Via Washington Post:

The Senate today defied a White House veto threat and narrowly approved a $122 billion war spending bill that calls for combat troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq this summer.

The 51-47 vote fell mostly along party lines, with two Republicans — Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.) — joining Democrats in support of the package, which would fund U.S. military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Democrats also attached language that would start troop withdrawals within 120 days of passage, with a March 31, 2008, goal for completing combat operations in Iraq. Some troops could remain in Iraq after that deadline in order to conduct counterterrorism training and security operations.

President Bush has made it very clear that any funding bill that has a timeline in it will be vetoed, and both the House and Senate versions have timelines in them. What this means is that it will take a while for the funding packages to get approved between the two houses, then Bush will veto the resulting bill, which will then lead to further delays in the funding process. As if that weren’t bad enough, Victory Caucus points out that the funding bill isn’t even on the emergency calendar. As has also been widely reported, both the House version and the Senate version are full of plenty of pork to help bribe just enough people to actually get a majority on this, including:

HOUSE
—–
- The effects of Hurricane Katrina on shrimp populations
- Asbesos abatement at the Capitol power plant
- A minimum wage increase
- Peanut storage
… among other things.

SENATE
——
- Sugar beet disaster abatement
- Insect infestation damage reimbursements
- Livestock production losses
… among other things.

Of course, none of these things have anything at all to do with the war or funding thereof and, better yet, none of it is going to get past Bush’s desk since he refuses to sign any funding bill that contains a withdrawal date or provision.

So, what happens now?

- The House and Senate will spend some time after spring break ironing out a unified bill to hand to President Bush.
- President Bush will undoubtedly repeal the bill.
- The House and Senate will posture about how Bush is preventing them from funding the troops, even though they’re the ones that wrote a bill that Bush made abundantly clear will never get past his desk (oh wait, they’re doing that already). Meanwhile, Bush will continue to posture similarly against them.
- Eventually, someone will give.

The only question is… who? Personally, I suspect that, considering the amount of pork they had to throw into their bills to get them off of their own desks, I somehow doubt they’re in anywhere near as strong of a position as they’d like to be on this. Consequently, I suspect this is more symbolic than anything else and is simply meant to appease the Democratic base so they can say, “Well, Bush is still evil and we still can’t defeat him,” or something to that effect.

In the end, though, it’s the troops that’ll suffer.

Sorry about the relative paucity of posts around here lately - been rather obnoxiously busy with work. That said, there’s something very interesting happening in the news right now…

From the LA Times - Irani official alleges held British admit territory violation:

TEHRAN — An Iranian official today alleged that 15 British personnel detained in the Persian Gulf had confessed during interrogations to violating Iranian territorial waters.

Iranians transported the British sailors and Marines from a base in southwestern Iran to the capital for “interrogations and investigations,” said officials speaking through official news outlets.

The seizure in the volatile Persian Gulf has sparked a diplomatic row between London and Tehran just as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose further sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that a fisherman says he saw Britons detained in Iraqi waters:

“We’ve been working in this job for many years and because of our experience we can distinguish which is the Iraqi and which is Iranian side,” he said, adding that Iraqi boats never venture across because of tight security by Iranian coastguards.

He said the ship the British forces were searching was among several that had been anchored for a week or more, waiting to unload or take on cargo at an Iraqi port.

“The ship was in Iraqi waters,” said the fisherman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

This is very interesting for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Iran isn’t handing the British sailors and marines back and has been interrogating them. If Iran overplays their hand here, even though the British people aren’t exactly for the Iraq war at the moment, their not exactly known for backing down against those that wrong them, either (see Falklands War). I don’t think this will be a Gulf of Tonkin-esque incident, but I do suspect that this could very easily sway British opinion in the direction that Iran really is dangerous and that sterner measures need to be put in place to ensure they don’t get nuclear weapons. If this incident doesn’t horribly backfire in the face of the Iran, I don’t know what will.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that Bush and his fans are smiling right now.

EDIT: Pajamas Media has a good roundup of what’s going on, including some analysis and a running blog of each event as it unfolds.

This post will be short and sweet.

The Perils of a Sexualized Society:

Misogyny and the misconception of beauty have been woven into the fabric of our society so much that it is less offensive and more conventional. This has everything to do with why sex offenders are running rampant - not just Chester the molester but the lifestyles of sexual promiscuity, crime and addiction.

Really? They’re running rampant, eh? According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by 69%. Looks to me like sex offenders aren’t running rampant - if anything, our ‘hyper-sexualized’ society has just eliminated over 2/3 of the most serious of them.

It’s Spring Break time. You know what that means, right? Of course you do - the customary articles about binge drinking. This is the part where everyone over the age of 30 tries to pretend they didn’t get drunk and stoned out of their mind while they were in college, that it’s just us ‘young kids’ that are getting in trouble, and, ohmygosh, we need to do something about this!

Look, I’m 26. I’ll admit something right here and now - I did my fair share of binge drinking. I also have smoked pot. That’s as far as I’ve ever gone; I’m not a big fan of doing anything that might lead to chemical dependence, though I do have a raging caffeine addiction. So, I’m going to lay out for everyone why I did this in the first place:

1. It wasn’t because of any commercials. Other than the Budweiser ones when I was in high school, it’s been a while since I’ve experienced any memorable alcohol ones. Oh, and for the record, I don’t drink beer - I don’t like the taste. I’m a gin & tonic guy, personally. Yes, I like Tanqueray, but that was long before that smarmy guy started advertising it and, frankly, I think I liked it more before those commercials.

2. Because I could - even with a fair amount of substance abuse, I was still able to pull down a 2.5 GPA at UNR. If I didn’t get drunk and stoned, could I have received a higher GPA? Sure, though I doubt I would have - to be honest, I was interested in school for the diploma, not so much for the material. Some of it was interesting and, in those classes, I did reasonably well. The rest of them, on the other hand, I did just well enough to pass.

3. College is well subsidized, sort of. I received many a Pell Grant and many a Stafford Loan (yeah, paying those back is a pain). Long story short, while I was in college, I was pulling down nearly $30k/year between financial aid and my 20-hour-a-week job doing clerical work for a non-profit. This number was after tuition, by the way, and like any good college student, I kept my expenses low - my cars were always about 10 years old or so, I lived with roommates, and I ate like crap (hello mac & cheese!). So, I had a fair amount of disposable income that wasn’t quite disposable enough to get anything really cool, but definitely disposable enough to blow some money on drinks from time to time. Of course, without that job, I might’ve had enough energy to study a little more, but I wouldn’t have had enough money to really survive, and besides, maybe I would’ve just blown the time on more substance abuse anyways. Who knows?

All right, so, you want to know how to make this kind of behavior stop. I’ll lay it out for you - this is what kept me away from it during my first couple of years of college:

1. Look at the party school list. Now, look at the stone cold sober schools. Notice a pattern? I’ll spell it out for you - the party schools are, for the most part, large public schools that let just about anybody in. The stone cold sober schools are religious institutions, military academies, and tech schools, all of which with very severe requirements. Guess what - if you have to care to get into the school, you’re not going to jeopardize it. If going to a university is your God-given right as an Iowan/Texan/whatever, well, expect people to treat it like high school where you’re away from your parents and can actually drink. Gee, I wonder how people will react in an environment like that?

2. Scare the kids. During my freshmen and sophomore years, I was deathly afraid of school - the homework was piling up, the grades were slipping, all hell was breaking loose. You bet I stayed sober… at least at first. This brings me to #3.

3. Don’t scare them TOO much. You want people to be challenged, but you don’t want them to feel like the struggle is impossible. Once it’s impossible, people just give up. Make sure there are resources for people to get involved in. One thing I noticed during my experiences with the LDS church (I might explain that one in another blog post - let’s just say it involved a girl and leave it at that for now) is that, when people start to slip in some fashion or another (lost job, sleeping around, found at a bar, whatever), the entire church mobilizes to help that person out with whatever’s bugging them. This isn’t just a bunch of volunteers stepping in, either - it’s systematic, organized, and often quite effective. In short, once someone begins to think that nobody cares about them, everyone proves them wrong. That’s a pretty powerful feeling to experience.

To be honest, I did my heaviest drinking and drug use after I took a couple of years off from school. When I came back, most of my university friends had already graduated or were at least far and away ahead of me in their coursework. Since I was married when I came back, I had to work, which meant I didn’t have a lot of time to really socialize with anyone - I had obligations at home and work and, as a consequence, really didn’t relate with most anyone at school anyways. Once I got divorced, there was one thing I could relate with - the need to do some heavy drinking. Of course, the students doing that weren’t the ones that were serious with their schoolwork anyways.

Since it’s getting late and I’m rambling pretty bad right about now, I’m going to try to wrap this up and summarize it.

If you don’t want your son/daughter/niece/nephew/brother/sister/whatever to binge drink and live like there’s no tomorrow, make sure they want a tomorrow. Encourage them to have dreams - this means they’ll need to sit still long enough to actually dream, which means that overscheduling them with various time-consuming activities probably isn’t going to help as much as you’d think. Make sure they realize that, if they’re going to succeed, they have to want to succeed because they want whatever their end goal is, not because their parents want that end goal. Most importantly, though, don’t be surprised if they experiment a little anyways, especially during vacations like spring break, just to find out what all the fuss is about - who knows, maybe they’ll be President some day.

I’m keeping out of politics at the moment - there just isn’t that much going on that is really interesting at the moment. I could go off on Gen. Peter Pace trying to backtrack on calling gays immoral but, let’s be honest here - anyone that’s expecting the military to be a bastion of progressivism is in for a surprise. Even during World War 2, it left much to be desired. That said, you’ll know that homosexuality has gone mainstream when the military is openly accepting and integrating it.

For the record, I’m very laissez-faire about homosexuality - I really don’t see what the big deal is. I can understand why it might make guys that have to see each other naked periodically somewhat uncomfortable, though, for what it’s worth, I think it’s probably just shifting some of the discomfort that some men put on women in bars when they’re leering at them right back at the source. So, if anything, openly accepting homosexuality might help reduce the number of creeps in social situations, which can only benefit us nice guys. Then again, I’m of a different generation, and it helps that the gay subculture is homogenizing into our own. When people seem less different, they’re easier to accept. To be honest, I suspect that much of the fuss about homosexuality will be moot by 2016, or, at least, I’m hoping so. I also don’t put much stock into the argument that homosexuality is bad for families - the next homosexual that I see that makes my family life worse will be the first. Besides, one of my girlfriend’s best friends is a lesbian, and she’s pretty cool - we watch Battlestar Galactica together. She’s in it for Starbuck, I’m in it for the sci-fi action. How is that hurting family values?

I guess I’m not staying out of politics after all. Heh.

I’m going to take a break from the usual political stuff for a bit and play with some tech issues. I’m not going to break any new ground here, but it’ll be fun to rehash some of the old ground.

As most everyone is undoubtedly aware, the IT world, at least for the end user, is pretty well dominated by Microsoft. Based on browser statistics, some flavor of Windows accounts for nearly 90% of the web traffic out there, which is fairly consistent with some of the more conservative figures on Windows marketshare. What is interesting about this is that Microsoft’s share has gone down significantly over the past couple of years - these days, Linux and Macintosh generate nearly 8% of all web traffic, which is up from a combined 4% in 2003. What’s also interesting is that Linux and Mac have been head-to-head since 2003, matching marketshare since November 2005 and Mac slowly working past Linux in marketshare since then.

Meanwhile, Vista recently came out, which is causing a lot of IT professionals to seriously consider alternatives, in part because of some odd choices from Microsoft, like restricting DVD playback to certain flavors of Vista. The problem with alternatives, though, is that Microsoft does a wonderful job of integrating everything together. Think about it for a second. I’m at work here, and what do I have? Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, which talks to Microsoft Exchange - Outlook is the only halfway decent thing that talks to Exchange and Exchange is the only halfway decent groupware client that talks to Outlook somewhat reliably. We have Microsoft Office for our docs - everything in the past 10 years has been made using Microsoft Word and Excel. Oh, did I mention our network diagrams are made using Microsoft Visio? At least other office suites can talk Word and Excel - what talks Visio? Oh, and yes, this is all running on Windows XP Professional.

This, of course, brings us to why IT professionals are starting to look at alternatives in the first place. Microsoft is only certifying MS Office 2007 as Certified for Windows Vista and only as far back as MS Office 2003 as Works with Vista. I have many clients that are still using Office XP, so upgrading to Vista also means upgrading version of MS Office. Meanwhile, you have a new interface to teach people, and that’s if you ignore the new ribbon in MS Office 2007. So, you’re going to spend a considerable amount of money and time in training people on the new system anyways, and if that’s the case, well… why cough up $190 for Vista Business and over $200 for MS Office 2007 when you can get most of the same functionality for free using something like Ubuntu, which also comes with OpenOffice.org for free?

Well, the answer to that is easy - businesses want a fall-back. They want someone they can call when their IT guy can’t figure something out. When OpenOffice.org isn’t working right, who do you call? If Ubuntu isn’t working right, who can you call (the answer: Canonical)? Plus, what’s with all the weird politics? In short, businesses pay for support because it’s worth it to them - the initial cost of a product is far less important than:

1. How productive it makes them.
2. What they can do about it if something goes wrong.

The good news here is that Microsoft’s competitors are making strides here at the same time that Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot. While MS is pushing an operating system that nobody wants, others are starting to come up with halfway credible alternatives to the Windows->Outlook->Exchange paradigm, such as cross-platform Google Apps, iCal server, and even products like Kolab and Open-Xchange. Even Novell Groupwise is still wandering around. Plus, with a little bit of effort, you can get Linux or Mac to talk through Active Directory, which means that IT professionals don’t have to completely overhaul their authentication servers.

So, what does this all mean? What it means where I work, at least, is that we’re beginning to take a serious look at Windows and Microsoft alternatives and we’re getting a fair amount of demand from customers driving this. For now, many of our customers are asking us to set up Windows XP on their boxes so they don’t have to make the switch, but this is eventually going to become impractical. Meanwhile, some customers are slowly pushing in more Mac laptops in their offices, and, sooner or later, we’re probably going to get asked about Linux PCs, too. If nothing else, larger companies are starting to go Linux, which means that, sooner or later, smaller businesses are going to start veering in that direction as well.

What does this mean to me? It means that, after I get my MCSE at the end of the year here, I’m going to have to start looking at Apple and Linux certifications.

You have a mine site. It’s so dirty that it’s declared a Superfund site. There’s mercury and other heavy elements all over the place, they’re getting in the ground water, they’re getting people sick… clearly, something must be done. So, the EPA steps in and clears away all of the contaminated soil. Good job, right?

Not if you’re a Native American - courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle. According to the article:

For decades, young members of the Elem Pomo tribe have broken out in skin rashes and elders have suffered kidney failure.

The Elem Pomos’ 50-acre reservation is adjacent to the Sulphur Bank Mine, one of the nation’s most polluted sites, and some Pomos believe the tribe’s health problems may be related to the federal government’s use of the mine’s toxic tailings to build reservation roads and house foundation pads 37 years ago.

Last year, after more than a decade of regulatory delays, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleaned the contaminated soil and rock from the reservation and stabilized the mine site.

Yet many of the tribe’s 300-plus members are dissatisfied with the $20 million cleanup project, saying the EPA’s excavations may have damaged archaeological sites in violation of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.

The cleanup removed thousands of cubic yards of toxic waste, improved roads and water systems, provided five new homes and significantly reduced pollution from the mine site. But tribe members say the EPA ignored their demands to modify the work plan, exacerbating the archaeological damage.

Long story short, the EPA cleaned away the dirt that made it where the people would stop getting sick, thus making it possible for them to create new history, but, in the process of doing so, they may have cleared away some archaeological evidence of the tribe’s history… because, well, the open pit mine didn’t do that already. How much does the tribe want in compensation?

Parker said case law suggests a guideline for assessing damage to archaeological sites: $10,000 for every cubic meter of disturbed material.

“By my calculation, that amounts to about $70 million,” he said.

This brings up a wonderful quote from Atlas Shrugged that immediately pops into mind:

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” (’Atlas Shrugged’ 1957)

Amusingly, the government is even fighting itself now - is environmentalism more important than preserving some arrowheads? Is the desire to preserve every last vestige of history more important than expediently removing toxic chemicals from your backyard? Which is more important - your past or your future?

I suppose when you have no future, you have to cling to the past.

According to the Toronto Daily News:

President Bush arrived in Brazil last night, greeted by about 6,000 environmentalist protesters, to finalize an agreement today with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to try to expand ethanol production and use in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Naturally, the farm lobbies are upset:

Tom Buis, president of the National Farmers Union, which represents smaller U.S. farm interests, warned that Bush’s proposal would redirect resources that could be used to feed a nascent boom in ethanol production at home.

“This agreement is the wrong step in the wrong direction at the wrong time,” he added.

Interestingly, that same article also points out:

Growing production of ethanol, which in the United States is made mostly from corn, has shaken up U.S. agriculture, driving up corn prices and squeezing other crops like soybeans.

It has also prompted cries from livestock owners who are paying more for cattle feed.

I personally believe that subsidizing ethanol production in the United States, especially of the corn-based variety, is nothing more than pork designed to line the pockets of Midwestern voters and agribusiness interests. R-Squared has a good article that mirrors an article from Popular Mechanics from May 2006 - the gist of both articles is that corn ethanol, if it’s a net energy gain at all, is a small enough one that it would take more corn than we can grow right now to make a serious dent in our oil dependence. Furthermore, there are other, better sources of ethanol (sugar beets, sugarcane, sorghum) that don’t immediately impact the cost of staples like meat and corn tortillas.

In short, I think that energy policy is far too important to use as an excuse to line the pockets of large agribusiness so they can provide the most wasteful method of production possible. It also is too important to use as an excuse to engage in protectionist posturing while we embrace this failed idea that national self-reliance is a good thing. Real energy independence is getting our energy from a variety of sources, both internal and domestic, and varying out in as many directions as practically possible, so that market movement in one sector or country doesn’t dictate our energy supply.

Let it never be said that I’m not into a little theatrics and grandiosity here…

I’m right now engaged in some campaign work near Redding, CA, and by “campaign work”, I of course mean “doing tech support in some remote location in the middle of nowhere”. But, I am meeting with my future constituents, even if they don’t realize it yet.

One article I read before I left, via Instapundit as always, detailed the high costs of children - giving birth to them, raising them, sacrificing career options for them, etc. From the article:

Not long ago we worried about baby booms and overpopulation. Now some people are worrying about a “Global Baby Bust.” Writing in Foreign Affairs, Phillip Longman says it’s mostly because of economics:

He’s clearly right about the economics. Children used to provide cheap labor, and retirement security, all in one. Now they’re pretty much all cost and no return, from a financial perspective. That suggests that subsidies might solve the problem. Vladimir Putin thinks so, as he plans to offer generous parental benefits to encourage citizens to have more children, something that’s necessary as Russia’s population is in absolute decline. (Italy, which is also in demographic free-fall, is doing something similar).

At this point, it’s important to note that many would argue that some people think there are plenty of people already. I’m not one of those, in no small part because many of our social programs are built with the understanding that there will be substantially more young people to keep the programs alive than there will be old people to draw from them. When you have less than sustaining population growth, you have a big problem that can either be solved by:

1. Importing additional taxpayers (immigration).
2. Slashing programs.

I’d argue that #2 is a perfectly reasonable option and, to be honest, is something we should be doing anyways since such government benefits are effectively a Ponzi Scheme, albeit an incredibly poorly performing one. However, even with this being the case, millions of Americans have put substantial sums of money in programs like Medicare and Social Security with the promise that they’d get something in return, so simply eliminating those programs is not an option unless we’re ready and willing to hand their money back. Seeing as we’re facing high levels of debt, we’re unfortunately not in a position to pay anything back to the American people at the moment. So, we have to come up with a plan that allows those programs to stay in the black, such that we do not incur additional debt. That leaves:

1. Importing additional taxpayers (immigration).
2. Having more children.

As the article above pointed out, though, nobody wants #2 - it’s stressful, expensive, and there’s no practical reward (though there are substantial emotional rewards in the long run). The solutions offered by particularly affected countries involve a flat payment - have a kid and we’ll give you $1000, or something similar. The problem with flat payments is that those most financially capable of caring for multiple children will care the least about the money - $1000 doesn’t matter as much to someone making $100k/year as it does to someone making $20k/year. Consequently, instead of creating large numbers of new taxpayers, you instead increase the load on an already faltering social system.

I have a better idea.

I propose we institute a flat tax cut for each child (say, 5%), up to a certain number of children (say, 5 - I’m pulling numbers out of my hat here). This has the following benefits over the usual flat-fee system:

1. Those most capable of caring for children, financially-speaking, will have the most incentive to have more children.
2. By encouraging the rich to have larger families, it will distribute their wealth when they die to more people (the children and their children), which, in turn, will increase the spending of that wealth (more money spent on food, housing, and other essential items that can normally only be consumed so much by one person).
3. If the poor choose to have fewer children, they can concentrate their wealth in their smaller families and achieve greater social mobility, letting them some day be in a position to take advantage of these tax breaks. That’s right - increased class fluidity!

Now, I will point out that it’s not always about money - it’s also about time. Having children requires time - time to take them to soccer practice, time to take them to music lessons, time to manage the 15,000+ activities that every parent insists their child needs to participate in to get into that Ivy League school… heck, it takes time to take them to day care and retrieve them after work. Even if you trim away most of the fat, caring for kids is a time consuming endeavor.

Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to that problem. But, I think solving the money issue will help turn the tide a little. Then, Americans can decide for themselves how to deal with the time constraints of children.

Via Instapundit, I came across this gem:

Nagin’s legal looting: Mayor Nagin filed a $77 billion lawsuit against the US Army Corps of engineers for the levees breaking in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, The Guardian newspaper reported.

That works out to $158,869.67 for every one of the 484,674 people who lived in New Orleans as of the 2000 Census.

There are a couple of issues at work here:

1. Our wonderful legal system, which gives no serious penalties for frivolous lawsuits.
2. A system of pork that encourages largess from the federal dole at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I’ll begin by acknowledging that there are moments when large settlements are necessary. Some companies have legitimately believed that legal action against those they harm are a “cost of doing business” - in those cases, it’s vitally important that a system of legal protections are in place that allow people to redress against such companies and provide significant penalties to avoid the “cost of doing business” school of thought. This is why I’m against artificial judgment limits or federally mandated caps. However, there has to be some penalties against those that feel our legal system is a lottery and clog our courts with frivolous suits. That’s why I do favor a loser-pays system, a proven system deployed widely throughout the world, as well as in some states in the US.

Like any good politician, I also don’t like pork. However, I don’t view pork as “any project that disagrees with my goals” since, as far as I’m concerned, part of what breeds corruption in Washington is that there is money to spend to begin with. I do believe we’ll need to keep taxes relatively high to pay off our obscene national debt but, past that, the federal government should not be in the business of providing much in the way of services. Unfortunately, the federal government has done a wonderful job of hooking people on various services, with their inherent bureaucratic inefficiencies, so I do realize that we cannot just abolish all services and call it good - they are there to meet a perceived need, so we must be ready to provide better alternatives in order to sell the American people on the value of freedom.

There’s an article from the AP about Georgia reconsidering its no-knock raid policies. To quote a paragraph from the story:

The measure was prompted by the Nov. 21 shootout between Kathryn Johnston and three police officers during a no-knock search of her Atlanta home. When the officers entered without warning, police say that Johnston, 92, fired a handgun at them and that the officers returned fire, killing her. An autopsy concluded she was shot five or six times.

This reflexively calls out the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So, the question is, what qualifies as an unreasonable search and seizure? The answer to that lies in finding out what would cause someone to require a no-knock raid in the first place - what kind of actions are being performed that would tell the police that they need to use overwhelming paramilitary force to resolve the situation? At the risk of repeating myself, there are two reasons:

1. Evidence might be flushed away or otherwise removed during the standard course of serving a warrant.
2. There might be armed individuals that are either a threat to police or a threat to others in the area (hostage situation, for example, or a well-armed gang holdout).

As far as I’m concerned, the first reason is not good enough for a no-knock raid - it’s too broad. If that alone is all that’s required for a no-knock raid, just about any warrant search can be served with a SWAT team since, during the course of a warrant search, there is almost always evidence that can be quickly removed. Endangering American citizens and removing their rights because we’re fortunate enough to have indoor plumbing and ready access to household cleansers is not acceptable. With regards to #2, it should go without saying that having a bunch of well-armed, screaming, gun-toting police officers swarm your house with flash grenades and tear gas is almost certainly not going to encourage you to become less of a threat to yourself, those around you, or the police officers. On the contrary, it’s almost guaranteed to elicit a fear response, which will cause you to respond with as much force as you can muster against the source of that fear. People in fear are not rational and are far more prone to hurt themselves and anything around them. This also makes the job of the police officer more difficult since, by using a no-knock raid in the first place, you’re implicitly communicating to them that they have something to be afraid of - if they didn’t, why wouldn’t they just knock on the front door? Consequently, you’ve gone from one possibly well-armed and fearful group to one definitely well-armed and slightly less fearful group (the police) against one possibly well-armed and definitely fearful group. How is that an improvement, exactly?

I think there are very, very few good excuses for no-knock raids (hostage situations, maybe). I also think that no-knock raids are the police equivalent of the fire department choosing to quell a house fire by burning down every surrounding building so it doesn’t spread. They just makes a bad problem much, much worse.

I am against no-knock raids. I am against policies and laws that restrict constitutionally-enshrined rights and freedoms. I know I’m not breaking new political ground here with this, but I’m not willing to throw our rights down the toilet because we’re afraid of a few drug dealers.

Well, let’s get this started, shall we?

Washington Monthly has an interesting article about the “toothpick rule”, where lobbyists aren’t allowed to have meals with legislators anymore, so they instead serve up lots of appetizers now.

My thoughts on this:

1. I’m all about free food. Consequently, one of my first acts as President would be to overturn this. It’s clear that this rule isn’t doing any good anyways - lobbyists are still talking to legislators and, instead of giving nutritious meals, they’re instead serving up hors d’oeuvres. A healthy legislator is a happy legislator, and a happy legislator (I hope) is much less inclined to take out their hunger-induced frustrations on their enemies.
2. Hors d’oeuvres shall be renamed - they shall be referred to as “Victory Snacks”. Hors d’oeuvres is too difficult to spell and Americans shouldn’t have to deal with remembering something like that.
3. I personally think campaign finance reform is a bad idea. Limiting access to money only makes it more difficult for people outside the system (like myself) to get in - after all, I don’t have the mindshare of an incumbent to draw from. Consequently, I need to be able to get my name out there. How can I do that? Part of it I can accomplish through cheap grassroots efforts, like this blog, for example. However, not everyone reads a blog and I can’t count on the news or other information sources to give free advertising to my existence. Even if I could, I most certainly can’t count on them being able to convey the message that I necessarily want conveyed. Consequently, if I’m going to get my message out there, I need to be able to raise money to purchase advertising that gets snippets of my message across. Unfortunately, I’m somewhat hamstrung on that thanks, in part, to bills like McCain-Feingold. My only hope of getting my name out there now is to either find a political action committee to support me and have them get my message out (think “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”) or to create one of my own that isn’t *officially* my own, and the people in those organizations are almost certainly more ‘fringe’ than I am on my positions, which just makes an already divisive election process even worse.

Besides, no matter what we do, people with money will find some way to talk to politicians. That’s a guarantee that’s been as old as time itself. Whether that conversation happens directly in the Lincoln Room or indirectly by the rich person purchasing large amounts of airtime to get their message across (pretty much what a 527 is all about these days), they can do this. The best part is, the Constitution says it’s okay - that’s what free speech is all about. You’re allowed to say what you want to say how you want to say it - just because I can yell louder than you doesn’t mean that I have to lower my voice when you’re around, for example. However, that doesn’t mean this communication is consequence-free for either side. Consequently, what I would rather see is:

1. Full transparency on campaign contributions. All money to a candidate should be trackable and traceable, openly and freely.
2. Full access to any (legal) campaign contribution source for candidates, provided the candidate keeps track of where that money comes from per #1. I qualify with ‘legal’ because it stands to reason that we don’t want our candidates being directly funded by, say, Hezbollah or something, though, if they were, as long as they reported via #1, that’s still fine by me. If my opponents are stupid enough to publically get funded by a terrorist organization, that certainly helps my cause, no?

That’s all we need to do. It allows people to exercise their rights to free speech as they see fit and it allows us to keep track of why our candidates and politicians are saying what they’re saying.

So, to summarize, I’d like to repeal McCain-Feingold, get the needless laws and regulations about lobbying off the books that only support rule-fudging, let free speech reign in politics, and get full transparency in all campaign contributions.

Who’s with me?

Well, it would appear my first substantial post here shall be about various technical issues here. So, let’s get to it.

Comments

Turns out I accidentally required moderation on my comments, meaning I had to manually approve them before they were posted. This has been fixed. Everyone should be able to comment freely now. Of course, if there’s a comment that’s wildly out of control, I’ll be more than happy to delete it, but I doubt that’ll be too much of an issue here.

Subscribing

Blogger supports RSS subscriptions, which is a fairly nifty method of subscribing to multiple blogs without totally overwhelming your e-mail box. How it works is fairly simple - you subscribe to the blog, then you can see the blog using your browser window (assuming you’re using IE 7, Firefox, Opera, or possibly Safari) by checking that browser’s RSS feed subscriptions. Here’s some quick instructions on doing this with IE 7:

1. When you visit this blog in IE 7, a little orange icon with two white concentric circles and a white dot at the lower right hand corner will light up - it’s traditionally next to the Home button (looks like a house) in the upper right hand corner. If you click the little down arrow next to it, you’ll be given two feeds you can subscribe to. They both give you the same information, and the procedure is the same; the only difference between the two is that one uses RSS and the other uses Atom, which is a competing standard to do the exact same thing. Pick one (flip a coin if you have to) and click on it.

2. You will now see a second window and a yellow box asking if you would like to subscribe to this feed. Go ahead and click on it and follow the defaults (i.e. just click “OK” when available).

3. To confirm that you’ve subscribed, click on “Favorites” (it’s the single yellow star in IE 7, usually in the upper left hand corner). Once there, you will see something that says “Feeds”. Click on that and you should see this blog feed.

Though I haven’t tested this procedure on other browsers, I imagine it’s fairly similar. I might try Firefox out tonight and see how that works - to be honest, I don’t use RSS feeds very much, though I can definitely see how it can be quite handy if you like to view multiple blogs. In fact, I might play with this feature a little more now that I’ve been forced to pay attention to it. Coincidentally, this is similar technology that’s in play when you listen to a Podcast.

Update:

Tried it with Firefox. It’s easier than I thought. When you go to this blog, you’ll see that orange symbol in the address bar. Click on it, follow the defaults, and you’ll have subscribed. Problem solved.