Minor Thoughts from me to you

Arnold Kling, at his askblog.

What these young people say is top-of-mind is that they really, really, don’t want to go through divorce. Compared to my generation, they seem to regard marriage as belonging to a later stage in life. My line is that for our generation, getting married was like starting a new business–a moment of promise and hope. Today, it’s like going IPO–a moment of affirmation and triumph.

I love this line. I'd classify myself and my wife as belonging to Kling's generation. But I've known friends that I'd classify as belonging to the current generation. This line nails the differences in attitudes that I've seen.

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I am, somewhat notoriously, not in favor of straight "majority rules" democracy and not in favor of absolute, universal, unfettered suffrage. In a recent op-ed on Egypt's coup, George Will has an apt quote that sums up my distaste for pure democracy.

Lincoln understood that unless majority rule is circumscribed by the superior claims of natural rights, majority rule is merely the doctrine of “might makes right” adapted to the age of mass participation in politics. The idea that the strong have a right to unfettered rule if their strength is numerical is just the barbarism of “might makes right” prettified by initial adherence to democratic forms.

I think that the U.S. Constitution should be far more of a straight jacket than it currently is. It would be limiting and frustrating, even to some of my own policy goals. But that's as it should be. Tyranny is the inevitable result of letting the majority rule simply by virtue of being the majority.

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it remains undeniable that black Americans in the age of Emmett Till would have given almost anything to live in a country in which the racism required decoding by the arbiters of taste. The progress has been swift and remarkable. The last thing that black Americans were worried about in the 1950s was “dog whistles.”

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I've been fascinated with underground houses ever since I read On the Banks of Plum Creek, many years ago. I think I'd really enjoy living in a modern "dugout" house.

Mickey Muennig has been building green-roof architecture for the past 30 years. One of his latest eco friendly buildings is the one on copper point where the roof is covered in a blanket of thick wild grass. He is a long time practitioner in eco-architecture and still remains an unsung hero of the green movement even at the age of 74. The copper point house is built into the landscape and has concrete walls on two sides with all-glass walls in between. The roof above is a continuation of the landscape which has thick covering of grass making the house more fireproof and also providing insulation at the same time. It is an ultra efficient house sporting solar panels grids.

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Last June, I wrote about an office duty Minneapolis policeman, who'd sucker punched a restaurant patron straight into a coma. Joy Powell recently reported, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, that Sgt. David R. Clifford was convicted for this crime.

Clifford faces a term of seven years under state sentencing guidelines. Two-thirds of that would be served in prison, the rest on supervised release. He was convicted of first- and third-degree assault, both felonies, and fifth-degree misdemeanor assault. Convicted felons are not eligible to hold a Minnesota peace officer license.

“Everyone assumes we’re going to give him a break because he’s a police officer,“ prosecutor Blair Buccicone said. “We treat everyone the same. David Clifford is no different from anybody else.”

This is fantastic news. It's always good to see police held accountable for their crimes. No one should be above the law—especially not the people charged with upholding the laws.

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Shaun Usher posted a wonderful letter, from Robert Heinlein, on Letters of Note. Heinlein sent the letter to Theodore Sturgeon.

"I went into a horrible dry spell one time. It was a desperate dry spell and an awful lot depended on me getting writing again. Finally, I wrote to Bob Heinlein. I told him my troubles; that I couldn't write—perhaps it was that I had no ideas in my head that would strike a story. By return airmail—I don't know how he did it—I got back 26 story ideas. Some of them ran for a page and a half; one or two of them were a line or two. I mean, there were story ideas that some writers would give their left ear for. Some of them were merely suggestions; just little hints, things that will spark a writer like, 'Ghost of a little cat patting around eternity looking for a familiar lap to sit in.'

The entire letter is posted. It's great reading. Heinlein is my favorite author and this letter demonstrates why. He was very creative and I would have loved to have seen the full stories that he could have written from these ideas.

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The Founding Fathers worried that "some common impulse of passion" might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly. Obama, who understands how to utilize public passion better than most, flew some of the Newtown families to Washington for a rally, imploring Americans to put "politics" aside and stop engaging in "political stunts." This is, by any measure, a preposterous assertion coming from a politician piggybacking tragic events for political gain. It would have been one thing, I suppose, if the gun control legislation written in the aftershock of a gruesome massacre had anything to do with the topic at hand. But what senators came up with would have done nothing to stop the shooter in Newtown -- or the one in Aurora, Colo. Passions can be aggravated by events, but in this case, events have little to do with the policy at hand.

The President's gun control bill failed in the Senate. That's a feature of the American political system, not a bug. The Senate is supposed to move slowly on legislation—and reject much—to ensure that whatever passes is passed by cool-minded individuals. The alternative is bad laws like the Patriot Act, which passed with no deliberation whatsoever.

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The Wall Street Journal had this to say:

A word, first, about that Senate "minority." Majority Leader Harry Reid was free to bring the deal struck by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey to the floor for an up-or-down vote, and this background-checks amendment might have passed. It did convince 54 Senators, including four Republicans.

But under Senate rules, a simple majority vote would have opened the measure to up to 30 hours of debate, which would have meant inspecting the details. The White House demanded, and Mr. Reid agreed, that Congress should try to pass the amendment without such a debate.

Majority rules would have also opened the bill to pro-gun amendments that were likely to pass. That would have boxed Mr. Reid into the embarrassing spectacle of having to later scotch a final bill because it also contained provisions that the White House loathes. So Mr. Reid moved under "unanimous consent" to allow nine amendments, each with a 60-vote threshold.

The White House was right to worry. An amendment from John Cornyn of Texas that would have required all states to recognize every other state's concealed-carry permits earned 57 votes, 13 Democrats among them. The nearby table has the list. On Thursday, Wyoming's John Barrasso offered an amendment to protect gun ownership privacy that passed 67-30.

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David Kopel, at the Volokh Conspiracy, analyzes the actual language of Senator Toomey's and Senator Manchin's gun control bill.

The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid’s gun control bill are billed as a “compromise” which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:

1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.

2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.

On April 17, after the bill died, the President had this to say.

They claimed that it would create some sort of “big brother” gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry. Plain and simple, right there in the text.

Except that, as Kopel showed, the bill only outlawed some registries, leaving the government free to enact others. It also posed a danger to gun owners who drive through anti-gun states. The way I read the relevant legislative language, the Senate was right to vote against the bill and the President was wrong to accuse them of acting in bad faith.

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Orin Kerr provides an interesting analysis, at the Volokh Conspiracy:

1) A lot of people assume that the police are required to read a suspect his Miranda rights upon arrest. That is, they assume that one of a person’s rights is the right to be read their rights. It often happens that way on Law & Order, but that’s not what the law actually requires. The police aren’t required to follow Miranda. Miranda is a set of rules the government can chose to follow if they want to admit a person’s statements in a criminal case in court, not a set of rules they have to follow in every case.

There are questions of legality and questions or morality. Based on Kerr's analysis, it looks like it's legal to question Tsarnaev without reading him his Miranda rights. But is it moral? I think it is. I don't see the harm in allowing the police and FBI to interrogate Tsarnaev about this attack, if they aren't planning on using his statements against him.

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Michael Totten asks the question that I've been wondering about:

Kim almost certainly isn’t serious, but what if he is? How would we know? His attention-seeking theatrics are identical to the behavior of a lunatic hell-bent on blowing the region apart. If war breaks out next month, everyone who has been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the Korean Peninsula will slap their forehead and see, with the clarity of hindsight, that every warning we could possibly need, want, and expect was right there in front of us.

After listening to the latest Common Sense podcast, I don't think Kim is serious. Totten doesn't either. But then, no one thought Hitler was serious either (except Churchill).

Im trying to avoid invoking Godwin's Law on myself. However, I have been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and it does give you that extra bit of horrified paranoia. They're probably not serious. But what if they are? Of such thoughts are neoconservatives made.

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Rand Paul, speaking at Howard University, passionately appealed to African Americans to support liberty minded Republicans.

The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism.

Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments.

Big and oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom, something black Americans know all too well.

We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white. Such freedom is essential in achieving any longstanding health and prosperity.

As Toni Morrison said, write your own story. Challenge mainstream thought.

I hope that some of you will be open to the Republican message that favors choice in education, a less aggressive foreign policy, more compassion regarding non-violent crime, and encourages opportunity in employment.

And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom.

It's a long speech but it is well worth reading.

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J.D. Tuccille, writing at Reason.com:

My wife and I used it as a starting point for telling our seven-year-old why we don't expect him to obey the law—that laws and the governments that pass them are often evil. We expect him, instead, to stand up for his rights and those of others, and to do good, even if that means breaking the law.

Read the whole thing.

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Baylen Linnekin, writing at Reason.com:

If a federal agency has the power to bar a court from overturning or halting the actions of that agency—an administrative rulemaking body to which Congress delegates far too much power already—then that body may (and will) act with impunity. The power of such an agency would, in fact, exceed that of Congress itself.

Such a law would be worse than almost any that preceded it in this country. Under no theory of agency with which I'm familiar can one delegate more power than one has. And yet this new amendment to the GMO law appears to place some USDA powers almost entirely outside the scope of judicial review.

In effect, this amendment gives the USDA the power to ignore a federal judge’s ruling in some cases. It would take the power of judicial review out of the hand of judges, crumple it up, toss it on the ground, step on it, and set it ablaze.

I know many people have an irrational hated of genetically modified food. When I first heard about this provision, I just assumed that it would protect Monsanto against these biased attacks. This analysis completely changes my opinion. Congress should vote this down.

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Dr. Pauline Chen, writing at the New York Times.

The researchers then compared these outcomes to those of patients who were not covered by Medicare and therefore not restricted to having their operations done at centers of excellence. Even after adjusting for individual patient risk factors and the specific type of bariatric procedure performed, they found no differences in complication rates or outcomes between Medicare and non-Medicare patients. Moreover, they discovered that many of the improvements had been under way prior to 2006.

In other words, the much-heralded policy of funneling patients to centers of excellence has had little effect on how patients do.

Over the past several years, I've seen lots of people talking about how this or that government program fixed this or that problem in the United States. And, almost invariably, I'll see economists pointing out that the trend line was already declining before the government got involved and that the government's involvement did nothing to speed up the change.

Without this research, this Medicare policy would have received the same praise even though it, too, deserves none of the credit.

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This is a story that's ripped right from the script of a future Castle episode. Max Colchester writes, at the Wall Street Journal, about two reenactors who are fighting over the opportunity to portray Napoleon during a 200th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo.

Mr. Samson is sorry that he is slightly less than an inch taller than Napoleon was. But he dismisses claims that Mr. Schneider is the spitting image of the general, saying that his rival's face is too thin to represent the older Napoleon. "Also he doesn't have the right embroidery on his saddle."

Mr. Schneider points out that, at 5-foot-7, he is exactly the same height as Napoleon. He also shares the French leader's distinctive nose. Napoleon "was born in 1769 and I was born in 1969," he says. "All of this makes my job easier."

But Mr. Schneider has been hampered by legal problems. He currently spends two days a week in jail near Williamsburg after pleading guilty to driving under the influence in 2008. He has taken 2013 off from traveling to Europe for re-enactments.

The American hopes to return in 2014, in time to be exiled to Elba. Napoleon was sent to the island off the Italian coast in 1814 after his army was defeated and he abdicated. Mr. Samson says he also wants to be exiled to Elba.

This, folks, is nerdery of a high level. I tip my hat to both gentleman (even as I snicker a bit).

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Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who became one of the most influential global leaders of the postwar period, died on Monday, three decades after her championing of free-market economics and individual choice transformed Britain's economy and her vigorous foreign policy played a key role in the end of the Cold War.

"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother, Baroness Thatcher, died peacefully following a stroke this morning," said Mrs. Thatcher's spokesman, Timothy Bell. She was 87.

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From Keith Hennessey:

Geographic politics distorts and often dominates government investment in physical infrastructure. Highway funds and airport funds especially are allocated in part based on which Members of Congress have maximum procedural leverage over the spending bill. Even if you could somehow get Congress to stop earmarking infrastructure spending (good luck), and even if you could rely on the Executive Branch not to allow their own political goals to influence how they allocate funds, local geographic politics would come into play at the state level, since much federal infrastructure spending flows through State governments. This is where reality most falls short of a valid theoretical starting point for increasing productivity and long-term growth.

Keith argues that infrastructure spending isn't useless but it does face a lot of problems that prevent it from quickly creating jobs. It's not a great "investment in America".

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Senator Rand Paul, at the Washington Times:

For these reasons and others, last week I joined my colleague Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in introducing a bill that would authorize judges to disregard federal mandatory-minimum sentencing on a case-by-case basis.

Some might think it is unusual for a conservative Republican to join a liberal Democrat on such a bill, but contrary to popular belief, the protection of civil liberties and adherence to the Constitution should be a bipartisan effort.

In my younger days, I would have regarded this as rank liberalism and heresy. Now it just seems like common sense. I'll stand with Rand on this one.

Read the whole thing. His reasons are dead on.

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Shikha Dalmia, at Reason.com:

In short, the ideal conservative welfare state would be a libertarian dystopia of even bigger proportions than the liberal welfare state. There is less welfare and more state in it.

A conservative welfare state is a horrifying idea.

Read the whole thing. If big government Republicans try to push the party in this direction, I don't see any future for the party.

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