On vacation
...until Wednesday; and glad to be out of the DC area for a while. In the meantime, check out the links to the left (* means updated in the last couple of hours) and also "The Road to Surfdom". posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:08:00 AM -- |  

 

Sniper speculation update
I e-mailed WTOP about the discrepancy I noticed last Thursday between their racial breakdown of the 5 Wednesday victims and those of the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post. WTOP's Mr. Jim Farley answered, not surprisingly:

Montgomery County Police changed the id's. You'll note we were quoting Captain Demme. Thanks for listening to WTOP Radio.

(No problem; someday I will.) So it wasn't a WTOP mistake, say a sloppy reporter or coffee spilled on the notes.

This supports the "Unqualified Offering" notion today that it's hard to tell from a distance what race some people are (or "are", depending on your point of view about "race" in the first place): the police wavered in their own categorizations even though they weren't looking through a sniper scope. While Jim thinks these are basically power-trip murders (there was one white woman among the initial group of victims), I still think they may well also be racist-motivated. I also note that the first 5 were tightly geographically bunched in a liberal stronghold of a liberal state. The picture has obviously become muddier because the sniper seems to be deliberately wide-ranging, unpredictable, and more cautious now, compared to his(/her, I know, not likely) first murders.

One interesting notion advanced by a "woman on the street" interviewed by the Washington Post a couple of days ago was that the killer "took the weekend off," and that made her think he was a divorced dad who had to take care of his kids. Between the coming weekend and the light rains that have settled in, I hope that the next couple of days at least will be sniper free -- and that they catch the guy. As that last Post story puts it: "Resident's Theories Run Gamut."

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Update, 10:50AM: So much for light rains preventing anything. MSNBC. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:17:00 AM -- |  

 

Max Baucus wants to be one of the guys, too
Having had a swipe at George Will et al below, I can't pass over a nasty piece of work by the Montana Democratic Party. Mike Taylor, the Republican candidate opposing Max Baucus for Senate, has quit the race. The reason: an ad run by the Democratic Party shows some footage of Taylor from the '80s, when he apparently ran a hair design school in Denver. Taylor claims that the clip was intended to portray him as gay, and many who have seen the ad agree, according to the Billings Gazette:

State Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, and program director for the Montana Human Rights Network, said Thursday morning the ad "is an overt and obvious appeal to the homophobic (voter) that is playing to that stereotypic imagery."

To me, the photo in the story just looked like another bad fashion day from the '80s (something I'm unfortunately knowledgeable about). But not having actually seen the clip, I'll naturally defer to Montanans on knowing gay-baiting in Montana when they see it. It's extremely disappointing that Baucus would be party to such a thing.

(Via Tony Adragna, who accurately calls this "contemptible campaigning." But Tony, I implore you: don't go to "L" on us now!) posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:36:00 AM -- |  

 

George Will wants to be one of the guys
Every so often you get a glimpse of the little man behind the spectacles and bow tie; here's George Will, in his column today about George Pataki:

The National Review tartly says that the only abortion law Pataki would oppose would be "one that threatened the population of gays and lesbians."

Well! There's nothing like a good tart quote from the National Review, never mind how ugly. It turns out this is something of a "bon mot" in the tweedy circles of the right: William Buckley chortlingly quotes James Buckley's use of it at a Conservative Party fundraiser. (It should be noted that in Buckley's version it's merely the rights of gays and lesbians are at stake; while I'm noting stuff, it's quite amazingly difficult to find the original NR quote, so I'm taking Will's and Buckley's word for it.)

In the spirit of jocular repartee, I wonder whether that would be the only "abortion law" Will, Buckley and the National Review would support? Or do they just crave a little attention, a little favor, anything, from the kind of Republicans they fear have left them behind? posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:44:00 PM -- |  

 

End times news you can use (TM): West Nile virus risk map
Via NASA's Public Health Applications Program and the "Earth Observatory" web site :

State health departments, in cooperation with the CDC, have kept record of infected birds over the past four years. Scientists and health officials have combined disease control data and satellite data to determine areas at risk for West Nile Virus. This is a sample risk map. ...

Researchers with INTREPID (International Research Partnership for Infectious Diseases) have been developing information products and databases derived from satellite data to show nationwide temperatures, distributions of vegetation, bird migration routes, and areas pinpointing reported cases. The combined data help scientists predict disease outbreaks by showing when and where habitats are suitable for the insects to thrive and where the disease appears to be spreading.

Empty circles are uninfected crows, dark circles are infected ones, gray means no data, green-to-red scale denotes increasing risk. A full U.S. map is here, with additional discussion here. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:33:00 PM -- |  

 

Kicking the can down the road
From William Burton's much-linked post* on gun policy:

Once we've affirmed that the 2nd Amendment does confer the individual right to keep and bear arms, we will have taken a gun ban off the table. Once this is done, the majority of gun owners, knowing that their rights are safe, won't object to reasonable gun control measures. A few will, but they'll be much easier to overcome when their hysterical ravings are ignored by the majority of gun owners.

I'm not against seeking middle ground in the gun control debate. But this just kicks the can down the road. How exactly do you affirm the 2d Amendment does anything other than what it already says it does? Anything less than a constitutional amendment -- a campaign pledge, an act of Congress -- is ephemeral. But say you pass an "2.b Amendment" with the "Well regulated militia" part removed, like the NRA misstatement on their home page dreams of? Do you really believe a expanded guarantee to the right to bear arms would result in gun-lobby concessions to the state to effectively regulate ownership of those arms? Life doesn't work that way.

Burton is wrong. We already have the Constitutional tool to both guarantee the individual right to keep and bear arms, and to effectively regulate gun ownership. We just don't have the political will or talent to do it on the one side, or the will to civilly seek meaningful middle ground on the other.


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*via Glenn Reynolds, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Jim Henley.
Update, 10/10: "effectively regulate" link to article below. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:23:00 AM -- |  

 

No one realized it that day...
...but Thomas Nephew's future presidency was to receive a crucial boost from a blog post by Josh Chafetz that was barely noticed at the time. (Via Greg Hlatky of "A Dog's Life").

Next week: Blogging in Obscurity. (Cue vaguely historical, elegiac music.) This post has been made possible by the Large Corporation, the Charity Ivy Hope Foundation, and by readers like you. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:37:00 PM -- |  

 
Pigs in space
From the Peace Action press release:

The "Missile Defense (a.k.a. Star Wars) is Enron in Space" ads feature a graphic that shows three pink pigs whose effluent is blasting them through space with the blue orb of earth below (ad can be viewed at www.peace-action.org). The ad displays open with, "The same greed, dishonesty and deception that shocked America in the Enron scandal is rampant in the $238-billion Pentagon Pig-Out called National Missile Defense.
...
Over $100-billion has already been wasted on what all experts agree is, since 9/11, America's least likely threat!"

The quite excellent ads are currently on display on the Metro in Washington, D.C. (Acrobat needed for final link to poster.) By the way, the graphic link to the right leads to a lot of hard information about rigged tests, silenced whistleblowers, and more.

While we're on the subject, I plan to watch Frontline's "missile wars" this Thursday at 10pm; here's the press release. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:37:00 PM -- |  

 

Google hit parade
More strange searches that have turned up "newsrack" lately:

overthrow Montgomery County: right on! A revolutionary for our times: what with driving the kids to day care, work and all, who's got time for more overthrowing than that?

evil ape shirt with UN logo: sold out.

"old guard" audit behavior: "Will you be wanting your back rub tonight, Mr. Skilling?"

rent a donkey in iraq: Osama alive after all? George Tenet planning undercover ops?

arabian cell phone ring tone: no idea, sorry. Probably not the opening bars of the Star Spangled Banner. Tell you what: call Wyche Fowler, he probably has a Pavlovian drool response to it by now.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:24:00 PM -- |  

 

Sure wish we could trace those bullets to the rifle that fired them
Instead of focusing on what to call a sniper murderer besides "sniper murderer" ("Terrorist"? "Chickenshit"? "Very bad man?" -- links via various Henley posts), I'll go ahead and open a discussion of a simple preventive measure.

That would be a ballistics registration system that allows any given bullet to not merely be matched with another bullet from the same weapon, but with filed documentation about that weapon. But as the New York Times' Fox Butterfield reports ("Law Bars a National System for Tracing Bullets and Shells"):

The technology exists to create a national ballistic fingerprint system that would enable law enforcement officials to trace bullets recovered from shootings, like those fired by the Washington-area sniper, to a suspect.

Such a system would have been of great use in the Washington case, in which six people were shot to death, because so far bullet fragments are virtually the only evidence.

But because of opposition by the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, only two states have moved to set up a ballistic fingerprint system, and Congress has prohibited a national program, experts say.

It's true that one of those states is Maryland. But the other is New York, and the law only applies to new weapons, meaning our local sniper had plenty of alternatives to a Maryland-store-bought rifle to put in his cold, hateful fingers.

To me, that argues for expanding the reach of such a program to the federal level, and subjecting all weapons to ballistics fingerprinting. Opponents like James Tartaro make some good counterarguments ("Ballistic 'Fingerprint' Scheme Far from a Magic Wand"): criminals could circumvent the program by defacing the barrels or other key parts of their weapons, or they could substitute other firearms less easily "fingerprinted," like shotguns.*

But neither concern would apply to more than a fraction of the arms fired in the commission of crimes, and for these, we'd simply be no worse off than we are now. Moreover, the simple measure of a re-registration program -- owners bring their guns in periodically for re-registration of their ballistics patterns -- would help minimize the "defacement" concern and the "what about old weapons" concern yet further. Evidence of significant ballistics changes or failure to appear would be a red flag for law enforcement.

And sure enough, a national system may be Tartaro's real concern, emerging late in his article:

The NRA has been dubious of this technology-based handgun DNA scheme because it would involve a sort of national registration system. The make, model and serial numbers would have to be linked to the samples on the digital files, and it wouldn't take long to link any serial number through other trace techniques. Pataki and Glendening would say that shouldn't bother anyone who is law-abiding; they have nothing to worry about.

I wonder if Tartaro's concern about national registration systems extends to car license plates or not. But at any rate, such a registry is not a Second Amendment concern -- quite the opposite: it would be faithful to the letter of that amendment, which invokes "a well-regulated militia" as the expected benefit of and requirement for the right to bear arms. As its defenders well know, the Second Amendment states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

...and not simply: The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed (as the NRA home page would have it). Just as any army maintains control over and detailed accounts of the guns in its weapons lockers, so would this kind of registry establish the kind of national census of firearms needed to "well regulate" those arms and the militias -- real or virtual -- that use them. Hunters could continue to hunt; families could continue to have their last line of defense against criminals. God-damned snipers shooting 13-year olds lose, the public wins.

Of course, I'm not counting on this measure to become federal law any time soon, because any conceivable gun control measure will appear to be the proverbial "slippery slope," "beginning of the end," or "salami tactics," (so that "reasonable" positions like Glenn Reynolds' evaporate on close reading) to gun fanatics, because gun owners take ever more expansive views of their "rights" (no registration, no ban on assault weapons, no waiting periods, nothing) and because no one looks forward to bitter political debates with armed opponents.


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*Needless to say, the NRA doesn't like the Maryland law either. But its reasons are either disingenuous (no crimes solved, manpower allocated: it's a new program limited to new weapons in a single state. I'd be shocked if it had solved a crime yet), or solved by a national program featuring repeat inspections. I suspect a well-drafted law, a good solicitor general and an honest Supreme Court -- I can always dream -- could overturn or limit the Haynes v. U.S. case the NRA cites to support the contention that such ballistics evidence would constitute self-incrimination.

UPDATE, 10/25: Welcome Weblog readers! You have gone back in time to October 8. Your comments and discussion are welcome. For followup articles to this one, see a 10/9 post above (middle ground in the gun debate?), two 10/18 posts (discussing James Madison and the Beauty of Gray) and/or a 10/25 one (discussing the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and Dave Kopel, noted gun rights writer). Also, consider visiting an exchange on the topic of ballistic fingerprinting between Mark Kleimann and Juan "Non-Volokh" here. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:02:00 AM -- |  

 

Reconstructive remarks
I've just caught up with Sergeant Stryker, and what do I read? On September 28, he mused judiciously about the Confederacy:

Thank God Sherman and Sheridan put down that rotten culture. It was evil and wicked to the core and no amount of romanticizing will change that basic fact. It was a society and economy based on slave labor. It deserved to be utterly destroyed.

... resulting in instant "newsrack" honor roll status for Mr. Stryker. Commenting on the inevitable storm of indignant comments that followed, Stryker writes in a second post:

It's interesting in that you find the same spins, myths, half-truths, evasions and diversions from many Southern defenders as you do from Islamist apologists... I suspect that a hundred or so years from now, educated Muslims will be defending the Intifadah and the Jihad against the West as an honorable fight against Israeli foreign occupation and American hegemony and corruption. They'll have all sorts of facts and opinions to back up their claims, our descendents will have theirs and I doubt the twain shall ever meet.

Indeed. This leads me to a few skeptical remarks about the expected benefits of planting the precious seed of democracy in the fertile valley of the Euphrates. The Arab world may hate us no matter what; in a free and fair votes, they might just get to say so democratically instead of via dictatorships and royal clans. The Germany/Japan counterexample fails in many respects, but chiefly in that there was a common foe to mobilize against -- and keep American public attention focused. It may not be exactly what Stryker meant, but I'll suggest it's likely post-war Iraq may have a lot in common with the post-war South: a failed Reconstruction that ultimately left many of the same people on top and at the bottom as before the bloodshed began, and that left the region with more self-pity than insight about why that bloodshed took place.

A failed post-war policy doesn't prove a war itself was wrong, of course. But in view of the United States' decidedly mixed post-war track record, an American post-war policy that has not yet even been carried out -- for year after year after boring, expensive year --can't reasonably justify a looming war either.

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Edit, 10/7: added "and that left the region..."
Update, 10/7: For a similar opinion, see this Shibley Telhami op-ed ("A Hidden Cost of War in Iraq") in today's New York Times. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:09:00 PM -- |