Useful Fools

People from Roger Simon’s blog and commenters community liked the following piece, which first appeared there as a comment, and it was suggested that I post it here. The piece was written in a stream-of-consciousness effort, with no time for editing or review, and I was shocked to find the number of spelling errors. There are probably still a few grammatical whoopses.

This is the story of how I arrived at my current political philosophy and specifically my mission this year of opposing John Kerry’s efforts to win the presidency.
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Bruce Schneier, in the following article argues that a national ID card system would not make us safer and in fact would be worse than useless.

Schneier is a very smart guy and a well respected practitioner in cryptography, but his arguments too often seem tainted by a bias towards privacy and against security concerns. Personally, if I want a code designed or evaluated, Schneier is one of the people I would go to first. But if I wanted a secure system involving humans, I would look at how the military does it, because they have vast experience and security requirements of tremendous importance, such as preventing accidental or rogue nuclear launches while maintaining the ability to launch in less that 15 minutes, verifying the identity of people with access to information that, if released, could cause grave harm to the nation, and doing this with many different sorts of people.
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A friend of mine, who is tired of the economic illiteracyand demoguery on the “Haliburton” issue comments:

If Haliburton isn’t making a good profit, the the school teachers should demand their money back!

His point: Haliburton, like most evil capitalist running-dog imperialist-helper worker-oppressing environment-destroying corporations is owned largely by retirement accounts, with teachers holding some of the highest stakes.

He also really likes corporate taxes, because they are not progressive. They are simply passed on to consumers, not favoring the poor over the not-so-poor.

Finally, some sense is being written about The Patriot Act. Legal scholars Posner and Yoo write:

Civil libertarians would have us believe that the Patriot Act allows CIA and NSA agents to roam freely through the country detaining anyone they please. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Patriot Act represents a modest retrenchment from an overcautious interpretation of FISA, but nothing like the pre-1978 regime of warrantless searches.

In other words, before 1978, for the first 200 years of our republic, national security searches required no warrant. FISA instituted a reasonable requirement for warrants, and The Patriot Act modernizes those requirements.

They also comment that

Putting aside the hysterics, the worst thing about the Patriot Act is its Orwellian name.

Pointedly, they note

But some think that even a small restriction of civil liberties can never be justified. These people think that, as a mark of our commitment to freedom, courts should not allow the government to invade our civil liberties even during emergencies. The truth is the opposite. Civil liberties throughout our history have always expanded in peacetime and contracted during emergencies. During the Civil War, the two world wars, and the Cold War, Congress and the president restricted civil liberties, and courts deferred; during peacetime, civil liberties expanded.

And finally, they end with this chilling coda:

It took Pearl Harbor to shatter the complacency of the American public. We can only hope the absence of an al Qaeda attack on American soil during the last two years will not lull us back into our pre-Sept. 11 stupor.

[emphasis added]

Much talk and a few judicial rulings have been made about the impact of the first amendment on the Do Not Call law. Even Edward at Zonitics gets it wrong this time! [NOTE: 10/28 Edward is rendering his opinion of how the court will rule, not his personal views. Hence my characterization of his article is incorect]

The important part of the law is not about the speech, it is about the circumstances under which one can be disturbed by a ringing telephone. As with many other laws, the *purpose* of the call is a valid discriminator (whether we agree with the chosen purposes or not) as is the identity of the caller.

I don’t see any first amendment issue here until the conversation has been started by mutual agreement by both sides. Nowhere in the first amendment do I see wording that I *must* listen to someone, nor do I see anything that implies that if I *must* listen to one group of people, I have to listen to all.

Ringing my phone is not speech. It is like ringing my doorbell. It is trespassing and use of my resources unless I want it or you have a good and legal reason to do it!

For those who complain and demand government intervention when the marketplace doesn’t produce what they want:

Thanks an a tip of the hat to Vox, whom I hope gets better soon!

You wouldn’t know it from the domain name, but this blog has elevated flaming and fisking to a high art. The job is outstanding and well worth reading (unless you are the target, but if you are, you deserve to suffer).

The only comparison I can think of is chewings out by Navy Chief Petty Officers - a breed of humans (sort of) who practice the most creative and effective cursing ever heard.

Oh, btw, the blog name is “The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.”

Sharp Knife gets it pretty much right about The Patriot Act in my humble opinion.

Which is to say that, apart from its inflammatory name, it is needed.

The Washington Times reports that stores are making rebates easy to spend.

WOW,I thought! I can go buy a disk drive or other widget and actually spend the rebate!
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