War Commentary

The Gangs Rule

Miranda Devine says that many of the problems in Sydney are a result of years of lax law enforcement against the Lebanese Muslim gangs. I disagree with this, though:

Rather than a problem of race, religion or multiculturalism, Sydney is suffering from a longstanding crime problem. It is a textbook case of how soft policing and lenient magistrates embolden successive waves of criminals, infecting other people who might otherwise have been law-abiding.

But that begs the question of why the policing was soft, and the magistrates lenient. Ultimately, I think it still comes back to a misplaced multiculturalism, and an unwillingness to crack down on religious minorities, even when they were breeding a culture of intolerance and criminality.

Space

Starting To Get Serious

Out Of The Cradle notes a new program to look for errant objects:

When fully operational, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project will deeply scan most of the night sky several times a month. About three-quarters of the sky are visible from the Hawaiian Islands, and Pan-STARRS will use four linked telescopes connected to its enormous cameras to take broad pictures of unprecedented detail. Objects as dim as 24th magnitude

War Commentary

When Does The War End?

There’s quite a bit of discussion in Sam’s post, some of which expresses appropriate concern about how long we have to put up with a modest (and sorry, that’s all it is, despite all the nonsense about living in a police state under Bushitler) suspension of some of the civil liberties that many of us had taken for granted, given that we don’t have a declared war, and that it’s not clear when it will be over. Tigerhawk has an excellent essay on that subject.

Weird

Call Of The Wild

A moose was attracted to the plaintive sounds of a teenager’s saxophone.

At least that’s what the story says. Question to the copy editor who wrote the headline, though–who taught the moose’s son to play the sax? It reminds me of the old joke that Groucho told about shooting an elephant in his pajamas.

Here’s a contest, for the best guess at what the song was. Somehow I doubt if it was “Embraceable You…”

Political Commentary

Check the Wire

Robert Reich in today’s Marketplace Morning Report (“Spies Like Us”) talks about how unchecked executive power is a concern for business. We can argue about whether Congress authorized any means necessary with its vaguely worded declaration of war. We can argue about whether the ends justify the means. But if the President can designate anyone an enemy combatant with no judicial check, that suspends habeus corpus. Holding people without charge is not supposed to happen in America especially not to American citizens on American soil.

If the President can tap anyone’s US-overseas calls without judicial review and use the evidence against them, that suspends the 4th amendment protections on unreasonable searches.

If the President can search my library book record, that nullifies the first amendment right to freedom of the press as surely as staking out people’s bedrooms nullifies their right to privacy.

Innocent until proven guilty is being whittled away as people like Walt Anderson are being held without bail based on their reading list.

Reading unclassified information is not illegal. A free press requires that anything that is legally published should be read without legal consequence.

I believe that authorities have overstepped here. There are antibodies society should create to check an executive or Congressional majority tinkering with the Constitution.

I propose that libraries be reorganized to hide reading lists from authorities. In particular, books should be checked out anonymously. The main business problem this causes is that the library doesn’t know who to send an overdue notice to. To solve this problem, readers should be allowed to pay a substantial deposit in cash to check out a book anonymously which would then be returned when the book is returned.

Let the Executive Branch go to Congress for money and get a warrant for staking out the library if it is so all-fired important to find out what we are reading.

So check the Executive. Check the wire. Check out the books without Big Brother looking over your shoulder.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!