Different River

”You can never step in the same river twice.” –Heraclitus

See if you can follow this without a scorecard:

INDIANAPOLIS — Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband’s administration.

Apparently, blaming George W. Bush for things done before he took office is normal procedure. Bush has also been blamed for the U.S. refusal to ratify the Kyoto accord (1997), the ratification of the NAFTA treaty (1993), and the escape of Osama bin Laden from Sudan (1996).

If George W. Bush is really as lousy a president as they say, couldn’t they come up with some examples of things he actually did?

In all the uproar over Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his “God D–n America!” speeches, everyone seems to missing the obvious solution this gives us to the immigration issue.

It’s really simply: Everybody in America who hates America that much should go live somewhere else, and give up their spot in America two one of the millions of people who want to live here, but can’t do so (legally).

Obviously, Wright is not the only candidate for this “nationality swap.” Clearly, it should include whichever of his parishioners agree with him, and all other likeminded people elsewhere — such as Alec Baldwin, who threatened (promised?) to leave the country if George W. Bush were elected in 2000.

See, now we can solve two problems at once, and make everybody happier.

Right?

An inspiring passage from Barack Obama’s speech on March 4, commemorating the Selma march and crediting it for his very existence:

What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedys decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.

Only one problem:

The first Selma march took place on March 7, 1965. Barack Obama Jr. was born on August 4, 1961. Do the math.

Hat tip: Ed Morrissey

In the interest of equal treatment of candidates, note that Hillary Clinton claimed she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the who climbed Mt. Everest — a few years after she was born and named.

I normally don’t quote Ann Coulter, since she’s way to strident even for me, but she makes some good points here:

Imagine a white pastor saying: “Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God.”

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, “Condoskeezza Rice.”

Imagine a white pastor saying: “No, no, no, God damn America — that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!”

… Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist “old uncle,” Rev. Wright.
…
Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother — who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school — has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his “old uncle” — who is not his uncle — Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama’s grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn’t get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she’s white. Denounce the racist!

Obama’s white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, is still alive — and still lives in the same high-rise apartment in Honolulu where she raised Obama (then called “Barry”) from the age of 10. They campaign “declines to make her available for interviews.”

Incidentally, the racial opposition to his parents’ marriage came from the black side of the family. From the Chicago Tribune:

The Dunhams weren’t happy. Stanley Ann’s prospective father-in-law [in Kenya] was furious. He wrote the Dunhams “this long, nasty letter saying that he didn’t approve of the marriage,” Obama recounted his mother telling him in [his book] “Dreams.” “He didn’t want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman.”

This is from a very interesting profile of Obama’s mother.

Ben Smith at Politico.com relates:

Edwards responded sharply to a Clinton aide’s criticism today, intensifying a back-and-forth that began at last night’s debate, after Clinton said Nataline Sarkisyan could be alive if the patients bill of rights, which he’d boasted of championing, had passed.

“The Clinton campaign has no conscience,” Edwards said, after Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said Edwards does no more than “read articles about people who need help and talk about them.”

Well, if that isn’t the clearest case ever of the pot calling the kettle African-American, I don’t know what is. Recall this incident from the 2004 campaign, when Edwards said that the recently-deceased Christopher Reeve could be brought back to life if Bush had supported federal funding for stem cell research!

As CNN reported on October 12, 2004:

Edwards said Reeve, who died Sunday, “was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him.

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again,” Edwards said.

Now I understand there is a lot of controversy about what, if any, benefits might result from stem cell research, and how long it might take for those benefits to be realized. But nobody — nobody except John Edwards — ever claimed it would result in resurrections.

But when former heart surgeon and then-Senator Bill Frist called him on it,

Edwards campaign spokesman Mark Kornblau hit back, “Yes, breakthrough research often takes time, but that’s never been a reason to not even try — until George Bush.”

So to summarize: John Edwards blames someone’s death on a policy of his political opponent’s. Hillary Clinton blames someone’s death on a policy of John Edwards. John Edwards claims, based on this fact, that Hillary Clinton “has no conscience.”

Therefore, by John Edwards’ own standard, John Edwards has no conscience.

Either that, or John Edwards is a hypocrite. Which is the more charitable conclusion?

Some Jews — in Israel, no less — are now against Channukah. On the grounds of … Global Warming!

In a campaign that has spread like wildfire across the Internet, a group of Israeli environmentalists is encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one less candle this Hanukka to help the environment.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

“The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle,” said Liad Ortar, the campaign’s cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site’s environmental forum. “Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation.”
…
United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz called the environmentalists “crazy people who are playing with the minds of innocent Jewish people.” He said the campaign would only convince people who do not light candles anyway.

“They should encourage people to light one less cigarette instead,” Ravitz said.
…

But if they do that, they’ll only make people live longer, and produce more carbon emmissions!

Saddam has been sentenced to hang, and Iraqis are dancing on the streets of Baghdad. This according to the London Telegraph — not exactly a bastion of neo-conservatism.

Yet, there are still UN officials American Democratic politicians who think that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam than they are now.

Some U.S. senator better go tell them they were better off under Saddam; they’re too busy celebrating Saddam’s downfall to realize it!

In case you’ve haven’t heard the news for the last 24 hours, John Kerry’s been at it again. Campaigning at Pasadena City College for the Phil Angelides, Democratic candidate for Governor of California, John Kerry said:

“You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The clear implication of this is that if your in the military, it’s because you were too lazy or stupid to “do well.”

Kerry is “defending” himself in classic Kerry style, saying, “I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks.” It’s a despicable attack on Kerry indeed, to quote Kerry’s own words. Kerry is also defending himself on the grounds that he was not referring to the troops, but to President Bush — as claiming that Bush is stuck in Iraq because he didn’t study hard is some sort of a reasonable argument against the war.

It’s especially disingenuous because Kerry arguably didn’t study as hard as Bush — as this blog documented, Kerry and Bush both went to college at Yale, and Kerry’s Yale grades were worse than Bush’s.

The real scandal is that Kerry — perhaps like many liberals — thinks is a reasonable thing to say that “study[ing] hard, do[ing] your homework, … be[ing] smart” is somehow the opposite of being in the military. It’s as if the joining military is a punishment for doing poorly in school.

If that was ever true, it isn’t now. The military rejects people who don’t do well in school. It’s virtually impossible to enlist without a high school diploma, or with bad grades, or if you’ve gotten into trouble with the law. It’s hard to get promted to the senior enlisted ranks without a college degree — and the military will send you to college to get one. You can’t become an officer without a college degree, and you almost can’t get promoted beyond major without a master’s desgree, and you certainly can’t get promoted to General or Admiral without a master’s degree. Most Generals/Admirals have two masters degrees, and a substantial percentage have a doctorate.

I teach economics to senior military officers. They are studying for a master’s degree. For some it is their second. Not one of them is a “classroom dud” — they do all the readings, they work hard, they show up to class with good questions, they write well, and they are clearly interested in learning, even if at the beginning of the term they weren’t sure what economics had to do with their jobs. (They know now!) One of my fellow instructors is an Army Colonel with a master’s degree in management and Ph.D. in operations research (that’s a field of math, for you Kerry people!). I know a Marine Lieutenant General with an Ed.D and four (!) master’s degrees. I was once in a training session with a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who was a lawyer — he not only had a J.D. (the regular law degree), but an L.L.M., indicating a level of education higher than probably 90% of lawyers.

Study hard, John Kerry. You aren’t good enough to get “stuck in Iraq.”

UPDATE: (11/1/06 4:00pm) Matt Drudge has this picture posted on his web site. I think this tells us what the troops think of all this:

UPDATE: (11/2/06 2:05am) The guys in the picture above are from the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division (1/34th BCT), a unit of the Minnesota Army National Guard.

Opponents of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy are fond of accusing Bush of “not having a plan” for dealing with Iraq after the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. This is, of course, just a self-righteous way of saying they didn’t like the plan Bush actually did have, and that the plan has not lead to perfect results immediately.

Nevertheless, it’s worth asking those who call for an immediate pullout from Iraq, or a timetable for a pullout within a specified short time frame, what their plan is for dealing with the situation that will result from a pullout.

Clayton Cramer has posed this question, and given some realistic answers. All of his answers are worse than the worst likely scenarios resulting from staying in Iraq. As he points out:

But if the American people decide that the cost is too high, what is the alternative strategy? Leaving Iraq alone right now will lead to full civil war, and probably the crowd that likes to torture people to death with power tools will be back in power–just like the way things were under Saddam Hussein. As the declassified Key Findings of the National Intelligence Estimate last week pointed out, if we lose in Iraq, it will embolden jihadists throughout the world. The reason isn’t hard to figure out: it will be perceived that like what happened in Somalia, Americans are weak, and lack the willingness to fight.

What are the options? Here’s Clayton’s list (I’m summarizing here, not quoting — for his more complete explanations click here):

1. “Fortress America”: Lock down the U.S. at the border and within, and curtail civil rights in the pursuit of terrorists who are here. Of course, it only takes one terrorist to get through — either shipping a nuclear weapon with a long-period timer, or getting one single legal U.S. resident to cooperate. So we are probably looking at more 9/11-scale attacks. (Why is this less likely if we are in Iraq? Because so many jihadists are fighting us over there on their home turf. We don’t want them freed up to attack us at home.)
2. Make the terrorists happy: Don’t just leave Iraq — forget about stopping the Al-Qaeda-backed genocide in Darfur, give them back Afghanistan, cut off aid to Israel and acquiese when Iran uses nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel. And this will only work until they decide it’s time for all of us to convert to Islam also and replace the Constitution with Shari’a law, at which point we will have to either acquiese to that, or go to war with a much stronger enemy.
3. Here I’ll quote: “Treat Muslim nations the way they have treated every other nation. Invade them; occupy; convert their mosques into churches; send in troops with orders to kill anyone that gives them any lip; assess a special tax on Muslims; pass laws that give Muslims less legal rights than non-Muslims, not just in ways that matter (say, a ban on Muslims possessing anything more deadly than a butter knife), but in ways intended to degrade them, like the laws that Muslims nations had prohibiting non-Muslims from riding horses.” I don’t think we, as a society, are willing to do that. We still believe in religious freedom.
4. Prove that Islam is not really as superior as it claims, by nuking Mecca. I don’t think we’re willing to do that, either.
5. Nuke a lot of Muslims. I don’t think we’re willing to do that, either.

So next time someone tells you we should pull out of Iraq, ask them one question: What’s your plan for after that?

If you are a public school teacher and you start a fire in your classroom, in front of the children in your class, filling your classroom with smoke your students have to breathe — and do this not once, but twice — what one factor might prevent you from being charged with a crime?

a) It was an accident.
b) You were insane at the time.
c) The main fuel for the fire was an American flag.

If you picked (c), you’re right!

A Stuart [Kentucky] Middle School teacher won’t be arrested for burning two American flags in his classroom because authorities said his students were not put at enough risk to warrant charges.
…
“On two occasions, teacher set fire to combustible material (flag), allowing material to burn in garbage can and on desk, then left the classroom filled with students in an attempt to find water to put the fire out,” the investigation concluded.
…
Holden burned a flag in two classes, one with 30 students and another with 24 students.

The flags were about 18 inches by 12 inches with wooden poles. He lighted the cloth on each flag while holding it over a small metal trashcan, according to investigation documents.

Holden told school officials that he had wet paper towels surrounding the trashcan on his desk, but several students told investigators that Holden had to leave the classroom to get more water to put out the fire.

As part of the fire department’s investigation, arson detectives questioned several of Holden’s students, and school officials provided detectives written statements of what they saw.

One student told investigators that smoke from the fire made students cough.

“It was smokey (sic), cause I’m like allergic to smoke and the whole room was full of smoke and like I was coughing, a lot of people was coughing,” the student said in a transcribed statement in the file.

Asked whether the fire was frightening, the student replied: “Not really. I just thought he could have dropped the flag and could have, you know, made the whole classroom on fire.”

Six months ago, Muslims the world over rioted over the publication of some anti-Muslim cartoons in a Danish newspaper.

Now, a reader wrote to me to point out that Iran has set up an entire museum exhibit of anti-Jewish Holocaust cartoons:

Organisers of Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon’s Contest said the museum exhibit, which has drawn more than 200 entries, aims to challenge Western taboos about the discussing the Holocaust.
…
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drawn international condemnation for dismissing the Holocaust as a “myth”. Nazi Germany killed six million European Jews in World War Two.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction.
…
Iran’s best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, launched a competition in February for the best cartoon about the Holocaust in retaliation for the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish and other European newspapers.

Notice that Jews are not rioting about this. We are not even rioting “in retaliation” for the Muslim riots before.

In fact, the most strident reaction has been a strong statement by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, who is basically paid to fight antisemitism wherever he can find it.

The Iranian sponsorship and exhibition of a cartoon contest on the Holocaust is outrageous, hateful and cynical.

One should ask two questions: Why is the outrage in the Muslim world to the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed directed against Jews, who were not responsible for the Danish cartoons? Why, if, as President Ahmadinejad says, the Holocaust is a myth, call for a cartoon contest to deride it?

The questions are easily answered in the fact of the constant drumbeat of anti-Semitism and demonization of Jews and Israel emanating from the Arab/Muslim world, through their media and through leaders such as Ahmadinejad. Everyday, in much of the Arab/Muslim world anti-Semitic and other hateful material is produced for mass consumption.

Denying the Holocaust and deriding the Holocaust are two sides of the same coin and must be denounced by the international community as classical anti-Semitism.

I’m not holding my breath. But perhaps it’s worth pointing out that not all religions are equally tolerant.

MoveOn.org recently sent this e-mail out to its supporters:

Ever wonder why some campaigns–like Dean in ‘04, MoveOn’s “Save PBS”, Net Neutrality, the Downing Street Memo, or Ned Lamont for Senate–go big online, while hundreds of others go nowhere? Our friends at the New Organizing Institute (NOI) have assembled a network of phenomenal online organizers to share the secrets of their success.

I don’t know where these MoveOn guys live, but in the world I inhabit, “Dean in ‘04″ flamed out in the Iowa Caucuses, “Save PBS” was based on a urban legend and was really about “saving” a small portion of of the government-provided portion of PBS funding, not about saving PBS as such, the Downing Street Memo just proved that Bush had been planning what his opponents had accused him of failing to plan, and Ned Lamont, while making an impressive primary win, has a long way to go before he actually sits in the Senate, and is currently behind in the polls.

And these guys call themselves the “reality-based community.” It’s more like an “alternate-reality-based community.”

Yet another myth was shattered today — the myth that oil companies don’t care about anything but short-term profits, and will do anything to get them unless government regulators control them. BP Exploration Alaska, Inc., a unit of British Petroleum, annouced they are shutting down the entire Prudhoe Bay oil field — accounting for half the production of Alaska North Slope oil. They are doing this because they found some corrosion in the pipeline that carries the oil out — in other words, there’s a risk of leakage, which would be an environmental disaster.

Major Alaskan Oil Field Shutting Down

Aug 6, 10:40 PM (ET)

By Mary Pemberton

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - In a sudden blow to the nation’s oil supply, half the production on Alaska’s North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line.

BP officials said they didn’t know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. “I don’t even know how long it’s going to take to shut it down,” said Tom Williams, BP’s senior tax and royalty counsel.

Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That’s close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East.

“We regret that it is necessary to take this action and we apologize to the nation and the State of Alaska for the adverse impacts it will cause,” BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone said in a statement.

Malone said the field will not resume operating until the company and government regulators are satisfied it can run safely without threatening the environment.

Of course, the “regulators” wouldn’t have even known there was a problem if the company hadn’t said so.

This will, unfortunately, increase oil prices, and thus the price of gasoline and anything else made from oil. Here’s the estimate:

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.

“Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment,” Emori said. “But we can’t really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced.”

Some cynics will say that this is a plot by BP to increase oil prices. But that’s wrongheaded — BP can only benefit from high oil prices to the extent that they can sell oil. When they are selling less oil, they make less. The ones who will make money off of this are all the other oil companies — in other words, BP’s competitors. Shutting down the oil fields hurts consumers a little, helps competitor’s a little, and hurts BP a lot. But in the long run, it’s the right thing to do.

Adrienne P. Samuels of the Boston Globe reports:

Police say they logged numerous complaints of straight people being called “breeders” by gays over the July Fourth holiday weekend. Jamaican workers reported being the target of racial slurs. And a woman was verbally accosted after signing a petition that opposed same-sex marriage, they said.

The town, which prizes its reputation for openness and tolerance, is taking the concerns seriously, though police say they do not consider the incidents hate crimes.

(… as they no doubt would if the roles were reversed.)

Winsome Karr, 45, originally from Jamaica, has worked in town since 2002. Lately, she said, the off-color comments stem from gay visitors who mistakenly believe that all Jamaicans share the views of an island religious sect that disagrees with homosexuality.
…
A group that supports gay marriage, knowthyneighbor, has created a website displaying the names of more than 100,000 signers of a petition that calls for the state Constitution to be amended to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Knowthyneighbor’s tactics are controversial, with critics alleging that knowthyneighbor is making the names of same-sex marriage opponents public in an effort to expose or intimidate them. The group’s founders say they are simply promoting civic discourse.

The names of 43 Provincetown residents are listed on the website. Most of the petition signers attend St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, which serves the Portuguese community and others in town.

Does this remind anyone of that list of abortionists somebody once posted? That led to a federal investigation. Anyone see that happening here?

Back in May, I noted that a Georgia court ruled a constitutional amendment unconstitutional, purportedly on the grounds that it failed a requirement that amendments deal with a single subject, even though that amendment dealt with only one subject.

Now the Georgia Supreme Court has overruled the lower court, stating that the amendment did, in fact, cover only one subject:

‘‘It is apparent that the prohibition against recognizing same-sex unions as entitled to the benefits of marriage is not ’dissimilar and discordant’ to the objective of reserving the status of marriage and its attendant benefits exclusively to unions of man and woman,’’ the court said in its ruling.

This is a victory for the English language, even more than for advocates of opposite-sex marriage.

Christiaan Briggs is an antiwar activist and pacifist who opposes all forms of violence.

Except, apparently, beating a younger man into a coma in an attempt to take his girlfriend away:

A New Zealand peace activist is facing serious assault charges after he allegedly punched a rock singer in London, leaving the man in a coma.

Christiaan Briggs, 30, who spent three weeks in Iraq with the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action Group in 2003, appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday to face a charge of grievous bodily harm.

Police say the incident occurred on June 22 when Briggs allegedly punched 19-year-old Billy Leeson, causing the rising rock star to hit his head on the ground.

Leeson, the lead singer with rock band Les Incompetents - who have supported Pete Doherty’s group Babyshambles - was “still very ill”, said Scotland Yard spokesman James Nadin.

His condition was described as “critical but stable”.

Mr Nadin said an argument broke out between the pair after Briggs allegedly “made advances” towards Leeson’s girlfriend.

This is the sort of person who claims that to believe in peace and nonviolence — and that George W. Bush is more of a threat to peace than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Well, waddaya know — it turns out there actually were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

“We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons,” Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.”

You can read the recently-declassified document for yourself Howard Dean or Michael Moore to acknowledge this — they’ll keep on saying “Bush lied” about Iraq having chemical weapons, even though what he said was true.

Nor should we expect the pollsters that reported that most Americans are “ignorant” for believing tht Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to report that it was, instead, the pollsters who were ignorant.

James Taranto points to this gem from ABC News, which sounds like the sort of thing you’d see in the satirical newspaper, The Onion:

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?

ABC News wants to hear from you. We’re currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

We want to hear and see your stories. Have you noticed changes in your own backyard or hometown? The differences can be large or small — altered blooming schedules, unusual animals that have arrived in your community, higher water levels encroaching on your property.

Well, I’ve noticed that in my community, there has been significant warming over the past six months. And yesterday, there was a massive rainstorm which caused a much higher-than normal water level in my backyard.

I guess by ABC’s standards, that’s proof of global warming!

Clayton Cramer, and one of his readers, together have what makes a fascinating analysis of the FBI Hate Crimes data.

The report says, for example:

Law enforcement agencies reported 4,863 offenses within single-bias incidents that were motivated by the offender’s racial bias. Among those offenses, 67.5 percent resulted from an anti-black bias, and 20.5 percent were due to an anti-white bias.

Clayton analyzes:

At first glance, the high number of crimes that “resulted from an anti-black bias” suggests that racism against blacks is a bigger problem than racism against whites. But spend a little time thinking about these numbers. In 2004, blacks were 12.8% of the population; whites were 80.4% of the population. Unless some of these hate crimes against blacks were being done by blacks (which seems rather unlikely), this means that the hate criminals came from the 87.2% of the population that are non-black, and these hate criminals committed the 67.5% of the racially based bias crimes that were designated as anti-black.

Similarly, the white haters must have come from the 19.6% of the population that are non-white Americans, and these criminals committed the 20.5% of the anti-white racial bias crimes.

Non-whites are thus more likely to commit anti-white crimes than non-blacks are to likely to commit anti-black crimes. This suggests that anti-white hate crimes are disproportionately present. Not quite what you were expecting, is it?

Let’s define a ratio of “potential sources of hate crimes” to “percentages of hate crimes” and you get what I call the “How Hated Are You?” Ratio. Divide 67.5% by 87.2%, and you discover that blacks are the victims of racial bias crimes only 77.4% of the amount that you would expect if racial hate crimes was evenly distributed. On the other hand, 20.5% divided by 19.6% gives 105%–whites are slightly more likely to be victims of a racially based hate crime than you would expect for their numbers.

In short, the HHAY percentage, if it is below 100, indicates that you are victims of a hate crime less than you might expect, relative to the percentage of the population that isn’t a member of your group. If your group’s HHAY percentage is above 100, then your group is receiving more hate crimes than you would expect.

Clayton reports that a(n unnamed) reader looked at the problem from the other direction — the percentage of each group that becomes a victim of hate crime, rather than the percentage that commits a hate crime:

It seems to me your “How hated are you” statistic does a poor job of measuring the actual problems caused by hate crimes for different groups. For example, using the figures you give, 67.5% of 4863, or 2164 crimes were motivated by anti black prejudice and only 20.5%, or 997 were motivated by anti-white prejudice. But 12.8% of the population (let’s call the US population 250 million, though that’s a bit out of date) is black, or 32 million people, while 80.4 %, or 200 million, is white. So a black person has a probability of 2164/32000000=0.000068 of being a hate crime victim in a given year — 17 times the odds of 0.000004 that a white person does. It seems to me reasonable to say that hate crimes are 17 times as significant a problem for black people as for white people.

What your HHAY statistic measures is the probability that a randomly chosen person of a different race will have committed a hate crime against someone of your nationality. It seems to me that, if I were given a chance to choose my race, this would matter much less to me than the odds that I would be a hate crime victim. (Or, for that matter, a crime victim of any sort.)

It is strange that black people are both more likely to commit and to be the victims of hate crimes than white people are, but I guess that’s just a nice example of how statistics don’t always do what you’d expect.

Actually, I’m not sure that we shouldn’t expect precisely that results. Blacks make up about one-eight o the U.S. population, which means there are about 7 non-Blacks for every Black. That means that even if a much lower percentage of non-Blacks commit hate crimes, there can still be a lot of anti-Black hate crimes simply because there is a much larger pool of non-Blacks. In fact, non-Blacks will commit more hate crimes (in absolute numbers, not percentages) as long as their rate is greater than one-seventh of the Black hate crime rate. Furthermore, since there are far fewer Blacks “available” to become targets of each hate crime, then for any given number of hate crimes, the probability of any one individual Black becoming a victim is much higher.

To take an extreme example, imagine for a moment that Blacks and non-Blacks each committed, as a group, precisely the same number (not percentage) of hate crimes. In that case, each Black individual would be both seven time more likely to be victim of hate crime — and seven times more likely to commit one. Even if the rates are closer together, as long as the percentages of non-Blacks commiting hate crimes is lower than that of Blacks, we will see something like this outcome.

So the figures that Clayton and his reader found are in fact precisely how you should expect the statistics to come out.

Yes, you read that right. Reuters reports:

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia judge on Tuesday struck down a ban on same-sex marriage that was approved by voters in 2004, saying it violated the Southern state’s constitution.

What Reuters calls a “ban” was in fact a constituational amendment. An amendment to the Georgia State Constitution. The judge declared this part of the Georgia State Constitution to be a violation of the Georgia State Constitution.

Here’s the “reasoning”:

Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that the measure violates the state’s “single-subject rule” as it asked voters to decide on multiple issues in one amendment, said Jack Senterfitt, an attorney with gay rights group Lambda Legal Defense.

Now I can see the logic of having a “single subject rule.” But there are two problems with this. First, the amendment deals with only a single subject. And second, the Georgia Constitution specifically allows “related” issues to be considered together in one amendment.

Here’s the full and complete text of the proposed amendment:

Article I of the Constitution is amended by adding a new Section IV to read as follows:

“SECTION IV. MARRIAGE

Paragraph I. Recognition of marriage. (a) This state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and woman. Marriages between persons of the same sex are prohibited in this state.
(b) No union between persons of the same sex shall be recognized by this state as entitled to the benefits of marriage. This state shall not give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other state or jurisdiction respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other state or jurisdiction. The courts of this state shall have no jurisdiction to grant a divorce or separate maintenance with respect to any such relationship or otherwise to consider or rule on any of the parties´ respective rights arising as a result of or in connection with such relationship.”

Could someone please identify for me the more-than-one issues in that amendment? It seems to be that the two issues to be decided are

1. A requirement that the state recognize only marriages that consist of one man and one woman, and
2. A requirement that the state recognize only marriages that consist of one man and one woman.

Can someone please explain the difference?

I can’t find the judge’s decision online (yet — the court’s home page is here), but Arthur Leonard of Gay City News has some more details on the attempt to carve out two subjects in that amendment:

The Georgia measure defined marriage for all purposes of state law as the union of one man and one woman but added a somewhat ambiguous paragraph that could be interpreted as barring the Legislature from creating domestic partnerships or civil unions or conferring anything that might be called a “benefit of marriage” on any “union between persons of the same sex.” That paragraph also stripped Georgia courts of jurisdiction to decide legal issues arising “as a result of or in connection with such relationship.”
…
Lambda’s challenge to Amendment One was based on two arguments—that the amendment language appearing on the ballot seriously misled Georgia voters by creating the impression that the measure dealt only with the definition of marriage, and that the state Constitution’s “single-subject rule” was violated because voters who favored civil unions but not marriage for same-sex partners would have to vote to ban both in order to prevent gay marriage.

[Judge] Russell rejected the first argument, finding Georgia law merely required that ballot language “identify which amendment they are voting on;” a voters are left to educate themselves about an amendment’s content.

However, Russell found merit to the single-subject issue, although she did not accept Lambda’s entire argument. Amendments can accomplish several goals, so long as they are germane to their central purpose, and the state contended that all aspects of Amendment One related to “the non-recognition of conjugal relationships between persons of the same sex.”

Russell agreed that this what the amendment would do, but found that the ballot question and the amendment’s text stated that banning same-sex marriage was its purpose; to the degree that the measure ventured beyond that purpose it was improperly embracing more than one policy question.

Lambda argued that the amendment had four policy objectives—to exclude same-sex couples from marriage, to prohibit recognition or creation of legal unions between persons of the same sex, to bar courts from recognizing certain official actions taken in other states and jurisdictions, and to divest courts of jurisdiction related to same sex relationships.

Russell found that the amendment measure fell short by addressing non-marital legal relationships, such as civil unions.

So we are expected to believe that “same sex marriage” and “same-sex civil unions” are two separate topics. Are they serious? Can they find a single context in which anyone — judge or otherwise — discusses “same-sex civil unions” without any reference to “same sex marriage”?

And even if those are, in some technical sense, separate legal issues, the consideration of related issues in a single constitutional amendment is specificall permitted in the Georgia Constitution. Article X, Section I, Paragraph II states in part:

If such proposal is ratified by a majority of the electors qualified to vote for members of the General Assembly voting thereon in such general election, such proposal shall become a part of this Constitution or shall become a new Constitution, as the case may be. Any proposal so approved shall take effect as provided in Paragraph VI of this article. When more than one amendment is submitted at the same time, they shall be so submitted as to enable the electors to vote on each amendment separately, provided that one or more new articles or related changes in one or more articles may be submitted as a single amendment.

Any reasonable reading of the last clause above should specifically permit “related changes” like “same sex marriage” and “same-sex civil unions” to be considered together — even if they are amending difference articles of the Georgia Constitution. (As it happens, the proposal amended only one article, by adding a single section with a single paragraph.)

This judge’s decision literally defies the plain meaning of the English language. It would be no less logical to claim that the “freedom of speech” clause of the U.S. Constitution actually mandated censorship. And the fact that a judge deliberately misread the constitution to overturn a vote that was specifically designated as an amendment to that constitution — that is, specifically intended to remove the issue from the discretion of the courts — and that was passed by 76% of the voters, can only show the deep contempt in which this judge, and likely a significant proportion of judges throughout the country, hold the voters.

UPDATE (7/7/2006):

The Georgia Supreme Court has overruled the lower court and allowed the amendment to stand,