Presto Agitato

Mr. Conservative

Pete Wehner stumbles to the point about Mr. Gingrich:

The single most important idea, when it comes to fundamentally changing Washington, is the budget plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan last April.  When most massive-scale-of-change conservatives were defending Ryan’s plan against scorching criticisms from the left, Gingrich described the plan as an example of ‘right-wing social engineering’.  It was Gingrich, not the rest of us, who was counseling caution, timidity, and an unwillingness to shape (rather than follow) public opinion.  (The Medicare reform plan Gingrich eventually put out wasn’t nearly as bold and far-reaching as the one put out by Governor Romney.)

So much for Mr. Fundamental Change.

One does notice, as an aside, that American ‘conservatives’, this year as in 2010, are demanding fundamental change regarding several things, most importantly regarding federal spending and the size and role of government in private lives, which gives the lie to the standard terminology of American political debate; in the standard political terminology, contrary to the fraudulent argot of American political punditry, this year's Republicans (or, more specifically, ‘Tea Partiers’) are the liberals, i.e. the ones who are standing for liberty.

Chuck Woolery for President

These aren't just ‘baseline cuts’ but for-real, bona fide, honest-to-goodness cuts!  But Chuck, honey, $1.5 trillion isn't even a drop in the ten-year bucket (a few trillion here, a few trillion there…), so let's get back to the chopping-block, eh?

Oh, yes, one more thing: Those ‘squirrels’ are rabbits.

Quote of the Day: A Matter of Policy

Personally, if a politician seems willing and able to reduce government to its proper scope, safeguard the nation’s borders, maintain a stable currency, and keep us out of unnecessary wars, I couldn’t care less if he prays to Unkulunkulu in the privacy of his chambers. — John Derbyshire

Bewildered

Dutch anti-free speech leftists are in mourning today:

Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders was acquitted of inciting hatred of Muslims in a court ruling on Thursday that may strengthen his political influence and exacerbate tensions over immigration policy.

The case was seen by some as a test of free speech in a country which has a long tradition of tolerance and blunt talk, but where opposition to immigration, particularly from Muslim or predominantly Muslim countries, is on the rise.

...

The presiding judge said Wilders's remarks were sometimes 'hurtful', 'shocking', or 'offensive', but that they were made in the context of a public debate about Muslim integration and multi-culturalism and therefore not a criminal act.

Notice that all three adjectives describe one's subjective emotional response, not the speech itself.  There was no objective offense to punish.  What I find shocking is that the court would permit such a case to go to trial in the first place!

Farid Azarkan of the SMN association of Moroccans in the Netherlands said he feared the acquittal could further split Dutch society and encourage others to repeat Wilders's comments.

'You see that people feel more and more supported in saying that minorities are good for nothing', Azarkan said.

'Wilders has said very extreme things about Muslims and Moroccans, so when will it ever stop?  Some will feel this as a sort of support for what they feel and as justification.'

Sticks and stones, asshole.  Get over it.

Quote of the Day: The Rule of Lawyers

The law sharpens the mind by narrowing it. — Edmund Burke

The point of the story is that our citizenship test (officially the 'Naturalization Test') is a mess.  But on this one, I must disagree with the author:

Then there is Question 12: What is the 'rule of law'?

I showed it to lawyers and law professors.  They were stumped.

There are four acceptable answers: 'Everyone must follow the law'; 'Leaders must obey the law'; 'Government must obey the law'; 'No one is above the law.'

Judge Richard Posner, the constitutional scholar who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, was unhappy.  'These are all incorrect,' he wrote me.  'The rule of law means that judges decide cases "without respect of persons," that is, without considering the social status, attractiveness, etc. of the parties or their lawyers.'

The test is correct and Posner and his fellow lawyer-consultees are wrong, although I suspect one would find few lawyers who know any better.  In fact (and here's the problem for lawyers) 'the rule of law' is a term of political theory, not of legal theory or judicial practice, nor even of the U.S. Constitution.  The distinction is between 'the rule of law' and 'the rule of men,' the upshot being that everyone, rulers and lowly citizens alike, is subject to the law and it cannot be modified at anyone's whim.  (According to Wikipedia, grain of salt duly applied: 'The rule of law is a legal maxim that states no person is above the law, and no one can be punished by the government except for a breach of the law.'  Well bless their open-sourced hearts, they got one right!)  Posner's explanations are consequences of this ancient principle, and I believe the term and the formulation ('the rule of law' vs. 'the rule of men') are Locke's.

Immigration by the Numbers

The solution to world poverty is that we must export our economic system (i.e., free markets), not try to import everyone else's problem.  No other system can possibly work, nor ever has.

Of course, that also means we must resign ourselves to being somewhat less economically dominant world-wide; as other economies grow, ours will be, to a significant degree, less, um, hegemonic.  We have been King Shit for so long because most of the rest of the world has been depending on socialism, empire, and utter kleptocracy to support their economies. 

Japan, with no natural resources to speak of, is positively rich compared to most of the world.  There's no reason why the rest of Asia (and Africa, and Latin America, &c.) can't do the same.

(h/t: Og)

Prosecutorial Indiscretion

Victor Davis Hanson:

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, the man behind the Blagojevich case, has institutionalized a disturbing modus operandi.  First comes the obligatory press conference where, through leaks and sensationalism, the prosecutor announces his crusade against a Blago or a Scooter Libby or a Conrad Black.  A trial in the court of public opinion is followed by a long, drawn-out legal process designed to bankrupt the defendant, who does not have the prosecutor’s publicly generated capital.  This is capped off by an underwhelming case that, after weeks of depositions and testimonies, results in something like a perjury conviction as a booby prize when the trumped-up case collapses.

Unfortunately, Fitzgerald isn't alone in this grandstanding bullshit, nor even historically extraordinary.  Michael Milken was charged, under the Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt Organizations statute, with 'crimes' that had nothing to do with racketeering, and probably weren't illegal.  The prosecutor was working from what's known as a 'novel theory' — that is, an unintuitive and very dubious reading of the statute.

Unlike, say, Scooter Libby, Milken could afford to defend himself against nearly anything the government could throw at him, but then the prosecutor threatened to indict him in every jurisdiction in the United States and even to prosecute his brother and his elderly and frail parents.  The prosecutor (Rudy Giuliani, by the way) didn't believe that the elder Milkens had anything to do with their son's business, but that was beside the point: The goal was Milken's scalp, and Milken was known to be very protective of his family.  And so Milken gave in, 'confessing' to a series of chickenshit insider trading charges only remotely connected to the original RICO bullshit.

I need not, I hope, elaborate on the case, a few years ago, of the U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of assault and a cover-up, all of which turned out to be bullshit.  (The cover-up conviction was thrown out on appeal, as was the entirety of the case against Lord Black, also prosecuted under a bizarre interpretation of the law.)  Milken's case is only extraordinary in that he was extraordinary — wealthy, brilliant, and very big news — and so prosecutors had the need and the motivation to push a lot harder and play a lot dirtier.  The ordinary citizen, having neither the money nor the courage to fight, will usually fold like a Federal prosecutor's cheap suit.  This is not the course of justice and the rule of law, but of tyranny.  It's long past time to rein these assholes in.

It's too bad Blagojevich's case is the opportunity to observe all this, the slimy shit.

For a Few Dollars More

Well, aren't they lovely:

On the day parts of Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, went into effect, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is in the news for another reason: there's a price on his head - allegedly offered by a Mexican drug cartel.

The audio message in Spanish is a bit garbled, but the text is clear.

'It's offering a million dollars for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's head and offering a thousand dollars for anyone who wants to join the Mexican cartel.'

In Texas you can get '$50 per pair of ears' (it may be up to $75 now) from ranchers to whack their feral hogs.  I wonder if Sheriff Joe would offer a similar commission on the noses of violent narcotraficantes?

Quote of the Day: Drop the Chalupa!

When we went in there, one of the ladies was hiding her Mexican I.D. in an enchilada, trying to conceal the identification. — Joe Arpaio, Sheriff, Maricopa County (Phoenix metro area), AZ

Note, also, the .50 cal. machine gun on the top of his SWAT van.  Don't fuck with Joe!

Quote of the Day: Deliberately Missing the Point

They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect. — Lorena Aguilar, soon-to-be-former Phoenix resident

Bullshit, lady.  'They' want to drive illegals out.

It is perfectly reasonable to argue that our immigration quotas / limits / whatever are unreasonably parsimonious and the system is byzantine (two facets of the same bureaucratic problem), but it is not reasonable to complain that our security and fiscal concerns are racist or xenophobic.  If you play by the rules and earn your own living, you're perfectly welcome.  Otherwise, fuck off.