Anita Hill Turns Voicemail Over to FBI

"Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology some time and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day."

Apparently, Anita Hill turned that message over to the campus DPS, who forwarded it to the FBI.

Why?

I don't know if Anita Hill lied to the Judiciary Committee two decades ago, but bringing her forward to make a public spectacle was inappropriate. They had interviewed her, found no real evidence, and should have dropped it at that, regardless of Nina Totenberg. And, while I don't agree with most of the Democrats' political objections to Clarence Thomas, I have other objections to many of his opinions, particularly the law-and-order cases when he helps to winnow away individual rights.

Bairo Ávalos

Seven-year-old son of the first rescued miner, Florencio Ávalos, brought tears to my eyes. It was a beautiful thing to see that boy's overwhelming emotions. (Picture from CNN.)

Beck on Beck

Billy Beck makes some observations about Glenn Beck, with which I tend to agree. I don't get the ubiquitous hostility and charges of craziness directed at him. His emphasis on faith at the Lincoln Memorial rally pretty much proved most of the pre-event hysteria dead wrong. It wasn't a "right-wing" political festival. Instead, it was a boring gathering of milquetoast religious speeches, something which isn't going to do any good to further the individual rights of Americans.

I've never listened to or watched Savage or Levin. I can't really argue too much about Billy's opinion of Hannity. For one thing, he tells people who phone him "great Americans" without knowing anything about them, other than the fact that they call him a "great American". But he's still smarter than Bill O'Reilly or any of the chumps at MSNBC. (Yeah, I know, that's not saying much.)

I was, however, surprised to see faint praise for Rush Limbaugh. I don't agree, because I don't think you can put your finger on "the bounds of his logic" because he so often makes ridiculously specious arguments with no logic. When Limbaugh is on the right side of an issue, or making a valid point about freedom and individualism, most of the time he's backing into it by accident, or at the very least, unable to universally apply such principles across party boundaries.

Stephen Colbert Testifies Before Congress

What Congress Critter thought this would be a good idea? I'm all for mocking politicians and see no reason to show them respect. They are, after all, whores and thieves on the scale of trillions of dollars. But those people seem to think highly of themselves and the "dignity" of their profession, so what moron figured bringing Colbert before their committee made any sense?

Stephen Colbert is very quick-witted and can be very funny at times. But his always-on "Opposite Day" shtick gets tedious after awhile. And, his character is hard-wired to lampoon Republicans/"conservatives"— some of them make it so easy—but any good satirist ought to see just as many, if not more, targets among the Democrats/"liberals".

Tea Party

When Rick Santelli, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, stated on CNBC (Feb 19, 2009) that traders ought to engage in a "tea party" to protest the insanely irresponsible mortgage bailout, which was rewarding poor economic decisions at the expense of everyone else, I was a bit moved. At least some people on the national scene were getting just how reckless the Obama/Pelosi/Reid machine was and the level to which Americans ought to be resisting. To be fair, Bush signed TARP with a few Republican supporters, including McCain, so the Democrats were only accelerating the large-scale looting of the efforts of taxpayers started a few months before. And, while TARP was unprecedented in its scope and scale, it was the logical progression from all of the travesties mainly tracing back to FDR's authoritarian meddling in the economy in response to the Great Depression.

All of the political horrors being splashed across the news from the start of the new administration convinced me that in order to dissuade the government from trashing the free market with more of these legislative abominations, it was going to take the kind of determination and courage shown by the Sons of Liberty, who carried out the Boston Tea Party. Widespread non-violent civil disobedience could have warned the politicians away from going as far as they did, but that sort of movement never materialized. People were content to hold rallies and rely on elections, rather than demonstrating their resolve to shut down the machine of government through non-compliance.

When I saw news footage of tea party rallies in the days which followed, I quickly realized from the placards and t-shirts being shown that a good number of these people were rather ignorant, or at least hopelessly naïve. They had all sorts of different agendas, most of which were recycled Republican/"conservative" positions, rather than more principled advocacy of individual rights and across-the-board opposition to government abuse of power. Many were able to enumerate the misdeeds of the Democrats, but few had the insight to recognize that the vast majority of the GOP politicians were similarly unethical, but just in slightly different ways. At best, the tea party movement has targeted RINOs. Unfortunately, it hasn't done anything to weed out the more irrationally religious candidates and pundits, or the law-and-order types.

When the immigration stupidity in Arizona became associated with a large number of self-proclaimed tea partiers, I saw no reason to hope that this "movement" was going to accomplish anything for liberty, but could turn out to be a net loss—if for no other reason than people who could have taken a stand for individualism against the Democrats were going to be drowned out in the debate. The media focuses on the more vocal, more sensational, oversimplifying the issues and pigeonholing people. And, when political opportunists like Sarah Palin and Mark Williams hoisted the tea party banner for their own agenda, I realized that the people who were sincerely interested in liberty and reining in government on principle were going to lose the opportunity to debate the important moral questions. Instead, people are distracted by Cordoba House ("Ground Zero Mosque") and other irrelevancies.

Meanwhile, Democrat supporters have happily cherry picked the most irrational, ignorant self-proclaimed tea partiers as being representative of the movement, in addition to playing the race card because a few idiots (or perhaps agents provocateur) showed up at rallies with signs which were racist (or, at least, which could be portrayed as racist). But the race thing started before the tea party became hot, as one liar after another cynically accusing anyone who opposed Obama's agenda of only doing so because he was black, and not on the principles of freedom.

Salt

Angelina Jolie as a female Jason Bourne makes this an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride. I could pick a few nits on the plot, but I was sufficiently entertained to forgive them. Go see it.

Agnostic Manifesto Mess

Balko puts himself somewhere around Ron Rosenbaum's position in his ridiculous Agnostic Manifesto. The comment sections both of those links are rife with excellent refutations of Rosenbaum's specious arguments. I cite one of my contributions below. The comments are so plentiful, I wonder if Rosenbaum has had the opportunity to read them all, or enough to see the errors he made. I would also hope that Radley saw enough to rethink his endorsement, so that in the future he could find (or make) better justifications for calling himself an agnostic.

I know Radley Balko has sneered at "smug atheists" in the past, which reminds me of one of my criticisms of atheism, before I realized that perception was wrong. For one, contrast the attitudes of the faithful who think they're going to heaven and all the rest of us infidels are going to burn in hell. No atheist I know could ever come close to that level of smugness, which when carried to the extreme leads to hatred, cruelty, and murder. You'll not find anything like that from an atheist qua atheist. Sure, there are plenty of people who are assholes about their disdain for religion, as with any group of people. To me, the "New Atheists" display an earnest, active resolution to enlighten people who may be ignorant about atheism (believing some of the nonsense Rosenbaum writes, for example), both as a way to protect non-believers from the ages-old bigotry against them, and as a way to redirect the energies of people away from the frivolities of imaginary things.

Smug? Consider the scientists, engineers, or musicians who put time and energy into studying a particular problem, trying to invent something good, or even just trying to understand what others have done before them. Confidence, satisfaction, and even joy are quite reasonable when things which don't make sense (or are not very good) are pushed off the table. But oftentimes, as was my own personal case, an outsider who sees this attitude mistakes it as an annoying smugness. But I suspect most of that misperception is driven by ego—not wanting people we may not like (for whatever reason) to be right or wise or smart.

Sometimes, one must put aside ego and work to be as honest and rational as possible. Read Hitchens or Dawkins, be open-minded, and don't fall for Rosenbaum's straw man model of atheism. If you're a self-described agnostic, you may realize you misunderstood the atheist arguments, and thus didn't have an accurate idea of what it means to be an atheist (which, of course, is a broad category which includes many variations). By all means, avoid becoming a catatonic skeptic, because that isn't wisdom. It's avoidance.

Here's my first comment (#28) at Balko's place:

Despite the common misconception, Richard Dawkins and other atheists do not have an absolute, 100% disbelief. In The God Delusion, Dawkins has a [Spectrum of theistic probability] scale from absolute belief to absolute disbelief, with agnostics in the middle. He puts himself close to, but not actually at, 100% disbelief. The common analogies are comparing a rational consideration of the possibility of a deity to the rational consideration of the existence of a teapot in orbit between Mars and Earth, or the existence of fairies in the bottom of the garden. Strictly speaking, I can’t rule out the teapot or the fairies, because tomorrow someone could actually provide proof. But I feel quite safe in disregarding such a “possibility” as too trivial to concern myself, like an infinite number of other similarly trivial “possibilities”.

That’s not agnosticism, either.

I identified as an agnostic for about 15 years. I considered atheists to be smug and often hostile to good people of faith. But I realize now that what tethered me to the theist side of the fence was residual Christian fear and guilt, as well as a kind of desperate hope that there was some kind of higher power. I even described myself as an agnostic leaning towards Deism.

I cut the tether [see #75 for more details] when I read someone point out how cruel it is to convince a child that their beloved grandfather would be burning forever in fire because he wasn’t baptized. All of the seemingly “well-meaning” traditional religions are poisoned with such hideous fundamental ideas, because it is necessary to inculcate people with fear and/or hate in order to keep them from “straying”, i.e., using their rational mind and dismissing religious tales as ridiculous fantasy–not to mention identifying the truly horrible aspects and applications. Leaders can only control the minds of religious followers so long as they use such despicable ploys. Even the Eastern and New Age religions are often poisoned with a worship of death over life. (Without such poison, they’re just silly fluff, mere fads.)

So, once I freed myself of that irrational anchor, I decided that, while I can respect people of faith who treat others respectfully and appreciate how much their beliefs mean to them, I should never again respect their actual beliefs. I don’t include the non-supernatural, rational beliefs like the 'Golden Rule' and [rules like] don’t commit murder. But I give no special exceptions for brises, religious education, slave garb for women, etc.. No, it’s not for me to decide how other people raise their children or treat their wives, but I also don’t have any reason to overlook cruelty and deception just because it falls inside some conceptual fence of “faith” (a wholly unvirtuous human quality).

I regret wasting my time on the agnostic fence and I would highly recommend that anyone who now considers him/herself an agnostic to critically question why. Read god is Not Great (Hitchens) and The God Delusion (Dawkins) if you haven’t already, rather than relying on hearsay about these people. I have a couple bones to pick with both, such as Dawkins’ utilitarian approach to morality and Hitchens’ occasional broad brush condemnations. But they do make excellent arguments against theism and agnosticism.

Jupiter Loses Stripe

From The Daily Mail:

"Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why.

"The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

"However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare.

"The band was present in at the end of last year before Jupiter ducked behind the Sun on its orbit. However, when it emerged three months later the belt had disappeared."

How long before some scientist blames global warming?

Taser

In response to an article at View From The Porch in which Tam made an offhand comparison between Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh, with which I generally agree, I noted some of Boortz's moral failings:

"I thought Boortz was a libertarian-leaning conservative.

That was before I heard Boortz advise a caller how to snitch to the IRS. Also, recently he expressed glee that the idiot cop used a taser on a non-violent streaker at a ball game. [Boortz's approval was done on-air but not mentioned in the preceding linked article.] The more I listen to Boortz, the more examples of anti-freedom ideas leak out from his microphone.

His "libertarian" principles run very shallow. Sure, he might be better than Rush in many ways, but I think it's worse to have someone who purportedly represents the libertarian position who undermines real application of the principles of freedom."

In a followup comment, "Divemedic" dissented:

"To Elliot: I don't have a problem with tasing the ball game streaker, even from a libertarian standpoint. Not only was he resisting arrest AND violating the property rights of the stadium owner and ball club, but he was violating the rights of the thousands of fans who paid to watch a ball game, not an idiot streaker.

IMO, this is no different than the "Don't tase me, bro" guy- why should one person who is disrupting the event and refusing to leave when instructed be given greater weight than the thousands of others there? The easy way to not get tased is to 1) not trespass, 2) leave when instructed, 3) not resist when being arrested for failing at #1 and #2."

To which I replied:

"Divemedic, when the taser was introduced to law enforcement, authorities claimed that it was to be used as a "non-lethal" alternative to using a gun or other more lethal force.

By that reasoning, the idiot cop could have been justified in shooting the streaker with a gun.

Please note that the taser is not actually non-lethal. In rare cases, people do die. If LEOs honestly only used tasers in cases where guns would be justified, one could argue that even a small risk of death is preferable to being shot.

But the reality is that LEOs routinely use tasers in an inappropriate fashion, even on old people, disabled people, and children. In many situations, they aren't reasonably justified in doing this. [Added: Nikoley gives an example of a video showing a cop's obviously sadistic pleasure in using a taser. His mom is right.] LEOs are supposed to be able to handle people in a professional manner, including using reason and, if necessary, physically restraining a smaller, weaker person without resorting to sadistic methods. And, if they're afraid for their safety, they shouldn't have become a cop in the first place. Fire the cowards who can't handle such situations.

The problem is that LEOs have become unaccountable, paramilitary automatons. They know that people like you will defend their inappropriate use of force ("don't tase me bro") and that they can do what they want.

I'm disgusted that you, or anyone else, could look at either situation and decide that "law and order" must be maintained, that not disrupting other people's "enjoyment" is of such a paramount importance that thuggish violence ought to be used to expedite the resolution.

This is the mindset that has led to SWAT teams swarming into the homes of non-violent suspects, risking the lives of innocent bystanders (like children), murdering family pets, and generally escalating a non-violent situation into a very violent one. Despite what apologists might argue, this happens hundreds of times a day.

Police are supposed to be professional and display exemplary behavior. They are supposed to be brave and strong, not cowards. They are supposed to use reason and restraint to resolve problems and defuse situations before they get violent, not inject unnecessary violence into them. And, most of all, they ought to be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, not given a free pass to do things that would put us in prison for years."

Tam reminded me that my rant (which she incorrectly called "copypasta"—I didn't cut-and-paste, but rather included hyperlinks in my original commentary) was inappropriate in the comment section for that article she wrote. That's her place, so she gets to make the rules. However, if anyone would like to discuss this further, feel free to use the comment section in this article.

and a high chair for my wife

Chris Muir sets the bar high for entries in the first annual Everybody Draw Mohammad Day. This follows on the heels of the 2005 Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publication (and 2008 reprinting) of various cartoonists' renderings, which triggered riots by savages in which more than 100 people were killed.

I still think Giovani di Modena's 1415 depiction of Mohammad burning in hell, as part of a fresco about Dante's Inferno takes the cake:

Dog Murders on Film

WARNING: The following video involves a police raid in which one, or possibly two, family pets are murdered by cops. The murders occur off camera and the dogs are never visually shown, but the sounds are very disturbing to hear. (via Balko)

This is just plain evil. There is absolutely no justification for this. If you approve of laws which make drugs illegal, please explain to me how shooting pets in a house with children just to keep some people from smoking a plant makes any sense. How is pot more dangerous than a violent, paramilitary raid with guns blazing?

Mailmen, meter readers, cable/phone technicians all have to deal with dogs. I've never heard of any of them needing to kill a dog. [Update: I forgot to mention what cowardly pussies all these cops who murder dogs are. It happens all over the country, all the time. (Search for "puppycide".)]

I don't need to watch any fictional movies about a futuristic dystopia. We are there now.

P.S.: "The entire philosophy behind SWAT-style drug raids is that the death of a mother, a child, or the family pet is an acceptable risk to prevent flushing." — Commenter "Dr Mabuse" in a forum.

Big Brother Tax Threat Commercial in PA

Balko, FNC. They are actually proud of their work.