Why did this take so long?

Calif. agency OKs broadband via power lines test�|�Reuters.com:
"CPUC commissioner Rachelle Chong, who drafted the plan, said broadband over power lines, or BPL, could become a new competitor to Internet services delivered via telephone, cable and satellites and help reduce prices for consumers."

Competition generally being a benefit for consumers, this is good news, but I really wonder why it has taken so long. Power lines have been used to deliver radio programming (the FM station when I was at UVa worked that way); and back during the energy crisis of the 1970s, a lot of research was done on sending signals through the wires to read utility meters and even to control appliances. There was a substantial potential for energy savings and improved system reliability if utilities could selectively knock out certain loads like air conditioners and water heaters to pare peak demand rather than using brownouts or rolling blackouts.

At the time one major difficulty was the expense of bridging each transformer since signals cannot be propagated through them. Another was the need to retrofit controllers on appliances and/or more expensive remote reading meters. If the internet angle takes off, look for those other uses to follow.

More "pie in the sky" from folks who should know better

Popular Mechanics - Crunching The Numbers On Alternative Fuels:
"In the past 18 months, the war in Iraq, a Texas oil refinery fire and drilling rig shutdowns caused by hurricanes--not to mention mounting worries over global warming--have all contributed to a sense of urgency to revamp the way America's vehicles run. Rising oil prices are leading skeptics to take another look at formerly ignored alternative automotive fuels. Ethanol is getting the most attention--but interest is growing in methanol and even leftover french fry oil for use in diesel engines. In addition to these biofuels, research continues into electricity and natural gas as vehicle power sources. Department of Energy (DOE) policy calls for eventually making a transition to a hydrogen-based economy. And President Bush has recently stated that he wants hydrogen-powered cars on the market by 2020."

I suppose one might object that Popular Mechanics is only trying to present a consumer's eye view of the various alternative transport fuels. Thus, they compare a Honda Civic to some limited edition minivans and such for their comparison of coast-to-coast fuel costs. But comparing different size vehicles and making no allowance for the price of the vehicle has some odd effects. For example, using only the cost of the electricity to charge an electric car and ignore the cost of the battery array as if it would last forever is not realistic.

Another factor which makes this article nearly useless for informing the public debate over fuel alternatives is the cavalier dismissal of differences in the way some of these fuels are treated for motor fuel tax purposes. To say that some alternate fuel is selling for 30 cents less a gallon than gas doesn't mean much if it isn't paying the roughly 50 cents per gallon that the feds and states assess in per gallon taxes on gas. The loss of that tax revenue may not mean a lot right now, but what happens to the highway building and repair programs that are funded from those taxes when even 10 percent of vehicles inflicting wear and tear on the roads are not contributing to their upkeep?

Also absent was any mention of the safety concerns of police, fire and EMS personnel who will have to respond to auto wrecks involving hydrogen or natural gas in tanks under high pressure, or electric vehicles carrying large arrays of batteries with corrosive contents. When a truck or trailer hauling bulk gases or liquids (or other things) is in an accident, the trained eye of the first responders can instantly tell whether the contents are under pressure or corrosive. And, they know where to look on the tank and truck for the required placards which will further describe the contents. Since fuel tanks (or batteries) in passenger vehicles are, and will likely remain, hidden, first responders will be even more dependent on the prominent display of a placard on the front, rear, left and right of each such vehicle.

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!

IOL: Spain urged to grant rights to apes:
"Apes share 99 percent of their genetic material with humans. Champions of their rights say they have an emotional and cultural life, intelligence and moral qualities like those of humans."

This, of course, explains the significant contributions which the great apes have made to art, literature, music,engineering, science and medicine, not to mention their leadership role in organizing political support for the humane treatment of all species.

Mystery solved

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Chinese women 'need bigger bras':
"Bra producers have been forced to offer bigger cup sizes in China because improved nutrition means women are busting previous chest measurements."

A few hours before encountering this item, I had seen a report on TV that Hooters was setting up shop in China and I had wondered if restaurants there could offer the same sort of attraction as they do here. Well, it seems prosperity has opened up a new opportunity for employment of women in China that I had not anticipated. It is that sort of vision that causes Hooters to get rich selling over-priced beer and wings to guys like me.

Meanwhile, UK PM Tony Blair who holds the rotating EU presidency is trying to end the "bra war" with China. It seems the Chinese, immediately after agreeing to a textile export regime which called for modest 8 to 12 percent annual increases in several categories of manufactured textiles, managed to exceed their 2005 quota in just two months for most of those categories including bras.

Sean Wilentz assesses Bush presiency in Rolling Stone

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2006�:
"'The Worst President in History?' streets Friday."

Not to in any way offset my extreme disappointment with the Bush presidency, I must protest that Bush is not in the major league of bad guys.

Here's my list of worst presidents in more or less descending order:

Abraham Lincoln - Did more to shred the Constitution in just over four years in office than any other president managed in a similar limited timeframe - making war on sovereign states exercising their rights which pre-existed the Constitution, interfering with republican institutions of government in the states he claimed were loyal (e.g., imprisoning state legislators in Maryland, exiling an Ohio congressman to Canada), conninving in the deprivation of territory of a state without its consent (the formation of West Virginia), suspending habeas corpus, and much more.

William McKinley - gets second place because the Spanish-American War was entirely unnecessary and opened the door to all the subsequent horrors of the 20th century.

Woodrow Wilson - earns third place for laying the pattern for FDR: lie to the people about your desire for war to get re-elected, nationalize key industries for the duration, get lots of Americans killed with nothing much to show for it.

Franklin Roosevelt - got us into a much bigger war than Wilson did, managed the war for the benefit of Stalin, ignored the two-term tradition of George Washigton and kept running for re-election even though he knew he was dying. The only good thing he did was to ditch the traitorous Henry Wallace for the incompetent Harry Truman in the 1944 campaign. By accepting the policy of unconditional surrender, he needlessly prolonged the war for the benefit of Stalin, Mao and company.

Harry Truman - makes the list, but not for the Inter-Korean War, per se. He dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though the surrender terms he accepted afterwards were not materially different from the terms previously offered by Japan. The business about a million casualties in the invasion of the Japanese home islands is a red herring since Japan was facing starvation in the coming winter and both they and we knew it. Without any way to import food or fuel, we could have killed just as many Japanese by a naval blockade as we did by the nuclear bombs - probably more. He allowed the USSR to enter the war against Japan and take the lion's share of the spoils after we had already won the war in the Pacific and CBI theatres without any help from Stalin and his client Mao Tse-Tung; and, as a consequence, captured Japanese ordnance was immediately turned against our wartime ally the Republic of China; this lead to the loss of China to the communists, the loss of Tibet to the Chinese communists, and the Inter-Korean War of 1950-53 which claimed more American lives in three years than the more than 15 years of our participation in the SEA War. He also refused to enforce the rights of the US, Britain and France to highway, waterway and railway access to Berlin. And, he took only cosmetic actions to deal with the problem of Reds in our own government.

Herbert Hoover - who laid the plans for what FDR would call the New Deal before the Congress with disastrous results. FDR in 1932 emphasized his Party's differences with the GOP by running on a platform of governmental economy and balanced budgets, but actually followed Hoover's policies.

Andrew Jackson - who, despite his great service to the country in the fight over the Second Bank of the United States, set the pattern for Lincoln by his love of excessive tariffs and asserting the right of the national government to be the sole arbiter of its own powers by the threat of war against the sovereign states comprising the union.

Compared to this rogues gallery, the depradations of LBJ, Nixon, Clinton and Bush pere et fils pale in comparison.

Campus Lockdown Appalls Parents - Los Angeles Times

Campus Lockdown Appalls Parents - Los Angeles Times:
"As students from neighboring secondary schools walked out of class recently to protest immigration legislation, one Inglewood elementary school imposed a lockdown so severe that some students were barred from using the restroom. Instead, they used buckets placed in classroom corners or behind teachers' desks."

Principal Angie Marquez, the article says, turned to the wrong chapter in the school district's emergency handbook and implemented the wrong set of procedures. According to Tim Brown, director of operations for the Inglewood Unified School District, told the LA Times, "When there's a nuclear attack, that's when the buckets are used."

Perhaps it isn't Mr. Brown's place to say so, but the incident makes me wonder what are the qualifications for elementary principles in Inglewood? Perhaps it never occured to anyone to ask candidates for such jobs if there were a difference in the way you protect primary school students from roving secondary school students and the procedures to protect students from nuclear attack.

New York nutrition news

Mayor Seeks to Lower a Barrier for Food Stamps - New York Times:
"Since she took office in 2002, the city's public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, has called for the city to accept the waiver, and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, this month proposed setting aside $260,000 a year to operate a new citywide office to combat hunger and obesity."

The number of "food stamp" (actually EFT cards now) users in New York City was over 1.5 million when former mayor Giuliani began an aggressive program to cut back on public dependency of all types. He cut it in half, but under Bloomberg the number has climbed back over the million mark. Of these 43,000 are able-bodied adults and the change being sought by the Bloomberg administration is expected to expand that category by at least a quarter.

[ASIDE: The office of the public advocate in New York City is one of the strangest known to American politics. You would think that, between the mayor and comptroller, the five borough presidents, and the 51 city council members there would be substantial advocacy for the public by city elected officials. But, New York being the greatest city in the world, they need a 59th elected city officer to speak for the people. (And that's not counting the district attorneys and the borough and community boards and all the other impedimenta of modern governance.)

What does an oath mean?

WorldNetDaily: Elected official refuses oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution, and Government of the United States and of the State of Florida against all enemies, domestic or foreign, and that I will bear true faith, loyalty and allegiance to the same and that I am entitled to hold office under the Constitution and that I will faithfully perform all the duties of the office of village council on which I am about to enter so help me God."

That is the rather long-winded oath required of councilors in Tequesta, Florida. A former member of the council who has recently been elected to a new term has decided he cannot take the oath again - he claims it forces him to support the US government's current war policy in Iraq!

Being a lawyer, Basil E. Dalack filed a federal lawsuit citing the First Amendment and demanding the wording be changed and trying to stop the swearing in ceremony for the entire Village Council. The judge denied the injunction, but the suit goes on.

It is not clear to me whether the US Constitution requires these councilors to be bound on oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. Article VI, Section 3 clearly requires even the lowliest executive and judicial officers to be bound but doesn't mention legislators except for the Congress and state legislatures.

Even so, the village might do well to consider more closely following the oath prescribed for the president of the US in Article II, Section 1, Subsection 7: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Journalism 101 - NYT shows how to report thoroughly but obscurely

Path to Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop - New York Times:
"In Putnam County, N.Y., about 50 miles north of Manhattan, eight illegal immigrants who were playing soccer in a school ball field were arrested on Jan. 9 for trespassing and held for the immigration authorities.
"As an example of the uneven results that sometimes occur in such cross-hatches of local and federal law enforcement, the seven immigrants who were able to make bail before those agents arrived went free. The one who could not make bail in time, a 33-year-old roofer and father of five, has been in federal detention in Pennsylvania ever since."

This is designed to elicit our sympathy for the poor father of five who landed in a federally-leased portion of the Pike County Prison in Pennsylvania just because he couldn't make bail faster than immigration agents could respond to his initial incarceration in Putnam County, New York.

You have to read through more than 20 paragraphs about other matters before the story returns to our unlucky roofer. Then we find that he and the other adults with him were only arrested after they refused the demand of school officials to leave the area, that school was in session at the time, and that his bail had been set at $3,000 (the others had bail set at only $1,000) "because he was not able to provide his home address" to the magistrate at his arraignment. Doesn't he know where he lives? A responsible man with a job and five kids ought to know where his home is.

That last fact is cited as corroboration of a statement by an illegal immigrant defense group that excessive bail is required of these people when arrested on minor charges. Seems to me it shows just the opposite. After all, seven of the eight ponied up the $1,000 bail before the feds arrived. And the eighth would have had the same low bail set if he had provided an address as the others apparently did. From my experience with the courts, I regard $3,000 bail as a bit on the low side for someone who does not provide full information to the magistrate.

A large part of the story concerns state, county and local police agencies having some officers attend a four-week training session run by federal immigration enforcement officials. Those who complete the course can then make arrests, conduct investigations and initiate court proceedings in cases involving immigration laws. The program was authorized by statute over a decade ago but has recently seen a surge in interest. Meanwhile, the number of federal officers in this field has remained stagnant at about 2,000. This is another example of how lax federal immigration enforcement imposes costs on other levels of government.

Judge rules correctly but does this belong in court?

Channel 4 KRNV.com: Local News and Weather for Reno-Tahoe Region: Judge says student can recite poem at state competition:
"... US District Judge Brian Sandoval said 'hell' and 'damn' in W.H. Auden's, 'The More Loving One,' does not constitute vulgar, lewd or offensive language that could disrupt the Coral Academy of Science's educational priorities."

The offending material consists of a reference to the stars not giving a damn about the author and those stars not caring if he went to hell. Pretty tame stuff compared to the lyrics of a lot of songs kids in middle schools listen to.

I don't particularly like the poet's point of view in this piece, but The More Loving One strikes me as a rather good poem in a technical sense and not the place I would have chosen to draw a line in the sand were I the head of that school.

So far, so good - a victory for free speech.

But when did federal judges become literary critics?

McKinney slyly criticizes police officer in her "apology"

McKinney apologizes on House floor | ajc.com:
"Washington – With a federal grand jury considering whether to charge her with assault, Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia went on the House floor Thursday and apologized for her role in a scuffle with a Capitol Police officer last week.
"'There should not have been any physical contact in this incident,' McKinney, surrounded by a handful of lawmakers, said."

By saying that "physical contact" should not have happened, Rep. McKinney re-iterates her criticism of the Capitol Police officer who placed a hand on her shoulder to restrain her when she refused his verbal order to stop. In fact, the officer's actions were fully in accord with use of force guidelines taught to police throughout the US.

As a constable in Pennsylvania this was a part of our annual continuing education curriculum. The "use of force continuum" as it is usually taught begins with "officer presence" and then moves up to verbal commands. When these methods do not acheive compliance, open hand control is appropriate - which is exactly what the officer was doing after McKinney ignored his presence and his verbal order to halt.

At the endo of her statement, McKinney termed it an apology and said she was sorry the incident had escalated, but the key phrase, in my view, is that weasely business at the beginning.

The only thing wrong in this incident is that McKinney was not immediately placed in restraints and taken before a magistrate for arraignment. Members of Congress have constitutional immunity from arrest except in cases of breach of the peace - and such this was.

Senate Republicans join in another Bush-Kennedy legislative train wreck, McCain helps

WorldNetDaily: Tancredo blasts Senate 'amnesty' :
"'We've had a huge breakthrough' overnight, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters.
"Frist said President Bush supports the plan.
"Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who co-sponsored legislation with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the plan 'tough and fair.'"

US Sen. majority leader William Frist (R-TN) has sold out the national interest in trying to get a "compromise" on the Senate version of the immigration bill.

In a nutshell, the compromise gives President Vincente Fox and his junior partner Jorge Arbusto exerything they wanted in an immigration bill with two small exceptions: a commitment to improve border security which is unlikely to be fully funded in future appropriations bills, and the creation of a new group of about two million illegal aliens who don't get amnesty now, but aren't likely to ever be sent home either. This assures that there will be a large nukmber of "oppressed" people who will continue to be a focus of organizing, demonstrating, and lobbying.

So, the GOP gets to be portrayed as mean-spirited and all the people who broke the law become citizens. This is the perfect compromise - Republicans score no points in pusuit of Hispanic votes (many of whom want the border controlled) and the majority of Americans of both parties who want to protect the country see another example of the late Gov. George Corley Wallace's (D-AL) famous maxim that "there's not a dimes's worth of difference" between the parties.

Like that other notable George Bush and Ted Kennedy joint legislative program No Child Left Behind, this immigration bill is an unmitigated triumph for the anti-American party.

At this point, the best we can possibly hope for is for the House conferees to hold firm and report no bill for onsideration by both houses.

I have a question

Zoo's phone monkeys forced to tone it down | the Daily Mail:
"Squirrel monkeys are native to South America where their status in the wild is threatened. They are used for biomedical research, as pets and for bait and food."

If you use a squirrel monkey for bait, what is it you are trying to catch?

Pre-Columbian colonies in the New World and other bold assertions

Amazon.com: 1421 : The Year China Discovered America: Books: Gavin Menzies:
"OVER TEN YEARS AGO I STUMBLED UPON AN INCREDIBLE discovery, a clue hidden in an ancient map which, though it did not lead to buried treasure, suggested that the history of the world as it has been known and handed down for centuries would have to be radically revised."

I just finished reading the 2004 US trade paper edition of 1421 and it is fascinating. There is little room for doubt that the Chinese ranged over most of the world during a very brief period of exploration and, perhaps unintentional, colonization in the early part of the 15th century under the Ming dynasty.

The book is not without its shortcomings, but most of the hyper-critical reviews I read at Amazon seem not to have read the book very closely. It is unfortunate that the Publishers Weekly and Booklist reviews refer only to the prior hardcover edition as the newer paperback includes substantial new material.

The author, Gavin Menzies, spent 17 years in the Royal Navy rising to the command of a nuclear submarine. He adopts what is, for an experienced sailor, a very different method of attacking the problem of what happened on the last great seafaring expedition of Ming dynasty China from what we would expect of an academic historian. In fact, his approach is perhaps the only way this story could begin to be revealed to the scholarly community.

The third Ming emperor Zhu Di had sent his ships throughout the long-established Chinese trade routes to India, Arabia, East Africa, etc. to invite heads of state or their ambassadors to join in the celebration of the construction of his new capital at Beijing. After suitable ceremonies, a great fleet under the command of his favorite court eunuch Admiral Zheng De departed with a fleet of hundreds of ships to convoy the dignitaries back to their own countries.

Shortly after they sailed, the emperor faced a crisis in the imperial finances, oppostition from the mandarin class who ruled the domestic bureaucracy and resented the eunuchs who controlled the military power and foreign affairs, and unrest among the people over the taxes needed for his naval extravaganza. In the midst of this, lightining set the new imperial capital afire and burned much of Beijing - the Chinese of all classes (even Zhu Di himself) regarded this as a very bad omen. The emperor withdrew from public life and turned the administration over to his son.

The reaction against Shu Di's policies was so vehement that China not only gave up its ambition to be a seagoing military power, it also turned its back several centuries of lucrative trade with the Spice Islands, India and Arabia. As the various parts of Zheng He's fleet straggled home, their officers were cashiered and their ships left to rot. The mandarins even insisted that all records of the great fleet's accomplishment's be burned - and very little has survived in China.

This is why I think Menzies' approach is the only way one could make progress on the mystery of what all those ships were doing for over two years (some authorities state the last of the ships returned after as much as four years at sea). You can't investigate this voyage as you would, say, the HMS Bounty where you have a wealth of official records, diaries, etc.

Menzies starts with what facts are clearly established, beginning with the date the fleet sailed from China and where it was heading and, when the documentary evidence peters out he uses his knowledge of winds, currents and the sailing characteristics of the Chinese ships to work out where they could have gone. The great square-prowed Chinese ships with their rigid, square-rigged sales could not sail into the wind; this helps to narrow the choices available to them at many points.

Having plotted where they could get to, Menzies looks for evidence that they got there. And, remarkably, he finds a lot of evidence. This includes wrecked ships of the right age and type, small step-pyramids of a type known to have been constructed in China and Japan at the same period to aid in astronomical observations to help construct more accurate sailing charts, stone buildings in places where the natives never worked in stone, inscriptions on rocks at prominent places such as the point on the Congo River at which oceangoing vessels must turn back.

Menzies also finds charts in the hands of various European maritime powers (Portugal, Spain, Venice, etc.) and the Ottoman Empire which show these places in considerable detail and which existed before any European sailor had ventured there. And, there are references in the diaries and memoirs of various European explorers indicating that they had or had seen such maps and - most remarkable, frequently mentioning that they found Chinese people waiting to greet them in various places in the Americas. Menzies even has an explanation for how at least some of the Chinese discoveries made their way into European maps in the person of an Italian named diCosta who seems to have been in China at the time the great fleet sailed in 1421, accompanied Admiral Zheng He on his voyage, and made a report of his travels to the Pope after returning to Europe.

[Along the way, Menzies also makes a very persuasive case that the Portuguese had established a colony at what is now Ponce, Puerto Rico, a half-century before Columbus got there.]

There is also a mass of evidence about non-native animals and plants turning up along the route Menzies proposes which fits, but doesn't prove, his thesis. And some, mostly fragmentary and arguable, linguistic evidence. What really ices the cake is the DNA evidence which shows certain assumed Amerindian populations to have fairly recent infusions of Chinese DNA. Specifically, SW China which supplied most of that nation's seafarers at that period. There are DNA links to SW China among the Inuit, Greenlanders, Incas, etc., but not to other Amerind groups around them.

There are some problems with the book. Menzies sometimes takes a step too far. For example, after making a fair case that the Mayas mined copper in the Upper Mississippi region, he goes on to suggest - for what appear to me to be insufficient reasons - that the Chinese also did so.

Still, 1421: The Year China Discovered America is well worth the time if you are interested in such things, as is America B.C. which offers intriguing evidence of trans-Atlantic trade in ancient times.

We've come a long way, Baby!

Prosecutor gets McKinney case | ajc.com:
"Capitol Police on Monday sent the results of their investigation of Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia to a federal prosecutor, who will decide, possibly this week, whether to press assault charges against her for striking a police officer.
"The police filing left open the question of whether McKinney should be charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor, or assault on a police officer, a felony, police and legal authorities said."

True Story, from about 30 years ago:

A Metropolitan (DC) Police officer was directing traffic at a busy intersection on Capitol Hill when a vehicle approached signalling for a left turn despite signs saying left turns were prohibited during rush hour. The officer looked the driver in the eye and shook his head in the well-understood negative gesture while continuing to give hand signals for traffic to proceed straight through the intersection. The driver then proceeded to make the left turn anyway and, in the process, struck down the officer who had to be taken to a hospital. No sooner had the officer been sent home to recuperate for several weeks but he was informed he had been suspended from duty. What had he done wrong? He asked a Congressman - the driver of the car that struck him - to obey the law.

The McKinney incident:

Things have changed. So far, the Capitol Police officer who was struck by US Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has not been relieved of duty. If the Democrats were in the majority in either or both houses of Congress, I would have expected him to be disciplined.

I hope the Republicans (who control the joint administration committee which oversees the Architect of the Capitol, the US Capitol Police, the National Arboretum (supplies flowere to offices on the Hill) and other Congressional support functions) will cave easily to the campaign McKinney and her supporters have begun to portray her as the victim of a racially-motivated sexual assault.

But, it's an election year and Republicans can be awfully spineless when someone accuses them of racism or sexism or any other nasty thing they aren't.

Camo pants and jackets banned along political messages on clothing

cbs4denver.com - Tensions Change Dress Code At Local Middle School:
"In Longmont, the principal of Skyline High School banned all flags, including the American flag, because of tensions related to immigration reform."

All it took was about two dozen students wearing camo pants and jackets to convince the principal of Shaw Heights Middle School to announce a change in the school dress code to ban expressions of patriotism.

It seems the students adopted the camo gear as a political statement showing pride in being American and opposing unlimited illegal immigration. Other students, with a different slant on politics, then began calling them names. This is what is known in the trade as a "teachable moment" - a time when students can see concretely the point of the lesson.

At that moment, the principal could have called an assembly and reminded students that free speech is for everyone but no one has the right to cause a disturbance just to show the degree of their disagreement with someone else exercising their equal right to free speech.

However, it appears that principal Myla Shepherd seized the moment to deliver a different lesson. The lesson Ms. Shepherd chose to teach her charges was that free speech does not exist in the school. That when people object to what you say you must shut up. And, for those who caused the disturbance, they learned that they don't need to debate or tolerate opinions with which they disagree; all they have to do is raise a stink and the authorities will make the offensive opinion go away.

I'm showing my age here, but I thought the US Supreme Court had dealt with this issue 30 years ago when they held that a public high school couldn't prevent students from wearing arm bands in support of anti-Vietnam war protests.

No wonder Americans are getting fatter

wnbc.com - News - Judge Says Dancing Not Constitutional Right:
"City law department spokeswoman Kate Ahlers said the judge's ruling was 'a confirmation of the city's efforts to protect residential communities from disruptions attributed to some cabarets.'"

According to the article, the number of places where you can legally dance in NYC is now less than 300, less than a third as many as 40 years ago. Dancing is good exercise and raises the spirit - at least I always thought so. Ms. Ahlers informs us, however, that the sort of people who waltz, foxtrot, twist and hully-gully, or whatever they do today, are some sort of criminal element who terrorize neighborhoods in a way that mere drunks do not.

May I suggest that it is nosy bureacrats who pose the greatest threat to all of us.

I seem to recall a story from Britain a couple of years ago about inspectors looking for patrons swaying to the music in pubs not licensed for dancing. At the time, I didn't think things were that bad on our side of the pond. It seems I was wrong.

May I suggest to the folks fighting the good fight for wholesome exercise (and probably less drinking) in NYC cabarets that they take a leaf from Lloyd Thaxton who tried, with little success, to popularize the "sit down dance" on his TV show in the 60s. The idea was to sit at your table and dance using your arms and upper body. I know it's silly - but it would make an interesting protest.

Fomula for fighting terror

DRUDGE REPORT FLASH 2005�:
"The case of Samih Jammal, convicted with the help of the Patriot Act and FISA wiretaps of fencing stolen baby formula, sits on the fine line between the government's terrorism-fighting role and its duty to protect citizen's rights."

They told us we needed special courts to issue warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and maybe we do. But how did the FBI justify going for a FISA warrant to investigate stolen baby formula?

This case is clouded by the fact the defendant is an American citizen born in Lebanon, but it appears the crime only involved using his wholesale grocery business to fence stolen goods.

Just as RICO was justified as a tool to fight the Mafia and international drug smugglers and ended up being used to intimidate right-to-life advocates, we now see FISA being turned into just another tool in the domestic war on crime. If that is the way it will be used, we might want to take another look at how much of our privacy we want to give up in aid of routine law enforcement.

Paris Hilton in Bollywood?

Indian director hopes to cast Paris Hilton as Mother Teresa - Yahoo! News:
"The filmmaker said Hilton is on his shortlist after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between the hotel heiress and the Albanian-born nun."

If you watch Fox Movie Channel you will have seen, more times than you wanted to, interviews with casting directors discussing how fortunate they were to get exactly the right cast for some Fox project like Walk The Line or Aquamarine - and in those cases they may well have been saying as much truth as hyping the films.

OTOH, T. Rajeevnath, the director of this upcoming Mother Teresa biopic, needs to have his head examined. There is much more to casting than physical resemblance. And, under that scarf, we often didn't get a really good look at Mother Teresa's face anyway. In fact, I'd wager she wanted it that way. The work was the thing, fame was just a way to get the work done. That was the secret of Dr. Schweitzer as well.

The thing that sticks in my mind, and I'll bet in yours, is just how tiny Mother Teresa was. Even among undernourished throngs in the slums of Calcutta, she seemed a very little person. Well, Paris Hilton, according to imdb.com, is 5'8" - as Mother Teresa, she would fit in about as well as trying to cast Michael Jordan as a fighter pilot in a remake of Top Gun.

A chance to shed new light on the OKC bombing

WorldNetDaily: Congressman demands new OKC bomb probe :
"In a memo written to Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, [US Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher [R-CA] said he has spent 12 months personally investigating the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 and concluded 'there is ample evidence to justify an investigative hearing into this historic crime.'
"The focus of the probe, he suggests, should be 'Was there a foreign connection to the Oklahoma City bombing?'"

Rohrabacher has been following the trail blazed by Jayna Davis who was, at the time of the OKC bombing, a news reporter for a local TV station. His subcommittee only has jurisdiction on foreign connections, but this should at least give him lattitude to investigate Terry Nichols' connections to Islamic terrorists in the Philippines and Timothy McVeigh's alleged ties to Andreas Strassmeier, a former German Army intel officer who was living in Oklahoma (at Robert Millar's "white supremacist" Elohim City compound) on an expired tourist visa and left shortly after the bombing.

Although less clearly within the purview of Rohrabacher's subcommittee, there is also the evidence that John Doe #3 was a "former" member of Saddam Hussein's elite Iraqi army formation the Republican Guards.

Among the promising investigative leads which will almost certainly be off-limits to the Rohrabacher probe is the alleged gun theft which the government said was used by the known OKC bombing conspirators - McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier - to finance the bomb plot. There is now reason to believe that there was no theft, only an insurance scam, and some of the allegedly stolen weapons turned up in the hands of a White Aryan Resistance bank robbery gang which had used Elohim City as a hideout.

No limit to Howard Dean's deceptive rhetoric

AP Wire | 03/31/2006 | Howard Dean accuses Bush, GOP of exploiting immigration issue:
"Dean and Bush agree on the legislation at the heart of the debate. Both support a Senate bill that would expand guest-worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.
"However, at a speech in an Oakland union hall, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate sought to tie Bush to a much tougher House bill that would tighten borders and make it a crime to be in the United States illegally or to offer aid to illegal immigrants. Bush does not back the House bill."

The old saying goes "Politics makes strange bedfellows." It also seems to make strange antagonists. Howard Dean and George Bush may not agree on the Iraq war, taxes, or social security reform, but they are united in their determination to flood the US with low-skilled laborers, their dependents, and a not inconsiderable number of criminals (I have seen figures quoted that indicate a fourth to a third of federal prison inmates are here illegally). They both favor amnesty.

Now, if you believed all that rot you were taught in your eighth grade civics class about people in politics working together for the public good, you would expect Howard Dean and George Bush to work together for amnesty for illegal border crossers the way Bush and US Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) worked together to pass the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education bill.

Clearly, this is not happening and politics is the reason why.

NCLB passed because it gave the Democrats exactly what they want in any education bill - more money, some of which will hire more teachers whose union dues will be used to elect more Democrats. NCLB also allowed the president to pretend to the "suburban soccer mom" demographic that he had done something to promote better education. NCLB was even sold to the right wing of the GOP on the basis that it included a voucher program - which it did. But, the voucher program was tailored to the interests of Ted Kennedy's two favorite groups the Democrat Party and the National Education Association (actually, they are just two fingers of the same hand, but it is considered impolite to point that out). The voucher component of NCLB is so cumbersome to invoke and so limited in extent that it is the functional equivalent of a ban on voucher programs.

So, why isn't Dean praising Bush's commitment to amnesty for lawbreakers? Because the political benefits of this bill can only be spun one way - as a sop to the Hispanic vote and neither side wants to let the other take any of the credit. Actually, Bush might be willing to share the glory with the Dems - he's that kind of guy, but Dean ain't.