Month: October 2003

In an editorial in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley’s latest piece bears the headline “One Reason Not to Like Bush” and he starts with a lead of:

Conservatives wonder why so many liberals don’t just disagree with President Bush’s policies, but seem to dislike him personally. The story of stem cell research may help to explain.

He offer some blah blah blah about Bush opposing fetus stem cell research and how Bush pretends to think it’s immoral, but:

None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem cell speech.

Got that? Kinsley starts putting beliefs into Bush’s head to make his point. Lookie der, lookie der, Bush cannot adhere to his principles because he has not specifically addressed this particular permutation! HYPOCRITE!

Finally, after some blah blah blah about Bush being a hypocrite and moral poser and not a very good one at that (undoubtedly, Kinsley would probably intimate, like you and me, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more!), Kinsley finishes with:

This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron — and he probably is not — he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.

Is that a good enough reason to dislike him personally?

Actually, if I were falling for the straw man Kinsley’s hung in effigy, I might still think it was a policy disagreement if I left out every impure motive he so applied so dilligently to the policy discussion.

As it stands, I can only summon forth a “Poor form, Peter” and continue to disregard Michael Kinsley as a serious thinker. Is it good enough reason to dislike him personally? But, Mr. Toohey, I don’t think of you.

The TSA strikes again, as in “swing and a miss!”

You think they’ll go after the harmless woman who brought a knife onto the plane to cut her apple snack? Perhaps it’s also against the law to eat an apple that’s not provided by flight staff on a plane, too. If not, maybe it should be.

(Link seen via Drudge.)

In his column today for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper discusses the marketing creation “metrosexual.” He’s spot on when he says nobody but people who are selling something to men who want to be “metrosexuals” every really uses the term “metrosexual.”

However, he goes over the line with his clincher paragraph:

Uh, I don’t think so. And after I finish my Guinness tonight, moisturize and then read a few pages of The Devil Wears Prada before I watch “SportsCenter,” I’ll sleep well, knowing this whole metrosexual thing is just media-fueled nonsense. Hell, I don’t think I even know any metrosexuals.

Dammit, were I in Chicago, I might feel the need to defend my manliness by having a slap fight with him or downing a Budweiser just to prove I could. As it were, I shall finish my Guinness, read a chapter of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, and ….

Uh oh.

Looks like there might be some awkward conversations at Thanksgiving when I come out of the walk-in closet.

Oh, wait, my beautiful wife dresses me, so I guess I am not a metrosexual after all.

With all the handwringing about Nathaniel Heatwole and his “hide the box cutter” stunt which has left him facing ten years in Federal prison for pointing out the folly that is the TSA and its passenger searches, I think it’s time to inject a little perspective into the anti-box cutter hysteria. I understand they were used in the hijackings on September 11, 2001, but it was a different world then. People expected that hijackers wanted to fly to Cuba, or wanted some political hostages released, or some ransom money. People did not know then that doing what a hijacker wanted was certain death, too.

Otherwise, no one would be hijacked by someone wielding one of these:

Not exactly a machete, now, is it? This is your garden variety box cutter favored by retail stockers and warehousemen everywhere. Note the less-than-shiny razor blade with almost a whole half inch of cutting surface exposed. This is not a piercing or stabbing weapon, folks. This is a little slasher, and it’s got far less than an inch of penetration power. No bad man is going to stick you in the heart or lungs with it, and it’s probably not enough to cut through your stomach wall if you’ve done any extra situps recently or have been eating a lot of fast food. Keep it away from your neck and you should be okay if someone pulls one in a fight. Granted, I’d rather be the guy with a case cutter if one of the two of us in the fight has one, but it’s not instant death, and it’s not even that intimidating.

Even if the bad guy pulls the razor out, he’s only exposing 1.5 inches of slashing blade, and it’s a hell of a lot harder to hold:

Of course, maybe when the press describes box cutter it means a utility knife. Utility knives come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re all designed to have a small, sharp cutting surface but also to be safe for people to handle. As a result, they don’t make that effective of a weapon, especially if you’re a terrorist with a plane full of resisting people.

So we, the people, know that the measures that strip grandmothers of their pinking shears and businessmen of their nail clippers are mostly cosmetic. That the TSA is making a show of security all the while telling us to please be quiet so that the TSA can fool the bad men into thinking the planes are secure. By taking away some of the most effective makeshift weapons available. This effort inconveniences air travellers and probably doesn’t even phase the bad men. It also could lead to prosecution of innocent people who make a small mistake.

When I was working in retail, the box cutter just became a part of the gear I carry in my jeans pockets. After each work day, I dumped it onto the dresser with my wallet, keys, and change. Every morning, including some upon which I did not work, I picked the gear up and put it into my pockets. If I were to do that today, on a day whereupon I was to catch a plane, don’t doubt the TSA would make an example of me.

So let this be a series of lessons to you. Our TSA is creating, for its own benefit, an illusion of security by isolating innocuous items and hoping against all hope that the terrorists continue to use things TSA screeners are looking for and that the terrorists are foolish enough to get caught with them. The TSA will ruin countless innocent American (not that Heatwole’s innocent, mind you) lives to make its point, which is not worth much.

Apparently, going over Niagara Falls without a barrel is illegal, according to this story:

It was a stunt — not a suicide attempt — that sent a Michigan man over the brink of Niagara Falls yesterday. That’s according to Canadian police, who say they will charge 40-year-old Kirk Jones of Canton, Michigan with illegally performing a stunt.

I’m not sure which stunts are legal in Canada, but just in case, it’s probably a good idea to not leap through any flaming hoops when visiting our nothern neighbor.

No word from our legal counsel yet whether wearing clown shoes violates Ontario ordinance.

Tyler Cowan of The Volokh Conspiracy expounds on the overcriminalization of economic conduct.

He quotes:

“Estimates of the current size of the body of federal criminal law vary. It has been reported that the Congressional Research Service cannot even count the current number of federal crimes. The American Bar Association reported in 1998 that there were in excess of 3,300 separate criminal offenses. More than 40 percent of these laws have been enacted in just the past 30 years, as part of the growth of the regulatory state. And these laws are scattered in over 50 titles of the United States Code, encompassing roughly 27,000 pages. Worse yet, the statutory code sections often incorporate, by reference, the provisions and sanctions of administrative regulations promulgated by various regulatory agencies under congressional authorization. Estimates of how many such regulations exist are even less well settled, but the ABA thinks there are “[n]early 10,000.””

Makes it hard to keep them all straight in your head, doesn’t it?

After treating a black Lab for an arrow wound, a veterinarian took a moment to plomb the deep recesses of the dark soul of hunters:

A lot of hunters take the hunt as seriously as a religion, and anything that gets in their way is going to get blasted to kingdom come,” Jones said. “Of course the dog probably ran around in this woods all year round. The hunters were probably there illegally.”

Spurious assertions made to split hunters from the mainstream, where they yet remain in the suburbanifying northern Jefferson County region of Missouri? Back off, man, he’s a scientist armed with a D.V.M. degree, so he can explain the lizard-brain-mentality which undoubtedly comes from an excess of blood and not enough phlegm in some sects of the population.

If you’re going to say a lot of hunters are murderous skybusters (or ground-level busters), you can just as easily assert that quite a few black Labs exhibit suicidal impulses or innumerable veterinarians are nitwits. However, I cannot comfortably assert spuriously based on personal anecdotes. Our veterinarian is not a nitwit and the most avid hunter I know hasn’t yet blasted everything in his way to kingdom come, I’d have to think that spurious assertions only serve to make good newspaper copy, and to be a Jedi mind trick for weak minded legislators fools.

The New York Daily News, writing about another suicide at New York University, characterizes the incident thusly:

A 19-year-old New York University student plunged from a friend’s sixth-floor window in Manhattan last night in an apparent suicide, cops said.

The incident marked the third reported suicide by an NYU student this fall.

Ouch. Might I recommend you share my pretentious reference to this season as autumn to avert these situations?

Draft Wesley.

(Link seen on Boots and Sabers.)