Back of the Envelope

Scott Kirwin is singing the praises of Liberal-Conservative marriages over at Dean's World:

There are serious benefits to a Liberal/Conservative marriage. First and foremost it keeps both of us from the extremes. If she comes home with some barking moonbat piece of tripe, I can usually shoot it down before she has wasted too much time on it or worse, come to believe it herself. Likewise I can sound an idea or an opinion off her and get her candid take on it before going public with it - thereby applying a level of rigor to what might otherwise have been a stupid idea or opinion. Secondly we can intellectually spar with one another, thereby keeping our ideas fresh and perhaps even (gasp) changing them. Finally, when we're together we can handle issues and situations using our different perspectives. Because of her liberal nature she can be much more open with salesmen than I can be. If the salesman takes advanatage of her openness, I can step in and bitch-slap him into submission without any regard for his feelings or the validity of his opinions. Needless to say the "Good cop - Bad cop" routine comes in quite handy when dealing with disputes with retailers and service providers.

I don't see opposites attracting as a good foundation for a relationship, but I do think there is a need for complementary personalities. If the members of the couple are too different, then they find themselves in conflict with each other, while if they're too similar, then they don't need each other. It's when one's strengths can cover the other's weaknesses, and vice versa, that they work best together. While marriage is the most obvious example of this, there should be some degree of this in every team.

Most conservatives have defended the London police for the accidental shooting death of a Brazilian man. The situation is described in the news:

Menezes was killed in a London subway station as police investigated a wave of botched bombings the day before and the deadly transit bombings of July 7.

Witnesses said Menezes was wearing a heavy, padded coat when plainclothes police chased him into a subway car, pinned him to the ground and shot him dead.

While Menezes' relatives said he was working legally in Britain and had no reason to fear police, the British Broadcasting Corp. said Menezes' visa had expired, suggesting a reason for why he ran.

It's pretty easy to see both sides of the story, actually. From the police perspective, they had been monitoring the house, the man was dressed in suspiciously bulky clothing, and he refused to stop when ordered. But the Brazilian was accosted by plain clothes policemen, and depending on his grasp of English language, he may not have understood who they were or what they wanted, which is the point that Mark Steyn makes in his column:

With that in mind, we turn to Jean Charles de Menezes, the supposed "suicide bomber" who turned out to be a Brazilian electrician on his way to work. Unfortunately, by the time the Metropolitan Police figured that out, they'd put five bullets in his head. We're told we shouldn't second-guess split-second decisions that have to be made under great stress by those on the scene, which would be a more persuasive argument if the British constabulary didn't spend so much time doing exactly that to homeowners who make the mistake of defending themselves against violent criminals. And, if summary extrajudicial execution was so urgent, why did the surveillance team let him take a bus ride before eventually cornering him in the Tube?
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We at this newspaper are currently defending British soldiers facing prosecution for situations broadly analogous to those in which the Met found themselves. But there's still a difference. Anyone who rubs up against the military in Iraq knows what to expect: attempt to crash a roadblock and don't be surprised if they open fire. But few of us had an inkling of the Met's new "shoot to kill" policy until they shot and killed Mr de Menezes. And although I've had a ton of e-mails pointing out various sinister aspects of his behaviour - he was wearing a heavy coat! he refused to stop! - it seems to me there are an awful lot of people on the Tube who might easily find themselves in Mr de Menezes's position.

I happened to be passing through London on Friday. It didn't feel terribly warm, but I spend half a year up to my neck in snow so when it climbs to a balmy 48 I start wearing T-shirts. But I can understand why a Brazilian might find 61 and overcast no reason to eschew a heavy jacket. So a man in a suspiciously warm coat refuses to stop for the police. Well, they were a plain-clothes unit - ie, a gang - and confronted by unidentified men brandishing weapons in south London I'd scram, too.

This is one of those difficult situations. While Mark refers to the passive culture which the British have put in effect as the problem, I don't see that a more aggressive culture would have avoided this situation. Perhaps police who were more accustomed to being armed and facing a possibly armed opponent would have dealt with it better, perhaps not. This is best seen as a friendly-fire incident, something which is regrettable, and incidents of which can hopefully be reduced in the future, but which are not entirely avoidable in a time of war. And make no mistake, this is a time of war. It has been declared on us, and it is better to be fighting it than to be passively losing it.

There were more bombings at the end of last week which got less news than the previous ones, both in Egypt and in Lebanon. From Fox News, on the Egyptian bombing:

The bombers who carried out Egypt's worst-ever terrorist attack appear to have entered this Red Sea resort in pickup trucks loaded with explosives that were hidden under vegetables, security officials said Sunday. Police were searching for three suspects believed to have survived the bombings.

One truck headed for the luxury Ghazala Gardens (search) hotel. There, one man planted a bomb in a suitcase in a parking lot, while another slammed the vehicle into the Ghazala hotel's reception area, the security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

As people fled the Ghazala attack, the suitcase exploded and killed at least seven people, said the officials.

A second truck, on a road leading to another major hotel, got stuck in traffic in the Old Market — an area frequented by Egyptian workers in the resort area on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Two militants inside abandoned the vehicle, apparently setting a timer, and the blast detonated soon after, the officials said.

With an estimated 88 dead, more were killed than in the London attacks, but it's getting a whole lot less press. Egypt's been struck with terrorist attacks before, most recently last October. There are some indications of al Qaeda ties with this latest attack, although it's not certain. The Lebanese attack has no clear link to al Qaeda, and in fact seems to be just the latest in the string of attacks on the anti-Syrian government. These are most likely the work of Hez'bollah, which has long had the support of Syria.

Having said that, the multiple London attacks and the one in Egypt may be part of a larger movement by al Qaeda to strike at the West and its allies with a wave of bombings. This sort of thing is easier to orchestrate than the 9/11 hijackings, and I would be surprised if they were unable to use similar methods to strike at the US. Sustained terrorism is more likely to wear us down than the large, dramatic attacks, and while I hope we can prevent them, I doubt our ability to. The solution remains getting to the root of the problem, and showing that terrorism will only increase our determination, not reduce it.

Someone tried to hit London a second time, this time with three bombs in the subway and one in a bus, just like before. Is this a follow-up of the terrorist attacks, or a copy-cat at work. Either way, they were a lot less successful than before. From Fox News:

Metropolitan police are looking for an unknown number of fugitives connected to four explosions in London Thursday and are hoping the bombing material used can lead them to the terrorists.

Two weeks to the day after terrorist attacks in London killed a total of 56 people, explosions struck three more Underground trains and a bus at lunchtime Thursday.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair (search) confirmed that three explosions occurred on subway trains near the Oval and Warren Street stations on the Northern Line and on a train near the Shepherd's Bush station on the Hammersmith and City line, and that a fourth explosion took place on a bus traveling in the Hackney neighborhood of east London.

But none of the presumed bombs appeared to have detonated properly, leaving only one person injured. Officials were hoping that the leftover explosives would provide a wealth of forensic evidence to help investigators hunt down whoever planted them.

Of course, Fox does something here that I can't quite agree with. Compare it to this AP report:

Only one person was reported wounded, but the explosions during the lunch hour caused major disruption in the city and were hauntingly similar to the July 7 bombings in which 52 people and four suicide attackers were killed.

I'd probably say it differently, as while I also would want to make a distinction between the victims and the suicide bombers, I do admit that the bombers are people too: evil, twisted, fanatical people, but that does not put them outside the definition of personhood. Still, you've got to give the AP credit for making the distinction. Of course, it no longer reads that way:

Explosions struck three London Underground stations and a bus at midday Thursday in a chilling but less deadly replay of the suicide bombings that killed 56 people two weeks ago.

As I said, I'd call the terrorists people, but I would definitely make the distinction between the terrorists and their victims. To Fox's credit, they do do that later in the article:

Although not as serious, Thursday's incidents were hauntingly similar to the blasts two weeks ago, which involved explosions at three Underground stations simultaneously — quickly followed by a blast on a double-decker bus. Those bombings, during the morning rush hour, also occurred in the center of London, hitting the Underground railway from various directions. The four homicide bombers, along with 52 others, were killed in those attacks.

That, aside from the term "homicide bombers," which I've always disagreed with, is how I would say it.

It looks like a lot of conservatives are very happy with him, although I've been looking for but not finding evidence of public statements and judicial opinions that confirm that he's a solid conservative and originalist. Still, I do trust the opinions of the likes of John Hawkins, Hugh Hewitt, Captain Ed, the guys at Powerline, and the folks at National Review, so I won't argue that he's not a good choice.

I will say that I was discussing with a friend Bush's choice, and she asked me why Bush didn't choose a woman. I found this an odd question. As I put to her, Bush had a responsibility to choose the best candidate who reflected his judicial philosophy. He interviewed both men and women for this position, trying to find the person who met this requirement. Should he have only interviewed women? If the answer to that is "of course not," then how can we say that he should have picked a woman? Would he have just been going through the motions when he interviewed men, but not seriously considering them? If, in the course of those interviews, he found a man met his requirements better, it'd be downright irresponsible to pass over him for a woman just because she was a woman. And in all the reports I'm reading on the matter, it seems like everyone agrees that Roberts is probably THE most qualified person for this position in terms of legal credentials. In any case, Chermaine Yoest has a good article on why making O'Connor's seat the Woman's Chair on the court would be bad for women.

I mean really, really angy:

The British suicide bombers and the Iranian nuke demands are genuine crises. The Valerie Plame game is a pseudo-crisis. If you want to talk about Niger or CIA reform, fine. But if you seriously think the only important aspect of a politically motivated narcissist kook's drive-thru intelligence mission to a critical part of the world is the precise sequence of events by which some White House guy came to mention the kook's wife to some reporter, then you've departed the real world and you're frolicking on the wilder shores of Planet Zongo.

What's this really about? It's not difficult. A big chunk of the American elites have decided there is no war; it's all a racket got up by Bush and Cheney. And, even if there is a war somewhere or other, wherever it is, it's not where Bush says it is. Iraq is a ''distraction'' from Afghanistan -- and, if there were no Iraq, Afghanistan would be a distraction from Niger, and Niger's a distraction from Valerie Plame's next photo shoot for Vanity Fair.

I think he's had just about enough of the Plame affair. Frankly, so have I, although I'm usually polite enough not to call people kooks. But no, I don't regard Wilson as a great patriot, and the information which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence presented on his mission does not put him in a flattering light.

According to the news reports, Bush is giving the Democrats an unprecedented level of input into his court nominees. He's doing this mainly to get them to stop whining. In turn, the Democrats are suggesting liberal candidates to him. I hope Bush is letting them talk without really listening to them. What Bush wants and what the Democrats want from the judiciary are fundamentally incompatible. The Democrats want a moderate (which, on their scale, equates to a moderate Democrat or a liberal Republican, not actually the center in this country) who will maintain the status quo of the Courts doing most of the policy-making in this country. Conservatives, including Bush, or so he claims, want the courts to stop making policy and leave that power up to the democratically elected legislatures. No candidate who believes in that is going to pass the the Democrats' test, while no candidate who believes otherwise will be acceptable to conservatives. The Democrats will argue that any judge who'd oppose Roe v. Wade is outside the mainstream of this country, while conservatives argue that Roe v. Wade is bad law no matter how you feel about abortion. It created a right ex nihilo in order to take authority away from the legislatures and give it to the courts. This is happening again and again, and it needs to be stopped, and I keep hoping against hope that the Democrats will wake up and realize this.

Really, I think the only hope of Bush getting the type of candidate he wants without the need for the nuclear option to overcome a Democratic filibuster is to nominate a dark horse candidate no one's familiar with but who will follow strict constructionism. Unfortunately, a spate of not-as-conservative-as-they-seemed Justices (Souter, Kennedy) will make conservatives reluctant to support anyone without top-notch conservative credentials, which would guarantee a Democratic filibuster.

I haven't said anything about the bombings in London, mainly because I couldn't think of what to say. What can you say about something like this? It's heartbreaking and infuriating. It is, at heart, an act of war, and while there's a massive manhunt for those responsible, the only appropriate response is war, but unlike the terrorists, we will target the murderers and fanatics behind it, not innocents.

The bare facts are that three bombs, probably on timers, were set off in the London subway during rush hour on July 7th, and a fourth was set off on a double-decker bus about an hour later, when all traffic had been diverted from the subways. So far, the death toll is 49, but that is likely to grow, and there are hundreds of injured. A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe" has claimed responsibility for the attack. It is well-known that many radical Islamists have found a home in England, and that it has done little to rid itself of them. In the aftermath of the attack, Londoners support for the war on terror has grown, and their tolerance for the Islamists in their midst has decreased.

This is all commonly known, so there is little reason for me to repeat the facts. I am glad to see that the Brits are made of sterner stuff than some others, and are set to fight back. They'll need that resolution, as well as a willingness to crack down on the Islamists among them.

Update: At this point, they are now saying that these explosions were the work of suicide bombers. Hmm, it hardly seems necessary for what they were doing, but suicide bombings are the hardest to prevent.

Judicial overreach got you down? This article by Denis Boyles won't improve your mood:

But, in the end, Kansans were as unsuccessful restraining the judiciary as everyone else, and as a result, the state’s taxpayers will be made to do what citizens in 45 of the 50 states in the nation have already been asked to do: pay a tax imposed on them by a judge seeking to fund state education in a way he or she finds agreeable, usually as a consequence of a ruling in an “equity” lawsuit. There are dozens of these lawsuits going on at any given time, often involving hundreds of millions of dollars. For lawyers, education is the new tobacco, and business is smoking.

As a rule equity lawsuits involve relatively small cohorts of plaintiffs with specific gripes — in Kansas, for example, a small group of parents and the school administrators in a couple of mid-sized school districts complained that small, rural districts got more per pupil than they did, while big schools in affluent neighborhoods were able to augment state funds with local levies. In the case, Montoy v. Kansas, they said they wanted more money for some of their Spanish-speaking, disadvantaged, and other “at-risk” students. The basis for the complaint: A passage in the constitution that required the taxpayers to give every kid in Kansas a “suitable” education.

Of course, that’s probably what most Kansas citizens thought they were doing already. Despite a slowly shrinking population, not much is the matter with education in Kansas. The last session of the legislature saw a $142 million increase in educational spending. The state spends more than its neighbors on schools — two-thirds of the state budget, in fact — and already distributes that money more equitably than most other states do. Every year, nearly ten grand is spent on every student in the state. Kansas pays its teachers well, more than most other workers in this low cost-of-living state, and produces graduates whose performance is in the top ten nationally.

Yet despite the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal noted recently “the link between school spending and educational achievement is close to nonexistent,” in Montoy, the court found that the word “suitable” translates in money-talk to exactly $143 million. Next year, that figure will begin to swell, potentially reaching more than $850 million and, according to one study, costing more than 20,000 jobs and a $1 billion loss in productivity.

The article goes into how the conservatives in the Senate tried to pass an amendment to the state constitution that would prevent the courts from telling the legislature how to tax and spend, but they were stopped by liberal Republicans and Democrats looking to legalize gambling as a new income source. But surely even the Democrats see the problem here?

A constitutional amendment shouldn't even be necessary. If I were in the Kansas legislature, I'd argue for passing a resolution that said, in essence, that the court has no authority to tell the legislature what to do within its own sphere of authority, that it has no intention of complying, and any judge who tries to do it again will be impeached for his contempt of the state constitution. To be honest, I don't know whether there'd be sufficient legal grounds for the final one, but I consider the constitution as written sufficient grounds for the first and second. The judiciary simply does not have the authority to decide policy, and the other two branches need to stop letting it get away with it.

It's now even more important to appoint strict constructionist judges, at all levels, but especially on the Supreme Court. And if the Democrats try to filibuster, the nuclear option needs to be used.

This Reuters headline caught my eye: "Israeli guard shoots dead Palestinian teen -police" Why would anyone shoot a dead body? I wondered. Did some sadistic person prop it up to make it look threatening? The article itself turned out to be less bizarre than the headline indicated:

An Israeli guard killed a Palestinian teenager on Friday while shooting to disperse stone-throwing protesters at a barrier being built near the Israeli-West Bank boundary, Israeli police said.

Medics at Ramallah Hospital confirmed they had the body of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the chest at the site but would not give further details.

Israeli police said an armed Israeli guard had opened fire when protesters hurled rocks at them near the village of Beit Likiya in the West Bank, killing a Palestinian teenager.

While a grim story, this sort of thing happens so often that the most unique thing about this story is its poorly written headline. And those journalists think bloggers need editors!

Mark Steyn, in writing about the Supreme Court's eminent domain decision, has this to say:

A couple of days beforehand, the majesty of the law turned its attention to "eminent domain" -- the fancy term for what happens when the government seizes the property of the private citizen. It pays you, of course, but that's not much comfort if you've built your dream home on your favorite spot of land. Most laymen understand the "public interest" dimension as, oh, they're putting in the new Interstate and they don't want to make a huge detour because one cranky old coot refuses to sell his ramshackle dairy farm. But the Supreme Court's decision took a far more expansive view: that local governments could compel you to sell your property if a developer had a proposal that would generate greater tax revenue. In other words, the "public interest" boils down to whether or not the government gets more money to spend.

I don't know about you, but when I first heard about this, I hoped that someone would apply it to the homes of the Justices who voted for it. It turns out I didn't hope in vain. Read a little bit further into the article:

Get the picture? New Hampshire businessman Logan Darrow Clements did. He wants to build a new hotel in the town of Weare and he's found just the right piece of land: the home of Supreme Court judge David Souter. In compliance with Justice Souter's view of the public interest, Clements' project will generate far more revenue for Weare than Souter's pad ever could. The Lost Liberty Hotel will include the Just Desserts Bar and a museum dedicated to the loss of freedom in America.

I don't know about you, but the last time I was in Weare, N.H., I couldn't help thinking that what this town urgently needs is a good hotel. If it will help the Board of Selectmen in their decision, I personally pledge to take the most expensive suite in the new joint for the first month it's in service. I'll be sluicing plenty of big columnar bucks around town, racking up big N.H. Meals Tax payments at Weare's finest restaurants and, along with my fellow guests, doing far more for the local economy than one ascetic, largely absentee bachelor like Justice Souter could ever do. Indeed, under Souter's definition, it would be hard to think of a property doing less for the public interest than his own house. So let's get on with putting his principles into action, and with luck his beloved but economically moribund abode will be rubble by the end of the year.

I just had to check up on this story, to see whether there was much chance of this actually happening. Fox News had some additional information:

Clements is the CEO of Los Angeles-based Freestar Media, which that fights "abusive" government through a Web site and cable show. He plans to move to New Hampshire soon as part of the Free State Project (search), a group that supports limiting government powers, the Monitor reported.

The letter was passed along to the board of selectmen. If the five-member board were to endorse the hotel project, zoning laws would have to be changed and the hotel would have to get approval from the planning board. Messages seeking comment were left with Laura Buono, board chairwoman.

"Am I taking this seriously? But of course," said Charles Meany, Weare's code enforcement officer. "In lieu of the recent Supreme Court decision, I would imagine that some people are pretty much upset. If it is their right to pursue this type of end, then by all means let the process begin."

Souter's two-story colonial farmhouse is assessed at a little more than $100,000 and brought in $2,895 in property taxes last year.

So, yes, it sounds like it could happen, although it doesn't seem too likely. Still, I'm thinking of investing.