I got new toys recently

boys
Originally uploaded by boatswain's mate.

The wife accidentally broke our old printer the other day while cleaning it. The repair costs for such an old printer were prohibitive, so I took the opportunity to upgrade our printer to an Epson CX4600 printer/scanner. It's pretty cool. Here's a sample to the right:


However, once I got it home and opened, I learned that the printer driver and other software wouldn't work on OS 10.1 (my aged Mac operating system). It took at least OS 10.2 (Jaguar). Well, now, you can't get Jaguar anymore, so I had to upgrade my OS to OS 10.3 (Panther). It was probably long overdue anyway. Apple quit making even updates for OS 10.1 a while back.

So I upgraded the operating system. Then I found out that the printer would work with either OS 10 or OS 9 (the "Classic" operating system) but not both at the same time. Now, our word processing software on the Mac was an old AppleWorks 5.0, which only works in OS 9. But since we didn't want to have to keep switching from OS 10.3 and OS 9 anytime we wanted to print depending on the program we were using, I went out and got AppleWorks 6.0, which works in OS 10.

All that because The Wife broke the old printer. How could I be mad at her? It was an accident, plainly, and I got new toys out of the deal. Makes me want to use the Mac again instead of the Dell laptop.

The Mac is living on borrowed time. This is the last operating system upgrade it will take. Once OS 10.3 has run its course, then this computer is done. Apple just came out with OS 10.4 (Tiger) yesterday and this old G3 iMac can't handle it (no firewire port, for instance, which Tiger requires). I had to delete a lot of files just to make room for Panther.

It's called planned obsolescence. Twerps.

It's been so hard to post lately

OK, OK, I'm not the best blogger in the world. I'm not even a very good one. It's been so hard to post lately. It's tax season, so I've been working long hours. The Wife has been working during the days, so she has to go to meetings at night. There are things to be done here at home after work, so there's little time to blog.

Not that there haven't been things to discuss. There was the recent death of feminist blowhard Andrea Dworkin, you know, the all-sex-is-rape chick.

There's the on-going blitzkrieg to get U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, for having his wife and daughter on his campaign payroll, even though such things are hardly new. Even our only Socialist congresscritter Bernie Sanders, S-Vt., gets his relatives into the act. Big honkin' deal.

There's the fight over the nomination of John Bolton to be UN ambassador. Appratently, the Dems are hoping to derail his nomination based on the fact that he once chewed out a subordinate. Stop the presses, Millie! This is what you have to fall back on when you know any substantive arguments you might make will fall flat on their faces.

No, there is plenty to write about, but it is hard, not being a professional pyjama-wearing blogger myself nor having a staff or other like-minded friends to post along with me. Nope, I'm a one-man shop, and this one man gets rather threadbare from time to time.

Now is one of those times.

Spring forward at 2 a.m. Yay!

This is the weekend during we "spring forward" into Daylight Time. I love Daylight Time. Losing the extra hour of sleep can be a bit nettlesome, but I compensate for it by simply going to bed an hour earlier Saturday night. And then I can look forward to getting that hour back in October.

John J. Miller has a column over at NRO poo-pooing the annual switch to Daylight Time. He complains about the switch, stating, maybe sarcastically, that there is no way to "save" daylight.

OK, I'll concede that rather pedantic point. That's one reason I simply call it "Daylight Time," as opposed to "Standard Time." It's prbably better to call it Daylight Adjustment Time," since what we are doing by this annual clock ritual is adjusting the daylight we get to enjoy from the early morning, when most people are off to work, to the evening, when most people are off from work. Maybe we should call it what others do around the world, which is merely "Summer Time."

I like coming home from work and there still being enough daylight left to take the children swimming or go get in a round of golf. I like it that the sunlight isn't streaming in my bedroom window at 5:45 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Now, as a parent, I wouldn't mind seeing the return of Standard Time the weekend after Labor Day, once the back-to-school routine has kicked in. Or how about having the commencement and termination of Daylight Time coincide more with the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. But them's small potatoes.

As I understand it, legally mandated switch in time happened in America occurred in 1918 as an energy-saving measure during World War I. It was repealed, then reinstituted during WWII ("War Time").

But the fact of the matter is, most people like Daylight Time because it's fun. So the poo-pooers can just go pound sand 'til October.

Godspeed, Karol Wojtyla, Bishop of Rome

a/k/a John Paul II.

Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, circa 1975
 

Now, mind you, I'm firmly Protestant, a child of the great Reformation. However, I greatly respect this Bishop of Rome, a man who armed only with faith in Christ could stand up to two of the most horrible examples of totalitarianism in modern times, Naziism and Soviet Communism, and help face them down. (I might add a third form of totalitarianism he was firmly against, that being the modern secular orthodoxy that, like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, cannot abide any form of dissent.)

He was firmly committed to his beliefs and never wavered. He was firmly pro-life to the point of opposing both abortion and capital punishment. His was a force of moral authority and certain moral absolutes that the secular zeitgeist could not shake. But he did not act like a king or prince as so many of his predecessors in centuries past used to.

Some liberals are in a bit of consternation over the outpouring of grief and cconstant media coverage of Bishop Wojtyla's final hours. You can read some of it here. Of course, some of these are the types of people who view everything through the prism of their own politics and for whom nothing transcends rank partisan politics. Thus, because Bishop Wojtyla opposed certain secularist orthodoxies, he is a man who cannot be remembered fondly or remembered for the good he did. Thus, because he dared defy these secular beliefs, he must criticised, even on his death bed. A truly sad way to exist, if you ask me.

Now, as I said, I am firmly Protestant. I do not recognise any special authority of the Bishop of Rome, I don't recognise the doctrine of papal infallibility. I truly believe in the Lutherian doctrine of the five solas, that man is saved by faith alone (sola fide), by grace alone (sola gratia), through Christ alone (solo Christus), as revealed through Scripture alone (sola scriptura), all for God's glory alone (soli Deo gloria). No one can or need intercede for us to the Father save for Christ alone. I understand that the Roman church has changed dramatically in its beliefs since Luther's day, but there are still many articles of the Roman faith I disagree with.

That being said, I truly belief that Bishop Karol Wojtyla is a godly man, has done many great things during his time on Earth to make it a better place, and, God willing, will be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven.

God be with you, Karol Wojtyla.

PFAW and Mr. Smith

People for the Anti-social Way have produced this commercial against the Senate GOP's proposal to end the filibuster on judicial nominations.

At the very beginning, they show a clip of James Stewart as Jefferson Smith from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" as he begins to launch into his filibuster.

The only thing is, in the movie, Jeff Smith has to conduct a real filibuster, which means in order to forestall the vote on the graft-laden Willet Creek Dam project he has to be recognised and then hold the floor as long as he can until he changes enough minds or gives up.

Not today. Now we have the "gentlemen's filibuster", where all one senator has to do is state his intention to filibuster and that's it. They can then all go home and have their scotch and Maalox. No one has to get the floor and hold it and try to talk a bill to death. Major wimps.

PFAW want to keep the filibuster? Fine. Let's go back to the one Jeff Smith used. Let's see how long the Democrats would last if they had to keep the floor 24-7 to filibuster a judicial nomination, thereby preventing anything else from coming to the floor.

Let's do it. Jolly good show, what?

Krugman's off his medication again

I swear, I think Paul Krugman, the New York Times' op-ed columnist ostensibly to represent the lunatic fringe, has seriously become unbalanced. Check out his column from yesterday. He tries to connect the Terri Schiavo case with political assassinations.

In a line that is the very epitome of guilt by association, Krugman insinuates that the Schindlers' "spokesman" Randall Terry of Operation Rescue fame is wholly suspect because of the actions of a former associate.

Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents, hasn't killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor.

There you have it. One of Terry's former associates is in the pokey for murder, ergo, Terry is just as guilty. Oh, Terry hasn't killed anybody, but wink wink, nudge nudge.

And then at the very end, Krugman says:

America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

The man is certifiable. Does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together actually think that he is speaking anything even remotely resembling reality. I mean, is there anyone out there who's not a part of the ANSWER looney left cadre who reads his stuff and thinks, "Wow, that's really insightful analysis?"

No, Krugman needs analysis -- on an industrial-strength couch.

Ahoy, mates, get this man his lithium salts!

A dear friend e-mailed me last week

when I was knee deep in my trial prep, with the following message.

Man, I’m quite disappointed. I’ve been checking your blog, and apparently, you have chosen NOT to discuss the whole Terri Schiavo situation. I mean, you have no problem attacking liberals or democrats when they do something stupid, why not at least MENTION the stupidity of the right-wing republican factions that are trying to make a mockery out of the judicial process. Thankfully, the balance of powers is at work, lest Jeb Bush have anything to say about that. What, you can give it but you can’t take it?

I love my dear friend, her being a Democrat notwithstanding. Can't say I'm not open and tolerant, eh?

I have resisted posting about the Terri Schiavo case, in large part because of my own conflicted feelings about the case. I do believe that people should be able to decline such life-saving measures if they want to. I have a living will. I have made it quite clear to my family that I don't wish any of that nonsense if I'm so incapacitated. My dear departed father also rejected such measures, even though it might have meant lengthening his life by a unknown amount of time. I firmly believe that such extraordinary measures are more for the benefit of the survivors than the patient.

I don't know what Terri Schiavo said or didn't say. I don't know whether she would have wanted to live as she is, as her parents contend, or that she would not have, as her husband contends. I don't know whether a feeding tube could be considered "extraordinary measures," unlike a respirator. I do believe that matrimonial bonds generally should take precedence over the parent-child relationship. I suspect when Terri married Michael, her father "gave her away" as is traditional. That act sublimates the parent-child bond to the husband-wife bond. The two had become one, and all that.

Now, on the substance of my dear friend's e-mail. I'm not wholly sure of what she was referring to when she wrote about the "stupidity of the right-wing republican factions that are trying to make a mockery out of the judicial process." I assume she meant the congressional efforts to intervene in the case, despite the Florida state courts' numerous rulings in the case.

I generally opposed the effort to nationalise the case, even though, as I understand it, all the bill the Congress passed did was to give the federal courts jurisdiction to review the case. Living wills and these kinds of situations have been the province of the States and should remain so. But I thought it odd that Democrats, mostly the more liberal ones, in Congress, were arguing against federal court review of the case.

You see, it has long been the position of liberals to make any violation of individual rights or individual injustice to the federal courts. State courts, it was argued, couldn't be trusted to protect the helpless and powerless.

Well, here we had a case of a helpless woman facing starvation and dehydration as a manner of death, and liberals couldn't elucidate their opposition to federal court review loudly enough. The question is why?

I don't believe for a minute that this matter, as far as congressional participation is concerned, has been a case of state v. federal courts or any of that nonsense. I'll tell you what I am convinced this case is, as far as the national politicos hope to use it.

This is a proxy for abortion. The Republicans are using this case as a way of playing to their pro-life base and to bolster their pro-life bona fides in an arena outside of strictly abortion. And the Democrats opposing this oppose it for the opposite reason: They see that to allow government intervention into this matter to save a life could serve as a precendent to allow it in to save other life as well. And that the Democrats cannot allow to happen even one iota.

(An historical aside: Did you know that the expressions "not one iota" or arguing over every iota has its origin at the Council of Nicea, AD 325, where the raging debate was between St. Athanasius, who argued that Christ was "of the same substance" of God the Father (homoousias) and Arius the Heretic, who argued that Christ was "like the same substance" of God (homoiousias)? So the main source of controversy in one of the most important meetings in the Christian era was over the iota.)

So the whole injection and protestation of Terri Schiavo's case in the national political arena was for nothing more than politics, abortion politics.

See, Harry Blackmun? You thought with your twisted opinion you could remove abortion as a political issue by giving constitutional cover, just like Roger Taney thought he could remove slavery from the political sphere with his warped opinion. Didn't work then. It won't work now.

Free at last, free at last!

Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!

(That's my favourite MLK line from the March on Washington speech.)

I finished a federal court jury trial today. I had spent the past two weeks getting ready. That's why the hiatus from posting. But now it's over, and I can get back to my normal life (until the next trial).

I think the DUers are going to have kittens

Democratic Underground scurvies are about to explode. Don't stand near one when it happens; the goo is hard to get out of clothes and hair and stuff.

What's got their knickers in a collective twist? The thread really doesn't say, but I 'spect it has something to do with ANWR.

Read Post # 28 for a good chuckle.

I think the time has come for some very serious action. We have been marching en mass for over four years now and have seen little result.

I think it is time for mass civil disobedience -- be it national strikes, sit-ins, or other non-violent actions.

I mean just how much longer do we let this go on, folks??? Really? When do we say enough? When do we say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anynore?"

I think I am there.

Oh, good-o! A DU national strike, all 500 or so of them. That'll show us.

Like I say, these guys are such a hoot!

The Revolution will not be televised. Film at 11.

Wonder how long before the ACLU gets hold of this

It seems that Ashley Smith may have acted unconstitutionally in her efforts to capture Fulton County courthouse killer Brian Nichols.

It would seem that Ms. Smith referred to God and the Bible as she talked to Nichols.

During the 13 hours police say Nichols held Smith hostage, Smith also shared her faith with him. At one point, he asked her to look at him and see that he was already dead.

"I got a bible and a book called the Purpose-Driven Life," Smith said, "I turned it to the chapter I was on that day, Chapter 33, and I started to read the first paragraph of it."

See also, this.

Smith, 26, said she gained Nichols' trust by talking to him about her 5-year-old daughter, God and hope.

I expect an ACLU lawsuit just any minute asserting that her efforts in helping the government catch Nichols are unconstitutional and that Nichols should be released because of her improper use of religion. Or at least Smith should not be eligible for her share of the reward money.

"There should be no invoking of a deity in the assisting of government to catch a poor misguided young man, a victim of society," I expect the ACLU's brief to read. "A private citizen, acting in furtherance of governmental ends, can no more violate the separation of church and state than the government can in achieving those ends."

The sistahs they forget

It's an axiom among liberal groups that Republicans are to be opposed, slandered and otherwise vilified for whatever they do -- even if they achieve the ends the liberal groups want.

Case in point: the professional Feminists. Read this.

For many years before September 11, 2001 – and much to their credit – Western feminists tried to rouse a sleeping world to the plight of women in increasingly radical Islamic countries. In the US, it was the Feminist Majority that pressured president Bill Clinton to impose sanctions against the woman-hating Taliban regime; it was feminists who first publicised the horror of genital mutilation in Muslim Africa.

But in the months after the attacks on New York and Washington, as Westerners gradually woke to the strange vocabulary that went with jihadism – burkas, veils, honour killings, stonings, forced marriages – feminists went uncharacteristically mum.

Here was the perfect opportunity to convince a stubborn public that remained ambivalent about feminism – in the US, only about one-third of young women accepted the label for themselves even as they opened their own businesses and maintained their own cheque accounts – yet in the communiques from feminist offices the phrase "Islamic extremists" was barely uttered.

Why the relative silence on a subject that would seem to epitomise feminist concerns? Because in the eyes of the sisterhood, worse than stoning women for adultery or forbidding girls to go to school are the policies of white men such as George W. Bush.

You see? The PF (professional Feminists) wanted Bill Clinton, the guy they liked, to do something about the Taliban and their policies towards women. He didn't. George Bush comes along and he does in the aftermath of 9-11. Apparently to the PF, the liberating of women in Afghanistan suddenly became less important that opposing a Republican president.

The article continues:

[I]f Muslim men could be said to oppress their women, it is the fault of Western imperialists or, more specifically, Western men. "When men are traumatised [by colonial rule], they tend to traumatise their own women," says Miriam Cooke, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina. From this vantage point, feminists must condemn not just war in Iraq and Afghanistan but any instances of what Columbia University professor Gayatri Spivak calls "white men saving brown women from brown men".

But wait, weren't the PF calling on Bill Clinton to do something to save brown women under the Taliban, ostensibly a group of brown men?

Oh, right, Bill Clinton was an honorary black man. Never mind.

I've talked about this very weird phenomenon before. It is strange.

OK, so I ain't a pro

It's been hard to keep the site updated the past few days. Work has been trying of late, and it's just a busy month altogether. I have two hearings and a trial, all in the second half of the month. Thus, it has been hard to keep the site free-flowing with my random nonsense.

I'll try to do better, but I'm not making any promises.

American Exceptionalism

America is an exceptional nation. We are not a run-of-the-mill country. We are different. We do not feel beholden to the diktats that other countries feel the need to impose upon their people, or on other countries. We are set apart. We are, as de Tocqueville wrote "marked out by the will of Heaven."

I began to think about American exceptionalism when I read this column over at Tech Central Station. It's about why America ratifying the Kyoto Protocol or some other similar nonsense would be disatrous for America, and that when the technological changes come that eventually do cut emissions, it will be American technology at the fore. It won't, nor should it, be foisted at the point of a gun.

The thought of American exceptionalism reminded me of a series of articles published back in 2003 by The Economist. They are all about, you guessed it, American exceptionalism.

One of the articles leads off with this quote: “Everything about the Americans,” said Alexis de Tocqueville, “is extraordinary, but what is more extraordinary still is the soil that supports them.” The piece goes on to explain why European-style socialism, much less communism, has never caught on here.

But exceptionalism has another meaning: that America is intrinsically different from other countries in its values and institutions. . . .

In 1929, Jay Lovestone, the head of the American communist party, was summoned to Moscow. Stalin demanded to know why the worldwide communist revolution had advanced not one step in the largest capitalist country. Lovestone replied that America lacked the preconditions for communism, such as feudalism and aristocracy. No less an authority than Friedrich Engels had said the same thing, talking of “the special American conditions...which make bourgeois conditions look like a beau idéal to them.” So had an Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, and a British socialist, H.G. Wells, who had both argued that America's unique origins had produced a distinctive value system and unusual politics.

Lovestone was purged, but his argument still has force: America is exceptional partly because it is peculiar.

It is when I think of how truly unique, how truly blessed we are as a nation, that I thank God that I was allowed to be born here, allowed to live here, allowed to share as a native son in this exceptional country.

Where are we?

I'll let the reader figure out which one we're in (I'll give you a hint, it's the second guy with the crown). 

Three cheers, lads, to Chuck Asay for another fine cartoon.

An inspired choice

President Bush has nominated John Bolton to be America's ambassador to the UN. I think that's an inspired choice.

Notlob, er, Bolton has been a vocal critic of the "world body," which has degenerated into little more than a mechanism for graft and a third-world debating society. I think we can safely conclude that Mr. Bolton won't go to New York and play footsie with this dysfunctional organization.

UN delegates have been their usual nonsensical selves.

"I hope that once he is here he will have a deeper perception of what the U.N. is about," Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said.

Which is what, now? How to enable petty despots and thrid-world potentates how to line their pockets? How to talk for hours upon end and achieve absolutely nothing?

Algerian ambassador Abdallah Baali said, "I think when he joins the United Nations he will certainly adapt his views to the United Nations, and I am sure we will work together in a very constructive way."

I don't want him to adapt his views to the UN. The UN has rotted down to its roots. Even their aid programs, which the UN used to be pretty good at, have become little kitties for the bureaucrats to skim from.

I don't believe for a moment that Mr. Bolton will be able to change the UN. Its corruption and ineptitute are deep seated. But at least it can be hoped that he won't just sit quietly in that oh-so diplomatic way for fear of injuring the delicate sensibilities of some delegate from a backwater dictatorship and call a spade a spade.

No posting tonight.

I'm not well.

That's the trouble with being a lone blogger. There's no back up when you get sick or busy.

Keep comin' back, though, please.

More on injudicious diktat

George Will has an excellent column today on how Anthony Kennedy, in his Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. ___ (2005) decision, played the role of legislator, sociologist and moralist.

At the end, Will writes:

The Democrats' standard complaint is that [Republican] nominees are out of the jurisprudential ``mainstream.'' If Kennedy represents the mainstream, it is time to change the shape of the river. His opinion is an intellectual train wreck, but useful as a timely warning about what happens when judicial offices are filled with injudicious people.

A-bloody-men.

Why do we even bother to have a Congress or state legislatures at all, if the court can step in and say, "Here's what national policy is. You'll take this and like it."

Based on Kennedy's decision, what is to stop the Court, or any court, from, say, imposing higher taxes in order to comport to our "evolving standards of decency." Sure, Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to levy taxes, but what is that when there is a "national consensus" (as defined by the court -- indeed it apparently doesn't even take a majority of states to create a "national consensus), or when the Europeans are doing it, or when there are several studies before the Court stating that raising taxes would be a good thing.

That's what is so disturbing about the Roper decision. It wasn't based on law, which is what the Court is supposed to look at. It was based on feelings, personal opinions about what is proper, studies, all those things that are proper for a legislature to consider. If a Court can base decisions on those extra-legal materials, then there is nothing to stop them from ordering anything, whether they have the constitutional authority to do so or not, except their own grace.

That's partially why we broke away from Britian in the first place.

Remembering Jim Gordon.

No, he's not dead, yet.

I was driving to church this morning, and "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes came on the radio. The song was co-written by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon. Actually, I believe Clapton wrote the first past and Gordon composed the instrumental theme at the end.

I get choked up everytime I hear that song, not because of Clapton writing it his love, and then-wife of his friend George Harrison, but because of what happened to Gordon years later.

Gordon was a top session drummer in the late '60s and early '70s. He played with the best of that era, Clapton, Harrison, John Lennon, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, Harry Nilsson, and Jackson Browne.


Here he is at a rehearsal. 

Of course, he took copious amount of drugs, as did most of the top musicians of the day. But that wasn't his real problem. His real problem was with schizophrenia.

He had been hearing voices for years, especially that of his mother's. In 1983, the voices got to him and he murdered his mother. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years to life in the California prison system. He actually spends most of his time in Atascadero State Hospital.

It's sad to think of such a musical talent being brought down by mental illness and the things he did for lack of treatment. That's why I get choked up when I hear "Layla" and that hauntingly beautiful theme at the end.

Excepts from a July 3, 1994, article on Gordon.

Now that's funny!

Do I make myself clear? 

Go get 'em!

Update: PowerLine has a story about gunfire at a protest march, fire coming from pro-Syrian thugs. Posits that the weapons play may have been on purpose to give the Syrians a reason to stay in Lebanon to "restore order" or some such.

(Let's hear it for Powerline, lads! Hip hip hooray!)

Fear and loathing in Paris

I generally despise France, and have rarely found the French, on my travels there, to be exactly friendly, be ye Americain or not.

I generally agree with John J. Miller and Mark Molesky that France has been our oldest enemy. See also Denis Boyles' Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese. The term "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" wasn't just coined by chance.

But aside from their wines, more specifically Bordeaux, and even more specifically Margaux, I have found one other saving grace:

Coralie Clement.

Totally fine. And that breathy whisper-style singing is enough to make even that Carson guy switch sides.

Here's Coralie's picture from her website.


Coralie Clement 

Listen to the song that launches when you go to her website. Something else.

OK, I'll concede France that point. R-r-r-o-w-w!

Marines, salute!