Megan McArdle claims there are no political lessons to be learned from the Fort Hood shooting.  I think she’s wrong.  Here are the lessons I think we’ve been taught (again).

• Political Correctness kills
• It is better to be rude than to be screwed
• If you think it was wrong for the US to free Muslims from a totalitarian dictatorship (Iraq), or from a theocratic dictatorship (Afghanistan), you are a lunatic.  If you are an “American” who is a Muslim first, and an American second, and you believe those things, you are, presumptively, and enemy of the United States of America
• “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”  Supporting the jihadis is Treason, and should be treated as such.

Other lessons?

Wow, Megan McArdle is really on a roll. First she told us that the polls are showing that Obama got a significant bounce from his speech. Too bad (for her) she told us this one day before the polls unequivocally showed that no, he had not gotten any significant bounce from his speech, and was back down to as low as he’s been this year. Then she got suckered by Rod Dreher into attacking Rush Limbaugh for something that, to any even moderately self aware individual, is an obvious satire that she simply missed.

Then, apparently feeling permanently stuck on stupid, she decided to double down with this little gem. Which, the more I look at it, the more stupid it is. A fisking is therefore in order:

A number of you are arguing that Rush Limbaugh is actually putting together a high-flown satire that I missed. Umm, okay, maybe. The problem is, if so many missed it, it’s not a very good satire.

Or, maybe, you’re a humorless twit who thinks that no one living outside NYC and the BosWash corridor could ever be as sophisticated and clever as you, and this bigotry caused you to miss what is obvious to everyone else.

I know, I know–I’m a humorless west coast liberal who doesn’t get an obvious joke. No offense, but Limbaugh’s listeners are not known for their ability to appreciate maybe-sort-of-satire.

Wow, bigoted much? “Everybody at the parties I go to knows that mouth breathing rednecks are just to stupid to understand satire.” And I do love the “No offense”, the sure sign that you know you’re about to say something highly offensive.

I don’t think it’s ridiculous to say that for Rush Limbaugh, racism isn’t a big problem in this country, but anti-racism is one of the greatest threats facing America today.

And what is the “anti-racism” you speck of, oh mighty one? Would that be the racism practiced by those who hate white and Asian people? Which is to say, is that behavior that anyone who isn’t delusional just calls by it’s proper name: racism? State sponsored racism is a great problem, even when they call it “Affirmative Action”. Its supporter’s assaults on the English language are one of its more minor sins, but it is still a problem.

So when he does a “satire” that comes perilously close to his normal rants against feminazis and raice[sic]-baiters, well, I don’t really think you can expect the rest of America to get the joke.

Well, we clearly can’t expect people who seriously believe in “bad racism” v. “good racism” to get the joke when their “good racism” is being mocked (leftists being notoriously humorless when it comes to their sacred beliefs being targets). It’s too bad you’re one of those twisted people. I thought better of you.

Update: Okay, perhaps I am unfairly tarring Rush Limbaugh’s viewers with his own behavior. But I have, in fact, listened to Rush Limbaugh quite a bit, though not recently, and at least back then, he was a humorless jerk who really didn’t find, say, Michael Moore or Jon Stewart funny. His main product is outrage at the vast conspiracy against him and his people. Sound familiar?

No, actually, it doesn’t. I’ve been listening to Rush Limbaugh for years, and that’s not what I’ve ever heard from him. Rush doesn’t sell outrage, or anger. He sells humor. Mockery of the Left. He also sells affirmation: “Oh, good, there are other people out there who think like I do.” He sells love of America, and love of achievement. If you really did “listen to Rush Limbaugh quite a bit”, and are unaware that his main selling point is humor, then you really are a humorless twit. Look, I’m not a huge fan of Rush’s humor, and I’d rather get my information from reading than from listening, so I rarely tune in any more. But it doesn’t have to be my cup of tea in order for me to know it’s there.

There’s been a lot of blathering about this, so I want to throw my two cents in:

Short version:

It is not possible to have a government run / controlled / funded /managed health care system without having death panels. That is one of the many reasons why government health care is a bad idea.

Longer version:

Any and every health care system must have ways of deciding who will get what care. In a totally private system, it’s decided by money: if you’re willing and able to pay, you get the service, if you aren’t / can’t, you don’t. In our current system, if you have health insurance, your insurance company makes decisions about what it’s willing to cover, and may you have to fight with it / jump through its hoops in order to get the treatment you want. Or you can sue it, or you can just pay for it yourself, or you can not get the treatment, and continue to suffer through the problem (or just die).

As someone (who I can’t remember) pointed out: in this system , the government serves as “umpire”, deciding who should win each argument. The other “umpire” is “the market”: if a company’s insurance provider is routinely stiffing its employees, the company is likely to drop that provider, and switch to a different one.

In a government health care system, the government will have to decide what treatments are covered, and what aren’t. Which conditions justify the expensive red pill, which ones only get the cheaper (but less effective) blue pill, and which ones get you a trip to the hospice, or an aspirin and a call back in two weeks (if you’re still alive then). And since our political representatives are chickenshits who do their best to avoid having to make decisions, there will be a “panel” to decide what gets covered, and what doesn’t. In Britain, that panel is called NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence: “NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health”) President Obama is pushing for IMAC, (“Yesterday, a group of some of the most distinguished health economists in the country sent a letter to the President and Congress in support of the Administration’s proposal for the establishment of an independent board of doctors and health experts to guide Medicare policy. This Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) would make recommendations on Medicare reimbursement policy and other reforms – playing a critical role in allowing health care policy to adjust flexibly to a dynamic health care market, thereby helping contain costs and improve quality over time. As the authors note, ‘a properly structured Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), with a congressional mandate and authority to do so, can reduce the rate of growth of health expenditures substantially.‘”) He already had the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research added to Porkulus. Both of those, by any reasonale definition of the term, are “death panels”. Panels that will decide whether you are worth treating, or if you should be left to die.

Will they decide it for you, personally? No. Will they “send death squads out to round up Trig Palin“? No. Might they decide it’s not worth the effort to fund “extreme” health care for people with Down’s Syndrome? Yes. Might they decide that your grandma doesn’t need that hip replacement, or pacemaker? Oh Hell yes!

Now, if you’re really rich, you can fly someplace else and get treatment, or, if your government allows it, you can pay for it yourself in your country (if, of course, your country has the ability to provide what you want. After all, the main way of government rationing will be to simply not provide the capability, or not provide enough of it, in the first place). But for the rest of us, those government panels will be deciding whether or not we get treated. Not the market, not an insurance company that can be dumped if we don’t like it’s choices, the government.

You know, the same government that has to pay for the care if it decides it’s “appropriate”.

Would you like to play baseball when all the umpires have been hired, and paid, by the other team? If not, then you don’t want those government death panels deciding when it’s not longer “cost effective” to keep you alive.

Josh Marshall, who was apparently born about 6 months ago, has a moronic post up that ends with the following:

Let’s be honest with ourselves: the American right has a deep-seated problem with political violence. It’s deep-seated; it’s recurrent and it’s real. And it endangers the country. It just makes sense to say something the first time they hit the sauce and not wait for things to get really out of hand.

Wow, and here I thought the Weathermen, and the SDS, were left wingers.  Earth First, the other animal rights wackos (and, Contra Josh’s attempt to minimize their violence, spiking trees, burning down research labs, and destroying researchers work are not minor things), I guess they’re all “True Conservatives.”  Union Thugs?  True Conservatives, on and all, esp. the ones who beat up Ken Galdney.  Anti-globalization protesters?  They, like Andrew Sullivan, are of course the last true conservatives.

Political violence in America has been mainly the domain of The Left since the late 1960s.  You want to see criminality, violence, the destruction of property?  Go to a left wing protest, that’s where you’ll find those things, and that’s most certainly where you’ll find those things glorified.

Josh Marshall can’t possibly be ignorant enough not to know that.

This bit of news has been making the rounds on the right wing blogs, but as of yet I haven’t seen anyone make the right point about it:

Four of the most powerful business leaders in America arrived at the White House one day last month for lunch with President Barack Obama, sitting down in his private dining room just steps from the Oval Office.

But even for powerful CEOs, there’s no such thing as a free lunch: White House staffers collected credit card numbers for each executive and carefully billed them for the cost of the meal with the president.

The White House defended the unusual move as a way to avoid conflicts of interest.

Excuse me? If the President went to a corporate event, and insisted on reimbursing the company for the cost of his visit, that would be “avoiding a conflict of interest.” That’s why there are rules about lobbyists buying things for Members of Congress. But, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no law preventing a politician from buying things <b>for</b> a lobbyist.

What is mainly on display here is “class”, as in “complete lack of”. But their explanations show something even worse than their complete lack of class:

The fact that no one in the Obama Administration even understand what ethics is. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that a Chicago politician backed by the Daley Machine isn’t really clear on the requirements of ethical behavior, but I do find it disappointing.

Jim Geraghty has a near constant refrain (“near constant” because President Obama gives him some many opportunities to use it): “All promises from Obama come with an expiration date.” A fish rots from the head down. So do Administrations. The Obama Administration starts with the liar in chief. Below him we have tax cheats, crooks, political hacks who care about nothing besides winning elections, and inexperienced, clueless losers.

“A” people hire “A” people, “B” people hire “C” people. By the (poor) quality of the people around him, we can judge President Obama.

HT: Slublog posting at Ace’s site, Fausta

Jonah Goldberg brought this babble to our attention

Will Wilkinson on why he won’t color his Twitter avatar green in solidarity with the opposition:

…Here’s what I do worry about. When people feel pressure to signal, and it’s free, they’ll signal. But sending the signal creates a small emotional investment in the overt message of the signal — solidarity with opponents of the ruling Iranian regime. As every salesman knows, getting someone to make a big, costly commitment is best achieved by getting them to first make a tiny, costless commitment. The tiny, costless commitment of turning Twitter avatars green is thin edge of the persuasive edge for the neocons who would like to sell the public a war in Iran. Since I would rather not be Bill Kristol’s useful idiot, I will conspicuously leave my avatar as is, and continue hoping for the best.

Shorter Will: Hey, I like to pretend that I care about the iranians, but when push comes to shove I’d much rather see them beaten, murdered, and enslaved, than have to reassess all the idiocies I’ve spewed over the last 8 years.

Here’s a clue, Will: When violent thugs want to keep you down, either you have to use violence against them, or you have to get someone else to use it, or at least threaten to use it.

Wishing doesn’t work.  Neither do words.  Little Rock schools didn’t get integrated because the Supreme Court said they had to be, they got integrated because President Eisenhower sent in the Army.

If you want the Iranian people to only have as much freedom as the “Supreme Leader” is willing to give them, then you want them to be slaves.

At least be man enough to stop lying about what you support.

In any event, congratulations: You’re not a useful idiot.

Too bad it’s because you’re not the least bit useful for anyone who cares about freedom.

Every cell phone I’ve owned has been made by Nokia. But the one I have now is the last Nokia product I’ll buy. Here’s why:

Iran’s Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

European Gear Used in Vast Effort to Monitor Communications

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS in New York and LORETTA CHAO in Beijing

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

The “monitoring center,” installed within the government’s telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, Mr. Roome said.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Good bye, Nokia, terrorist thug enablers.

In case you’re new to my blog, I changed my banner to green to do my (pitiful little) part to support the protesters in Iran. I have been following what’s happening there, I hope hope for the best (an overthrow of the current government, and replacing it with something better).

The following news item makes me feel a bit more hopeful

Iranian media say the daughter of one of Iran’s most powerful figures, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, and four family members were detained during the protests but later released.

The vast majority of the people in the Middle East are amoral familists.  “My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against everyone else.”  Rafsanjani was out trying to drum up support among the mullahs.  Grabbing his daughter put him in a terrible bind.  the fact that the government had to back down, and let her go, is amazing.

I do not believe they would let her go simply because Rafsanjani agreed to stop working against the government.  No one’s going to trust him that much.

If they really did let her, and the other four, go, it’s IMHO because someone let the “Supreme Leader know that there are some lines he cannot cross.

And that makes it more likely the good guys will win.  Or at least that the worst guys will lose.

Some useful information from John Tierney

The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. Dr. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, asks:

[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?

You can check out Dr. Pielke’s blog for a detailed rebuttal of how the report presents science in his area of expertise, the study of trends in natural disasters and their relation to climate change. While the new federal report (prepared by 13 agencies and the White House) paints a dire picture of climate change’s impacts, Dr. Pielke says that the authors of this new report, like those of previous reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Stern Review, cherrypick weak evidence that fits their own policy preferences. He faults all these reports for all relying on “non-peer reviewed, unsupportable studies rather than the relevant peer-reviewed literature” and for “featuring non-peer-reviewed work conducted by the authors.”

Dr. Pielke contrasts these reports’ conclusions about trends in natural disasters with the some quite different findings last year by the federal Climate Change Science Program. Dr. Pielke summarizes some of its less sensational conclusions:

1. Over the long-term, U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation . . . there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

I am shocked, shocked, to discover that the Obama Administration’s Angencies are committing fraud in order to advance their political / fantasy agenda of anthropogenic global warming!

More from Tim Blair.

Far too many news articles and blogs have been talking about the “warning” that “Supreme Leader”  Khamenei gave to protesters.  This is a misuse of the English language.

If I tell you “don’t go onto that bridge, because it’s unstable”, I’ve given you a warning.

If I tell you “I will shoot you if you go on that bridge”, that is a threat.

Khamenei isn’t warning the people of Iran, he is threatening them: roll over like dogs or I will send my thugs out to brutalize and murder you.

Let’s stop abusing the English language, and correctly describe his actions, ok?

The Supreme Court today released it’s decision in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (08-6). There’s been a lot of vapors about this case (even Instapundit got it wrong), so I’m going to stop commenting on this in other people’s posts, and write my own instead.

The crime:

On the evening of March 22, 1993, two men driving through Anchorage, Alaska, solicited sex from a female prostitute, K. G. She agreed to perform fellatio on both men for $100 and got in their car. The three spent some time looking for a place to stop and ended up in a deserted area near Earthquake Park. When K. G. demanded payment in advance, the two men pulled out a gun and forced her to perform fellatio on the driver while the passenger penetrated her vaginally, using a blue condom she had brought. The passenger then ordered K. G. out of the car and told her to lie face-down in the snow. Fearing for her life, she refused, and the two men choked her and beat her with the gun. When K. G. tried to flee, the passenger beat her with a wooden axe handle and shot her in the head while she lay on the ground. They kicked some snow on top of her and left her for dead.

The evidence:

At the scene of the crime, the police recovered a spent shell casing, the axe handle, some of K. G.’s clothing stained with blood, and the blue condom.
Six days later, two military police officers at Fort Richardson pulled over Dexter Jackson for flashing his headlights at another vehicle. In his car they discovered a gun (which matched the shell casing), as well as several items K. G. had been carrying the night of the attack… Jackson admitted that he had been the driver during the rape and assault, and told the police that William Osborne had been his passenger.
The State also performed DQ Alpha testing on sperm found in the blue condom. DQ Alpha testing is a relatively inexact form of DNA testing that can clear some wrongly accused individuals, but generally cannot narrow the perpetrator down to less than 5% of the population… The semen found on the condom had a genotype that matched a blood sample taken from Osborne, but not ones from Jackson, K. G., or a third suspect named James Hunter. Osborne is black, and approximately 16% of black individuals have such a genotype. In other words, the testing ruled out Jackson and Hunter as possible sources of the semen, and also ruled out over 80% of other black individuals.

The Trial:

Osborne and Jackson were convicted by an Alaska jury of kidnaping, assault, and sexual assault. They were acquitted of an additional count of sexual assault and of attempted murder.
Osborne then sought postconviction relief in Alaska state court. He claimed that he had asked his attorney, Sidney Billingslea, to seek more discriminating restriction-fragment-length-polymorphism (RFLP) DNA testing during trial, and argued that she was constitutionally ineffective for not doing so. (Billingslea testified that she had no memory of Osborne making such a request, but said she was “ ‘willing to accept’ ” that he had.) Billingslea testified that after investigation, she had concluded that further testing would do more harm than good. She planned to mount a defense of mistaken identity, and thought that the imprecision of the DQ Alpha test gave her “‘very good numbers in a mistaken identity, cross-racial identification case, where the victim was in the dark and had bad eyesight.’” Because she believed Osborne was guilty, “‘insisting on a more advanced . . . DNA test would have served to prove that Osborne committed the alleged crimes.’” The Alaska Court of Appeals concluded that Billingslea’s decision had been strategic and rejected Osborne’s claim.

The court relied heavily on the fact that Osborne had confessed to some of his crimes in a 2004 application for parole—in which it is a crime to lie. In this statement, Osborne acknowledged forcing K. G. to have sex at gunpoint, as well as beating her and covering her with snow. He repeated this confession before the parole board. Despite this acceptance of responsibility, the board did not grant him discretionary parole. In 2007, he was released on mandatory parole, but he has since been rearrested for another offense, and the State has petitioned to revoke this parole.

The Ruling:

1. The Federal government, and 46 States, have rules in place for post-conviction access to DNA evidence. The elected governments of the States are actively confronting the challenges DNA technology poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality, as well as the opportunities it affords. To suddenly constitutionalize this area would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response.
2. Under the State’s general postconviction relief statute, a prisoner may challenge his conviction when “there exists evidence of material facts, not previously presented and heard by the court, that requires vacation of the conviction or sentence in the interest of justice.” Alaska Stat. §12.72.010(4) (2008). Such a claim is exempt from otherwise applicable time limits if “newly discovered evidence,” pursued with due diligence, “establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the applicant is innocent.” §12.72.020(b)(2). (Since he had the chance to get this evidence during his trial, and refused to take it, that means the evidence is not “new”, and so doesn’t qualify under Alaska Law.)
3. A lot of verbiage on the type of appeal he should be using, and what kinds of things each type of appeal allows. IANAL, but what I could understand seemed reasonable.
4. Having been found guilty, and exhausted his appeals, he now bears a presumption of guilt, rather than a presumption of innocence. (This is not new.)
5. In other words, [Osborne] has not tried to use the process provided to him by the State or attempted to vindicate the liberty interest that is now the centerpiece of his claim. When Osborne did request DNA testing in state court, he sought RFLP testing that had been available at trial, not the STR testing he now seeks, and the state court relied on that fact in denying him testing under Alaska law.
6. Establishing a freestanding right to access DNA evidence for testing would force us to act as policymakers, and our substantive-due-process rulemaking authority would not only have to cover the right of access but a myriad of other issues. We would soon have to decide if there is a constitutional obligation to preserve forensic evidence that might later be tested. If so, for how long? Would it be different for different types of evidence? Would the State also have some obligation to gather such evidence in the first place? How much, and when? No doubt there would be a miscellany of other minor directives. In this case, the evidence has already been gathered and preserved, but if we extend substantive due process to this area, these questions would be before us in short order, and it is hard to imagine what tools federal courts would use to answer them. At the end of the day, there is no reason to suppose that their answers to these questions would be any better than those of state courts and legislatures, and good reason to suspect the opposite.
7. Alito (correct, IMHO) quotes an expert :“[F]orensic DNA testing rarely occurs [under] idyllic conditions. Crime scene DNA samples do not come from a single source obtained in immaculate conditions; they are messy assortments of multiple unknown persons, often collected in the most difficult conditions. The samples can be of poor quality due to exposure to heat, light, moisture, or other degrading elements. They can be of minimal or insufficient quantity, especially as investigators push DNA testing to its limits and seek profiles from a few cells retrieved from cigarette butts, envelopes, or soda cans. And most importantly, forensic samples often constitute a mixture of multiple persons, such that it is not clear whose profile is whose, or even how many profiles are in the sample at all. All of these factors make DNA testing in the forensic context far more subjective than simply reporting test results . . . .”
8. I see no reason for such intervention in the present case. When a criminal defendant, for tactical purposes, passes up the opportunity for DNA testing at trial, that defendant, in my judgment, has no constitutional right to demand to perform DNA testing after conviction. Recognition of such a right would allow defendants to play games with the criminal justice system. A guilty defendant could forgo DNA testing at trial for fear that the results would confirm his guilt, and in the hope that the other evidence would be insufficient to persuade the jury to find him guilty. Then, after conviction, with nothing to lose, the defendant could demand DNA testing in the hope that some happy accident—for example, degradation or contamination of the evidence—would provide the basis for seeking postconviction relief. Denying the opportunity for such an attempt to game the criminal justice system should not shock the conscience of the Court.

This last part, to my mind, is key: He had the chance to do DNA testing at his trial, he (or at least his lawyer) passed on that chance, now, when it can’t hurt him, he wants the test.

No.

Let’s be realistic here. He should have been found guilty of attempted murder. The only reason I can think of for the jury not to find him guilty was concern, concern caused by having 84% certainty from DNA evidence rather than 99% certainty. He gambled, he made his choice, now he gets to live with it.

A Generalized Right to Post-Conviction DNA Testing Carries Significant Risks

“But,” you say, “why shouldn’t we let anyone who wants to pay to get DNA testing to prove his innocence?” Simple: because it may be more likely to release guilty people, than innocent ones.

No test is perfect. Every test will have problems with false positives (saying yes when it should have said no), and false negatives (saying no when it should have said yes). In our search for justice, we prefer false negatives (letting the guilty go free) to false positives (punishing the innocent). But the two are competitors (pushing down one tends to increase the other). And a test that’s reasonable before a trial (when the defendant has the presumption of innocence) may not be reasonable post-conviction (when the prisoner is presumed guilty, and must prove his innocence). Then there are issues of lab failure, DNA degradation (caused by weather, time, and even by extracting a sample), and, most importantly, contamination. And when you’re running a newer, more sensitive test, contamination that wouldn’t have mattered 10 years ago could now be a serious issue. Finally, let us consider the time frame. Osborne’s case is 16 years old. A ten year old case would have had the RFLP testing done, and we’d already have the DNA evidence that he is guilty. These cases are all going to be with old, and therefore less reliable, samples.

So, let’s assume that 1 major conviction in 1,000 is wrong. Let’s also assume that the tests will give a false positive 1 time in 100, and same for a false negative.

Let’s have 100,000 prisoners decide they want to get tested.

There will be 99,900 guilty people in that pool. 999 will be freed despite being guilty.

There will be 100 innocent people in that pool. 99 of them will be exonerated. That’s 9% of the total freed people.

You may think that’s a good trade. I disagree. But I don’t think any reasonable person can claim that the Constitution requires us to make that trade. Not post conviction.

If you can get the false negative rate to be the same as the false conviction rate, then you’ll end up with half the people being freed being guilty. Better. But how many innocent people will be harmed by those guilty people you’ve set free?

Conclusion

The Supreme Court made the right call, both for Osborne in particular, and the issue in general. People should read the ruling before shooting their mouths off about it, and not trust some of the hysterics who have been screaming the loudest, with no justification.

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey is mocking Obama’s speech to the AMA

A big part of what led General Motors and Chrysler into trouble in recent decades were the huge costs they racked up providing health care for their workers — costs that made them less profitable and less competitive with automakers around the world. If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM — paying more, getting less, and going broke. When it comes to the cost of our health care, then, the status quo is unsustainable.

Er, yes. Which is why no one could understand why Barack Obama kept sinking tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into GM while its pension and health insurance obligations never got addressed. It’s also why we all wondered why Obama perverted the bankruptcy process in order to favor the unions, who insisted on those big, expensive pension/benefits packages that made GM uncompetitive in the domestic and global market.

While Ed makes good points, he misses the real problem with Obama’s statement: The claim that having “the government” “pay for health care” will improve US businesses competitiveness. This is an oft repeated claim. But it’s utter garbage. Let us consider this WRT GM. There are four ways things can happen WRT GM and ObamaCare:

1. GM has a”gold plated” health insurance plan for its members, and ObamaCare will allow GM to dump the plan, and stick its employees with the national plan, instead.
2. GM has a”gold plated” health insurance plan for its members, and since it is required by their contract, GM will continue to pay for that plan.
3. GM has a”gold plated” health insurance plan for its members, and through the miracle of ObamaCare, the employees will get to keep that plan, subsidized by the rest of us taxpayers.
4. GM has a normal and reasonable insurance package, and something similar will be extended to everybody.

So, now let’s consider each of these options:

1. The only way this will happen is if the US bans all private insurance / health care, and forces everybody to be part of the National Health System, and, like Canada, forbids health care providers to do business outside of the government run health care system. If we were to do this, then GM would probably save money. But Obama swears up and down that he’s not going to do that.
2. This seems to be the most likely option under the currently proposed ObamaCare. At best, GM is no better off than it is now. However
   • Taxes will have to go up to pay for ObamaCare. Which means employees will be fighting for higher wages just so they can keep their standard of living the same.
   • Taxes will have to go up to pay for ObamaCare. Which means that everything GM buys will cost more, raising the cost of its cars compared to cars made in Japan (where their taxes aren’t going up to pay for ObamaCare).
   • We expect that ObamaCare will raise costs for the private health insurance companies. Those costs will be passed on to GM.
3. I suppose Obama can try to do this. OTOH, I can’t think of a quicker way to destroy the Democrat majority in Congress than to announce that union health plans would get a special subsidy that the rest of us don’t get, and I can’t think of a quicker way to bankrupt the US than extend those subsidies to 50%+ of the country.
4. the idea behind ObamaCare is to extend health insurance to those who currently lack it. Which is to say: to increase the amount of money we’re going to spend on health care, and thus increase taxes so the government can pay for all those people’s health care. Who’s going to be paying those taxes? Why, GM, and its employees. And its customers and suppliers. See #2 for the problems with that.

In short, one of the competitive benefits US Companies have is the smaller size of the US governments (Federal, State, and Local) compared to Europe, and thus the lower costs that government imposes on all of us. Making the US Government bigger is not going to make us business more competitive.

Wow, that Barack Obama, he sure is good at working with our allies, being non-unilateral, etc. Not.

Foreign Office fury over settlement of Guantánamo Uighurs in Bermuda

The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda.

The four arrived on Bermuda in the early hours, celebrating the end of seven years of detention after learning that they were to be accepted as guest workers.

But it appears that the Government of Bermuda [and President Barack Obama's State Department] failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send them back to Cuba or risk a grave diplomatic crisis.

Bermuda, Britain’s oldest remaining dependency, is one of 14 overseas territories that come under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, which retains direct responsibility for such matters as foreign policy and security.

“We’ve underlined to the Bermuda Government that they should have consulted with the United Kingdom as to whether this falls within their competence or is a security issue, for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility,” an FCO spokesman said.

“We have made clear to the Bermuda Government the need for a security assessment, which we are now helping them to carry out, and we will decide on further steps as appropriate.”

Yep. it’s such a good thing that we now have the clever Democrats running our diplomacy now.

HT: Gabriel Malor over at Ace

The idiots at “Think Progress’ have the following ignorant post up:

As Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained to Garrett, it is Chrysler — not the federal government — that is in charge of selecting which dealerships will be closed. Further, as Nate Silver explained in a post that was published just hours after the Examiner’s initial report yesterday, “There is just one problem with this theory. Nobody has bothered to look up data for the control group: the list of dealerships which aren’t being closed.”

Silver explained, “It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.” In all, Silver found that “88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates,” while, the list of Chrysler dealerships being closed “gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans — not really a significant difference.”

As I write this there are 258 comments over there. Not one of the references the hypergeometric probability distribution, which indicates that not one of their commenters knows what he or she is talking about. Short version: you have a urn full of black and white balls. You take a number of balls out, and don’t put them back in before taking other balls out. If you know the number of balls of each color in the urn, then you can calculate the probability that, by random chance, you will draw out ‘x’ white balls in ‘n’ draws from the urn.

There are 3000 Chrysler dealerships. 750 got told they’re getting closed. Using Nate Silver’s numbers, there are 2640 “Republican” dealerships, and 360 “non-Republican” ones. Of those dealerships, 690 R and 60 non-R dealerships were closed.

Using R, we can calculate the probability that, by random chance, 60 or fewer non-R dealerships would be closed out of 750

phyper (60, 360, 2640, 750)

Unfortunately for Nate, and for the TP big talkers, the result is 3.671535e-05. Or 9 in 250,000.

So yes, that is a significant difference.

Some of the posters over at Nate’s are claiming 3500 dealerships. Keeping all percentages the same, we get

phyper (70, 420, 3080, 875)

That takes the chance down to 8.738693e-06.  Less than 9 in 1,000,000.  IOW, fail.

This is utterly disgusting news

The White House said Wednesday that a US court ruling clearing the way for the sale of Chrysler , likely to Fiat, cleared the way for a quick and orderly bankruptcy for the collapsing auto giant.

…Gonzales told a packed federal courtroom in New York on Tuesday that the plan was “a fair and ordinary process,” stressing the “urgent need for the sale to be consummated.”

Dear “Judge” Gonzalez:

I don’t think that phrase “a fair and ordinary process,” means what you think it means.  Giving secured creditors < 35 cents on the dollar, while giving unsecured, politically connected creditors > 50 cents on the dollar, isn’t “fair and ordinary”, it’s political corruption,  Your willingness to spit on bankruptcy law and allow this political theft is arguably criminal.  You are a contemptible and worthless human being.  Given a chance to do your job, you violated your oath of office, and allowed political thugs to steal from a group of politically unpopular people in order to give the money to their campaign donors.

This is the kind of corrupt behavior we expect from Third World hellholes, not the United States of America.

I don’t know what kind of payoff you expect to get for this behavior, but whatever it is, understand it has cost you your honor, and your reputation.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a lovely little article titled Senate Dems to Specter: Hello, rookie. I think he has the wrong title. First, the news:

The Senate dealt a blow tonight to Sen. Arlen Specter’s hold on seniority in several key committees, a week after the Pennsylvanian’s party switch placed Democrats on the precipice of a 60-seat majority.

…

But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter’s seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.

Definitely worthy of a laugh.  But it’s worth more than that.  Ed swerves near the point here:

If Reid really did make a similar deal with Specter, then his caucus just sent him a message as well, a humiliation that will make Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins think twice before following Specter into rookie status.

And that, to my mind, is the big point.  The just told any other Republicans considering jumping that they can’t trust anything Reid says, and that the Senate Dems really don’t want them to cross over.

Specter, Collins, and Snowe used their official “Republican” status to posture, preen, and suck up media attention before voting for the Porkulus.  All the other Senate Democrats had to just sit down, shut up, and do what they’re told.  Not a position any Senator likes to be in.  This is their repayment: “we don’t need you, so you can go get stuffed.”

The Republican Senate leadership should be laughing their asses off right now.  Because they can go to Snowe, Collins, Graham and say “look, you have a choice: you can start voting like a Republican, and backing the Republican Party positions, or we can strip you of your committee positions, and you can go beg the Democrats for some scraps.”  (“You can see how well that worked for Specter” can be left unsaid. )

This move by the Democrat Caucus was a great blow for Republican Party unity.  I extend the Democrats who made this happen my sincere thanks.

From England comes the following heart warming story

YouTube helped father deliver baby

A proud father has explained how watching video clips on YouTube helped him deliver his baby son.

Marc Stephens said he had to act quickly when his wife Jo went into labour three weeks early as she had a history of fast births with her previous three children.

The 28-year-old Royal Navy air engineer, from Redruth, Cornwall, searched “how to deliver a baby” on the internet and after viewing a few clips said he was ready to help deliver healthy baby Gabriel.

Mr Stephens said: “I didn’t even have time to panic. She started complaining of pain around 10.30pm. I went on Google and watched a couple of clips on YouTube.

“At 2.30am she woke me up, but when I rang the midwife to come out she said they were busy at the hospital.

Woman with a history of fast births goes into labor three weeks early.  She started having pains, and four hours later labor began.  What would an American do with those four hours?  Go to the hospital.  What did the Brits do?  Stay at home, because going to the hospital wasn’t worth it.  Instead the husband went on YouTube to find some clips on how to deliver a baby.

Labor starts.  They call the midwife.  Sorry, too busy.  So he delivers the baby.

Try to imagine this happening to someone in the US who has health insurance.  Because in Great Britain, they all have health insurance.  That have “Universal Coverage.”  Which means, the care they got is the care that everyone gets (unless they’re politically connected, or rich enough to be able to avoid the system).  (Note: this guy’s a Royal Navy air engineer.  His equvalent in the US would certainly have health insurance.  And I don’t believe that even the VA is this bad).

By way of Megan, we get this

Potential buyers of assets complain that, a month after Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, unveiled the public-private investment programme, the authorities have yet to reassure them they would not be subjected to draconian Congressional scrutiny.

Megan, mising the point, has this to say

I think it’s very clear what the implications are:  if you take the King’s Shilling, the King gets to micromanage your life.  Nor do I see what good it will do to have Treasury clarify its statement.  The government is no longer capable of making a credible committment to keep its hands of firms that participate.  If the voters decide that you make too much money, Congress will move heaven and earth to take that money away from you, plus some extra money, and maybe they’ll deny you permission to build that bathroom addition, too.  They also reserve the right to tell you how to run your company.

And in general, I am not against having strings attached to government money.

The problem isn’t that “strings come with government money.”  Of course they do, and of course they should.

The problem is that the idiots running this Democrat Congress are attaching brand new strings after the money’s been taken.  That is dishonest, wrong, and the problem.  When teh strings are up front, you can look at them, and decide whether the deal is worth it.  When they’re after the fact, no rational person would want to get involved.

And that’s what the Democrats who Megan supported in the last election have given us.

Megan McArdle has a great post about debate / discussion tactics up, where she firmly points out that making an argument you don’t believe in, because you think it might help you “win”, tends to drive away your listeners once they catch you at it. It was an excellent post, until she got to her last paragraph. Then she babbled this

Think of the ridiculous debates over breast cancer and abortion, or the rear-guard action against climate-change science.

My response to her

The Earth’s been cooling for the last decade, we’re at a century low for sunspots, the AGW proponents still can’t come up with a computer climate model that works going backwards (and if you can’t predict the past, NASA’s recently released a study blaming Arctic Warming on the elimination of aerosol particle emissions starting in the 70s, why in the world would we think you could predict the future?), and yet you claim that it’s the opponents of the “climate change” / AGW fantasy who are engaging in a “rear-guard action”?

(All that setting aside the way proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming have switched to calling it “climate change”, since this “lets” them claim that any bad climate, temp up or down, is “caused” by CO₂ emissions.  Now that is an example of a “ridiculous” “rear-guard action”.)

Where exactly are you getting those drugs?

She really does need to occasionally get outside of the NY – DC – Boston corridor.

By way of  HotAir, I found this from IBD

It started Saturday, when he put himself next to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at lunch and then studiously exchanged notes.

Having listened to Uribe … Obama then seemed to realize that the long-stalled Colombia free trade agreement should have been passed yesterday.

The president announced that his team must find a way to pass the agreement.

Sweet.  The Democrats opposition to this agreement has made a mockery of Obama’s claims to oppose American “bullying” in Latin America, since their opposition was based on the wish to add requirements for Columbia to change their society to suit Democrat desires.  Since the treaty gives us the same benefits we’re currently giving the Columbians (in exchange for their anti-drug efforts), supporting the treaty is an “any-brainer” (i.e. anyone with any brains at all supports it).

It’s good to see President Obama supporting it.