Politics
stcynic | February 23, 2004They seem to be in desperate need of a fact checker at the Worldnetdaily. One of their features is called The American Minute, written by Bill Federer. Federer is president of Amerisearch, which is described as "a publishing company dedicated to researching America's noble heritage." Based on this snippet from one of his columns, I'd say their dedication to research far exceeds their ability to research. After noting that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born on the same day, he says:
Lincoln is best known for freeing the slaves by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, affirming…
stcynic | February 20, 2004The Washington Times is reporting that conservative evangelical Christians are upset at President Bush for a wide variety of supposed offenses. Such religious right luminaries as Gary Bauer and Donald Wildmon are sending up warning signals that evangelicals may just decide to stay home on election day because Bush hasn't inspired their faith in him. The mind absolutely boggles, doesn't it? Supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, virtually ending stem cell research in the US, pushing through faith-based initiatives (by executive order in some cases), ranting in his state of…
stcynic | February 17, 2004The more I read from conservatives and their arguments against gay marriage, the more I'm convinced that there simply isn't any there there. The latest is from William Kristol, who, along with Joseph Bottum, writes this article in the upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard. The article is almost purely rhetorical, with virtually nothing of substance offered in terms of legal arguments. It begins:
In an act of astonishing self-righteousness and self-congratulation, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has forced the question of marriage upon the entire United States.
Okay....were they wrong…
stcynic | February 17, 2004Tyler Cowen, of the Volokh Conspiracy, is encouraging everyone to read Will Wilkinson's post on libertarianism and the problem of mythology. Wilkinson likewise encourages us to read the conversation in Reason magazine on the subject between Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett (one of my favorites), David Friedman and James Pinkerton.
Let me add my own "ditto" to both recommendations. Like Cowen, I am a "small 'l' libertarian". I vote for the party and tend to agree with the essential argument of libertarianism, but there are key areas of disagreement and an overall sense that in its pure form,…
stcynic | February 16, 2004President Bush has pardoned David McCall, a Plano, Texas businessman who pled guilty to bank fraud in 1996. He and 4 others pled guilty to creating a scheme to hide bad loans from bank regulators during the Savings and Loan scandals of the 80s and 90s.
Prediction #1: the Republicans who howled in self-righteous anger at Clinton's pardons as he left office in 2001 will come up with all sorts of reasons why this is totally different and nothing like that.
Prediction #2: the Democrats who defended Clinton on the pardons will be screaming bloody murder over this pardon as though it was the first…
stcynic | February 10, 2004I've been reading excerpts from Paul Waldman's new book Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You. There are a few brilliant paragraphs scattered about, but like most partisan polemicists, Waldman seems to think that what he describes is unique to his enemies, in this case Republicans. To wit:
Just as Newt Gingrich once counseled that Democrats should be portrayed as "the enemy of normal Americans," Republicans, from President Bush on down, endlessly assert that only they and those who support them are real Americans. When he travels to the Midwest or South,…
stcynic | January 25, 2004Josh Claybourn has an interesting blog that I read now and then, but this morning he has an odd entry on the front page entitled "Libertarian Freedom: Self Destruction?". I think he's engaging in a bit of a straw man - at the very least, in drastically oversimplifying complex ideas. The entry begins,
The consequence of original sin - man's fallen nature - is central to everything in the Christian worldview. Marxists, humanists, and most atheists/agnostics will tell you that human nature is perfectible and that only our faulty societies and social constructs have hindered man's reach for…
stcynic | January 10, 2004The first link on my list of other blogs is Jason Van Steenwyk's Iraqnow blog. Jason is an Army officer serving in Iraq around Ramadi. Unlike most of the military bloggers, Jason is an excellent writer with a degree in literature and an engaging mind. His blog is enormously valuable because it gives us a picture of what life on the ground is like for the troops serving there. The best thing about his blog, in my view, is that he's not afraid to tell the truth about what's going on, for good or for ill. He has taken the media to task, and rightfully so, for getting a great many things wrong in…
stcynic | January 7, 2004The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Hewlett-Packard's right to fire an employee who insisted on posting anti-gay bible verses on his office cubicle in response to the company having posters encouraging respect for diversity in the office building he worked in. The diversity campaign, as the Chronicle reports, was the sort of empty sloganeering that anyone in the corporate world is used to seeing:
The conflict started in 2000 after the company began implementing a diversity policy that was developed at staff meetings and put up workplace posters showing different employees, with labels…
stcynic | December 29, 2003The LA Times continues its investigative series on politicians misusing their office with an expose` on Ted Stevens, the enormously powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and how he has become quite wealthy by starting businesses that benefit from legislation his committee passes. Among the other things they uncovered
Armed with the power his committee posts give him over the Pentagon, Stevens helped save a $450-million military housing contract for an Anchorage businessman. The same businessman made Stevens a partner in a series of real estate investments that turned the…
stcynic | December 28, 2003Having used the moniker StCynic for nearly a decade now in various places, I have often been asked what a cynic is. More often, I am simply presumed to be whatever the person asking the question presumes cynicism to be - unduly negative, hateful, unhappy, angry, etc. For myself, the best definition I have seen is from the arch-cynic himself, Ambrose Bierce:
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be
This preference for truth over lie, fact over fiction, is at the heart of my approach to the world. In political terms, this primarily means seeing…
stcynic | December 11, 2003I've long been active in the battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. One of the arguments that we hear quite often is the "Fairness Argument". It goes like this: There are two explanations for the existence of life on earth, either life evolved by "random chance" (evolution) or it was put here by a creator (creationism or "intelligent design theory"); since neither has been "proven", it's only fair that if you're going to teach one, you should teach them both and let the kids decide. To the average person, this argument sounds eminently reasonable. Who, after all, could argue…
tlambert | November 12, 2003 I was reading the normally sensible Steve Bainbridge when I came across this post that seems to have come from the planet Zebulon in the galaxy Warblogger. Bainbridge offers his interpretation of an intelligence memo in parallel with Kevin Drum's. I was struck by the complete disconnect between Bainbridge's interpretation and the actual words of the memo.
I emailed Bainbridge to see if I could get an explanation. With his permission, I post our correspondence:
TL:
Your interpretation of:
"Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to…