Hardly does a day go by in which I am not reminded of the blurring of the distinction between facts (often wistfully known as "the truth") and opinions. On the rare days I am not reminded, it is only because I haven't been as attentive to online content as I "should" be. As it often seems that my life consists of online content, avoiding such content becomes another life-avoidance scheme.

Or should I say reality-avoidance? I hate it when the opinions of other people are the only reality, because I am as sick of their opinions as I am of my own. That probably reflects too many years being online, and endlessly reading the opinions and then spouting off with some of my own. Factor in that most of the opinions involve politics (something I dislike intensely but keep up out of a twisted sense of obligation), and it is not surprising that a sense of burnout would develop. I complain about the sense of burnout all the time, but that's even more tedious, because I hate to do my daily blog burnout routine in the same way I hate doing my strenuous daily exercises but  do them anyway. Which means that writing a blog post is often like doing 120 pushups. Both are "good for me." The difference is that even though I hate doing the pushups, and the damned chinups, and the even more damnable three-mile-runs, they are easier to do in the sense that I don't have to be creative or original. A self-imposed requirement of daily original creativity is a lot more onerous. 

Reflecting on the unresolvable Chernobyl data recently, I worried that the blurring between truth and opinion tended to prove post modernists were at least partially right.

If basic data is not there, that means that most of what we used to consider hard, factual truth will have been rendered simply matters of opinion. (The extreme skepticism over "scientific" data said to be global warming "evidence" as well as extreme skepticism over basic vital statistics are but two stark examples. Personal experience has made me become skeptical over Google road maps, which have directed me to roads that turned out never to have existed.)

Truth is opinion?

Just what I used to hate the Post-modernists for saying.

What could suck more than that?

I don't know, but I liked Dave's response to a glum pronouncement that "we are living in an era of public life with no referee -- and no common understandings between fair and unfair, between relevant and trivial, or even between facts and fantasy."

Dave reminded me that if there is a silver lining in this cloud, it might be that at least the MSM is no longer the arbiter of truth.

the age of the MSM deciding what's innuendo and what's a real story is slowly dying.

Pravda is no longer pravda.

I can handle that!

But apparently Robert Gibbs can't:

"There are no more arbiters of truth," said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. "So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We've crossed some Rubicon into the unknown."

Were you guys born in 2008, or something?  You don't remember all the conspiracy theories -- advanced by Dan Rather, no less -- about Bush getting special treatment when he was a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard?  You don't remember "I did not have sexual relations with that woman?"  The John Edwards - Rielle Hunter story? 

It's only when someone comes up with a crazy notion about a beloved Democrat that the press dismisses it -- even if it's real, like when Newsweek spiked the story about Clinton having sex with an intern.  The media as a whole tried desperately to ignore the bombshell story about John Edwards cheating on his terminally ill wife even as he used her for a campaign prop, despite all the evidence, but a similar story about John McCain with no evidence (and certainly no love child) got Page One treatment by the NYT. And in 2004, the Swift Vet campaign forced John Kerry to retract multiple claims about his service and his behavior after coming home, despite receiving little to no support from the media.

The age of innuendo didn't start this week, but the age of the MSM deciding what's innuendo and what's a real story is slowly dying.

UPDATE:  Andy McCarthy asks: given how trivially easy it was for Obama to produce the document, where were the indignant questions to Obama from the press on this?

The whole thing is especially ironic and galling to us Illinoisans, who remember how the MSM sued to have the child custody hearings of his Senate opponent's divorce proceedings released, an extraordinary violation of his privacy rights.

That's right: for Obama, the MSM doesn't even ask for a long-form birth certificate, let alone transcripts of his grades, law review articles, his relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers, his Communist mentor, etc.  For those who oppose him, no stone must go unturned, no matter how private! 

Did Sarah Palin write a book?  Quick, assign a dozen fact-checkers!  No need to review Obama's book, we're sure everything he's ever done is wonderful and perfect.

Sickening.  Just absolutely sickening.

I should have been online last night but I wasn't. I went out and saw a play.

And now I'm really, really sorry! Because yesterday was a real milestone (well, sort of...) in the ongoing Birther drama and I missed it until this morning.

Barack Obama has apparently released a copy of his so-called "long form" birth certificate. The Washington Examiner says it's time to put this to rest and get on with the real issues.

The White House's release on Wednesday of Obama's long-form birth certificate -- the archived document with the signature of the physician who attended at his birth -- should settle this matter for good. Obama is doing so much damage to America, especially with his wars on free enterprise and the energy industry, continuing quasi-imperial power grabs, and feckless foreign policy, that the country has no time for debating false conspiracy theories about his origins.

I couldn't agree more, and the only thing that surprises me is the timing. I thought its release would have been dragged out until the late summer shortly before the election. Perhaps Team Obama (which I think instigated and fueled this flap from the start) has been influenced by the release of the WND book. Or perhaps they want to make the Birthers look even more ridiculous, by forcing them to go further out on a limb by denouncing the long form as another forgery, or better yet, switch gears into "it doesn't matter if he was born here as he wasn't a natural born citizen" mode. 

I predict that this conspiracy theory will absolutely not die. There is far too much invested in it.

Wow, no sooner did I say "I predict that this conspiracy theory will absolutely not die" than I learned that my prediction was not a prediction at all, but merely an illustration of my slowness and ignorance. (I might as well "predict" that man will get to the moon.) 

Alex Jones says it is a forgery!

And naturally, WorldNetDaily has joined in the fray, on the one hand claiming the long form is suspicious, and also switching gears to the specious "Vattel" backup argument  -- the "he wasn't natural born anyway" claim. "Now game begins," they say. According to the language in the Constitution as interpreted by WorldNetDaily scholars, a candidate has to be able to show not only birth here, but that both of his parents were United States citizens. (I realize the founders didn't say that, but according to the living breathing WorldNetDaily Constitution, a post-Constitution translation of a Swiss author's treatise means that's what the founders really meant to say. They somehow anticipated the wording of the future translation.) 

Does that mean children of unknown fathers or anonymous sperm donors, are ineligible? What about clones?

And how does WorldNetDaily know that the Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was really the president's father? Simply because his mother said so? Has any genetic testing been done?

It would be easy to clear this up.

Obama may say "we do not have time for this kind of silliness" but he knows better.

Let the real silly begin!

MORE: Commenter bernie says that "If the submitted document were a check it would be seized as evidence and that person submitting it would be jailed." The problem with that argument is that it was the State of Hawaii that submitted it -- something Hawaii has the sovereign right to do, as does any state. Might as well argue that if the money our government issues were private checks they would be seized as evidence and the persons submitting them would be jailed.

What I think is happening is a strategic tactic by Obama. With the release of the much-demanded "long form," the Birthers are being forced to decide whether to continue attacking the birth certificate (which some of course will) or abandon that issue and move on to the "Natural Born" argument. And good luck with either.

Considering that there are voters out there (who voted for Obama under the assumption he was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan born father), it may be better to deal with the merits of other issues, but it's not up to me. I'm just a blogger.

MOER: The hits keep happening.  "Top 20 Conspiracy Theories That Have Already Sprung Up Around President Obama's Birth Certificate"

It has been a few days since my last round up and there have been some "events". But first a couple of videos of critical importance.

Radiation Safety has this report:

Radiation in the #1 building is at highest levels since the crisis

They don't even know the source of the newly-elevated readings

"Tepco must figure out the source of high radiation," said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University. "If it's from contaminated water leaking from inside the reactor, Tepco's so-called water tomb may be jeopardized because flooding the containment vessel will result in more radiation in the building."

Evidence Of Recriticality - 19 April

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Reactor 1 "Water Entombment" - Same News, Different Spin

Also, TEPCO disclosed on April 26 that the survey by the robots inside the Reactor 1's reactor building could not pinpoint the location of the damage on the Containment Vessel.

But no matter. TEPCO and NISA are going with their "accidental entombment" and about to gradually pour over 7,000 tons of water in the Reactor 1 Containment Vessel.

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: 1120 Milli-Sieverts/Hr Inside the Reactor 1 Bldg, But "Water Entombment" Has Started Anyway

That high level of radiation would indicate the highly radioactive water from the Pressure Vessel may be leaking outside the Containment Vessel, but TEPCO has decided to go ahead with the plan.

Workers locked in battle at Fukushima, exposure to radiation rising

I believe a workaround to the rising dose workers are absorbing has been found.

Japan's Ministry of Health to Get Rid of Annual Radiation Limit for Nuclear Plant Workers

The normal limit of 50 milli-sieverts per year is to be eliminated, but 5-year total of 100 milli-sieverts limit remains.

If the limit is eliminated, the workers who will have been exposed to the radiation of more than 50 milli-sieverts but less than 100 milli-sieverts at Fukushima I Nuke Plant will still be able to work at other nuke plants, as long as 5-year total remains under 100 milli-sieverts.

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is for the nuclear industry's health, labor and welfare. Of course, the argument is that unless these workers are able to maintain the power plants (there are 17 of them, with 54 reactors, according to this site), everybody's health, labor, and welfare will be threatened

So what kind of workers are the Japanese getting?

Job offers come not from TEPCO but from Mizukami Kogyo, a company whose business is construction and cleaning maintenance. The description indicates only that the work is at a nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture. The job is specified as 3 hours per day at an hourly wage of 10,000 yen. There is no information about danger, only the suggestion to ask the employer for further details on food, lodging, transportation and insurance.

Radiation above safety limits detected in Fukushima fish, vegetable

Radioactive topsoil removed from school grounds

Workers are removing radiation-tainted topsoil from school grounds in the northeastern Japanese city of Koriyama. The city is about 50 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The city began removing the soil on Wednesday at two of the 28 public elementary and junior high schools and daycare centers.

Radiation levels at one of the schools are higher than the central government's new safe limit for children playing outdoors. That limit is 3.8 microsieverts per hour. Other schools are close to the limit.

TEPCO starts test for more water injection

Tokyo Electric Power Company has begun testing one of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to check its plan to submerge and cool the hot fuel rods.

The utility firm began pumping more water into Reactor Number 1 on Wednesday in order to monitor changes in the water depth in the containment vessel and check for leaks.

After increasing the amount of water from 6 to 10 tons per hour on Wednesday the firm says it has delayed further raising the amount injected due to data showing some instability in the state of the reactor.

The test is part of a plan to fill the Number 1 and 3 reactors' containment vessels with water by July, to cool the fuel rods in a stable manner.

TEPCO: Water isn't leaking from No. 4 reactor pool. Well that is good to know. But they add this little tit bit at the end of their article.

The storage pool is to be reinforced by July.

TEPCO to rid 200,000 tons of radioactive water. They plan on doing it by decontaminating the water.

On Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Company announced it would set up the treatment system to eliminate radioactive materials.

The utility firm says 87,500 tons of contaminated water has accumulated in the No.1 to 4 reactors.

It estimates that up to 200,000 tons of highly contaminated water will be produced by the year end if all the water used to cool the reactors becomes highly radioactive.

The company says it plans to start installing the system in early May and begin operating in June.

It hopes to dispose of 1,200 tons of highly contaminated water per day once the system is in place.

That ought to be enough to keep you depressed for a while.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm in the habit of doing things like melting butter in the microwave in my pyrex measuring cups.    Now I wonder if it's safe after seeing this over at Instapundit  http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-03/gray-matter-cant-take-heat

And speaking of that, have there been any changes to hair dye?  I'm perfectly willing to admit that perhaps my hair is getting more dye resistent, but I've checked with friends who also dye their hair and the ordinary, cheap dye from the grocery store is now lasting a week, if that.  It just washes off.  I've had to switch to the Frederic Fekkai stuff...

I know Eric periodically writes about being tired of politics, where people get inherently crazy. However, at least in politics you could argue our whole way of life - if not our civilization - might be at stake. Certainly money is, and money, ultimately is the most real thing there is, (since in our civilization money dictates where we live, what we eat, etc.)

HOWEVER I live in an even more interesting world than that of politics. In that world, being a writer is sort of like being a movie star, except with none of the high pay, fame or... well, okay, it's not at all like being a movie star.

I'm going to say several things about writers and, oh, yeah, about teachers.

This email was forwarded to me but it was written by Eric Odom, a libertarian Tea Party activist, and I thought I would share it with readers here. It's long, so I'm putting the text in the extended area, lest people read it and mistake it for one of my posts.

As to whether Odom is being unnecessarily alarmist, I don't know. I read different opinions all the time, and I often feel as if I am adrift in a sea of ever-louder, ever-shriller, ever-more paranoid opinions. I worry that I may drown.

Is it "true" that there is no hope?

Am I in "denial" if I hope not?

The total collapse of the United States economy is certainly not a fun thing to contemplate.

I should probably find it more depressing than I do.

Hey, maybe if I cheer up I can get depressed!

The question is on the minds of several commentators, and it is a good one.

I think the answer is an obvious "YES."

I don't think libertarian Republicans should be wringing their hands over this, because not only is it an indication that libertarianism is alive and well in the party, it also means Ron Paul is not the only libertarian game in town. 

Whether they are in a clear majority of the GOP or not, I think this it is clear that libertarianish thinkers are no longer circus freaks. I can't imagine anyone asking, "Is the Republican field big enough for two conservatives?" or even "Is the Republican field big enough for two moderates?"

And Gary Johnson is a reminder that if a libertarian Republican can be elected governor for two terms in a 2-1 Democrat state, it might be time to ask whether such an ideology is really as "fringey" as the political insiders who bitterly cling to the flawed dichotomy of "either liberal conservative" would have the rest of us believe.

To preserve the artificially limited spectrum on which their power depends, they want the playing field kept as small as possible, so I would expect them do anything they can to keep libertarian issues and candidates out of the debates. A likely tactic would be to engender animosity not between Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, along with their followers. How well that will work, I don't know.

I prefer Gary Johnson, but I would never begrudge Ron Paul his due. Despite my disagreements with the man, he broke new ground in the GOP, and I will repeat what I said when I returned from the Michigan Republican Convention in January:

I think all libertarians owe a serious debt to Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty. They stormed the Republican Party before the Tea Party existed, and the once-sidelined libertarians now have a place at the table thanks to them.

It's nice to see the table growing.

plutosdad at my post A Radiation Safety Expert Says - Tokyo Uh Oh left a link to the following post which I am going to repeat (most of it) here. I have no idea if these people are legit. But the idea is a good one.

====

This morning, my friend Sean Bonner e-mailed me this:

As you may or may not know I've spent the vast majority of the last month either in Tokyo or working with people in Japan on project I helped start called Safecast. Actually we just changed the name to Safecast, until last week it was called RDTN. We realized that the only information on radiation levels was coming from groups we couldn't really trust, and decided we could do something better. Safecast has a goal of distributing geiger counters to people in Japan and creating an open data sensor network so anyone can access the information we gather with these devices. We're also collecting data ourselves - if you have a few moments and want to read this post it's a great example of what we're doing right this second.

http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/24/first-safecast/

If you don't have a few moments I'll sum it up for you - we drove up to Fukushima and took readings at schools that are in the "safe" zone. At one of those schools we measured over 50 µSv/hr outside on a playground. To put that in perspective outside today in Los Angeles I measured 0.072 µSv/hr. We also gave some counters to volunteers in the area who will take readings and report back to us, and measured over 5000 different points during the trip. We hope to do this on a regular basis.

Anyway, what I'm asking for your help with is this:

http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/25/fundraising/

We have a kickstarter and are more than halfway to our goal, but only have 11 days left to hit that mark. While donations are helpful, what we really need is awareness. We need more people to know about what we're doing, we need more people to know they can help.

And that 50 uSV/hr reading? That translates into a 438 miliSieverts a year. That would be 43.8 REM for those of you more familiar with the old system. That is a very high dose even for plant workers who have accepted the risk. For civilians and especially children, that is a radiation level that is unacceptable except in small doses - on the order of a few hours a year. And that is not counting that the stuff is carried by the wind so it is ingestible. So it is possible to carry a dose with you even if you leave the area.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In an earlier email exchange with Sarah, I made a shocking conspiracy claim, which I decided to post here in the hope that someone can show me how wrong I am. Noting that a friend had loved him when he was New Mexico GGovernor, Sarah asked me whether I think Gary Johnson has a prayer.

First let's get religion out of the way. Gary Johnson's religious views are not mentioned in his Wiki bio, although this Christian Science Monitor piece notes he was raised Lutheran but speaks little about his faith:

Johnson was married for 28 years to Denise "Dee" Simms, before he divorced her in 2005. She died in 2006. He had two children with Simms, daughter Seah and son Erik. Raised Lutheran, Johnson speaks little about his faith.

Whatever his religious views might be, he has come under attack for allegedly supporting "taxpayer funding of religious private schools through vouchers" -- which is said to be "faux libertarian" as his support for gay unions but not gay marriage. Regarding the latter, his position is that government should stay out of the marriage business:

Does Johnson think there's a constitutional right to same-sex marriage? "I don't see it," he says, "but I do support gay unions. I think the government should be out of the marriage business and leave marriage to the churches."

Anyway, that's about as close as I can come to determining Governor Johnson's religious views, which is not very close. I cannot say whether he "has a prayer" in the literal sense.

Obviously, Sarah meant the word "prayer" in the sense of whether he has a chance of becoming president, and I just saw it as an excuse for looking into the man's religious views here.

As I said to Sarah, though, I see the issue as not whether he has a prayer of being president, but whether he has a prayer of being heard.

Or a prayer of being known as a candidate. When I saw him speak here, I remember thinking how marvelous it would be to get the ideas he is speaking at least out into the public arena for consumption, but then I saw that there was an absolute news blackout on his visit to Ann Arbor. There was simply no local media coverage. This being a left wing town, I guess that's understandable, but you can be damned sure that if Newt Gingrich came here to speak, there would be plenty of media on hand.

Since the Ann Arbor visit, Gary Johnson announced his candidacy and that was greeted by near zero reporting. Moreover, it appears that GOP insiders do not want him to be allowed in the debates. They might allow a few token nut minor candidates, but not one who has been a governor who has cut more spending bills than any governor in history and means what he says when he talks about taking the Constitution literally.

There is no question in my mind that not only does Gary Johnson recognize this, but unlike any other candidate I know of, he has walked the walk in terms of knowing how to deal with it. 

When he was governor, the man vetoed 750 bills for wasteful spending. At the time, that was more than the the other 49 governors in the country combined.

If there was a Guinness Book of World Records category for greatest number of bills vetoed by an American executive, he would hold it. No president -- in the entire history of the United States -- has vetoed more bills. (This earned him the nickname "Governor Veto.")

So he is the real deal. A lot of politicians talk about the tough choices that need to be made and make all sort of promises, but for those who are looking for someone who can really do it, he not only can, but he already has. Who else can say that?

Yet this is not a ruthless man who loves wielding the ax for its own sake. His ability to patiently explain in detail the reasons for every cut he made is very endearing. He comes across not as a cruel Ebenezer Scrooge, but as a naturally compassionate and humane man. That he was elected and reelected in a state which is 2-1 Democrat is nothing short of amazing, and a testament to his ability to patiently explain these things to people on the other side. (In fairness, his social liberalism probably helps soften the blow too....) He comes across as mild-mannered, self-effacing, humorous, and one of the most approachable men I have yet met in politics. I walked right up to him and chatted, and there was none of the usual pomposity I associate with finger-to-the-wind poseurs hiding behind canned bombastic slogans. I told him that I was tired of holding my nose and voting for Republicans I didn't like, and he immediately knew what I meant. I specifically asked him about one of my pet peeves, which is the federal assumption of vast powers never mentioned in the Constitution (such as Homeland Security, Department of Education, the FDA, etc.), and he said that he would simply abolish them.

And you know what? He meant it.

Behold the New Iraq, exporting oil AND democracy, and set to become one of the richest countries in the world -- at five times current levels they would be looking at about $25B per month in windfall wealth, in a country of ~25 million.  (Worth noting: no democracy has ever failed at that level of wealth.)  And instead of going for SCUDs, tanks, and WMD programs to attack Iraq's neighbors or tacky palaces to aggrandize Saddam, the money might actually be spent usefully, to benefit the Iraqi people.

Status of neocons: vindicated.

A little bio of the radiation safety expert.

I am a licensed medical dosimetrist from the U.S. currently living in the Philippines. Given the recent extraordinary events unfolding in Japan, i've decided to express, to the best of my ability, the dangers associated with the nuclear powerplant crises in Fukushima and how it may affect the territory of the Philippines. After much discussion elsewhere, i have decided to basically live blog my observations and present them for those who are interested.

Much higher readings in parts of Tokyo vs a few days ago

According to a recent update from that facebook dude with his own personal geiger counter:

"2011-04-26 15:13: 0.716 micro-Sieverts/h. Location: Roof of Metropolis Office, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Conclusion: Elevated, but not dangerous."

His Digilert 100 unit is one of the most reliable geiger counters on the market. His readings are 18 times higher than Tokyo historical norms. On a yearly basis, this would yield 630 millirem from local background alone. People have to remember that the sources of these high readings are from inhalable and ingestible fission products - not from a temporary visit to a high mountaintop. They should be avoided as much as reasonably possible, and every action should be taken to prevent these levels of exposure from reaching young children and infants.

It looks like the recent change in wind directions really are starting to manifest in higher readings. I don't remember Tokyo reading this high since the initial massive discharge back in mid-March. Something tells me Tepco has been losing the fight big time recently but is not disclosing accurate dispersion and exposure data.

It's time for everyone to start paying close attention to regional and global wind forecasts again.

Commercial nuclear plants are not nearly safe enough in my estimation. They need to be intrinsically safe. Which is to say they can survive a shutdown without electrical power indefinitely.

We shouldn't build any more of the old style plants except possibly for the Navy. Aboard ship in an emergency you have three shifts (actually 6 since watches are 4 hours) available instantly. Decisions will be made quickly. The captain expects it. He is a nuke too. Not only that he can order things done by the rest of the Navy. A commercial operation can not be run to that standard. It is not cost effective. Thus civilian plants need to be safer. And it wouldn't hurt if military plants improved as well. If that is feasible.

And another point worth emphasis. It is not over for Tokyo. Let us be conservative and say the increased radiation happened over a period of 5 days. Fifty days at that rate and Tokyo becomes an exclusion zone. About the beginning of July. Godzilla.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I like Frank Chu. He's not only refreshing, but he's a sort of political warning post. It's what can happen if you stick to your principles despite what most of us consider reality.

In Zombie's typically humorous coverage of a recent Obama fundraiser in San Francisco, ("Obama Visits the S(lush) F(und) Bay Area"), he said this about my, your, and OUR man Frank:

I haven't posted a picture of Frank Chu for a while, so here he is once again -- San Francisco's resident all-purpose protester, who shows up at literally every single political event with his trademark indecipherable signs (and yes, he is completely serious about them).

Here's the picture:

Clearly, he is a man whose logic is as bulletproof as his principles.

And in the following video, Frank sets the record straight with  "Wiggin Caxtrokenical Patrosenial":

Who can argue with that?

There is something charming about Frank Chu, even if he is crazy, and depending on how broad a view you take of these things, sanity might be completely beside the point. 

Another guy I find charming is anything but crazy. What I have noticed about Donald Trump is that the people who get really mad about him (and some people I greatly respect in the Tea Party become indignant when his name is even mentioned) only work themselves into rages because they take him seriously.

But what if he is a buffoon? Wouldn't that mean he should be cut some slack, and allowed to like, "freak freely" as Jerry Garcia used to put it?

I mean, I liked what Trump said about Obama being unqualified for Ivy League schools.

Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.

Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

The issue is not so much what he said (which for all I know may be highly debatable), but just the way he said it. Trump is like the forgotten common man -- the type who show up at Tea Party demos and speak their minds freely and are basically accountable to no one. Like them, Trump can shoot off his mind freely -- except unlike them, he's got the billionaire big media presence. This is highly unusual; most men in his position would be hemmed in by a sense of "responsibility."

Hell even I am hemmed in by a sense of responsibilty, and I have no responsibility! I pull punches all the time, because I don't want to hurt feelings, start arguments, be logically inconsistent, or be misunderstood. (That's worked out really well for me, hasn't it?)

Sometimes I think I need to become more texdrochellical.

Up from reality!

I'm having a discussion over at Zero Hedge with Crockett. We are looking at Ron Paul's idea of Foreign Policy. Needless to say - I'm not a fan.

Way ahead of you Crockett, my man. I already make my world conform to my desires. And I'm not unhappy with the results. International politics is a mugs game. Those who can play it well are thugs. Reality. You don't like it? Well the answer is to fix human nature. You up for it?

People are what they are. No amount of libertarian philosophy will change that. What do people really want? Liberty? Doubtful. The question on every man's tongue is a very old one "ubi est?" So I work for a little liberty at the margins. Ending the drug war is within reach. So I reach for that.

I used to have grand dreams for a country premised on Liberty. Now I'm willing to settle for movement at the margins. i.e. something that can actually be done.

====

My ideal foreign policy establishment:

A State Department run by Warmongers who are willing to settle for peace. And a War Department run by Peacemakers who are the most vicious warriors on the planet. The Marines get it. "No better friend, no worse enemy."

Ron Paul is a Peacemonger. They are most dangerous because they usually deliver the opposite of what they claim their aim is. This is my view:

Peace through superior fire power and the willingness to use it.

To be loved is a good thing. For the rest fear should suffice.

Of course domestic policy is different and there Paul shines. What he is unable to do is to reconcile the two systems. He wants the world to be a logical place. It isn't. Proof? There are Frenchmen.

The latest black on white attack in a McDonalds has gone bigtime viral, and as it just seethes with Culture War subtexts, I find myself unable to ignore it as I perhaps should. (Alas. Sometimes I think that what Trotsky said* about ignoring war applies to ignoring the Culture War.)

Drudge has been linking the video and the stories for days now, and there is of course much clamoring for hate crime prosecution of the attackers. Once again, I should point out my stubborn opposition to hate crime laws. As I said in an earlier email to a friend (who thought this was really ugly incident, which it was),

If prosecutors did their job and went after violent criminals, no one would be clamoring for hate crime legislation. The problem is that aside from the constitutional issue, they create priority victims. Then everyone clamors to be included on the list.

And in this case, which list do we use? Obviously, the victim was white and the attackers were black. But the victim was also transgendered, and for the life of me, I find it hard to ignore that. This is not to say that I support special protection for any category, but as I watched the video I just found myself wondering about something....

The victim was not an "obvious" M2F and I doubt most men would have been able to detect that this was someone who had crossed that divide.

The attackers, however, were women. Did they know? My theory (and it is just a theory) is that they probably didn't know it in the conscious human sense, but that they may have been able to sense it in that ill-defined animal sense. You know, the sense that tells people whether they're compatible by things like subliminal odors they're unaware of, or the sort of sense that causes women who are infused with regular amounts of sperm to mutually adjust their monthly cycles. Things scientists study but which we don't consciously understand, and for which we can get into serious trouble for discussing (assuming we belong to the educated and civilized classes of people whose civilized colleagues go ape over discussions of things that make trashy people go ape.)

What if there were subliminal pheromonal issues at work?

If such things can trigger violence, is it necessarily hate? Or does hate have to be a civilized and conscious decision? Do such distinctions matter? 

I think what happened is simply violent criminal behavior, and people who do things like that should be punished severely, whether they do it out of conscious hate or unconscious animal instinct. I'd like to think that's what laws are for.

Once we start rating crime according to their level of "hate" we end up giving the non-haters a pass.

* Actually, Trotsky didn't say it about war; he said it about the dialectic! Same difference.

I may not be interested in the Culture War, but the Culture War is interested in me?

Nah, I shouldn't be taken in by such solipsistic drivel. I must resolve to valiantly continue to hide my head in the sand and hope it goes away.

What is pain, and why is it considered a question of morality in the minds of so many people?

To most linear, logical thinkers (and engineering types like my esteemed co-blogger M. Simon) the question will seem ridiculous, as it strikes such people as self-apparent that pain has nothing to do with morality. Pain is neither moral nor immoral; it just is. It is a condition of life that comes and goes depending on illness, stimuli, and the individual psychology of whoever experiences pain. A person either has pain or he does not. Pain varies from person to person, of course, and some people will experience more pain from the same illness or injury than others. Some people are more stoic than others; one man may demand pain meds for lower back pain, while another might endure amputation without complaint. Does the ability to endure pain touch on morality? How would that be evaluated? By setting up a graph with two axes showing who complains the loudest on one axis and the degree of pain on the other? How can degrees of pain be measured objectively? It is beyond dispute that some people are weaker than others and more likely to complain, but at the same time it is also beyond dispute that pain thresholds vary greatly. So if two different people experience identical stimuli, one may feel it while the other does not. Because of this natural variation, what we would call "stoicism" in the face of pain would not be the same thing for all people. In order for pain to be "endured stoically," pain must first be felt. A man who feels no pain from something cannot be called a stoic in the face of what he does not feel. And if we assume stoicism in the face of pain constitutes moral superiority, the insensible man therefore cannot be more "moral" than someone who hurts.

I was reminded of this earlier when I briefly turned on the TV to see a documentary on crucifixion in what was obviously someone's idea of Easter programming. In a fascinating medical experiment, healthy young male volunteers were suspended from a cross (without nailing, of course) while doctors carefully monitored their vital signs until they finally said they'd had enough and demanded to be let down. Even without nailing, the pain of crucifixion eventually becomes unendurable, and because of a combination of physiological processes (slow asphyxiation and stress to the heart), if someone were suspended long enough, he would die.

Whether with or without the near-fatal scourging and the driving of nails through hands and feet associated with the death of Jesus, crucifixion as developed by the Romans was intended as the ultimate pain experience. The slowest possible death coupled with the maximum amount of pain. As the documentary pointed out, the driving of nails would hasten death, while tying the victim alone would prolong it. Jesus's death was unusual for its shortness of duration; crucifixion often took days, sometimes as long as a week. And if the "gall" Jesus refused was in fact poison as is argued here, that provides more evidence that the Romans wanted his death accelerated, and that Jesus was bravely stoic. (Something the Romans would have admired.)    

It was hard to watch a documentary like that without having it cross my mind that pain -- and the endurance of it -- might just have a historical and even religious connection with morality.

This is not an idle question, because if pain involves morality, then the relief of it becomes a moral issue. Many modern Americans would laugh at the Victorian doctors who refused to use anesthesia out of fear it would damage their patients' morality, but they grew up in a time when enduring pain was considered part of life, with weakness and virtue being defined accordingly. 

At the same time, it hadn't occurred to the moralists that the relief of pain was something that should be regulated by the government. 

Whether someone endured pain or sought relief for it was seen as a private matter. People could go to doctors if they wanted, or they could even walk right into pharmacies and buy powerful narcotics without prescription. It was not until the Progressive Era that this became a matter for the government with the 1914 passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act. Initially, it was entirely up to doctors to decide what to prescribe for their patients, but over time the government got into the business of looking over their shoulders, and constantly narrowing the medical grounds for pain relief -- to the point that today many doctors are afraid to prescribe narcotic pain killers lest they be investigated and prosecuted by the DEA. (Which means the war on drugs has become a war on pain relief.)

Interestingly, the war on drugs has led to patients in certain countries being allowed no pain relief at all.

...the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, together representing less than 20 per cent of the world's population, accounted for more than 95 per cent of the total morphine consumption in 2005.

This indicates a significant underconsumption of morphine affecting the remaining 80 per cent of the world's population, whose combined morphine consumption represented less than 5 per cent of the global total.

And despite the World Health Organisation's limited success in promoting poppy-based medicines for palliative care for cancer and HIV/Aids in emerging countries, the sheer enormity of the global pain crisis demands ongoing sustained action by the WHO, governments and international regulatory boards.

That sub-Saharan Africa, with a large percentage of the population in pain from AIDS and cancer, has almost no access to narcotic painkillers is itself a largely unreported international scandal which I think ought to be considered an outrage. The chief reason is the difficulty of imposing the same sort of controls over prescription and distribution which are required by the international drug police in western countries. The result is that Africans simply die in pain.

This link was forwarded to me by a literary-agent-friend.  Is this one of Coco's relatives?

(Thank you to Michael Kabongo of the Onyxhawke agency!)

I found this funny and kinda sweet.

The Few, The Proud, the Britney Spears Fans in the Marines!

Back in November, I lamented that this sort of thing would be happening more and more:

Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.

Homeland Security agents arrested the TSA officer March 24, and he is being held without bail.

Although the case was unsealed Thursday, neither the indictment nor the news release mentioned Gordon's job searching airline passengers for TSA.

Typical. When you offer to pay people to do what they most want to do, they will line up to take the jobs. If the government offered to hire people to put Jews in ovens, rest assured that there would be applicants.

Yes. It has been a few days since my last update. The news from nuclear Japan is just so depressing. So let me have at it in no particular order.

Evacuation Zone Widened

The government on Friday added some towns outside a 20-kilometer radius of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the list of areas covered by its evacuation directive due to concerns over high cumulative levels of radiation exposure.

From the "it's about time" department.

The science ministry said Friday it will compile maps showing the extent of air and soil contamination as part of government efforts to enhance the monitoring of radiation levels and reevaluate evacuation zones around the crippled nuclear plant.

International Agencies are also complaining that the data is sparse.

The chairperson of the International Commission on Radiological Protection says more checks are needed to measure radiation in the Fukushima area.

Claire Cousins told NHK that the Japanese government's decision to raise the permissible level of radiation from one millisievert to 20 millisieverts per year is in line with the levels set by the commission when dealing with emergency situations.

She said it is difficult to predict when people will be able to return to the evacuation zone, but suggested it may be a considerable length of time.

She said the area will need to be monitored to determine when it will be safe for people to live there again.

A no-entry zone has been imposed for the area within 20 kilometers of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

At midnight on Thursday, the off-limits zone was set up in 9 municipalities around the plant in line with a law governing disasters.

Authorities set up 75 checkpoints on the roads leading to the areas within the zone.

On Thursday night, before the no-entry zone was established, local residents were seen moving out of the zone in cars after being allowed to return temporarily to collect things left behind.

Radiation Safety Philippines has a nice roundup. Here are some of the links I found interesting.

Fukushima Fallout Detected In Korea

Fukushima nuke workers at risk of depression, overwork death. And that is not all. Evidently worker safety is not high on the list of priorities. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Invisible Deaths At Evacuation Centers

Sai kept eating and responding to her son even after she became unable to move. But she died 20 days after the disaster struck.

Her doctor listed the cause of death as disease.

Sai's case is one of the growing number of "invisible" deaths among evacuees who have died after developing illnesses or seeing their pre-existing conditions worsen following the quake.

But since they are not officially listed as disaster-related deaths, their surviving family members are ineligible for condolence money from the government.

As of April 18, only four evacuee deaths were certified as disaster-related in the stricken Tohoku region--three in Miyagi Prefecture and one in Fukushima Prefecture. They included one death in an aftershock.

Heat stroke is affecting plant workers who are wearing suits in non air-conditioned areas.

There are more links at "Radiation Safety". Supposing that you are insufficiently depressed.

Continuity will become a challenge, and core Fukushima staff may have to be cycled out soon to due dose limit considerations

The Japanese have advanced managerial and human resource management techniques for dealing with such eventualities. They are planning to double the human body's ability to handle radiation exposure after all ready increasing it by a factor of 5 over US standards.

In order to stabilize the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, the government is planning to raise the radiation exposure limit for the workers from the current 250 milli-sievert/year.

The radiation exposure limit for workers at nuclear power plants is 100 milli-sievert/year, but the limit has been raised to 250 milli-sievert/year to deal with the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident. According to the government sources, the higher limit is being considered because it is getting increasingly difficult to have enough workers to work on the plant. Also, the radiation inside the Reactor buildings is high, and the annual limit of 250 milli-sieverts may not be high enough to achieve the goals laid out by the TEPCO road map.

The international standard allows 500 milli-sievert/year in an emergency work, but it hasn't been decided how high the new limit will be. The government will carefully assess the timing of announcement, keeping in consideration the health concerns of the workers and the public opinion.

The work at the [Fukuhsima I] nuclear power plant requires skills and experience under harsh conditions, and securing workers has been a problem.

In the article "Doctor warns Japan nuke workers are at their limit". An excerpt from the article.

"Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant operator, said 245 workers from the company and affiliated companies were stationed at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant Wednesday. Soldiers, firefighters and police officers also were at the site."

"The nuclear workers have been toiling around the clock to stabilize the plant. Tanigawa said they get little rest, no baths or fresh food and are under the constant threat of exposure to radiation, which remains so high in many places that robots are being used to take measurements."

"The workers, most of them middle-aged men, suffer insomnia and show signs of dehydration and high blood pressure, he said. One had gout. Tanigawa said he is concerned they may develop depression or heart problems."

"Tanigawa said the mental stress of the job is deepened by the fear of radiation exposure, the concerns of their loved ones -- many don't want the men to stay on at the plant -- and the fact that many of the workers themselves lost homes or family in the tsunami."

Some people are of the opinion that insufficient attention has been given to nuclear safety.

The two recent natural calamities that hit Japan -- the massive earthquake of 11th March and the subsequent tsunami -- not only resulted in massive loss of life and property damage but also resulted in the unfolding of the subsequent drama at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that is still to be satisfactorily resolved.

The loss of emergency diesel power resulting in a loss of coolant at the plant, a partial meltdown of the fuel in the reactors there and the radioactive leakage from the site to the neighboring prefectures have all not only resulted in anxiety over the suitability of nuclear power in Japan but also cast a shadow over the global expectation of a nuclear renaissance.

Not unnaturally, in India, where there is a program of vigorous expansion of nuclear energy generation, this has resulted in some doubts over the wisdom of relying on nuclear power to solve national energy demands.

Before analyzing the safety and reliability of nuclear power, it is necessary to pause and examine what really happened and did not happen at Fukushima.

Notwithstanding the severity of the earthquake and the age of the reactor, nearing its nominal lifetime, there was no structural damage to the reactor installation as a result of either the earthquake or the tsunami.

Some on the citizens of Japan are mad as hell.

Kyushu Electric Power Co. will have to delay the restart of two nuclear reactors currently undergoing regular checks at its Genkai power plant in Saga Prefecture beyond May due to a lack of consent from the local community, the prefectural assembly chief said Friday.

Losses mount due to radiation radiation leakage.

A government panel agreed Friday to recognize financial losses caused by restrictions on shipments of farm products as damages from radiation leakages at the Fukushima Daiichi atomic power complex, government officials said Friday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Thursday he has urged the health ministry to investigate whether women's breast milk has been affected by radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Well some one has done the proper test and the results are not looking good.

Breast milk from a woman in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo tests at 36.3 Becquerel

Something is officially wrong with Japan's official radiation numbers

Here's the deal: They tested a 120-130 milliliter sample of breast milk from this woman and discovered an amount of I-131 that is equivalent to a 36.3 Bq per kilogram concentration.

The safety limit is 100 becquerels per kg for tap water consumption by infants under 1 year old, but that is besides the point - if we evaluate the official I-131 readings in water from atmc.jp, officials will be hard pressed in explaining how she accumulated even this amount in her breast milk.

What we are seeing is radiation hot spots. The question is where? Some where in the food chain? Somewhere local? Where you work? Hiding the decline will have short term benefits and long term losses. So it goes.

Japan Summer weather is nigh, and here's the change we can expect in wind direction. Inland then off to China (so to speak). The guy writing the article thinks that there will be no major problems if there are no major problems. Otherwise the opposite is true. Prediction is difficult. Especially about the future. Nice maps and graphics.

For the first time

Radiation levels of over 100 microsieverts per hour were measured at four locations 2 to 3 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant from late last month, the science ministry said Thursday as it released such data for the first time.

This is the Joke Of The Day.

The Japanese government has expressed concern about the structural strength of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant's Number 1 reactor. It says the ongoing water injections may be making the vessel less earthquake resistant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, is planning to fill part of the containment vessel with water to cool the reactor.

TEPCO wants the water level to reach the top of the fuel rods in reactors one and three by mid July, so it can cool them under more stable conditions.

At the Number 1 reactor, where fuel rods are believed to be the most seriously damaged, six tons of water are being injected every hour.

TEPCO believes the water is vaporizing, then condensing in the containment vessel.

Robot video inside reactor buildings 2 & 3. More Robot Videos.

Isotope Data Suggests Ongoing Criticality in the junk piles.

During full-power operation, numerous "fission products" are in approximate steady-state equilibrium, meaning roughly equal becquerel of I-131 and Cs-134, with a slow buildup of Cs-137. But they all cease to be created when the reactors are scrammed. Japanese regulators NISA and MEXT seem oblivious of the mysterious fact that I-131 Bq "reactor density" is still often reported double the Cs-134/137 Bq. The TEPCO data suggest that fission is ongoing despite the reactor shutdowns. This is bad news.

Isotope ratios in radioactive leaked water.

I've had enough. The most worrisome of these reports is the indication of ongoing criticality. If that is in fact happening (another month should give us definitive results) this accident will not be over any time soon. As in years to decades.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A long, and quite well-researched piece at leftie Salon.com thoroughly debunks Trig Trutherism for all the left-of-center world to see.

Not that this nonsense ever needed debunking in the minds of reasonable, sane, or rational people. The problem is that these theories are more emotion driven than fact driven, and debunking them with rational arguments or resort to facts is futile with those who simply want to believe what they want to believe. I was amused to see the Salon author acknowledge something I discussed earlier this week: the uncanny similarity between Trig Trutherism and Obama Birtherism.

Sullivan's refrain on this issue is that he does not endorse any conspiracy theory, he is merely asking questions. He simply wants Palin "to debunk this for once and for all, with simple, readily available medical records." He has proposed, for example, the release of "amniocentesis results with Sarah Palin's name on them."

It's worth noting that this posture is identical to the rhetoric used by Obama birthers (for instance, WorldNetDaily Birther czar Joseph Farah employs the "just asking for definitive piece of proof x" line here).

But the larger point is that continuously demanding more "proof" on an issue about which there is already overwhelming evidence is either irrational or disingenuous. And why would a piece of paper with amniocentesis results and Sarah Palin's name be more dispositive than the doctor's many statements and the testimony of all of the reporters who saw Palin pregnant? If you already believe everyone is lying and everything is a hoax, it wouldn't.

The Salon author (Justin Elliott) acknowledges that no form of proof will ever satisfy a conspiracy theorist who wants his theory to be true. So debunking these things tends to be a waste of time, at least with them.

It is also a tedious and boring exercise, because these theories are meant to be entertaining, and debunking them can come across as humorless and nerdy. Like a killjoy who points out that Santa Claus doesn't exist, or that circus magician has a hidden compartment or something. People who want to be entertained don't want their entertainment ruined, and the fact is that the Palin haters love Trig Trutherism, facts be damned. 

When the state of Alaska says Trig is her baby, they lie, every bit as much as Hawaii is lying when they say Obama was born there!

I never thought about it before, but it almost seems that there is common agreement between the far left and the far right that the two most recently admitted states cannot be trusted to keep vital statistics.

I should probably be glad my official "Certification of Birth" says I was born in stodgy old Pennsylvania, because I really can't remember all the details and all the people who were allegedly there are dead. What a dreary task it would be for me to have to debunk my natural born birtherism.

In what is intended as a scary headline, the left wing People for the American Way proclaims that "the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection."

I see that as a classic example of coalition politics. In the name of environmental protection, some of the remaining vestiges of freedom are being destroyed. So, go coalition!

Except, because I am not in the "Religious Right" part of the coalition, I naturally found myself wondering... whatever can they mean with the phrase "Corporate Right"? What precisely is that? I read on, and found the demons of the "Corporate Right" prominently listed:

....the Acton Institute, which is primarily funded by groups like ExxonMobil, the Scaife foundations and the Koch brothers. Beisner is also an adviser to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which is financed by the oil-backed Earthart Foundation, the Koch brothers, and ExxonMobil.

[...]

....the Heartland Institute, a pro-corporate group funded by Exxon Mobil, the Koch Family Foundations, and the Scaife foundations. Other organizations funded by energy corporations that cosponsored the conference include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity.

[...]

Corporations and their front groups are increasingly using this rhetoric as well. For example, the pro-corporate American Action Network ran campaign ads featuring a senior citizen suffering through cold winter nights, claiming that the American Clean Energy and Security Act would make energy unaffordable and devastate the economy. Peggy Venable, the Texas state director of the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity, claimed that "the Global Warming hoax is imperialism allowing a vehicle for environmentalists to dictate the way of life for us all - and is most harmful for third world countries where children often don't see their fifth birthday."

So it's Koch, Koch, Koch! I guess they think that if they use that name enough in a negative context, it will become the leftie equivalent of "SOROS!" (Much as Soros sucks, an unfortunate reality is that the name "Soros" just does not readily lend itself to this sort of ridicule.)

What's interesting to me as a libertarian is that not only are the Koch brothers libertarians, but nowhere in the entire PAW piece does the l-word appear.

Surely they aren't trying to make libertarians disappear by making up a new, more evil sounding word for them. Why can't they just use the old and familiar "hedonist" as an anti-libertarian smear?

While I don't mind all that much having to be on the Corporate Right, do I really have to be? No corporation pays me to write this blog, and I don't have a corporation to call my own. To steal a line from Robert Duvall, "I'm a man without a corporation!"

So how can I ever hope to succeed as a member of the Corporate Right? 

And why aren't they saying anything about the Corporate Left? It isn't as if fat cats like billionaire Soros and union buster Michael Moore don't have corporations, you know....

Earlier I wrote a post about the Michigan State Police searching cell phones with intrusive scanning devices.

In a Popular Mechanics piece, Glenn Reynolds warns that "it's the bigger picture that's truly worrisome":

The combination of smartphones loaded with data about you and law enforcement devices that can easily extract that information means that a privacy war is looming.

[...]

What happens if police gain access to all this information through your phone? Courts are only beginning to grapple with this. Take the question of location tracking: One federal magistrate has held that the government must have a warrant even to obtain cellphone tracking information from a cellular carrier. The cellphone system routinely logs which cell towers contact your phone as you travel about, and that data provides a pretty good map of your whereabouts. It's a good enough map, the court decided, that police shouldn't be able to access it without a warrant. Likewise, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that installing a GPS tracker in your car requires a warrant. However, other cases have held that putting GPS tracking devices on suspects' cars doesn't require a warrant--the argument is that whenever you drive your car, you're in public view, and thus have no expectation of privacy regarding your whereabouts, so you're not harmed by the tracking. (I feel certain, however, that if I went down to the nearest federal motor pool and installed GPS trackers on their vehicles, they'd take a different view.)

Experts have been warning of privacy threats for years, and for the most part the public has yawned. But the combination of devices that gather all sorts of information about you and law-enforcement agencies wanting to snoop on it has put us into a whole new ballgame.

It might be a new ballgame in terms of technology. But there is nothing new about the Fourth Amendment. It was intended precisely to stop this sort of governmental abuse, and it is high time we returned to that original intent. 

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.

As Glenn points out, today's smart phones contain "a lot more information about you than your emails and the numbers in your address book."

Your phone knows where you've been and what you've done. Consider the recent revelations that Apple iPhones actually maintain an internal file of the user's locations, one that is copied to the user's computer when the phone is synchronized to iTunes. These phones may store as much as a year's worth of location data--data that could be snooped by law enforcement, creditors, jealous spouses, or-- more troubling, and probably more likely--hackers, malware operators and stalkers.

The invasions of privacy that the founders intended us to protect us against were much less egregious than that, so you'd think the Fourth Amendment would have been strengthened accordingly. Yet as Professor Thomas Y. Davies demonstrates here, the courts have systematically weakened it.

So, instead of enjoying the privacy afforded by the traditional common law doctrine that the founders intended, we face routine SWAT Team raids and an all new war on privacy.

I hate repeating myself, but once again, there has been a massive failure to impart basic civics, from the top down.

Yes, we are being tyrannized by a blundering but very dangerous Obamasaurus Rex who is "flailing around in a world in which he doesn't fit."

Fortunately, Sarah has documented the habits of this beast in great post at Pajamas Media.

Don't miss "Jurassic President." 

It's wonderful. We are very proud of Sarah.

For the last couple of days, the fight over Terry Jones (the Koran-burning minister) and his efforts to hold a rally in front of a Dearborn mosque have occupied the front pages of the Detroit Free Press.

As a First Amendment literalist, I see this as a simple matter of free speech. Jones has every right to go there and say anything he wants, and he has the right to burn a Koran right there in front of the mosque as long as he is on a public street. Similarly, the Ku Klux Klan has a right to hold a rally in Detroit. 

The First Amendment does not contain exceptions for irritating, offensive, or inflammatory speech. Period.

Of course, there is the interesting question of who pays. The legal wrangling in Dearborn involves not only the attempt to stop Jones from speaking in front of the Islamic Center (which I think is dead wrong), but whether he can be required to pay $46,000 in security costs for being allowed to speak at all:

A battle over free speech played out Thursday in Dearborn as Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones arrived in metro Detroit to make his bid to protest today in front of the largest mosque in Dearborn. And questions remained as to whether the pastor would be able to carry out his plan.

Dearborn officials and Wayne County prosecutors sought to convince Jones to post a bond for security costs if he wants to protest in Dearborn. And they urged him to rally not at the Islamic Center of America -- his desired spot -- but instead in front of their City Hall or civic center.

With his courtroom packed with police and reporters, Dearborn District Judge Mark Somers sided with government officials, finding their arguments compelling. The officials argued that for logistical and security reasons, Jones should not be allowed to rally at the Islamic center.

Jones declined to post the bond, prompting the judge to order a jury trial for 8:30 a.m. today that will decide whether Jones has to pay to hold his rally this evening. Dearborn police say they would have to pay an extra $46,000 in security for the protest.

OK, right there I see a problem. Requiring a large sum of money as a precondition of free speech constitutes a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. 

I'm glad to see that the ACLU is supporting Jones:

Earlier Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and others criticized authorities, saying they were wrongly denying Jones his constitutional rights.

The government should "not impinge on a person's right to protest, even when their speech is as distasteful and offensive as Rev. Jones' is," said Rana Elmir, communications director for the Michigan ACLU. "We should combat hate speech with more speech."

Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad said there are serious problems with having Jones protest outside the Islamic Center, noting that Jones has received numerous death threats and has a $1.2-million bounty on his head from a Pakistan-based terrorist group.

Moreover, the mosque is surrounded by several churches that have Good Friday services, making traffic an issue, he argued. The site also is logistically a challenge because of a lack of pedestrian and vehicle access, he said.

The city already has denied Jones a permit to protest -- a decision that might have to be revisited today after the trial.

"It would have been chaos," Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly Jr. said Thursday.

There's no denying that there might be chaos. So what? There would probably be chaos if the Nazis or the Klan were to hold a rally, but that has nothing to do with free speech.

Where tends to confuse people is the security cost. The government has a duty to protect the public, and whether they can do their job properly or not is an issue independent of the First Amendment. Isn't the talk about the cost of security mixing apples and oranges?

When he discussed Koran burning recently, Glenn Reynolds described his sentiments as in line with Cohen v. California.

From the Wiki entry:

On April 26, 1968, Paul Robert Cohen, 19, was arrested for wearing a jacket bearing the words "Fuck the Draft" inside the Los Angeles Courthouse. Inside the court room he had the jacket folded over his arm, only after exiting the room he put the jacket on and was then arrested. He was convicted of violating section 415 of the California Penal Code, which prohibited "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] offensive conduct."

The Supreme Court held as follows:

"[A]bsent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions," it said, "the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense."^[1] In his opinion Justice Harlan famously wrote "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."^[2]

Let's suppose that the "FUCK THE DRAFT" jacket had outraged patriotic citizens enough for them to have violently assaulted Cohen. The police would have had a duty to protect him, just as they would any other citizen who was engaged in legal, constitutionally protected conduct. The level of emotions that might be raised is irrelevant. Even if someone wore a t-shirt with the n-word, or a slogan like "SUPPORT NAMBLA," the police would still have to protect them from violent assault the same way they would anyone else. They have no right to evaluate the inflammatory nature of the message, and bill people in advance for the privilege of displaying it, because that would be inconsistent with the First Amendment.

So, I see no way they can constitutionally demand a security bond from Terry Jones.

Absolutist that I am, the First Amendment is silent about who has to pay the somtimes high cost of inflammatory speakers.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

While requiring the payment of a bond would abridge freedom of speech, what about doing absolutely nothing to protect the speaker and/or the public? Suppose a bankrupt city like Detroitwas faced with an impending Klan rally. Could they just tell the Klan that the police would do nothing and that the rally would be at the Klan's and the public's own risk? Or do they have to guarantee safety for all, no matter what the cost?

While the First Amendment is silent as to cost, could a case be made that refusing to police an event would constitute an abridgement of speech? 

I don't know the answer, but I am curious.

Having your city visited by guys like Terry Jones and Fred Phelps can get expensive, especially in these days of budgetary woes.

Taking a broad general view, though, I think it is fair to point out that Dearborn has been all but asking for a visit from Jones.

And what would Henry Ford say? The town he founded is no stranger to inflammatory rhetoric; thanks to Ford's tract being a best-seller in the Mideast, Dearborn is known around the world.  

Free speech has many facets.

MORE: The latest news is an outrage. In a mockery of the First Amendment,  Dearborn jury has "ruled" that allowing the rally would "breach the peace":

A judge late today sent two Florida pastors to jail for refusing to post a $1 bond. After a short time in jail they left on $1 bond each.

The stunning developments came after a Dearborn jury sided with prosecutors, ruling that Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp would breach the peace if they rallied at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

Prosecutors asked Judge Mark Somers for $45,000 bond. Somers then set
bond at $1 each for the two pastors. They refused to pay. And Somers ordered them remanded to jail.

Chaos broke out outside court as opposing factions yelled at each other. Jones and Sapp were led out of court by Dearborn police. That left Jones' supporters stunned, given that he hadn't even attempted to go to the mosque yet.

According to the Wayne County prosecutor's office, both Jones and Sapp are prohibited by the court from going to the mosque or adjacent property for three years.

This is not the sort of thing that is up to a jury. The jury simply decided -- based on their perception of the content of the speech -- that it should not be allowed.

We have the First Amendment to prevent such injustices. It is not for a jury to decide what sort of speech is acceptable in America.

The morons are acting as if the whole point is Terry Jones and what he says.

Who he is and what he says has nothing to do with it.

Appalling.

It's bad day for free speech in America, but I predict this will be overturned in a higher court.

I don't know why people keep confusing the right to free speech with whether the speech in question is right, but they do.

The case reflects a huge failure to impart basic civics in this country.

MORE: Eugene Volokh calls the decision "a pretty clear violation of the would-be demonstrators' First Amendment rights" and predicts it will be overturned.

I like to kid around and slough the feeling off with humor in posts like these, but I have a serious (at least, to the extent it is possible for me to ever be really serious) confession to make.

I'm feeling so burned out by politics that I am genuinely worried.

It is too far away from "the" election to be feeling this way. I cannot remember a time in my life that I was so burned out and literally drained during what should normally be a political off time.

Am I alone?

When I attempted to google the feeling, I found evidence that I wasn't:

After a LOT of thought about political matters lately (see my GD threads), I've decided (again) I've had enough. I've already deleted at least one blog from my Firefox address bar, and may do it to more. And this a blog of MY general political bent!

It's just stress I don't need or want. I know it's important stuff, but the steady drumbeat is just wearing me down.

Y'know, as I'm thinking about this, I have a feeling I'm not alone on this, and may answer a question I've wondered about whether and how much partisan blogs accurately reflect the general voter thought and mood on their side of the aisle. If they don't, it's because of moments like mine all across the country. Or else, they never have that moment because they don't bother with the subject to begin with...

No idea who wrote that, or whether he or she is on the right or the left.

But the election cycles in this country have become so seamlessly endless that we are always in the middle of elections. And the ever-louder political drumbeats take their toll. Day after day, year after year, whether I agree or not, whether I pay attention or not, and whether I am burned out or not.

Perhaps the only escape is the certain knowledge that eventually I won't hear them.

What would be a neat trick would be if I could figure out how to use this blog to conquer the problem, because after writing daily posts for nearly eight years it sometimes feels as if blogging about politics might exacerbate the political burnout problem.

There is that old saying that the first step in dealing with a problem is by admitting you have one. (In the case of political blogging, maybe I have two....)

Hence the post.

UPDATE: Via an email, I just got an image I find utterly inspiring:

Why not? It works for Coco...

AND MORE: Some beautiful white-petaled flowers sprang open just today in my backyard alongside the blue ones that have been open for a week or so:

At first I thought they were daisies, but after noticing that the flowers only have eight petals (daisies have many more than that), I googled white flower with eight petals and looked at pictures until I found an exact match

They are bloodroot flowers:

Bloodroot is a perennial wildflower that's native to the eastern woodlands of North America. Its name is derived from the thick, red sap that leaks from the rhizome when cut.

The sap, btw, is said to have medicinal and magical properties.

No word on whether it has political properties, but the FDA seems to frown on its unsupervised use.

Let it bloom, I say.

There will be bloodroot!

Yesterday I lamented my plight over what feels like an obligation to blog about the real issues (whatever they are) in the election ahead.

Well, today I thought I would steel myself, buckle down, and attempt to come to terms with the truth involving one of the most serious issues in the election. An issue said by many to rise to the level of being a "real" issue!

I refer to the "truth" about the circumstances of the birth of Trig Palin.

I have long thought that Trig Palin birtherism was created largely in retaliation for Obama birtherism, and this long and obsessive piece I read earlier (by an author plugging his book titled "The Lies of Sarah Palin") confirms that the Trig Truthers are indeed trying to inject new heat into Trig Birtherism. I suspect that may be in anticipation of the WorldNetDaily Obama Birther book that's coming out. One Truther book deserves another, right?

Other than the fact that it was recently Trig Palin's birthday, the Trig Truthers have nothing new to report, and the author of the new book does little more than cite vintage Andrew Sullivan and give everyone else who isn't demanding "proof" a sound scolding:

There is one person who can put an end to the Trig matter immediately and instantly, and that is Sarah Palin. Before she takes another step in what has been a hapless bid to position herself for a run for the presidency, the American media should demand that Palin produce full and conclusive evidence of Trig's birth and parentage. It's that simple.

No, it really isn't, no more than it would be "that simple" for Obama to dig up the hospital records that are being demanded by the Obama Birthers.  Because, like the Obama Birthers (whose secondary position is that Obama is constitutionally ineligible even if he was born in Hawaii), the Trig Birthers also have a lawyerlike fallback position.

Even if Trig is Sarah Palin's baby, she was "reckless" in hurrying from Texas to Alaska for the delivery.

Once that step is taken, then the American media needs to break its "spiral of silence" about Palin's "wild ride" from Texas to Alaska and to demand direct answers from her about the decisions she made, the actions she took and what motivated her to do so. Anyone who examines Palin's own story closely will come to no other conclusion that she was "reckless beyond measure"--as Andrew Sullivan so succinctly put it--and entirely unqualified to hold higher office in these challenging and demanding times.

This "wild ride" was said to have "put her infant and herself at risk" and "potentially put all passengers and staff on the two flights at risk as well."

Huh? Babies being born are dangerous to other people? That's a new one on me. I think if I saw a woman going into labor on a plane I might offer to help out, but I cannot imagine how my safety would be endangered in any way -- any more than it would be if I saw a woman giving birth on a bus. Seriously, what's the danger? Am I supposed to have a heart attack or something?

It is important to note that the "wild ride" is what lawyers call "arguing in the alternative" because if Trig was not Sarah Palin's baby, then she wasn't pregnant on the plane and obviously there could not have been any "wild ride" that recklessly endangered other passengers. So unless they're smoking so much dope that they believe she was endangering passengers with a phony full-term pregnancy involving a baby that wasn't there, it's only a fallback position -- of value only if Trig's birth becomes "authenticated."

As to constitutional issues, I can find nothing in the constitution about the ineligibility of presidential candidates who hurried (on a "wild ride" or not) from one state to another to have a baby. But I admit, I read the Constitution literally. There might be an implied pregnancy clause in there somewhere. Perhaps readers can enlighten me.

There's another minor point which has me confused about this whole thing.

So far as I know, Trig Palin is not a candidate for president, right? So, even if Sarah Palin were to do as her critics demand and supply a detailed birth certificate for him along with independent DNA evidence that she is his mom (I guess that's what they want), not only would that settle nothing, but it would be constitutionally irrelevant. Even if Trig turned out to be a Russian changeling born to Sarah Palin's neighbors and tossed over the fence from Russia into her Alaska yard from which she is known to have waved to them, that has nothing to do with the constitutional eligibility of anyone in the race.

Silly as I think they are, at least the Obama Birthers are talking about things that would be constitutionally relevant if they were true. They claim that he wasn't born in Hawaii even though Hawaii says he was, and that in the alternative even if he was, he still wasn't a natural born citizen because his father was not a citizen. However unfounded these arguments are, they are at least theoretically grounded in a constitutional provision requiring candidates to be born in this country. Unfortunately for the Obama Birthers, the Constitution makes no mention of birth certificates (much less types of birth certificates), and states have the sovereign right to keep vital statistics certifying who was born in them in whatever way they please. As these records constitute prima facie evidence of what they say, proving their falsity is nearly impossible in the legal arena, which leaves only the arena of conspiracy theory politics. If the latter approach works, and the majority of the voting public comes to disbelieve the State of Hawaii, then maybe Obama will decide to produce additional corroborating evidence of his birth, and as I have argued ad nauseam, it is in his interest to bait the birthers and drag this conspiracy theory drama out as long as possible, thereby avoiding substantive issues.

Not that there's anything wrong with an entertaining conspiracy theory, so once again folks, what about the Obama girls? Has their parentage been verified? Has anyone seen their birth certificates and tested their DNA? Does anyone know whether Michelle Obama had any wild rides?

Considering that the grandaddy of Trig Trutherdom Andrew Sullivan famously called the birth of Trig Palin "one of the biggest frauds in American political history," (my apologies again for letting him take over the blog) how do we know that the Obamas didn't get away with perpetrating at least two similar frauds?

The Obamas could easily clear this up.

Anyway, at the rate things are going, all births will be suspect. What's next? Maybe non-births?

I'm glad I'm not running for office. Otherwise, how could I ever hope to prove that I was born where my lame Pennsylvania "certification of birth" says I was?

For that matter, how could I ever hope to prove that I never had an abortion?

By wearing the t-shirt?

The first mate bought me a box of Fruit Roll-Ups™ the other day which is how I learned that General Mills is running a promotion that is giving laptops to kids without cash in places like Haiti.

Helping to educate

In 2010, Fruit Snacks partnered with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide educational opportunities to the world's poorest children.

You can get more information on the promotion at WinOneGiveOne.com.

The official rules say they are giving away 2001 laptops. I assume this also means that an equal number will be donated to poor kids. But they are not specific about that in the rules.

And of course Amazon will sell you Fruit Roll-Ups™:

Fruit Roll-Ups Fruit Flavored Snacks, Strawberry, 4-Count Rolls (Pack of 18)

Note that the rules say that on average you have to buy 19,000 boxes of Fruit Roll-Ups™ to win one laptop. What are you waiting for?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

What's goin' on with that election thing?

Let's see. Trump is accused by the Club for Growth of abusing eminent domain, Sarah Palin defended Trump on the birther issue, Michele Bachmann thinks the birther issue is settled by the state of Hawaii's certification (which it is legally, even as a new WorldNetDaily book will doubtless claim that the state of Hawaii is lying), Bachmann's son turned down a Playgirl offer, and Gingrich is having trouble raising money. OK, I think the latter is good news, because I believe anyone with the exception of Barack Obama is better than Gingrich. And I have to say that I was surprised by Bachmann's legally sound birther position (although as I explained here, the objections Trump raises are not legal, but based on a populist, anti-government common-sense yearning for a lost past).

But the election news already has my head spinning. I can't keep track of these things, and I am not sure I want to.

Do I have to? I mean, does duty call? Is there such a thing as a "duty" to blog about these things?

I'd rather sit on my butt watching a Samuel Jackson movie and let the candidates crash.

Forgive me, but I'm finding irony in the idea that there is such a thing as responsibility. 

I'll probably get over it.

(Forgive the title, as analysis won't help here. It only leads to cycles of overanalysis.)

MORE: Poll finds most Americans can't name a GOP presidential candidate:

About half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- could not name anyone when asked which Republican candidate they've been hearing the most about, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

Obviously, I need more analysis.

But that would take years -- especially by the standards of strict Freudian analysis.

Sarah told me about an outfit called "US Uncut." Sounds funny in a sexy way, right? It sounded funny to me too, but Sarah warned that it is "not nearly as much fun as the name makes it sound..."

Wow, was Sarah ever right!

If the people quoted here are any indication of the mentality behind "US Uncut," they are not only humorless lefties, but they are naive beyond belief.

FLINT, Michigan -- About 15 to 20 people gathered in front of the Mott Foundation Building on Saginaw Street to protest corporate America's tax breaks.

The group, U.S. Uncut, was protesting as part of a national movement to have the U.S. government restructure how corporate America is taxed, said Virginia Hamori-Ota, a protester and lecturer at the University of Michigan-Flint.

"We're out here to raise consciousness to our movement," the 52-year-old said.

The protesters gathered to protest the Bank of America, which did not pay income tax last year. They said that while lower- and middle-class families struggle to get by the fifth-largest corporation in the U.S. didn't have to pay up.

"Big companies like the Bank of America don't pay their taxes," said Robert Burach, a 20-year-old UM-Flint student who was one of the student leaders of the group.

Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for the Bank of America, said the bank didn't pay an income tax in the U.S. because it reported a loss, therefore there was no income to tax. It did, however, pay state and local taxes.

It is very sad to contemplate that Michigan's educational system trains minds to think like that of the student quoted, but apparently it does. It's bad enough that so many of them voted for a man who believes that not taking more from people constitutes "giving," but the idea that taxes should be imposed in the absence of income to tax?

Incredible.

How do they think that is possible? Might they think that because it's a bank, it just "has money" there for the taking?

Never mind that it's other people's money. It's a bank! They have money, so why shouldn't they just pay it out? Lots of rich people put their money there, right? Maybe they can get it from them!

Just like the government money. The government has money too, right? So why don't they just, like, pay it? There are plenty more rich people who are all greedy and everything. Just tax them!

Still in awe of the logic and intellectual acumen of this outfit, I thought to google the professor who was protesting, one Virginia Hamori-Ota. She teaches French. 

Oh, well in that case I guess that makes her an expert!