dangerous liberty

CSPAN has the video of the FL gubenatorial debate held Monday October 30, 2006.

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A must read Hitchens: Plamegate’s ridiculous conclusion. By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

He is not easy on David Corn of The Nation. Nor should he be. It was Corn who started the whole 16 words imbroglio so many moons ago, based on Wilson’s lies. At best his judgement is suspect, at worst he deliberately misled, as he has accused Bush for many years. Hitchen’s explains:

In the stylistic world where disclosures are gleaned and ironies underscored, the nullity of the prose obscures the fact that any irony here is only at the authors’ expense. It was Corn in particular who asserted—in a July 16, 2003, blog post credited with starting the entire distraction—that:

The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation’s counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.

After you have noted that the Niger uranium connection was in fact based on intelligence that has turned out to be sound, you may also note that this heated moral tone (”thuggish,” “gang”) is now quite absent from the story. It turns out that the person who put Valerie Plame’s identity into circulation was a staunch foe of regime change in Iraq. Oh, that’s all right, then. But you have to laugh at the way Corn now so neutrally describes his own initial delusion as one that was “seized on by administration critics.”

The fact that Corn doesn’t disclose outright that he was one of the ‘adminstration critics’ says a great deal about his journalistic ethic.

Coyote Blog: A Skeptics Primer for “An Inconvenient Truth”

I’m halfway through, it is well done. (even handed, as well)

In the post Conservatives Against Intelligent Design, Indian Cowboy reveals the astounding ignorance of what ID proposes which is sadly so common among those who oppose it, especially those who do so because they consider it a “perversion of science”.

I’ve looked at his prior posts and see nothing indicating depth where this issue is concerned. The rub with ID proponents isn’t and has never been ‘evolution’, but the Darwinian inference those changes and ultimately life itself is a result of undirected mutations and chance. This is not provable by any experimental standard Indian Cowboy would consider good science. I’d challenge him and others to point me to the experiment designed to observe random and undirected mutations over vast time without any intelligence influencing the mutations!

From a blog entry I wrote a few months back:

When critics dismiss ID arguments out of hand as ‘not Science’, they attempt a pass on addressing the arguments that are being put forward for this theory.

If one were to study intelligence and come up with general rules or properties of intelligence, would critics consider that science? If they were then to apply those rules to observable and documented processes or structures in nature (for instance, the ATP synthase motor), is that science?

The fact is, critics do not know if the micro-evolutionary process of adaptation is built in (ie ‘designed’) or if it is part of a larger purposeless process. They start with the premise it must be the latter and circle around to prove their original premise.

NDE proponents do not know that natural processes account for the origin of life. That is simply a matter of their own faith! Got gaps? Natural selection or infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters eventually producing the works of the old Bard is the answer!

I’m wide open to science and believe in the scientific method and the rigor of review and critique. It is critical to a decent understanding of our physical world. But I also know that with humans, the philosophic framework by which we view the world around us informs our conclusions about that world. Naturalists deny this when they deny their faith in science to provide the answers and their faith that observable, quantifiable nature is the means to all ends of understanding.

The bottom line? Critics should practice a little more intellectual honesty with their own faith based narrative and acknowledge the science upon which the nascent ID movement draws the design inference.

Intelligent Design is more a modifyier of Evolutionary Theory (in all its forms), than a replacement. I know of few ID proponents who discount the mountains of science showing the earth and universe to be very old and living things to undergo change over that time.

Is anyone game for polite exchange on the topic? Help resurrect this old post on my forum and join in!

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George Reisman powerfully comments on The Sorry State of Our Union (HT: Luskin):

… one leading and downright terrifying fact stands out. And that is that the people’s elected representives do not know what the government is doing. The government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. The people’s elected representatives are supposed to be in control of that government in the name of the people they represent. That is their job.

The situation we are in, and have been in for several generations, is one in which intelligent, representative government is increasingly impossible, simply because of the sheer size and scope of government. If we want a government that is controlled by our representatives, we need a government that is sufficiently limited in size and scope for it to be humanly possible for our representatives to know and understand what it is doing and what is being suggested that it do.

For the people’s representatives to regain control of the government, its size and scope must be radically reduced.

Reisman concludes

Comparisons to train wrecks hardly do justice to what’s at stake. It’s the wreckage of our country that is waiting to happen, and has been happening. And it’s been happening and will continue to happen for the very simple reason that the government of the United States is out of control in the most literal sense. It is out of the control of the American people and their elected representatives. That control must be reestablished.

This is absolutely true, but how? Where is the plan? Who is doing the right thing? How to bring out the libertarian in John Q. Public? Individualism and self-reliance are no longer attitudes of most Americans, there is a general acceptance of governmental control and now nasty fights over who gets to legislate morality.

Nifty little networking feature for the blog group Life, Liberty, Property. Thanks to Eric for setting it up!

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Donald Luskin on the 2003 Tax Cut on Capital Gains Entirely Paying for Itself on NRO Financial. A well-supported analysis.

Yesterday in Reason magazine: Vouching for Newark: One of America’s most-maligned cities gets set to elect pro-school choice leadership, by David Weigel. David notes today that the subject of this article won election yesterday and run-off election will determine whether his pro-choice slate will have a big majority in the city of Newark.

Those who support the cause of choice in public education should consider supporting the remaining pro-choicers in their run-off elections…

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal for about 30 minutes yesterday to discuss immigration reform.

He addressed:

• border fencing - about 14 miles of fence in San Diego. Now hard to find locals who want the fence down. It’s a good thing, he said, and property values are going up in that area.
• will take significant manpower and willpower, the latter being more important than the former.
• Democrats view illegals for hispanic votes, Republicans for cheap labor.
• Supply and demand keep wages low for citizens in areas affected by low cost illegal labor.
• The supply of illegals keeps some industry from using advanced technology to plant and harvest without machines.
• Mexicans aren’t the only illegals
• for every 1 we stop, 3-5 get by us.
• SSN ‘instacheck’ system gives employer lookup for valid SSN.
• Republicans tried to lower illegal entry from a felony to shorten the deportation process but Democrats blocked it
• all countries south of the US enforce their borders and immigration laws
• a majority of legal hispanic immigrants oppose illegal immigration

One outraged caller voiced his umbrage at illegals demanding civil rights they haven’t earned.

This issue is going to cost the GOP if they don’t get spines.

Powerline discusses misreporting a recent hearing in the New York Times in The verdict, take 2. The entire hearing can be viewed here. The particular clip they deal with in their post is here.

After hearing the testimony, I think Powerline has it right. All the judges agreed the president has inherent authority which sometimes trumps statutes. Most seemed to agree presidents would be remiss to cede authority, which is the reason for presidential signing statements.