am not going to consider their circumstances. Jumping up and down on twin fetuses inside the belly of a pregnant woman is beyond the pale.
The Wrong Mentality
If you want to know everything that is wrong with our prison system, just look at this paragraph from a NY Times story on Martha Stewart:
Was the conviction of Martha Stewart for lying to federal investigators worth the effort?
For her, “the last five months in Alderson, West Virginia has been life altering and life affirming,” Ms. Stewart gushed in a statement on her Web site on Friday. She added, “Someday, I hope to have the chance to talk more about all that has happened, the extraordinary people I have met here and all that I have learned.”
Prison, it seems, was a good thing. And that could present a problem for criminal law enforcement.
Punishing wrongdoing, the theory goes, has two primary goals: to penalize the wrongdoer and to deter potential wrongdoers. But in Ms. Stewart’s case, it is not clear that either goal was achieved.
Prison shjould have THREE primary goals:
Punishment, deterrence, and REHABILITATION. Because we have failed to pay attention to the rehabilitative aspects, we are soon going to release a swarm of super-criminals into mainstream society.