I have to get my taxes done by someone other than myself because I live in North Carolina, worked in South Carolina in 2004, plus I want a professional to handle the blogging income and write-offs.

Unfortunately, I made just enough to go up to a tax bracket higher than the year before and despite the fact that I paid in extra Federal and State money all year of 2004 to make up for the blogging income, I took a beating. I expected to come fairly close to breaking even, but instead, I ended up taking a $1000 hit + a fee from the company that did my taxes. Those are ugly numbers.

Still, I'm interested in finding out how other bloggers are doing their taxes. Has anyone tried incorporating? Does that make a big difference? What sort of expenses are you writing off? There's not much I can do for this tax bill, but if there's anything I can do that'll reduce my tax payout next time around, I'm interested.

Supposedly there's another "Terri Schiavo story" out there unfolding in Georgia. It involves a woman by the name of Mae Magouirk. The round-up from WorldNetDaily makes it sound almost like premeditated murder:

"Mae Magouirk was neither terminally ill, comatose nor in a "vegetative state," when Hospice-LaGrange accepted her as a patient about two weeks ago upon the request of her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, 36, an elementary school teacher.

But her health becomes more precarious by the hour. Her vital signs are still good, but since admission to hospice she has not been lucid – "but who would be since nourishment and fluids have been denied since March 28," Mullinax remarked."

What's being descibed here is nothing less than murder with the help of the court system....however, something about the story just doesn't seem right to me.

I tried doing a little follow-up on my own but couldn't reach Ken Mullinax and oddly enough, although I reached the Hospice-LaGrange, they denied having a Mae Magouirk on the premises. I then called back and spoke to the admissions to verify. They also denied that they had a Mae Magouirk there.

Given that, I'm keeping my powder dry on this issue until there's more confirmation of what's happening.

*** Update #1 ***: BlogsforTerri has multiple articles on this.

*** Update #2 ***: From LaGrange News:

"Kenneth Mullinax, the patient’s nephew in Birmingham, Ala., said a hospice nurse told him that Magouirk had not received substantial nourishment since March 28. He wants a temporary feeding tube inserted until she can be evaluated for treatment at the University of Alabama Medical Center. A living will states that nourishment should be withheld only if she were in a coma or vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

Boyd said Gaddy testified at the hearing that she feeds her grandmother Jello, chips of ice and “anything else she’d be willing to eat.”

This still leaves a lot of basic questions unanswered...

Wesley Clark is living proof that not all generals understand military strategy. He still to this day misunderstands the war:

The United States must reassure Syria and Iran about its intentions rather than trying to destabilize them, a former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate said.

The U.S. retired general Wesley Clark said that President George W. Bush's policy towards Syria and Iran encourage the two states to work against the U.S. interests in Iraq, and endangers the U.S. forces based there.

Both Iran and Syria, along with nearly every other ME government, have been working against US interests for decades. That didn't stop when we invaded Iraq, primarily because they know that a democratic Iraq probably spells doom for them. The unrest in Lebanon and trends toward greater representative government elsewhere in the region fuels their own self-doubt and fuels their restive populations' desire for freedom.

All of that is good. All of that, in fact, is the point of the war in Iraq. Along with taking the possibility of a WMD-armed Saddam out of the picture, democratizing the MidEast starting with Iraq has always been a part of the plan. The Bush administration made that case from the beginning. Blogs like this one made that case, too. And you don't democratize the MidEast by reassuring Syria and Iran, the two worst terror-sponsoring governments in the region. They should be scared, not reassured.

Clark also said that he fears the Bush administration's rhetoric would lead to the collapse of Syria's regime, saying that the U.S. is not prepared to handle that possibility.

Eh, when will we ever be prepared for that possibility? Were we prepared for the possibility that Communism would collapse in 1989? Should we have gotten all the ducks in a row before Reagan scolded Gorbachev to tear down that wall? What does being prepared for the collapse of Syria even mean? Does Clark think we're going to go in an occupy it of Baby Assad gets a shiv in the back tomorrow? That's looney.

Clark is going to bat for Syria and Iran, two enemies of the US. Like most Democrats these days, he'd rather trust our enemies than our duly elected administration. That was true during the Cold War and it's true now. That sad fact says quite a lot about where we are as a country.

This content was used with the permission of Bryan Preston of JunkYardBlog. You can read more of his work by clicking here.

After reading this article, most people probably think: "Isn't it worth it if it saves just one life?" Regrettably, I have to say, "no." Read it and make your own call:

"New passenger cars must have tire pressure monitoring systems in place by the 2008 model year, the government announced Thursday.

...NHTSA estimates that 120 lives a year will be saved when all new vehicles are equipped with the systems."

I'm sure there will be a lot of back patting about this legislation, but there shouldn't be because it's a perfect example of the government using regulation to make decisions that should be made by the market place.

After all, this is a feature that's already on the market:

"Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents nine automakers, said about 18 percent of their vehicles already have the technology. It first appeared in the 1997 Chevrolet Corvette and is used in some luxury vehicles."

So why is this feature "used in some luxury vehicles" instead of all cars as it is? It's because most Americans don't want to pay (roughly) an extra $50-$70 for the feature. I can tell you if I had a choice between getting that feature or keeping $70 of my own money, I'd rather have the money. Especially since you can do exactly the same thing with a $2 tire gauge.

But assuming the "120 lives a year" figure is right, isn't it worth it? Well, considering that we live in a nation of almost 300 million people and the overwhelming majority of those people ride or drive in a car on an almost daily basis, 120 deaths a year is an infinitesimal number. Just to give you a little perspective, in 2001, 322 people died via "Drowning and submersion while in or falling into (a) bath-tub."

So if we're going to decide that it's worth $70 per car to save 120 lives, what about all the other changes that could be made? Would it be worth $700 added to the cost of every car to save 1200 lives? What about $7,000 dollars added to the cost of every car to save 8400 lives?

The problem is that once the government signs off on a significant price increase for cars in order to achieve a statistically insignificant improvement in safety, then a precedent has been set. If someone comes along next year and says, "We can save 120 lives a year by making a another $70 part mandatory on every car," what's the justification for saying "no" supposed to be? Why is it any different than these "tire pressure monitoring systems?"

Look, the government should be in the business of monitoring the safety of cars. That makes sense; you don't want death traps rolling around on the highway. However, this sort of excessive regulation is bad for the country. It makes our businesses less competitive, it passes unnecessary costs on to consumers, and it sets a terrible precedent that makes it likely that even more red tape will be applied at a later date. Congress, especially a Republican Congress, should be more responsible than this...

*** Correction ***: I plain old misread the original article and mistook the cost per vehicle for the cost per tire. That has been corrected.

Unfortunately most pundits, myself included, tend to spend a lot more time pointing out what's wrong with proposals made by our political opponents than explaining what they believe should be done. That's why I wanted to take a moment to give a brief explanation of what I think should be done about some of the serious issues we face today:

ANWR: Drill, drill, drill!

Abortion: I'd like to see Roe V. Wade overturned. Then I'd like to see it kicked back to the states.

Buying Drugs From Canada: This is a political dodge. Canada has a tenth of our population and there's no way on earth they're going to be able to regularly supply us with enough drugs to make a difference. Even if they could it would be a form of price control that would cause the same sort of problems that price controls always do. I'm opposed.

Control Spending: Some form of Balanced Budget Amendment along with indexing the baseline budget to inflation would do the trick long-term.

Controlling Health Care Costs: Ease the burdensome rules and regs that add little to safety and increase costs. Use tort reforms to drive down the enormous insurance costs and extra expenses incurred by doctors practicing "defensive medicine." Then we should promote medical saving accounts and work to keep illegal aliens, who are driving up costs in certain areas, out of the country.

Education: The key to improving education in this country is introducing competition into the system via vouchers. Give us a real voucher program and we can have the best school system in the Western world in 20 years.

Illegal Immigration: Dramatic increases in border security, heavy penalties up to jail time for businesses employing illegals, & a lifetime ban that prevents illegals from ever becoming American citizens. Put that into effect and you'll see the numbers of illegals in the US rapidly and steadily decline.

Iran and Nukes: Use any means necessary to prevent them from getting nukes. That means bombing by our forces or Israeli forces if that's what it takes -- and that may be what it comes to when it gets right down to it.

Iraq: Keep permanent bases in the country, but allow the Iraqis to take over policing duties from our forces as soon as is practicable.

McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform: I'd like to see it repealed.

Minimum Wage Hikes: Forcing businesses to pay employees more than they're worth leads to reduced competitiveness and lost jobs. I'm opposed to having any sort of minimum wage.

North Korea and Nukes: Use negotiation and if it becomes fruitless, ratchet it up to an embargo. Given the grinding poverty there and cooperation we have from the Nork's neighbors, I doubt if violence will be necessary in this case.

Nuclear Option: There is no constitutional right to filibuster judges & the Democrats refuse to compromise. Pull the trigger.

Prescription Drug Benefit: I'd like to see it repealed.

Protection of Marriage: I support the Hatch Amendment: "An Amendment to the full faith and credit clause to insure that the legislators of each state, not the courts, would make the decision on gay marriage and that their rulings would not impact other states."

Social Security: Optional private accounts up to 6%, Raise the age to 68 in 2025, index Social Security payments to prices, instead of wages. That would go a long way towards helping to fix the problems with the program.

Taxes: Ideally, I'd like to see us switch to a flat tax or a national sales tax. If that's not politically possible, I'd settle for simplifying and flattening the tax code.

Term Limits: 4 terms for Congressmen & 2 terms for Senators.

The United Nations: I'm in favor of building a competing organization filled with likeminded Democracies. Then we'll eventually do everything that matters there and treat the UN as a toothless debating society.

This was so bizarre and creepy that it actually took my mind a few moments to comprehend exactly what I was looking at:

Yes, that's a piercing!

"Artist James Sooy proudly displays his piercings and metal jewelry, from the two captive bead rings in his upper ears to the thick stainless steel rings on each of his fingers.

Sooy and friend Oliver Gilson, a 27-year-old bartender, have been advertising their creation on a Web site and hope to patent the pierced glasses. They want to offer a model for $75 to $100 by June."

Yes, it's a "distinct look" all right. Instead of the glasses, why not just wear a sign around your neck that says: "Hello, I am a freaky weirdo."

Then again, I'm probably not the best person to ask since these days piercings remind me of that movie "Strangeland."

Here's the really scary thing for you kids in college: when I was 18-19 years old, I had hair down to my chin and I used to wear 25-30 friendship bracelets on one arm. Now, that I've gotten older I don't even like tattoos on women...of course, I didn't think women looked good with tattoos back then either....hmmm, well, I was going to make a point about what happens when you get old, but it doesn't really apply....still anybody with glasses shoved through the bridge of their nose looks like an oddball...

From Mickey Kaus:

"(Bill) Bradley wants the Democrats to emulate Republicans and generate ideas from a stable, pyramid-like institutional base--with "Democratic policy organizations" engaged in the "patient, long term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas." Just plug in a candidate at the top of this institutional pyrmaid and ... victory!

Currently, the Democrats' only hope is that once every four years a maverick candidate will come along who tells the party's permanent institutional base to shove it and actually fashion an appealing platform. party's post-Vietnam presidential winners--Carter and Clinton--both fit this pattern."

WASHINGTON (IFOC) - President Bush signed legislation today authorizing the creation of the Department of Neverland Security and a Cabinet-level position to manage the new bureaucratic entity.

"Visitors to the Neverland Ranch will never again experience the fear of a terrorist attack by Michael Jackson," said Bush at a press conference. "We hope that we can carry forward the exemplary record of the Department of Homeland Security to this new Department of Neverland Security."

Along with the creation of the new department, a color-based alert system similar to that of the Department of Homeland Security was announced:

GREEN: Michael Jackson is not on the property. Practice and train on protective measures against attack.
BLUE: Michael Jackson is on the property, but safely sealed in his hyperbaric chamber. Check communications with attorneys.
YELLOW: Michael Jackson is on the property, but there are plenty of witnesses and members of the media around to record any incidents. Increase surveilance of major body orifices.
ORANGE: Michael Jackson is on the property, roaming around with pornographic materials and looking for a tickle-fight. Coordinate efforts with Federal, State, and local law enforcement.
RED: Michael Jackson is naked in the shower and you're sick from the chemo treatments.

As for who Bush will select to head the Department of Neverland Security, sources say that former child-actor-turned-security expert Gary Coleman is leading his short list of candidates.

Despite his wide appeal, several Democratic Senators hinted that they would resist the selection of Coleman to the position and refuse to vote to confirm his appointment. "The hiring of another underqualified token minority to the Cabinet to cover for the Bush Administration's blatant racist policies is abhorrent to us," said a senior member of Senator Kennedy's staff off of the record. "We would support, however, the selection of Macaulay Culkin or that kid from Webster. They have plenty of experience with Jackson already."

Satire used with the permission of Laurence Simon of The IFOC News. You can read more of his work by clicking here.

Illegal Immigration has been one of Hillary Clinton's pet issues lately and now Virginia Governor Mark Warner is getting in on the act:

"Virginia Gov. Mark Warner yesterday signed into law a measure that denies illegal aliens public benefits, including access to Medicaid, welfare and local health care services."

Politically, going after illegals may be one of the smartest things the Democrats have done in years. Here's why:

Pro-illegal Republicans pull in big bucks from business contributors who want the supply of cheap labor to keep rolling in. Plus, the general feeling is that being soft on illegals helps Republicans pick up Latino votes. Furthermore, since the Democrats are even friendlier to illegals, whom they see as a possible source of votes, than Republicans, the GOP has escaped the wrath of the voters, who have been shown in poll after poll after poll to be adamantly against illegal immigration. So quite frankly, it's understandable that some Republicans think they're not going to have to pay a political price for looking the other way on the illegal immigration issue.

However, the dynamics of this issue change rather dramatically if Democrats start taking a tough line on illegal immigrants. Latinos were projected to only account for something like 6.1% of the votes in the 2004 election. So even if a pro-illegal immigration stance moves the Latino vote a few points in your direction, it's still going to have a relatively small impact (although admittedly bigger in some areas than others).

The flip side of this is that polls show a large majority of people in the U.S. are very much against illegal immigration. So if you have a situation that features a Democrat who's tough on illegal immigration going up against a Republican, like George Bush, who's not serious about the issue, you could see the Democrats peel off quite a few potential Republican voters without taking a major beating with Latino voters, whom polling shows are much more split on illegal immigration than most people assume.

How much of a difference do I think this issue could make? Had John Kerry been rabidly against illegal immigration instead of being even friendlier to illegals than President Bush, he would probably be President today. If Hillary Clinton keeps talking tough on illegals (and backs it up with votes) & were fortunate enough to run against a pro-illegal Republican like John McCain, I think it's not just entirely possible, BUT LIKELY, that she would ride that issue right into the White House.

The Republicans who've being politically penny wise and pound foolish on illegal immigration had better hope that Democrats like Hillary and Warner who're getting tough on illegals are just exceptions to the rule instead of the start of a trend because this is an issue that could cost the GOP a lot of elections if the Democrats are smart enough to figure it out.

Hat tip to Cold Fury for the Warner story.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." -- The First Amendment

One of the odd things about the First Amendment is that it is the Amendment to the Constitution that Americans are most familiar with. Yet, that very same Amendment, which was designed at least in part to protect religious liberties, has been clearly and unambiguously turned on its head and used as the primary tool of those who wish to drive religion from the public square.

The "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" clause of the Constitution means exactly what it says: that Congress will not establish a national religion like the church of England or the theocracy that rules Iran.

So to try to use the First Amendment to ban prayer in schools, public displays of the Ten Commandments or Christmas carols in public schools isn't just wrong, it's contrary to the very purpose of the Amendment.

Put another way, maybe you think prayer in schools is a good idea or maybe you think it's a bad idea. You may love the idea of school kids singing "Away in a Manger" at Christmas time or you may think they should stay away from that sort of song. But whatever your opinion may be, there is certainly no constitutional prohibition of those activities.

Quite frankly, that shouldn't even be a controversial assertion given that when Jefferson, Madison, and Hancock were around, the Bible was used as a text book and some states had their own established religions.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have been snookered on this subject by the misleading use of the phrase, "separation of church and state." That phrase does not appear in the Constitution; it's from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists and his use of "separation of church and state" is nothing more than a way of restating, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

Newt Gingrich elaborates in a bit more detail here:

"I suggest you go to the Jefferson Memorial, which on three of its four walls has a quote about God. Around the top of the memorial, it says the following: “I have sworn upon the altar of God Almighty, eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the minds of man.” And I say to my secular friends, “What do you think Jefferson might have meant by the term ‘God Almighty’?”

...They will then say. “Aha, Jefferson wrote a letter to the (Danbury Baptists) saying that there should be a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state,” which is exactly right, and by which Jefferson meant we should not have a nationally funded (established) church, which I agree with. They then mean separation of church and state has now become anti-religion. Well, what they won’t tell you is that two days after Jefferson signed that letter, he got in his carriage at the White House, rode up Pennsylvania Avenue, went to the U.S. House of Representatives Chamber, and went to church, because the U.S. House was used as a church until after the Civil War. Furthermore, Jefferson turned over the Treasury every Sunday to be used as a church, so it’s a little hard to explain how Jefferson thought you couldn’t say, “One Nation, Under God,” or have a prayer, or do a variety of really radical things, like posting the Ten Commandments."

Exactly.

The meaning of the First Amendment in regard to religion has been grievously twisted and that's something the American people should be told about.

What happens when a business can't compete with its rivals? It can try to improve its performance, go out of business, or if it's in a liberal state like Maryland, it can sic the government on its competitors to try to slow them down.

It's especially helpful when you're picking on Wal-Mart, a company liberals love to hate. Here are some of the details of the socialist scheme Maryland is targeting Wal-Mart with:

"Wal-Mart, the largest US retailer, is facing a new political challenge as Maryland's state assembly moved yesterday towards passing a bill that would require the company to increase significantly the amount of healthcare coverage it provides its employees.

The Maryland bill would require any private employer with more than 10,000 workers to ensure either that its contributions to its workers' health insurance are the equivalent of at least 8 per cent of its total payroll, or to make compensatory payments to the state."

Of course, when you start digging into the details, you find out that the concerns about the State picking up the tab for Wal-Mart's health care have been largely exaggerated:

"Wal-Mart says that it funds medical insurance for about 56 per cent of its employees through its medical plan, and that 86 per cent of its workers have health insurance of some sort."

Wal-Mart in Maryland employs 15,000 people and if 86% are covered already, then you're only talking about 2100 employees who aren't insured and that includes employees who just got hired, part-timers, and of course there are always going to be some people, usually those who are very young, who simply choose not to get coverage. So if 86% of Wal-Mart employees are covered, that's not too shabby.

So what's this legislation really about? It's about Giant Foods trying to hamper a much more efficient competitor:

"The Maryland bill was backed by an unlikely lobbying alliance between local groups: the United Food and Commercial Workers International union and Giant Foods, the state's largest supermarket operator, which is owned by Ahold, the Dutch retailer.

...The Maryland governor's department of business and economic development has said it opposes the bill, calling it bad for business, and suggesting it is being used by Giant to block competition."

If this passes, the real losers here will be the people of Maryland. They'll pay higher prices at Wal-Mart, thousands of their fellow citizens may lose their jobs at Wal-Mart, new businesses may be discouraged from coming to Maryland, and all because Giant Foods can't compete because they're saddled with a union. The people of Maryland deserve better than this...

Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits popped off a provocative column on the political divide between libertarians and conservatives. Here's an excerpt to give you a feel for the piece:

"Too often, though, the idea of a conservative-libertarian divorce reads like an ultimatum from libertarians, who occasionally express so much frustration at conservative apostasy they threaten to walk away. If we’re going to follow the marriage analogy to its grisly end, this dynamic is akin to a mouthy, pushy wife riding her hardworking husband (cheap fedora cocked to one side, tie askew, briefcase bulging with work still unfinished) about how useless he is around the house from the moment he walks in the door to the moment his head hits the pillow. With all respect, on Election Day, conservatives are the ones doing all the work."

Let me try to get across what Patrick was saying in...uh, let's say a bit more of a diplomatic way =D.

On issues where they philosophically agree with conservatives -- like taxes, free markets, & shrinking the size of governments -- Libertarians tend to be impossible to please purists. On the other hand, in many areas where Libertarians philosophically disagree with conservatives -- like open borders, legalizing hard drugs, & legalizing prostitution -- their beliefs equal political death for almost any Republican who espouses them at the national level.

Then when you consider the small size of the Libertarian voting block and you factor in that generally sensible Libertarians like Neil Boortz and Glenn Reynolds seem to be equaled in popularity in the Libertarian community by complete, raving, lunatics like Lew Rockwell and Justin Raimondo, it becomes clear that it's futile to try to court Libertarians politically.

Don't buy that? Then take a look at this article from Reason that polled prominent Libertarians about who they were going to vote for right before the November 2004 election. Here's the wacky breakdown from the Creme de la Creme of the Libertarian community:

Bush: 10
Kerry: 11
Badnarik (The Libertarian Candidate): 5
Undecided: 9
Not Voting: 5
Other: 7

Not only were these Libertarians all over the map, but almost all of them seemed to be ambivalent about their choices. The same ones who voted for Bush this time could very well be voting for Hillary next time and the ones that voted for Kerry might not vote and the ones who went with Badnarik could vote for the Republican candidate in 2008, yada, yada, yada, etc., etc., etc. If you're trying to figure out which way these same Libertarians will go in the future, you might as well flip coins, because there's no reliable way to predict which way they're going to go next time around.

Ultimately, this is what leads to Libertarians being given the short shrift in the Republican Party. Libertarians are a small, extremely unreliable, block of voters who can't be appealed to by conventional means. So, given the circumstances, it's very understandable that most Republicans don't bother to make the effort.

On the other hand, there is something Libertarians can do if they want to make more of an impact politically and that's join one of the two major parties and try to co-opt the Party from the inside. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but it beats sitting outside with your nose pressed up against the glass complaining that, "No one wants to listen to people out here," while simultaneously refusing to walk in the open door.

My dog Patton has gone completely nuts over that football in his mouth. It's the first thing he picks up when he gets up and the last thing he touches before he goes to bed. As a matter of fact, when he goes to sleep, he has been taking the football with him to bed...

The State of Kansas on Tuesday voted to re-affirm its existing ban on gay marriages. The margin was 71-29.

And, along those lines, below is a breakdown of the voting margins, to ban gay marriages, in the 15 states which have done so, by direct referendums, since Howard Dean’s Vermont became the very first, and only, jurisdiction to recognize “civil unions” for same-sex couples outside of the judicial system:

57-43 = Oregon.
59-41 = Michigan.
62-38 = California.
62-38 = Ohio.
66-34 = Utah.
67-33 = Montana.
71-29 = Kansas.
71-29 = Missouri.
73-27 = North Dakota.
75-25 = Arkansas.
75-25 = Kentucky.
76-24 = Georgia.
76-24 = Oklahoma.
78-22 = Louisiana.
86-14 = Mississippi.

What’s my point?

Well, let’s put aside, for a moment, the various legal, moral, ethical, historical, and religious issues which surround this matter.

This is, after all, a political web site.

And politics is about power, not merely rhetoric.

The thing that I, for one, have found, well, quite surreal, to be frank about it, is the extent to which supporters of gay marriage have ensconced themselves in revolving conundrums of sheer political reality denial.

The overwhelming majority of voters in this country do not want gay marriages to be recognized. We can sit around and debate the merits of the underlying questions, all day, but it won’t change that pure political reality. Yet, the more states which go ahead and directly vote to ban recognition of those unions, by overwhelming, super-majorities, no less, the louder the proponents thereof continue to shout that they’re “inevitable,” and a “winning issue,” politically speaking, from their standpoint.

With that, let me quote from the patron saint of political cognitive dissonance, the late Manhattan socialite, New Yorker film critic, and trust-fund liberal, Pauline Kael:

“I don’t know how Nixon got elected; nobody I know voted for him.”

Yep.

Nixon won 49 out of 50 states, in that election, including dear Pauline’s home base of New York.

And denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, my friends."

This content was used with the permission of Polipundit.

From Hindrocket at Power Line:

"Our disagreement with activist judges isn't based only on the fact that they're liberals and we're conservatives. More importantly, it's based on the fact that our Constitution didn't establish the Supreme Court as a super-legislature, appointed for life, charged with nullifying popular opinion when it conflicts with more "sophisticated" sentiment. One can imagine a government so structured, but it isn't ours, and it wouldn't be a democracy. Those who try to turn the judiciary into a legislature--but an unaccountable one, that never has to stand for re-election--can hardly complain when electoral passions begin to swirl around judicial appointments."

Judging by his latest proposal to combat indecency, James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis, must not have the word "overkill" in his vocabulary:

"Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations.

When asked how he intended to criminalize the violations, Sensenbrenner repeated his assertion that it was the best way to penalize people who violate the statute but avoid "penalizing people who are not violating the law."

Sensenbrenner, Ted Stevens out of Alaska, these guys are just out of control and need to be given a reality check.

It's one thing to start tossing around huge fines over Janet Jackson unexpectedly flashing a Super Bowl audience that was full of children. That's understandable and, quite frankly, if you're not going to step up to the plate and do something in a situation like that, you might as well not have indecency laws at all.

But after that, they upped the fines for indecency on radio programs to the point where in effect, it amounts to stealth censorship, because the fines are so high that even programs that make beaucoups of money, like Howard Stern, can't afford to pay the fines.

Now we're talking about applying indecency statutes to Cable TV, which is nutty given that a lot of cable companies already allow parents to block channels they don't want their kids to see. If you don't want your kid watching "South Park" or "Sex in City," either don't order cable or just block it. Why does the government need to be involved in that?

On top of all this, we've got Sensenbrenner talking about criminal prosecution for indecency charges which is pretty scary when you consider that what qualifies as "indecent" is inherently subjective. Imagine someone actually being sent to jail for making a "lewd" comment on TV that other Americans on the internet or in bars, sports arenas, or around the water cooler could say with impunity. That seems to be the direction that we're heading towards unless something changes.

Since the Janet Jackson incident, Sensenbrenner & company have been downhill skiing on the slippery slope of indecency regulations and it's time they were told to brake hard.

Howard Dean comes across as quite the Holy Roller these days.

Somebody must have told him that when you go to the South, you're supposed to pepper all your speeches with "Jesus talk." Just look at some quotes from this column on a Tennessee fund raiser Dean attended:

"We don't ever have to be ashamed of our values," Dean said at Vanderbilt. He made a point of invoking Holy Writ, championing "paycheck-to-paycheck" working people against the predatory wealthy via the famous passage which says a rich man's entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is as difficult as a camel's passing through the eye of a needle. He employed scripture to defend civil rights for gays: "When Jesus said 'love thy neighbor' he didn't mean choose which one to love." (Note: This is a funny quote for the guy who openly says he hates Republicans and everything they stand for to be tossing around, isn't it?.)

...The values of America are much closer to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. The Bible talks about Jesus reaching out to people who are different than He was, reaching out to sinners, reaching out to everybody and including everybody. I don't see those values in the Republican Party. I see a party that can't balance the budget. There is no moral virtue in leaving a debt to our children larger than the one we inherited."

That last quote, the one where he talks about the Republican Party not sharing the values of Jesus, is my favorite part. If Bush were to say something similar about the Democrats, the press would be ranting about it for two weeks at a minimum. As a matter of fact, Democrats like Dean tend to get all huffy when Republicans mention God at all. Remember this quote from Dean's failed primary campaign?

"We have got to stop having the campaigns run in this country based on abortion, guns, God and gays..."

But then when someone like Howard Dean concludes that it might be politically useful to start talking about God -- and usually that's right after the plane lands down South or immediately after walking into a black church -- then starts the thumping on the Bible like there's a drum solo.

So why don't liberals get angry at Howard Dean for mixing religion with politics? Where are the shouts of "theocon, theocon, theocon?!?"

There's a reason they're not upset about it and it's that libs understand that this is all part of a Howard Dean "strategery" designed to trick Americans into thinking that he shares their values and concerns. Check out this Dean quote from the same fund raiser and you'll see what I mean:

"We have to acknowledge people's fears. It's not just about gay rights and abortion. It's fear of what happens to their families. What they need is a signal from the Democratic Party that we're going to make it easier for them to raise their kids. The mistake is to think we're going to talk people out of their fears. These are not logical fears. Most kids will turn out fine, even in this era of bad stuff on television and things like that. You cannot sit down and logically explain to people why they have their fears."

All this religious talk from Howard Dean? That's part of the "signal" he's talking about and it's supposed to reassure middle-America that he's on their side even though he admits that he thinks their fears for their families are illogical and groundless.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think Dean is going to be able to sell that to the American people -- especially if he keeps publicly giving away his gameplan.

Hat tip to Mickey Kaus for pointing out the Dean quotes.

Here we'll take a balanced look at social security with all sides weighing in on the matter.
Social Security Question and Answer Session

What is wrong with Social Security?

Left Side - Nothing. Ok well, we'll tweak it a little. Really the only thing that would improve it is putting it in the U.S. Constitution or the U.N. Charter.

Right Side - A whole freakin' lot. In fact, just short of everything. We don't even really like the name all that much.

Off Side (me) - Everything. Well, it's my money, why can't I freaking keep it/lose it/buy a Play Station Portable with it or groceries or plastic yard bunnies or whatever? But NOOOOOO, instead I have to take it out of every single freakin' paycheck and put it into an account I'll probably never see a red cent of unless we start euthanizing more inconvenient people pretty soon.

When will Social Security run out of money if nothing is changed?

Left Side - Never, if money ever gets low, we'll just institute a tax on Bibles, Bible reading and any other Bible related activilties, up to and including thumping.

Right Side - 2017 or 2041 depending on what you mean by run out.

Off Side - 1954, Right now it takes on average 3 people's pay in to match 1 person's payout. At 3:1 it sounds like it's already out of money to me.

Who will use personal accounts?

Left Side - Everyone will be forced to. Your money will be taken from you by jack booted thugs at gun point. We don't have a problem with this in principle since that's how we'd like to see taxes taken. Our real concern is that it will then all be given to evil rich Republicans. Oh and the dead will all have to be dug up to see if they we buried with loose change in their pockets. The dead people change will also given to the evil rich Republicans for them to spend on having their gold-plated everything turned into platinum-plated everythings.

Right Side - Only those who desire to participate will. Those who chose not to participate can keep their account the way it is. People over 50 will not have the option.

Off Side - Only the people who brought me really cool presents for my 13th birthday will be allowed to participate. This is the 22nd year I've continued to accept these presents. Hint: I like things with the initials PSP. Oh and that blogger Phil. he can use them too.

Describe Social Security in 25 words or less.

Left Side - A great big ol' warm bear hug from our nanny, the government. Good for us who are too dumb/lazy to plan for our own retirement. [long sigh]

Right Side - Social Security, an idea whose time has come and GONE. Social? I dunno,maybe. Secure? HAH! HAH! HAHHHAHHAHHAHA HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAH!. HAHAHAHHAHAHH! [deep breath] AHAHAHAHA HAHHHAHAH! [COUGH] HAH!

Off Side - I say its time to let it die a dignified painless death. And somebody please get the 'Right Side' guy some water, he's turning red.

Thanks for tuning in.

This satire was used with the permission of IMAO. You can read more of Spacemonkey's work at IMAO.

Back in Feburary, I was mocking the left side of the blogosphere for pursuing the Jeff Gannon story like it was another Watergate.

But who's laughing now? Well...actually, it's still me because according to The Des Moines Register, the left side of the blogosphere has devolved into full-on "moonbattery" over the story. This, you've got to read...

"Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh.

"It appears that Gannon is the good guy - he might be getting back at his abusers," observed the Tyranny Response Unit blogger."

Hat tip to Wizbang! for pointing out this story.

Confederate Yankee, writing on the Border War, makes this interesting observation:

In 2004, the equivilent of 160 12,500 military divisions simply walked northward across the U.S.-Mexican border to disappear into our country’s interior. Opposing them is an apathetic federal government, a complicit media, an overworked Border Patrol, and now, the militia the Constitution intended.

Meanwhile, Barry Schweid for myway news is reporting that the U.S. will tighten border controls by 2008:

Americans will need passports to re-enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, Panama and Bermuda by 2008, part of a tightening of U.S. border controls in an era of terrorist threat, three administration officials said Tuesday.

Until now, Americans returning home from Canada have needed only to show a driver’s license or other government-issued photo identification card.

Let’s hope all those itinerate suicide bombers with designs on destroying the US are planning on putting off their sojourns for another 3 years or so…

This content was used with the permission of Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom. You can read more of his work by clicking here.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is being flayed in some quarters for saying:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."

Cornyn's primary mistake here is not advocating violence as some people have claimed -- to the contrary, he correctly says attacks on judges are without justification -- but saying something that can be easily misinterpreted.

For example, just look at Glenn Reynolds way over the top take on Cornyn's remarks:

"If you need proof that some Republicans are just as dumb as some Democrats, this is it. Now if there are further attacks on judges, Cornyn -- and the Republicans -- will be blamed. What's more, to some degree they'll deserve it.

Plus, when you get that hysterical, you sound like Paul Krugman."

You know, I like Glenn a lot, I think he's one of the best bloggers in the business, I read his page every day, he was nice enough to do an interview with me early on (Hey, Glenn, when do you want to do that 2nd one?), but quite frankly, he's the one who sounds as hysterical as Paul Krugman here.

So Republicans are going to be blamed for attacks on judges because of a statement made by a Republican Senator that doesn't advocate attacks on judges and refers to such assaults as being "without any justification?"

Well, I suppose Democrats will blame Republicans for any attacks on judges, but they blame us for everything short of foot fungus & split ends as it is, so will anyone notice the difference?

Moreover, while there is a growing level of discontentment with our imperial judiciary on the right, I don't know of any conservative who has called for an "all out war" against "the idea of an independent judiciary." So where does Glenn get this from?

I will say this, though: our government is a system of checks and balances and quite frankly, the judiciary has been allowed to tilt the scale in their own favor far too often.

We have courts in Massachusetts "discovering" that a "right" to gay marriage was written into a 200 year old state Constitution. We have multiple Federal Courts deciding to simply ignore Congress when it writes a law demanding a de novo review of the Terri Schiavo case. We have judges on the Supreme Court of the United States openly admitting that they're making rulings based on what they perceive to be "world opinion." The First Amendment, which the Founding Fathers intended to protect religious liberty, has been turned on its head and used as cudgel against public displays of religious belief.

This sort of judicial overstretch is not new, nor is it rare, but happily, I think we're finally starting to see Congress push back. Hopefully, as members of Congress do so, they'll take a bit more care with how they phrase things than Senator Cornyn did so as not to provide fodder for their political opponents.

*** Update #1 ***: More on this topic from BeldarBlog.

*** Update #2***: Here's clarification from Cornyn.

As I write this, it's 2:09 AM and once again, I've been hit with writer's block.

-- Terri Schiavo? I've hit her killing as hard and as often as anything I've ever discussed on this blog and I'm not sure that there's much more to say at least for the moment.

-- The Pope? I'm not Catholic, he's not American, and while I do think some of the MSM coverage is kind of silly, especially polling Catholics about what sort of positions they want the new Pope to take, as if the Holy Father were a politician. It's not worth doing a whole post on the subject.

-- The Democratic Underground has gotten really dull lately, perhaps because the moderators have gotten on a deletion happy in response to conservative websites and radio shows regularly bringing their looney opinions to light. I've gone into posts, thought "This one has real potential," and have come back a few hours later to find half the posts gone deleted by the mods. So those waters may be overfished for the moment.

-- Captain's Quarters is covering some scandal it's illegal for Canadian papers to talk about which is pretty nifty, but let's face it, that's a pretty dry topic unless you're a Canuck, eh.

-- By the way, I switched over to Vonage to save some dough and so far, so good. It's $25 a month for unlimited calling and by the time I get all the rebates back for the $59 phone adapter I had to buy to get it to work, the adapter will be free. Oh, but I had one heck of a time getting TiVo to download updates on it. It took a lot of patience and a lot of configuring. But, this isn't Slashdot. Heck, Slashdot isn't Slashdot anymore.

-- And....aww, forget it. It's now 2:45 AM and I just spent all that time writing this post about having nothing to write about and watching a truly lame Twilight Zone episode about a bunch of weirdos stuck in a cylinder.

I'm heading to bed and early tomorrow afternoon, I'll be rested, ready, and hopefully there will be some more breaking news. And if not, I'll cook something up.

From "The Knowledge Gap & The Terri Schiavo Case" (March 28, 2005)

"Sadly, the liberal media has campaigned as hard to put Terri in the ground as they did for John Kerry during the election. The polling data on this issue? It has come almost exclusively from pro-death push polls that don't adequately explain to the public what's happening.

...There has been a full court press on in the conservative media to let the public in on these details, to let them know that the State is erring on the side of death here, but unfortunately, Terri Schivao will likely be dead before the truth gets out..."

From If You Have A Problem With Saving Terri Schiavo, You Have A Problem With Conservatism (March 29, 2005)

"If you're looking for the line of demarcation in this case with conservatives/Republicans, it's not between social conservatives and market based conservatives, it's for the most part between those of us on the right who've been informed of the many troubling details of this case and those of us who haven't. Slowly, but surely, the word is getting out despite the best efforts of the mainstream media, and you will see opinions change as the facts come out. But sadly, Terri Schiavo is going to be killed in the interim..."

From Zogby Polling via Lifenews via Michelle Malkin:

"...The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and has not expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri's case, 43 percent say "the law presumes that the person wants to live, even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube" while just 30 percent disagree.

When asked directly about Terri's case and told the her estranged husband Michael "has had a girlfriend for 10 years and has two children with her" 56 percent of Americans believed guardianship should have been turned over to Terri's parents while 37 percent disagreed."

I wasn't planning to post about Terri Schiavo for another few days, but I just had to chime in and say, "See? I told you so."

BALTIMORE (IFOC) - The Baltimore Orioles opened the season with a loss when batboy Carlos Rodriguez was beheaded on the pitcher's mound before Monday's game against the Oakland A's.

"This made Curt Schilling's bloody sock look like a paper cut," said Oakland's General Manager Billy Beane. "That skinny kid opened up like a gusher and went down like a half-full sack of potatoes."

"Awful. Just awful," said Baltimore's recently-acquired outfielder and slugger Sammy Sosa. "This kind of thing never happened in Chicago, even when that fool in the stands messed with a foul ball."

Several fans were overcome with shock and had to be taken to local hospitals. Major League Baseball's management moved quickly to address fan concerns over the ghastly sight.

"Several players were whipped during the preseason, but the punishment increases to a beheading for the first offense once the regular season begins," said Major League Baseball's Commissioner Bud Selig. "Our sympathies go out to the Rodriguez family, but let's face it - he was warned. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

Several employees within the Orioles' organization hinted that the 5'10" 130lb Rodriguez's sample may have been switched with that of a player under investigation for the abuse of performance-enhancing substances.

Sosa went on the record to dismiss the rumors. "Nonsense," he said. "I saw the kid juicing with my own eyes. I will hit a home run in his honor today. And I swear that I will hit one for any other boys that might get caught in the future. Not that it's going to happen again."

Satire used with the permission of Laurence Simon of The IFOC News. You can read more of his work by clicking here.

Unlike most libertarians, I don't have an opinion on gay marriage, and I'm not going to have an opinion no matter how much you bait me. However, I had an interesting discussion last night with another libertarian about it, which devolved into an argument about a certain kind of liberal/libertarian argument about gay marriage that I find really unconvincing.

Social conservatives of a more moderate stripe are essentially saying that marriage is an ancient institution, which has been carefully selected for throughout human history. It is a bedrock of our society; if it is destroyed, we will all be much worse off. (See what happened to the inner cities between 1960 and 1990 if you do not believe this.) For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution. We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart.

A very common response to this is essentially to mock this as ridiculous. "Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual"

To which social conservatives reply that institutions have a number of complex ways in which they fulfill their roles, and one of the very important ways in which the institution of marriage perpetuates itself is by creating a romantic vision of oneself in marriage that is intrinsically tied into expressing one's masculinity or femininity in relation to a person of the opposite sex; stepping into an explicitly gendered role. This may not be true of every single marriage, and indeed undoubtedly it is untrue in some cases. But it is true of the culture-wide institution. By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.

To which, again, the other side replies "That's ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!"

Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. "That's ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!" This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can't justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he's only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity. Similarly, you--highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you--may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn't mean that the institution of marriage won't be weakened in America just the same.

This should not be taken as an endorsement of the idea that gay marriage will weaken the current institution. I can tell a plausible story where it does; I can tell a plausible story where it doesn't. I have no idea which one is true. That is why I have no opinion on gay marriage, and am not planning to develop one. Marriage is a big institution; too big for me to feel I have a successful handle on it.

However, I am bothered by this specific argument, which I have heard over and over from the people I know who favor gay marriage laws. I mean, literally over and over; when they get into arguments, they just repeat it, again and again. "I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted."

They may well be right. Nonetheless, libertarians should know better. The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality. Every government programme that libertarians have argued against has been defended at its inception with exactly this argument.

Let me take three major legal innovations, one of them general, two specific to marriage.

The first, the general one, is well known to most hard-core libertarians, but let me reprise it anyway. When the income tax was initially being debated, there was a suggestion to put in a mandatory cap; I believe the level was 10 percent.

Don't be ridiculous, the Senator's colleagues told him. Americans would never allow an income tax rate as high as ten percent. They would revolt! It is an outrage to even suggest it!

Many actually fought the cap on the grounds that it would encourage taxes to grow too high, towards the cap. The American people, they asserted, could be well counted on to keep income taxes in the range of a few percentage points.

Oops.

Now, I'm not a tax-crazy libertarian; I don't expect you to be horrified that we have income taxes higher than ten percent, as I'm not. But the point is that the Senators were completely right--at that time. However, the existance of the income tax allowed for a slow creep that eroded the American resistance to income taxation. External changes--from the Great Depression, to the technical ability to manage withholding rather than lump payments, also facilitated the rise, but they could not have without a cultural sea change in feelings about taxation. That "ridiculous" cap would have done a much, much better job holding down tax rates than the culture these Senators erroneously relied upon. Changing the law can, and does, change the culture of the thing regulated.

Another example is welfare. To sketch a brief history of welfare, it emerged in the nineteenth century as "Widows and orphans pensions", which were paid by the state to destitute families whose breadwinner had passed away. They were often not available to blacks; they were never available to unwed mothers. Though public services expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, that mentality was very much the same: public services were about supporting unfortunate families, not unwed mothers. Unwed mothers could not, in most cases, obtain welfare; they were not allowed in public housing (which was supposed to be--and was--a way station for young, struggling families on the way to homeownership, not a permanent abode); they were otherwise discriminated against by social services. The help you could expect from society was a home for wayward girls, in which you would give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.

The description of public housing in the fifties is shocking to anyone who's spent any time in modern public housing. Big item on the agenda at the tenant's meeting: housewives, don't shake your dustcloths out of the windows--other wives don't want your dirt in their apartment! Men, if you wear heavy work boots, please don't walk on the lawns until you can change into lighter shoes, as it damages the grass! (Descriptions taken from the invaluable book, The Inheritance, about the transition of the white working class from Democrat to Republican.) Needless to say, if those same housing projects could today find a majority of tenants who reliably dusted, or worked, they would be thrilled.

Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.

Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatise unwed mothers. Why shouldn't they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.

But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.

Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?

People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.

C'mon said the activists. That's just silly. I just can't imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.

Oooops.

Of course, change didn't happen overnight. But the marginal cases did have children out of wedlock, which made it more acceptable for the next marginal case to do so. Meanwhile, women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men. So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded. In the early 1960s, a black illegitimacy rate of roughly 25 percent caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write a tract warning of a crisis in "the negro family" (a tract for which he was eviscerated by many of those selfsame activists.)

By 1990, that rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.

But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle's absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.

Marriage matters. It is better for the kids; it is better for the adults raising those kids; and it is better for the childless people in the communities where those kids and adults live. Marriage reduces poverty, improves kids outcomes in all measurable ways, makes men live longer and both spouses happier. Marriage, it turns out, is an incredibly important institution. It also turns out to be a lot more fragile than we thought back then. It looked, to those extremely smart and well-meaning welfare reformers, practically unshakeable; the idea that it could be undone by something as simple as enabling women to have children without husbands, seemed ludicrous. Its cultural underpinnings were far too firm. Why would a woman choose such a hard road? It seemed self-evident that the only unwed mothers claiming benefits would be the ones pushed there by terrible circumstance.

This argument is compelling and logical. I would never become an unwed welfare mother, even if benefits were a great deal higher than they are now. It seems crazy to even suggest that one would bear a child out of wedlock for $567 a month. Indeed, to this day, I find the reformist side much more persuasive than the conservative side, except for one thing, which is that the conservatives turned out to be right. In fact, they turned out to be even more right than they suspected; they were predicting upticks in illegitimacy that were much more modest than what actually occurred--they expected marriage rates to suffer, not collapse.

How did people go so badly wrong? Well, to start with, they fell into the basic fallacy that economists are so well acquainted with: they thought about themselves instead of the marginal case. For another, they completely failed to realise that each additional illegitimate birth would, in effect, slightly destigmatise the next one. They assigned men very little agency, failing to predict that women willing to forgo marriage would essentially become unwelcome competition for women who weren't, and that as the numbers changed, that competition might push the marriage market towards unwelcome outcomes. They failed to forsee the confounding effect that the birth control pill would have on sexual mores.

But I think the core problems are two. The first is that they looked only at individuals, and took instititutions as a given. That is, they looked at all the cultural pressure to marry, and assumed that that would be a countervailing force powerful enough to overcome the new financial incentives for out-of-wedlock births. They failed to see the institution as dynamic. It wasn't a simple matter of two forces: cultural pressure to marry, financial freedom not to, arrayed against eachother; those forces had a complex interplay, and when you changed one, you changed the other.

The second is that they didn't assign any cultural reason for, or value to, the stigma on illegitimacy. They saw it as an outmoded vestige of a repressive Victorial values system, based on an unnatural fear of sexuality. But the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has quite logical, and important, foundations: having a child without a husband is bad for children, and bad for mothers, and thus bad for the rest of us. So our culture made it very costly for the mother to do. Lower the cost, and you raise the incidence. As an economist would say, incentives matter.

(Now, I am not arguing in favor of stigmatising unwed mothers the way the Victorians did. I'm just pointing out that the stigma did not exist merely, as many mid-century reformers seem to have believed, because of some dark Freudian excesses on the part of our ancestors.)

But all the reformers saw was the terrible pain--and it was terrible--inflicted on unwed mothers. They saw the terrible unfairness--and it was terribly unfair--of punishing the mother, and not the father. They saw the inherent injustice--and need I add, it was indeed unjust--of treating American citizens differently because of their marital status.

But as G.K. Chesterton points out, people who don't see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Now, of course, this can turn into a sort of precautionary principle that prevents reform from ever happening. That would be bad; all sorts of things need changing all the time, because society and our environment change. But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that "it just growed". You don't have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.

It might also be, of course, that the feature is what evolutionary biologists call a spandrel. It's a term taken from architecture; spandrels are the pretty little spaces between vaulted arches. They are not designed for; they are a useless, but pretty, side effect of the physical properties of arches. In evolutionary biology, spandrel is some feature which is not selected for, but appears as a byproduct of other traits that are selected for. Belly buttons are a neat place to put piercings, but they're not there because of that; they're a byproduct of mammalian reproduction.

However, an architect will be happy to tell you that if you try to rip out the spandrel, you might easily bring down the building.

The third example I'll give is of changes to the marriage laws, specifically the radical relaxation of divorce statutes during the twentieth century.

Divorce, in the nineteenth century, was unbelievably hard to get. It took years, was expensive, and required proving that your spouse had abandonned you for an extended period with no financial support; was (if male) not merely discreetly dallying but flagrantly carrying on; or was not just belting you one now and again when you got mouthy, but routinely pummeling you within an inch of your life. After you got divorced, you were a pariah in all but the largest cities. If you were a desperately wronged woman you might change your name, taking your maiden name as your first name and continuing to use your husband's last name to indicate that you expected to continue living as if you were married (i.e. chastely) and expect to have some limited intercourse with your neighbours, though of course you would not be invited to events held in a church, or evening affairs. Financially secure women generally (I am not making this up) moved to Europe; Edith Wharton, who moved to Paris when she got divorced, wrote moving stories about the way divorced women were shunned at home. Men, meanwhile (who were usually the respondants) could expect to see more than half their assets and income settled on their spouse and children.

There were, critics observed, a number of unhappy marriages in which people stuck together. Young people, who shouldn't have gotten married; older people, whose spouses were not physically abusive nor absent, nor flagrantly adulterous, but whose spouse was, for reasons of financial irresponsibility, mental viciousness, or some other major flaw, destroying their life. Why not make divorce easier to get? Rather than requiring people to show that there was an unforgiveable, physically visible, cause that the marriage should be dissolved, why not let people who wanted to get divorced agree to do so?

Because if you make divorce easier, said the critics, you will get much more of it, and divorce is bad for society.

That's ridiculous! said the reformers. (Can we sing it all together now?) People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!

Oops.

When the law changed, the institution changed. The marginal divorce made the next one easier. Again, the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce.

There were actually two big changes; the first, when divorce laws were amended in most states to make it easier to get a divorce; and the second, when "no fault" divorce allowed one spouse to unilaterally end the marriage. The second change produced another huge surge in the divorce rate, and a nice decline in the incomes of divorced women; it seems advocates had failed to anticipate that removing the leverage of the financially weaker party to hold out for a good settlement would result in men keeping more of their earnings to themselves.

What's more, easy divorce didn't only change the divorce rate; it made drastic changes to the institution of marriage itself. David Brooks makes an argument I find convincing: that the proliferation of the kind of extravagent weddings that used to only be the province of high society (rented venue, extravagent flowers and food, hundreds of guests, a band with dancing, dresses that cost the same as a good used car) is because the event itself doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to, so we have to turn it into a three-ring circus to feel like we're really doing something.

A couple in 1940 (and even more so in 1910) could go to a minister's parlor, or a justice of the peace, and in five minutes totally change their lives. Unless you are a member of certain highly religious subcultures, this is simply no longer true. That is, of course, partly because of the sexual revolution and the emancipation of women; but it is also because you aren't really making a lifetime committment; you're making a lifetime committment unless you find something better to do. There is no way, psychologically, to make the latter as big an event as the former, and when you lost that committment, you lose, on the margin, some willingness to make the marriage work. Again, this doesn't mean I think divorce law should be toughened up; only that changes in law that affect marriage affect the cultural institution, not just the legal practice.

Three laws. Three well-meaning reformers who were genuinely, sincerely incapable of imagining that their changes would wreak such institutional havoc. Three sets of utterly logical and convincing, and wrong arguments about how people would behave after a major change.

So what does this mean? That we shouldn't enact gay marriage because of some sort of social Precautionary Principle

No. I have no such grand advice.

My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can't imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff. And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining. If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that's either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform. If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed b@stards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I'm a little leery of letting you muck around with it.

Is this post going to convince anyone? I doubt it; everyone but me seems to already know all the answers, so why listen to such a hedging, doubting bore? I myself am trying to draw a very fine line between being humble about making big changes to big social institutions, and telling people (which I am not trying to do) that they can't make those changes because other people have been wrong in the past. In the end, our judgement is all we have; everyone will have to rely on their judgement of whether gay marriage is, on net, a good or a bad idea. All I'm asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision. I realise that this probably falls on the side of supporting the anti-gay-marriage forces, and I'm sorry, but I can't help that. This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I'm asking it from my side too, in approaching social ones. I think the approach is consistent, if not exactly popular.

This content was used with the permission of Jane Galt. You can read more of her splendid work at Asymmetrical Information.

Liberal blogger Oliver Willis takes a look around the blogosphere & opines that:

"In the blogosphere, you have almost a reverse dynamic to that found in the media. Overwhelmingly liberal bloggers identify themselves directly as Democrats. Yes, there are many who see the party as the lesser of two evils, and in their hearts would prefer Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, but overwhelmingly I've found bloggers on the left have no problem saying "yep, I'm a Democrat" (I obviously count myself among that group).

But among bloggers on the right, it always seems that great pains are taken to make it clear that they are "independents" or "libertarians" - these are people who usually endorse much of the GOP agenda and reliably vote for Republicans - and they don't identify as "Republican". Yes, there are some like GOPBloggers who identify with the party, but that was essentially a recent development."

Believe it or not, I think he's right about what he said there, although his conclusion, in the next paragraph, that Democrats are "prouder of the Democratic party," is off-base.

In my experience, the blogosphere doesn't neccessarily match up ideologically with the rest of America as well as many people might think.

The liberal bloggers tend to be even further to the left than their counterparts in the mainstream media. When you're talking about left-wing bloggers, a lot of times you're talking about the sort of people who get irritated with libs like Alan Colmes & Chris Matthews because they believe they're way too moderate. When candidates like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton pretend to be much more moderate than they actually are, the left-wing bloggers are exactly the sort of radicals they're trying to separate themselves from in the minds of the American people.

On the other hand, in my opinion, the right side of the blogosphere is much more libertarian than the republican base. Sometimes that slips by people because a lot of these libertarians, quite understandably, focus on topics where their ideology and interests dovetail with those of their GOP readers. But on certain subjects that fire up the GOP base, like gay marriage, abortion, & illegal immigration, you'll often see surprisingly large portions of the right side of the blogosphere either duck the issue or take positions contrary to those of most of their own readers.

As to why the right side of the blogosphere has an unusually high percentage of libertarians and libertarian leaning bloggers -- I have a theory. Conservatives flocked to talk radio in reaction to the liberal dominance of the mainstream media. They felt like their message wasn't being given a fair shake, so they found a way to get around the MSM filter.

Same deal for libertarians in the blogosphere. Libertarians tend to be very passionate about their politics and yet they've been marginalized in mainstream politics. So, a larger number of them than you would expect have gone into blogging where they have an opportunity to expound upon their ideas without a liberal OR conservative filter between them and the public.

So, if you're wondering why so many right-of-center bloggers won't call themselves republican -- well, it's because they're not republicans, even if they agree with the GOP on their hot-button issues more often than they agree with the democrats.

I'm not a Catholic and I've often disagreed with political stands taken by the Vatican, but I wanted to take a moment to say a kind word about the Pope since he passed on this week-end.

During the eighties he was a power player in the war against Communism. This was a man who could have said, "This is none of my business," but he supported the Polish people, his people, as they struggled to throw off the Soviet yoke and he made a real difference. All people who love freedom owe the Holy Father a debt of gratitude for that.

Also, the way the Pope lived his last few years on earth were inspirational. Here was a man whose body was beginning to fail him and it showed. He often looked sick, exhausted, as if he were about to collapse under the responsibilities placed on his shoulders. Sure, the Pope is supposed to stick it out until the very end, but who could have blamed him had he decided that he had done enough, that it was time for him to go home, put on his fuzzy bunny slippers, eat some chicken soup, and relax in a comfortable chair while an army of staff fretted over his comfort. But there were people who looked up to him, who needed him, and so he persevered for the sake of others when it would have been easier just to give up. There's much to be said for that.

So, John Paul II, wherever you are up there, thanks for what you did down here.