Stupid Legislation: Bloody STUPID Legislation

I'm not finding much happiness reading the news this AM. This article made me bang my head on the desk at least 3 times.

The woman terminated her pregnancy in 2002 after she learned that her fetus had no forebrain or cerebellum, a fatal condition known as anencephaly. Because her husband was in the Navy, the woman was covered under the military's health plan, the Civilian Health and Medical Program for the Uniformed Services, or Tricare.

But Tricare administrators said they were barred from paying for the abortion. Federal law prohibits payment for abortions except "where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term." A regulation putting the law into effect specifically excludes payments for situations involving "fetal abnormalities" and mentions anencephaly.

I want to hear just one argument that supports this legislative limitation. Just one. Then I'll find the commenter and cut their eyes out with a spoon (make that a wooden spoon). Here is a perfect example of why the decision on whether the fetus was going to survive or not should be left to the doctor and not some bloody politician. Is there anything remotely reasonable about forcing the woman to carry to term a fetus that won't survive. And, don't we owe the servicemen and women of this country and their families at least a reasonable coverage for things like this?

Lisa M. Stone, who represents the woman, said she and her husband had an annual income of less than $20,000 and could not afford the charge of about $3,000 for the abortion. The couple sued, and in 2002 a judge ordered Tricare to cover the costs, allowing the abortion to go forward.

Over 10% of their annual income for the abortion. To preserve a "life" that wouldn't have lasted after birth? WTF!!!!!

The government appealed to get its money back from the couple. Though lawyers for the Justice Department did not dispute the diagnosis of anencephaly, they argued that the Congressional restriction furthered the government's interest in protecting human life and warned against a "slippery slope" if courts tried to determine which abnormalities warranted an abortion.

Ah, the infamous "slippery slope" argument. Of course, the legislature stepped on that slope in defining what couldn't be used to warrant an abortion.

Unfortunately, I think the court did the right thing. The law was just broken from initial creation. This is just another case which makes me wonder whether some judicial activism isn't, at times, correct. Especially when the law is flagrantly unjust.

Melba Toast Jokes Bringing Offense

Is this the worst that Roberts' said? Damn! Getting offended over this vanilla level comments is just putting a new level on being thin skinned.

In some memos, for example, he made jokes about Hispanics and women. For a 1983 Reagan interview in Spanish Today, he said, "I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their illegal amigos."

He also joked in 1982 about Kickapoo Indians, saying "a group of them made Newsweek by choosing to live in squalid conditions beneath the International Bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, rather than their Mexican homeland."

In a 1984 memo advising on how to respond to an eccentric letter to his boss, Fred Fielding, asking if all property had been placed in a public trust, Roberts began, "One Ramon L. Rivera of Los Angeles (where else?) ... "

And in a 1985 memo about a corporate scholarship program for women, Roberts said, "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

My thoughts (unspoken) nearly every hour run across much more acerbic comments. Maybe I'm not the mind to be using as a measuring stick though. Then again, I find it unlikely that the people that find offense with such comments are exactly equivalent to Mother Theresa either.

And my favorite topic of recent note pops up again:

In 1983 Roberts wrote that many proposals were "highly objectionable," including a Florida plan to charge lower tuition to women because they have less earning potential and "a staggeringly pernicious law codifying the anti-capitalist notion of 'comparable worth.'"

I won't get into the argument on comparable worth here. But knowing my beliefs on capitalism, I'm certain you know where I go on this specific bill that they are discussing.

A Woman in Berlin

This is not the kind of book I'm likely to read, so getting an overview from someplace like Salon is very helpful. The book sounds incredible. The suffering of the women of Berlin from the Russians must have been almost biblical. I also enjoyed the history of the publication that they went over. History about history can be pretty fascinating.

Marine Corps Special Forces

Fascinating article on experiments conducted in Iraq combining Marines with the SEAL teams. I wasn't aware the Marines didn't have a special forces contingent. I thought it was the Recon guys. Now it looks like they're going to build in a special forces unit with the Corps. While I do understand (and don't argue with) the idea that all Marines are just Marines, it does make sense to actually make a Marine Corps Special Forces unit with all that it entails.
Those things that you don't think through, Army & Navy special forces each have dependencies on other services for support, infrastructure and intel. So operations require lots of cross communication on an ad hoc basis. The Corps, something I've known forever, with the exception of some of it's ships (I served on a gator-freighter for a while) is a self-sustaining operation with it's own support, infrastructure, intel, and hell, procurement. Simply the elimination of ad hoc communication will increase the efficiency of the units. Add in the whole Gung Ho routine and it becomes a really bad day to be a Jihadist.
The Reporting War web site looks pretty interesting too.
H/T VodkaPundit

London Tube Shooting

I just don't understand. Why would the police force lie about what occurred? Basically, nothing that they released to the press about the actions that led up to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Fresh material shown last night also revealed that police had been tailing a car that had allegedly been spotted at a terror training camp in the Cambrian Mountains in Wales. It was registered to the address in South London where Mr de Menezes lived.

When the surveillance operation began one officer, codenamed Hotel Three, asked for permission to detain Mr de Menezes before he reached the station but this was refused.

The papers show there were three surveillance officers in the carriage at Stockwell station where the Brazilian sat down seconds before he was killed. One had to hold the doors open with his foot to let a team of marksmen in and point out Mr de Menezes.

No flight, no hurdling the stanchions, no bulky coat, WTF? Sounds like murder to me.

British Overtime Blues

This article is cute. And Oh so European in thought. They are debating whether the UK should be opting out of the EU Work Time Directive that caps the work week at 48 hours. What will they want next? A EU Vacation Time Directive to require a month off every summer?

The discussion at least is based on a study of overtime and the increased risks of injury. This is very interesting in that they point quite quickly to the problem with the findings.

The study, based in the United States, looked at 110,236 job records and found that more than half of injuries occurred in jobs with extended working hours or overtime.

After adjusting for age, gender, type of industry and job, employees on overtime were 61 per cent more likely to sustain a work-related injury or illness.

Longer work days were shown to be more hazardous, but lengthy commutes had no impact on injury rates.

Despite a host of previous studies linking long hours to injuries and illness, two grey areas have troubled researchers. Do people who work long hours tend to work in hazardous industries, thereby skewing statistics? And do they have a greater chance of injury because they are simply at work over a longer period of time?

I could find no details on the relation of accident to severity either. I've worked at companies where getting a paper cut required documenting an accident report if you asked the site nurse for a bandage. (Lesson was to keep bandages in you car and don't talk to the nurse.)

Here's the shocking part of the article:

A spokeswoman for Unison, Britain's largest trade union, agreed, saying:

"This research underlines that when people are tired they are more likely to make mistakes and that can result in serious injury not only to themselves but to fellow workers."

I'm surprised they didn't demand reparations from any company requiring overtime.

I have a lot of questions on the study (which I can't locate). What occupations were studied? What were the percentages of each occupation relative to the aggregate total? I think an understanding of the methods and data are required to understand the finding. This looks to be a very complex environment to study, and I don't think the results are a simple relationship between overtime and injury.

Because He Can...

Have I mentioned lately that I love living the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts... No? Well maybe stuff like this is the reason. For the love of Gu, the guy's got his Federal license from the ATF. If that's not enough he has a license to carry, no doubt issued by the same chief or his immediate predecessor.

Glurge

I love these guys, and with quotes like this, Nyarlathotep would get along right well with them:

Why, if we could recast all our political issues in terms of pictures of kittens and puppies, the world would be a better nicer smarter more nauseatingly bathetic cesspool of melodrama than it already is. But cute.

Oh, and follow the link to Obsidian Wings for a good laugh.

A Friendly Drink In A Time Of War

Wow! I've gone in search of an intelligent liberal argument against the war in Iraq. So far, I haven't found it. What I did find was this. It's one of the most amazing statements in support of the war, not Bush, but the war, that I've ever read. I'm posting the link here so that our 10-12 readers can maybe pass this on to someone else. The GeekWife & I will be passing it on to several friends who will also pass it on to several of their acquaintances. I'm hoping this point of view can be spread as far and wide as possible.

Now, back to the search for the intelligent liberal argument against the war. If I have to read how Bush looks like a monkey and that's why they're against the war, one more time, I may puke.

If I find anything, I'll share it here.

Karate History

Being a history geek and a martial arts geek, I found this paper on the origins of the need for a history for karate very interesting. Since I practice in a style that touts itself as eclectic, we're not too concerned with sources beyond identifying them. That explains why we teach boxing techniques along side straight karate or total kung fu techniques, not to mention the ju juitsu & judo that gets tossed in. But, having studied three different styles and having learned the same forms, three different times and three different ways, I do get interested in the growth & development of systems in order to try to figure out why, for instance, in what we call Pinan 1, our stance is high, half-moon, and our movements are circular, where as in Goju-Ryu, Taekioko 1 (sp?) is a very low, front leaning stance, but with circular movements, but in Seido (derived from Mas Oyama's Kyoko Shinkai) the stance is again the low front leaning, but the movement requires a very linear, feet on the railroad tracks, kind of movement? I don't know, but I'd be interested.
Anyway, I enjoyed the read, and thought I'd share.

Another Case of Lawyers Doing the Wrong Thing

This whole Able Danger thing is such a round pound.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department's Special Operations Command had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. "It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.

The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the so-called data-mining program to come forward and acknowledge his role.

Note it was the privacy of a civilian, not a citizen. Whoever made these rules should be the ones held accountable, but instead they are given seats on big commissions investigating why things went wrong.

Iran's Revolution

LATimes article by Niall Ferguson.

The article goes about discussing how the Iranian Revolution is unlikely to be slowing in any manner, no matter what the west hopes.

People in the English-speaking world never give up hoping that the revolutionaries will suddenly see the advantages of peace, the rule of law and representative government. That may be because they think their own revolutions -— the English Revolution of the 1640s and the American Revolution of the 1770s -— followed that pattern. Yet there was no more bellicose British government than Cromwell's. And the United States was scarcely a peaceful power as it expanded from sea to shining sea in the century after independence.

So it was pure fantasy to imagine that the Islamic Republic of Iran, founded in revolutionary year 1979, was just about to mutate into a friendly democracy. Yet people did. "In Iran," President Bush declared in a speech in November 2003, "the demand for democracy is strong and broad." Dream on. Far from being on the brink of democracy, Iran is now on the brink of becoming the single biggest threat to democracy in the world.

Last Monday, the Iranian government flatly rejected a European package of political and economic incentives to halt its covert nuclear weapons program. With a defiant flourish, the Iranians reopened their uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan. The Iranians say their aim is merely to become a "nuclear fuel producer and supplier within a decade." Given that they are among the biggest oil producers in the world, this rush toward nuclear power is a mite suspicious. It's certainly not motivated by a desire to combat global warming.

He doesn't really discuss the religious aspects or influences of the revolution, which I believe will make the revolutionary mindset even more sustainable.

To be sure, Ahmadinejad's victory was not achieved without irregularities. On the other hand, it's hard to pretend that his victory over the favorite, Hashemi Rafsanjani, was wholly rigged. Rafsanjani was the candidate backed by all the grand ayatollahs of the holy city of Qom as well as the Society of Combatant Clergy. Yet Ahmadinejad routed him by 17 million votes to 10 million.

This misses a point. The elections had Ahmadinejad as the opponent of Rafasnjani, but in order to be considered for the ballot both had to have the support of the ayatollahs in some measure. That fact alone should provide sufficient suspicion that the irregularities were so minor as to be fairly easily ignored.

Ferguson also neglects to discuss the resistance to all measures toward moderation in Iran. The vast majority of the west wants Iran to forego nuclear technology and are using all means to stop it, but the overwhelming force the west wishes to apply merely allows Iran to view itself as the underdog and firmly plant its feet. There is nothing like the opinion that you are being repressed to make one fight. In a country with the level of news and information control that exists in Iran, you can be certain that there is little there to dissuade them from that view.

Dean's World

Does Howard Dean have a speech writer? Or does he always come up with this BS on his own?

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday, the fiery former Vermont governor said, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq."

With how easily words are taken out of context in the MSM, you'd think Dean would be more careful. But then it's pretty hard to get anything out of that statement even in context.

Blog SPAM

Ok JACKASS' if you intend to bomb this blog with your moronic spam expect it to be deleted.

I'm pissed to say the least. You asshats think some rinkydink little blog that a couple people use to post news and comment is a billet for commerials, well you friggin' wrong.

I'll delete any spam that I see from now on. If you want to comment on the content fine, but as soon as you add a commercial advertisement its off. You want to link your non-commercial website, that's fine. But I don't make any money for this god-damn blog and I'll be screwed if I'm going to maintain a posting site for free loading ass-holes.

Got the point?

Cindy Sheehan: Time to Go Home

This is a terrific read. The conclusions are laid out in better ways than I can ever hope to achieve. Be sure & follow all the links at the bottom too.

Media Bias? What Media Bias?

Nope, no bias in our media. No sirree. These guys are all objective professionals who just want to get to the "truth."

Time and Newsweek both ran pictures of a tiny group holding MoveOn.org signs protesting the John Roberts nomination outside the White House. Neither magazine identified the group as liberals, nor even mentioned MoveOn; you had to squint at the photos to make out the group's name on the protest signs.
Now, angry, Bush-hating Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and co-founder of "Gold Star Families for Peace" -- last glorified by ABC in January for protesting President Bush's "lavish" second inauguration -- is being celebrated again as she sits outside Bush's Texas ranch.

Can you imagine the networks ruining the Clinton vacation on Martha's Vineyard by making a big story out of a conservative protester there? I can't, because they didn't. In 1998, a few weeks after Clinton admitted sex with Monica Lewinsky, he went to his first partisan pep rally in Worcester, Mass. ABC and CBS did full stories, and the streets outside the hall were filled with protesters demanding Clinton resign, but ABC and CBS failed to interview them. Only Fox News brought up how a local Democratic city council member, Konstantina Lukes, refused to attend.

You know, the stuff about the media not mentioning that protestors are carrying moveon.org signs doesn't bother me so much. Or the fact that their covering Cindy Sheehan. I can see where it just makes good copy, so they cover it, and these days I just expect them to be lazy, so I don't feel a lot of outrage (though I probably should) that they don't look into the groups the protestors are associated with. But the fact that there were hundreds of protestors against St. Bill in 1998 that were barely of interest to the MSM is extremely annoying to me.

Garbage Privacy and Turning the Tables

Oh, this one is just hilarious. [hattip SayUncle]

The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic. It's not. Your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your most intimate secrets; what you toss away is, in many ways, just as revealing as what you keep.

And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy is being pilfered. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government has granted itself far-reaching new powers to spy on you, from email to bank statements to video cameras (see "Big Brother's in Your Trash Can," below).

After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.

Read the whole thing, it's quite entertaining that the advocates of the legality of the "garbage pull" went nuclear when they had the tables turned on them.

NAMBLA and the ACLU's Bent Perspective

Topic is related to Charles Jaynes and NAMBLA. The context is that allegedly NAMBLA is paying Jaynes for his recruitment practices in prison.

The Curleys, who filed a $200 million lawsuit against the North American Man/Boy Love Association in 2000, allege that Jaynes is receiving money from NAMBLA while in prison and is actively recruiting inmates for the organization. They are seeking information regarding Jaynes' mail and phone activity, canteen account and employment.

Take a wild guess at who is defending NAMBLA. Yes that bastion of civil rights, no matter how distorted or evilly applied.

NAMBLA, who cites "educating the general public on the benevolent nature of man/boy love" as one of its goals, is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

I'm sure they're doing it because NAMBLA is such and honorable group whose rights in this case are representative of rights we should all expect in our lives.

Then there is this affidavit regarding Jaynes:

One affidavit, signed by an inmate at MCI-Concord, alleges that NAMBLA sends Jaynes' mother money on his behalf, which she deposits into his prison canteen account; that Jaynes passes around Curley's autopsy report to inmates; keeps a journal of rape and sexual assaults; engages in sexual acts with other prisoners; and "use[d] to participate in a fatherhood group so he could listen to fathers talk about their children."

Gem of humanity there. What kind of prisons do they have in the People's Republic? Maybe Jaynes needs to be moved to a prison in the south.

NRO has a piece further discussing the ACLU's actions.

As ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director John Reinstein sees it: "Regardless of whether people agree with or abhor NAMBLA's views, holding the organization responsible for crimes committed by others who read their materials would gravely endanger important First Amendment freedoms."

However, as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly noted, there is more at play here than pamphleteering. "According to lawyers familiar with [NAMBLA's] website," O'Reilly explained, "it actually posted techniques designed to lure boys into having sex with men and also supplied information on what an adult should do if caught."

NAMBLA is "not just publishing material that says it's OK to have sex with children and advocating changing the law," says Larry Frisoli, a Cambridge attorney who is arguing the Curleys case in federal court. NAMBLA, he says, "is actively training their members how to rape children and get away with it. They distribute child pornography and trade live children among NAMBLA members with the purpose of having sex with them."

Frisoli cites a NAMBLA publication he calls "The Rape and Escape Manual." Its actual title is "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships."

I suppose that there needs to be an advocacy group related to rights, but the ACLU isn't it. Try and find any documentation on the ACLU supporting a rights case related to a right-wing group. I've tried, and didn't find any. Their advocacy for groups that are beyond border-line wrong is just a thing of shame. If they were fighting the cause of anti-abortion groups first amendment rights as well as NAMBLA's I'd give them credit for acting purely with respect to rights. But they don't. In fact, they typically stand against any religious or right leaning group.

Since 1915, the Boy Scouts have managed land within San Diego's Balboa Park. It has built a swimming pool, a 600-seat amphitheater, and a camping facility that accommodates 300. Camp Balboa serves some 12,000 Boy Scouts annually through daylong events and weekend sleepovers. The Scouts' tie to this land is a 50-year lease offered by the San Diego City Council and signed in 1957. In exchange for their stewardship — including private investment for maintenance and development — the Scouts hand the city an annual lease payment of $1.00.

This arrangement is too much for the ACLU to swallow. It sued the City of San Diego to expel the Boy Scouts from Balboa Park. The ACLU contends that the Scouts are a religious organization and thus should be dislodged from the facility. Never mind that the Scouts did not bar other groups from using the park. In fact, according to Hans Zeiger, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout who has written about this controversy, Balboa Park hosted last summer's San Diego Gay Pride Festival.

You may not like the Boy Scouts for their religious affiliations, but tell me that this was an action for the overall good and not some political siege on a religious group.

Protein Wisdom

Man, I usually go over there for rants & comedy (Martha Stewart's diaries in prison were phenomenal), but this is a very astute assessment of what seems to be happening to people & their opinions. To this degree, and this degree only, it is Viet Nam all over again.

George Will on Jimmy Carter

I'm not a fan of George Will, but picking on Jimmy Carter (Jemma) is kind of like picking on the French. An easy target, but somehow, always fun. So, when Mr. Will goes off, a bit, on Jemma, I can't help but sit back & smile at the show.

By the way, I believe that Jemma's pitiful failure to rescue the hostages in Iran was part of what led us down the road to 9/11. It was the start of a very long list of failures and half measures that showed us, at least to the radical Muslims, to be a paper tiger. They really thought they could get away with 9/11 without major repercussions. Jemma started us down that path.