Dean's World

CNN is reporting that the Pope has been given last rites.

This doesn't mean he's dying per se. It's common to do this for someone who's extremely ill; some people have it more than once in their lifetimes. Nevertheles....

It appears that The Queen and I shall be attending Blog Nashville.

This looks like fun.

Aaargh! This guy was the best Dr. Who since Tom Baker!

He quits after one episodeseason??

(Thanks Paul Burgess.)

I haven't read the actually report on the nation's intelligence services yet. Anyone know where to find it? The news reports haven't been all that promising, looking like they're trying to find scapegoats rather than give an honest evaluation, but I sense that may be press spin more than reality. The Washington Post's story is fairly well balanced, but others have been all over the map.

An important thing to understand is that intelligence is never 100% accurate, and much of intelligence work involves weighing your best guesses and estimates against each other. Demanding 100% accuracy is impossible and is likely to produce disastrous results. But you can't let people evade accountability either.

I'd really like to read the actual report.

* Update * The Indepundit has an excellent analysis.

In the criminal justice system, there are two possible unjust outcomes: the first is a false negative. This happens when the guy is guilty, but walks. The second unjust outcome is a false positive-- a person is innocent and is put behind bars. It is impossible to ever rid our system of both of these, and unlikely that we could really rid ourselves of either of them. To make matters worse, by and large, to when we lessen the effects of one of these injustices, we tend to make the other worse. I am about to argue for a mitigation of the second problem, as I feel it is more of a concern that the first...

Let me take a moment, then, to explain why I feel it is worse. When a type 1 injustice occurs, we have a victim. When a type 2 injustice happens, we have at least 2 victims-- the original victim, and the non-guilty person who is now a virtual slave of the State (the only kind of slavery still legal under the US constitution, interestingly). Under both injustices, the guilty is still walking the streets, and so there is just as likely a chance for yet more victims...

I believe that a type 2 injustice is also more likely to happen. During the criminal justice process, the entire vast apparatus of the State is arrayed against a single citizen. This is a bit of an overstatement-- the CIA, and (I believe) the Armed Forces are legally barred from becoming involved. Everyone else, however, is able to jump on in-- from local police, county sheriffs, State cops, the FBI, ATF, CPS, ect. Indeed, recall that it was the IRS who brought down Al Capone. Imagine that all of that is brought down on (or potentially brought down on) the head of one potentially innocent citizen. That citizen is believed guilty by a single beat cop who, being human, is utterly fallible...

Between that citizen and unjust punishment is whatever legal team they can muster. Some defendants have US$8 million to spend on the greatest legal team ever assembled. Most have to make due with a court appointed lawyer. These lawyers are often overworked and nearly always despised. Offhand, I can’t think of a single criminal defense attorney who went on to a governorship, or Supreme Court judgeship. Granted, I am no legal historian, but this point bears thinking on: cops are loved, prosecutors are loved, defense attorneys are hated...

Public Defenders that public defenders are overworked is axiomatic. Indeed, in one famous case, the Defense attorney actually repeatedly fell asleep during the trial! This cannot be the best justice America can provide. I don’t think so, at any rate...

My suggestion is a simple one. For ever dollar a municipality spends on the District Attorney’s office, or any other prosecutor office, it must spend a matching dollar on defense attorneys. This would still not be entirely fair; the police would still be doing a lot of research that the defense attorneys would have to do themselves, but it would be a step in the right direction. It is simply not axiomatically true that anyone who is on trial must be guilty; Americans are no more infallible than anyone else. Therefore we are going to run into many cases where the innocent are put on trial. Let us be as committed to protecting the innocent as we are to prosecuting the guilty...

From my (chronically overfilled) inbox comes a note from Mike Olds:

Hey there. I'm a reader of your blog who saw you posted a bit about WWII in Japan.

Right now I am in Palau (search for the battle of Peleliu) searching for the remains of MIA's and POW's. There's a blog from this expedition at bentpropsupporters.blogspot.com and a history of previous expeditions at bentprop.org. Check it out, you won't regret it.

I checked it out. I didn't regret it.

Go. Now.

Sean Kinsell is tired of being labeled a conservative.

I mentioned this yesterday, but I'm going to mention it again because I'm so impressed: the Neo-Libertarians are singing our song, Sean. (Password tnlv1i1 to read it.)

I know it's all but over, but I found nothing surprising in this Florida lawyer's perspective on how Terri Schiavo's family got shafted by the system.

(Read it before commenting. Link via Scott Harris.)

The latest Carnival of the Vanities is at Eric Berlin's blog.

I wish I'd noticed this item sooner: the May 24 issue of Science includes a paper by a North Carolina paleontology team who have recovered a fragment of a Tyrannosaurus Rex's femur and, instead of discovering a normal fossil, they ahve what looks and acts an awful lot like soft tissue. Indeed, have a look at that sample photograph over there on the left--it's one of many photos of her specimen.

Press release from her university here. Pretty good writeup with more photos in GeoTimes here.

They're they're pretty sure that they can't extract DNA from something like this, but they aren't quite willing to say it would be impossible just yet. In any case the whole thing is making big waves in paleontology at the moment--as you might well imagine.

I've been working on a novel for the last year and a half. Work on the project often leads me to reading the oddest things, seeking inspiration and perspectives. I find myself reading stuff written by published novelists a lot, even if it's about a type of novel I don't normally read (mysteries, romances, westerns, spy novels, etc.).

One of the more amusing pieces I've read recently is an essay by the late Elizabeth Mansfield entitled Why I Am Not Jane Austen: An overview of today's romantic fiction and how it got that way. Parts of it had me laughing out loud. For example, she defines a type of romance novel known as a "Bodice Ripper":

The truth is that the historical novel — five parts swash to one part love, and all of it heavily overlaid with historical detail — became a dinosaur. The audience (mostly women, who make up the majority of readers of novels anyway) which cared only for the consummation (with a kiss and a blackout) of the love affair between the dashing Captain of the Guard and the Duke's imperious daughter, had to skim through hundreds of pages of battle mayhem and political intrigue. The publishers began to perceive that they got more readers if they gave them more love than swash or history. And, with the tremendous success of a book called Forever Amber, they realized that sex, not history, would sell historicals.

Nevertheless, publishers waited for another Gone With the Wind for two decades. It didn't happen. But something did in the early 70s, and her name is Rosemary Rogers. Rumor has it that her book, WICKED LOVING LIES would never have been read, except that an editor was going away for what she thought would be a boring weekend and took the fattest manuscript from the slush-pile to keep her company. "It's junk," she reported the following Monday, 'but I couldn't put it down." The publisher bought it and the result was amazing. "It was like printing money," the overjoyed editor said.

That was the beginning of what in the trade are called bodice-rippers, and they account for the condition of the historical romance today. They are so successful that they crowd most of the other romances off the shelves. A bodice ripper is five parts sex to one part history...and terrible history at that. One of them was shown to me by an editor because it was set in the Regency period. The author did not know the difference between England in 1810 and England in 1210. In the opening scene, two warring clans were facing each other across a stone dining hall, the men — so help me!-- carrying bows and arrows.

The ingredients of a bodice ripper are instantly recognizable. The cover illustration shows a bosomy female whose bodice is being ripped. It has to be fat (what is called in the trade a good read), and I think some editors require that the heroine be ravished every ten pages. The emphasis is on plot rather than character, the action is movement without motivation. The books infuriate feminists, who understandably object to females being repeatedly ravished and often enjoying the ravishment, yet the market for them is amazing and insatiable. The women who read them are avid readers who devour several a week. These are the most successful romances (with the possible exception of the contemporaries, which I'll describe anon.)

More here. I was a bit saddened to see that Mansfield had died in 2003. I'm sure I would have enjoyed meeting her, even if I'm quite certain I'll never write that sort of novel. ;-) Still, her description of the genre even made me seek out information on "Forever Amber," which led me to this interesting historical lookback review in The Guardian.

It's a world of publishing I'll never be a part of, but it's a fascinating little look into the psyche of a big part of the population.

(By the way, yes, the entirely different sort of novel I'm working on is almost done--now why hasn't some literary agent pounded on my mailbox to ask to see a synopsis and sample chapter yet? It's pretty damned good.)

Art Chrenkoff celebrates his first blogiversary.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how some people will excuse any amount of torture, any amount of butchery and murder, so long as it's done by a Marxist. Indeed, not only that, but they'll do anything they can to smear and silence those who speak up, especially in places like Hollywood.

Val Prieto calls it, rightly I think, The New McCarthyism.

A few months ago I noted that one of the big problems for America's left wingers is that, while the right was forced long ago to confront the fascists and such in their midsts, the left had yet to fully confront the communist apologists among them. A bunch of people on the left laughed at me. Are you guys still laughing, or are you finally starting to see it? (And please, dispense with the "well they're not talking about me!" baloney. Are you seeing it yet or aren't you? Because it really is a problem, gang, and it only speaks to your own intellectual integrity if you can't or won't acknowledge that it's there--and very real.)

Well I must admit to being surprised. Jessica Sierra? She's got one of the best voices.

I love Nadia but I guess I see why other people aren't loving her. I guess she'll be gone soon, which is a letdown for me. I could agree on Anwar.

Honestly if the world weren't full of pre-teen girls Constantine would be gone now.

...when the Detroit Symphony is doing shows playing musical selections from Final Fantasy.

The folks at Q&O have begun what they're calling the "Neo-Libertarian Network," and have published the first edition of their newsletter, "The New Libertarian."

You can read a free copy of their first edition by clicking right here. It's a PDF, and you'll also need to enter a password to read it. The password is "tnlv1i1".

I'm not sure if I'm a neolibertarian or not, but I think I'm awfully close to what they're driving at.

Speaking of libertarianism in general, I've long thought of the hard-core libertarians--the really serious, no-compromisers--as the Marxists of the right. Interestingly enough, Scott Kirwin sent me an article in The American Conservative recently which makes that exact point, and makes it quite well: Click here to read Robert Locke's "Marxism of the Right".

Note: I'm no big fan of The American Conservative, but this is a good article. But it looks like the Neo-Libertarians are trying to address the very defects in libertarianism that Locke complains about.

PC World's Stephen Manes thinks he sees a trend toward companies improving their technical support.

Although he doesn't say so, I sense that part of this may be that some companies are starting to see that outsourcing tech support jobs overseas doesn't work out all that well for them.

Way back in the day, I did a post asking if Microsoft was replaceable. I looked at a trio of applications and tested them against their Microsoft equivalents. I decided to try it again, this time going so far as to replace the operating system itself. I found a lot of features to admire, but a couple of glaring holes in the system.

I am going to first recount the experience, then tell the bad things about Linux generally, and end on a positive note with the good things.

For those who care, System specs:

The process: First thing I tried was Mandrake 10.1. The installation was fairly straightforward, though the partitioning aspect was a pain. When I point it at a chunk of empty disk space, I expect it to salute and install. Instead, it wanted me to play around with settings and mount points. But I got everything set up...

Mandrake had issues. It was unable to find my sound card, and wasn’t able to connect to the internet, despite spotting both of my network cards. After a couple hours of fiddling, I gave up and blew it out.

Next up was XandrOS. The XandrOS installation was much simpler, and it found my soundcard and network. It had some rather nice features, which I’ll get to later. Weirdly, I had a several application crashes, as well as having the system suck up a lot of RAM. At least, I presume that's what happened, as my I had no system resource monitor to tell me for certain. It might have been video card issues, though I was able to install the latest drivers...

I turned the monitor off twice during my several hours with it, and discovered that when I turned it on, everything was blurry. Logging out and back in again cleared up the problem, but give the other weirdness, I decided to blow that out, and try something else...

The last distribution I tried was Red Hat'sFedora Core 3 Fedora went in smoothly, found my network, found my sound card, had no RAM issues, and couldn’t find my other drives. My hard drive has a trio of partitions, one of which has Linux on it, the other Windows, and the third has a bunch of utilities, my movie files, and all my music files. Fedora wasn’t willing to let me access them, saying I didn’t have permission. At least, I think those were the drives; HHD01 is not the way I would have designated a drive, and the place it buried them is not at all a user friendly interface decision.

Fedora had a nice update function, just press a few buttons and it was ready to install all the new components-- including updating the Gnome interface! It took me about 7 hours to actually download all the updates, though, leaving me mire than a bit annoyed. Since I have a DSL line, This shouldn’t have taken quite as long. Once downloaded, installation only took a few minutes, and crashed my system...

The Bad: Yeah, the above is fairly negative. None of those problems seem inherent to Linux generally, though, just to the distributions. The constant problem Linux had was installing programs. Here is the way it should work: I download a program. If necessary I unzip the program, I click the icon called "installer", or some such. Then it shoves the program wherever I tell it to go, puts a shortcut on the start/launch/application menu, and asks me if I want one in the quick launch area.

How it does work: I download a program, finding it wherever it ended up, despite the fact that I told to land on the desktop, unzipping where necessary. If the program is nice, it just needs to be shoved into a spot on my hard drive, and I need to create a shortcut on the quick launch menu., changing the icon so as to be more pretty. I don't know how to get a shortcut on the application menu. If the program isn’t nice, I need to open a terminal, make compile, wave a magic wand and to the hokey pokey. When that fails, I scream and throw the program in the garbage. Oh well, I can live without Thunderbird...

Also, every distribution maker spent time making the desktop look pretty. The application makers didn't. Even Firefox looked blockier and uglier than the window’s version. Along with that, did you know font’s are intellectual property? Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple each own a version of Times New Roman. This means that visiting the same webpage will look different depending on which OS you are using. The Linux fonts are a little bit harder to read than the Apple and MS ones...

The Good: Did I rag on Linux too much? There are problems, and glossing over them does no one any good. However, there are some big successes as well. Indeed, every little feature I’ve thought should be in Windows was present in at least one distribution of Linux. A dictionary seems to be built into the interface, allowing spell check to be easily integrated into any program that needs it. Word processors, Email, even Instant messaging...

Wallpaper changing was interesting; with XandrOS, I was able to tell it that certain pictures were available, and to cycle through them every 10 minutes. Windows has a similar program, but it isn’t as configurable, nor is it built into the system. Multiple desktops are a fairly nice feature, though they should be called "work areas" rather than "desktops", as your icons and system tray stay in the same spot every time...

A hell of a lot of programs came pre-loaded with each Distro. Given my experiences trying to add new ones, this is a good thing. The applications were varied, useful, and most of them easily updateable...

Verdict: Linux is almost ready for prime time. Once the issues I mentioned earlier get fixed (and they are fixable), Linux will be a viable desktop contender even for my parents. And once they are fixed, Microsoft needs to be very scared...

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is available at Back of the Envelope.

...and likes what he sees.

Publius Pundit (newly added to the blogroll) has an excellent news roundup of the latest developments in the fight for freedom in Lebanon. Click here to read it.

In related news, Will Franklin has an excellent roundup of his own, and notes some fascinating statistics about young people in various countries, including Lebanon, which look to be on the verge of democratic reform. Click here and read the whole thing.

On a more ominous note, Dr. Zin over at Regime Change Iran notes that Iran's mullah-regime seems to be making moves to supplant the Syrians in Lebanon.

I don't think the mullahs will succeed. The oppressive regime of the ayatollahs in Iran is hated by most of the Iranian people, and will certainly be even less welcome among the Lebanese. The free world will need to watch the situation, though, and stand ready to help the Lebanese people in their struggle for freedom.

It's not that difficult to pronounce, you know:

Keer. Gih. Stan.

Kyrgystan.

Will Franklin has many reasons you should care about it. And Publius Pundit will give you the latest developments there.

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!" --Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

"The Wall" meaning the wall that Che Guevara so happily put people up against to shoot them.

But Che didn't always bother with the wall. One of his favored methods of killing was to tie his victim to a chair, gag him, walk around the room a bit ranting at him, and then slowly walk up, pistol in hand — and splatter the victim's brains and skull across the room while his companions watched.

Why do I bring all this up? Well yesterday, I noted Val Prieto's piece on Che's cheerful everyday execution of Christians during his "glorious revolution" in Cuba. In response to that, some faux-liberal left-wing twit posted an incoherent rant on his blog about me, Fulgencio Batista, George Custer, Ariel Sharon, and King David.

Yeah, you got it. Instead of just acknowledging that Che was a sadist and a mass-murderer, the guy changed the subject to the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ!!!!!

What is it about totalitarian hate-freaks that whenever they're confronted with the monstrous crimes against humanity committed by one of their heroes, they think they can make it go away by changing the subject? And what is it with their creepy fascination with jews, anyway?

Mind you, I can sort of understand bringing up Batista, the man who Fidel and Che toppled. Batista was a gangster, a thug and a thief. He killed political opponents and cracked down hard anyone objecting to his thuggish regime.

On the other hand, anyone who's looked at what's happened on that island over the last 50 years knows the truth: Fidel has killed and tortured and imprisoned far more people than any dictator in Cuban history. He has also created more poverty and suffering than any other Cuban leader in history. Yet still people make a hero out of his buddy, the sadistic murderer Che Guevara?

Oh thank you Che! You helped replace a brutal thug named Batista with an even more brutal thug named Castro! And in the process you helped make the poor of Cuba even poorer, helped further suppress free speech, and were proud to institutionalize torture and terror for everyday Cubans! On top of all those glorious things, you wrote poetry!

Che, you looked so handsome and dashing on your motorcycle! But you were even more handsome and dashing when you were terrorizing Cuban peasants, blowing their skulls to bits with your personal sidearm! You romantic Stalin-loving poet you!

The twit anti-semite apologist for Che also had the audacity to say that Che was a "symbol" for "Latin Americans." Yes, certainly he is, and the Latin Americans at Cubanet will be happy to tell you just exactly what that symbol means to them: Just click here to read what these Latin Americans have to say about the "symbol" Che.

And here's what some other Latin Americans have to say about the symbol Che.

Che Guevara was a murdering pig. If you're an apologist for him, you're an apologist for a murdering pig--and an enemy of human rights.

Meanwhile, Bridget Johnson notes that it's has some serious suggestions for movies Hollywood should be making, but isn't.

Michael Demmons notes a proposed Michigan law to allow doctors to refuse to treat gay patients.

I have to admit to being confused by this. Does the law currently force doctors to see patients they don't want to see? Also the bill seems designed to allow a health care facility to refuse to offer abortions or other treatments based on religious objections.

I'm pro-choice, but I don't think any health care facility should be required to offer abortions. And should a doctor be forced to treat someone she doesn't want to treat? Well, maybe if it's a state-run medical facility...

I guess I'm confused. I'd question the ethics of any doctor who refused to offer medical treatment to someone just because he was gay though.

I confess I often do not understand the thinking of the government of South Korea. They're alternately hostile toward, and yet extremely friendly toward, North Korea. I never quite understand the thinking.

The most upsetting thing I've heard lately, though, is that the government there is actually covering up evidence of human rights atrocities by the Kim regime. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

On a bleached and scratchy video image smuggled out of Kim Jong Il's closed regime, blindfolded prisoners are tied to white posts on a rocky landscape, shot three times, and dragged away. The rare video footage of summary executions in North Korea - a practice considered routine in the North but never captured on film - was taken by hidden camera March 1 and 2, and smuggled through China to South Korea.

At the time, refugee groups in Seoul were ecstatic. It looked like a human rights slam-dunk: Refugees from the North have long described summary executions - public spectacles where prisoners are shot moments after a death sentence is proclaimed. The shootings are a form of social control via terror, experts say.

However, the story goes on to note, while the film has been shown in other southeast Asian nations, the South Korean government is forbidding the film to be shown to South Koreans.

You can read more on the story by clicking right here.

You can also see a three-minute excerpt of the video by clicking right here.

Remember, these people were shot for one reason: trying to leave the country without permssion.

(Thanks, Robert.)

This painting, entitled "Starry Night," may be the most popular painting in the world save, perhaps, for the Mona Lisa:

As it happens, today is the painter's 152nd birthday. You can learn more about his life and work by clicking right here.

I guess the famed Chewbacca Defense finally failed.

Defective Yeti has a tribute.

So we're down to 10. My two favorites, Bo and Nadia, picked good but not great songs, whereas some others (especially Vonzell) were absolutely on fire. Nikko gave his best performance yet.

If I had my druthers Constantine would be gone soon, but I think twenty billion teenaged girls will keep him in the competition for some time, maybe even all the way to the end.

If I had to pick who will leave tomorrow, it'll be either Scott or Anthony--but I fear my lovely Nadia may once again be in the bottom three. :-(

In case you dont know it, Randall Terry is an obnoxious anti-abortion activist who tends to inflame people.

I mention that in passing since he's mention a few times in this interesting commentary and link roundup about Terri Schiavo and "theocracy", which I suggest you read.

Rusty has lots of details.

Val notes a letter recently sent to Carlos Santana, who was such big idiot that he wore a crucifix over a Che Guevara t-shirt at the Oscars.

Which would be sort of like wearing a Star of David over an "I Love Hitler" t-shirt.

When our obscene campaign finance "reform" laws were enacted a few years ago, they were challenged in court. The Supreme Court wound up upholding the "reforms," but noted when they did so that it was a clear abridgement of free speech. They just held that reducing the appearance--the appearance!--of corruption was such a compelling state interest that the laws could stand anyway.

Ron Coleman notes other disturbing trends like this by the Supreme Court.

"When banks compete, you win!"

--tagline of some damn internet company.

It is a truism that free markets are a boon for consumers. When multiple firms create similar goods (or perform similar services), consumers are able to rend the flesh from advertising glosses and drink the sweet marrow of the best possible price point. Free markets cause competition (or, rather, competition is a necessary precondition to calling a market a free one), and competition lowers prices while raising quality...

Ironically, Firm owners don’t like competition at all. Why should they? Competition forces them to work just to maintain current levels of profitability. Also, there is the very real possibility that they won’t be smart/lucky enough to survive-- Darwin is a bitch and this is my retirement we’re talking about...

So, owners contrive to create monopoly situations. They aren’t always successful, but economies of scale and network effects combine in a lot of industries to suck competition right out of them. As a case in point, in order for Microsoft to lose its 95%+ share of desktop space, it has to either screw up more than anyone has ever screwed up before, or interoperable standards need to be created to loosen network effects. This may well be in the process of happening, and would be a brilliant example of the market in action if it ever does...

Another example is the bandwidth industry. There is, in effect, a limited number of space for wires to connect to a home, and once the wires go in, few of us are willing to dig up the ground to install more of them. Moreover, most municipalities are going to be unwilling to let new companies tear through concrete every few days to lay yet more fiber optic cable. What is going to happen is that most cities are going to get only a couple-- at most-- separate tracks for bandwidth to travel on. Two companies will fight each other until one dies, and then monopoly will reign...

Unless! If the government steps in and forces a bandwidth company to let every firm that wants to use its pipes to be able to pay a set price for that privilege, a natural monopoly can be turned into a competitive-- and free-- market...

This is the situation as obtained in the electricity market right now. In most areas, there is only one company who owns power lines. If they wish to be a monopoly, absent government regulations, they can do just that. A deregulation scheme that worked would have to take that into account, forcing the company which owned the lines to sell to the same rate to everyone...

And here we see the contradiction of a free market: there is nothing at all natural about it. The internal logic and drives of the market conspire against it. Only with constant (but extremely judicious) application of governmental interference can markets be free...

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. This week we've got the situation in Afghanistan, more remembrances of the war, a pretty Kurdish girl, background on the Ba'ath, a blogger who deserves all the readers that can be sent his way, and much, much more.

Here's the situation-in-Afghanistan-in-a-post from Afghan Warrior.

Abu Khaleel of A Glimpse of Iraq has some anecdotes about the Iraqi revolts against the British.

Riverbend has posted her remembrance of the beginning of the assault on Baghdad in 2003.

Mohammed of Iraq the Model has his own remembrance of the invasion of Iraq. It's, uh, somewhat different than Riverbend's.

Husayn of Democracy in Iraq (is here) responds to hate email.

Rose of Diary from Baghdad is preparing to leave for Dubai.

Over on Friends of Democracy there's some background on the Iraqi Ba'ath party.

Kurdo reports that during the recent Kurdish New Year sales of traditional Kurdish clothing reached record highs (includes picture of pretty Kurdish girl in traditional dress). That would appear to be a good metric for rising Kurdish nationalism. He's blogging up a storm by the way. Check out this post on Iraqi history: Iraq was designed to fail.

neurotic iraqi wife breaks the news that she's joining Hubby in Baghdad to her parents.

There's a remarkably good blog that's new to me: The Hanoudi Letter. He posts on a wide variety of subjects from the situation in Iraq to Iraqi politics to Terri Schiavo. He posts weekly. The kicker: Dr. Najeeb Haloudi, an ophthalmologist, at 70 is the oldest known Iraqi blogger. He'll be a regular stop of mine from now on. Hat tip: Iraqi Blog Count.

Finally, you might want to check out The Words That Come Out… a sporadic poetry blog from Iraq (in English). Hat tip: Iraqi in America (formerly Live from Dallas).

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

Yeah.

More here.

Jack Shafer gets it right.

Thanks for understanding and respecting the first amendment, Jack. Unlike some people.

I logged into my email this morning.

158 unread emails, plus about 30 I'd read but not responded to yet.

There is a phrase for this: "An embarassment of riches."

For riches they are. Each and every one. No complaints, honestly. But patience, please...

The Free Muslims Against Terrorisms' Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour says:

The loving and tolerant teachings of the Quran and Islam have been perverted over the years by hypocrites who twist the word of God to gain money and power. The consequences include the hateful ideology that has created several terrorist groups. This false doctrine of hate has been spread throughout the Middle East and even in America with Wahabi money, the sect practiced in Saudi Arabia.

They have more to say right here.

Did you hear the one about the hippy who ran out of drugs?

He suddenly looked around and said, "Man, this music SUCKS!"

(Tell me yours.)

A Christian friend recently wrote me about some of the things I'd written about various faiths in the last week or so. He'd wondered if he'd proselytized to me excessively, or seemed overbearing in any of it. I wrote him this in response:

Listen my friend, sometimes I tweak my Christian friends. Also sometimes my Jewish friends. I wish I had more Muslim friends--although I do have a few!--who were as willing to engage and discuss.

But honestly, if I were as angry at or contemptuous of my Christian friends as they sometimes think I am... well honestly I don't think they'd talk to me at all. Honestly, the one thing I have taken away from the Gospel, the one thing that endears me most to it and to its followers is this:

You take criticism seriously, and want to talk about it, rather than simply angrily denounce it.

I love that about you guys. Completely.

Thank you for listening.

I was not in the least bit sarcastic.

Weekend Pundit has resurrected the classic classes for men.

In fairness, I thought I'd mention again my own classes for women.

Keith Taylor notes one way bloggers could defy our masters in Washington's desire to suppress political dissent.

Although I intend to do everything I can to openly defy these vile laws, I'm glad our friends outside the States actually appear to have more respect for freedom of speech than Congress or the Supreme Court.

Well, I should say, there have been at least a few in Washington who actually care about the first amendment.

Well, one.

(Click the image if it looks cut off on your browser.)

In fairness, Mitch McConnell has also been a real First Amendment hero on this entire phoney baloney "campaign finance reform" issue from the beginning. Also, apparently John Conyers can actually read the first amendment, at least when it comes to bloggers (although I sadly suspect he supports the other provisions of these obscene laws).

There was a time in America where we faced an ever-increasing wave of violent crime. But, although many people seem unaware of it, violent crime is at record lows in the United States, and has been on an overall decline for darn near twenty years now.

That being the case, it would seem to me that as a society we are overdue for a re-evaluation of some of our stricter sentencing guidelines, and also to start thinking harder about helping prisoners reform themselves with an education and skills they can use when they get out of jail.

It appears that there's a growing movement of politicians on both sides of the aisle for just such reforms. Even Governor Schwartzenegger is on board.

Good.

(Via Weekend Pundit.)

Political scientist Rudy Rummel notes that Kofi Annan has an extremely admirable proposal for reform of the U.N. that would make it a great institution.

He also notes what will probably cause those reforms to fail to get beyond the proposal stage.

This post is going to assume a certain intuition of mine. It will presuppose a statement that I have no firm proof of-- indeed, I have no true definitions for. Hell for all I know, this hunch of mine might be accepted doctrine in economics. I am stating this up front so that I am not later asked to defend with rigorous proof something that I merely have an instinct on currently. The main point of this post is to spark a discussion, rather than to make an argument.

I believe that there is a difference between “wealth” and “money”. Money is a pre-condition for wealth, but not its guarantor, or summation. It is entirely possible to make money for one’s self without adding wealth. An example of this might be day traders at the top of the last business cycle, who owned pieces of companies worth a lot of money (on paper). They cashed out their stocks (creating money), and those stocks turned out to be worth a lot less than they were paid for them...

Perhaps then what I am hinting at, is the difference between long-term and short-term interests? It certainly seems that wealth and money are inextricably linked, though there seems to be a lag between them, with money going up (or down) before wealth...

If my intuition is correct, this might be a good definition of a market: a device to create wealth using money as a goad. Since agents and firms have different goals (respectively money and wealth), this sets up an agency problem, and perhaps explains the business cycle...

Well, am I full of it? Is this excepted wisdom? The comments section is open...

We've all heard the "environmental litany." We're running out of natural resources. The air and water are getting dirtier. People are getting sicker and starving at greater and greater rates because there isn't enough food to go around except for the wealthy fat countries. The forests are disappearing. The human population is exploding out of control and destroying the planet.

All of that is verifiably false. But people not only don't want to believe you when you tell them that, they actually tend to get angry when you try. Or to assume that you're nuts.

But it's all quite true.

The sad part is the natural outgrowth of the "doom & gloom litany" thinking is these people: the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

The sad part is, while they are happy to use humor, they are actually quite serious: they believe the world would be a better place if the human race simply died out.

I'd call that the ultimate in self-hatred, wouldn't you? So sad, because it's so unnecessary.

The world would be a much better place if more people would have children. In free countries, more people are assets, not liabilities. And no, that's not an ideological statement, not a "feel good" statement. It's just the truth.

I'm not sure what I'll remember as the dumbest story of the 2004 election season. I guess it's a tie whether it was the phoney story that we'd see a return of a military draft, or the Valerie Plame "outed spy" nonsense.

I guess I'll pick the Valerie Plame baloney, only because the phoney "they're bringing back the draft" story was serious enough that Congress actually voted on it (nearly universally against, mind you--only two members actually voted for it). The Plame nonsense, however, has dragged on and on and on and on--even long after it was pretty obvious that the only person who'd "outed" the "undercover agent" Valerie Plame was her husband Joe Wilson.

The mainstream press here in America had done their best to whip this phoney "scandal" into national news for well over a year--until prosecutors started threatening to force reporters to divulge their sources. Then all of a sudden the press started screaming that this whole story was a witch hunt. It reached the height of absurdity last Thursday, though, with major news organizations arguing that there was no proof a crime had actually been committed here, and demanding proof that a law was actually broken before harassing reporters any further.

Can you get more rich with irony? Apparently people in the press are all too happy to pass along half-assed allegations that smear people in government.... until one of their own is in the crosshairs. THEN they start asking whether there's any actual proof that a crime was committed?

Ah. You gotta love the press corps.

(Via Mark Noonan.)

Joanne Jacobs notes that Cambridge University has banned the wearing of kilts, and notes that the Scots are mad.

You'd better believe they are, Joanne, every last red-blooded man and woman among them! But... do you think they're at all upset about this new Cambridge policy?

The astounding amount of good news that's been coming out of Iraq has only gotten greater with time. It's getting so good, in fact, Art Chrenkoff is beginning to wonder if the mainstream media won't just put him out of business. My thinking is: don't bet on it. Any time the press has a chance to make it look like U.S. troops are failing in their mission, or that Arabs are incapable of or uninterested in democracy or freedom, and they'll glom onto it like Michael Moore onto a donut truck coated in fudge.

Otherwise they'll do do their best to be quiet as church mouses, just like always.

So, everybody: don't miss Installment 24 of the Good News from Iraq.

I see that some people are getting violent in South Africa. Well that's one way to debate treatment options.

In other news, looks like Kim Bannon, the HIV+ (viral load 20,000) lady who's suing the HIV testing kit manufacturers will be on television in New York.

Meanwhile, I keep forgetting to link this Neville Hodgkinson expose on AIDS drugs in Africa. (Lies all lies I tell you....)

I've never much liked Tom DeLay. Some of the smacks against him are just cheap political posturing, of course. The recent L.A. Times smear piece on him and his father was an incredibly low blow, for example. Alas, as today's Wall Street Journal points out, Tom DeLay smells bad, for entirely unrelated reasons, most of them his own making.

I remember being around for the "Gingrich Revolution" agitated for change throughout 1992 and 1993, and was swept into power in 1994. It's astonishing how much of the rhetoric being used by Democrats now against congressional Republicans sounds exactly like Newt Gingrich did back in those days.

The fact that Democrats are able to credibly voice so many of these complaints is almost entirely due to the Republican leadership--and most of that falls to Tom DeLay.

If the GOP is smart, they'll do what they can to ease this guy out of a leadership role by the midterm elections. If not, they'll deservedly begin losing power in the House--and no one who really cares about the country will shed a tear for them.

By the way, speaking of Terri Schiavo, the Journal also notes today some other people who've practiced hypocricy on State vs. Federal issues in the past.

I'm told that in Chicago, this is the sign the city puts up these days to warn people when they've put down rat poison in an area:

You know, that is just plain great graphic design. I remember growing up in Chicago and how unremarkable the "rat poison" signs were. On the occasions when I saw them, they were rather unobtrusive. This, on the other hand, just grabs your eye instantly doesn't it? Someone should get an award for that.

(Thanks, Jerry.)

Last week, on Good Friday, I noted that in the wake of 9/11 many Jews in America were frightened that Christian America might rise up against them in response, and also noted how condescending Christians often are toward faithful Jews.

When I noted this, some were stunned. Some were defensive. Some were incensed. Some were even--perhaps justifiably--offended.

Only one said that this revelation saddened him.

Were I a believing man, I'd say that he was the only true defender of the Gospel among them.

In any case, Kathy over at The Cakeater Chronicles asks why certain atheists seem to feel the need to proselytize. Well, see, here's the thing: am actually quite embarassed by rude atheists who rant about the evils of religion. I think that, at best, they're gigantic putzes. I think if I ever met Bill Maher, my biggest urge would be to kick him in the shins (for this and a whole bunch of other reasons). People who say "religion is evil" are a******s in my book.

I recognize that I live in a world wherein the vast majority of people believe in the supernatural. Even in "enlightened" places like Europe, where supposedly religion is unpopular, the vast majority of people believe in things like life after death, astrology, numerology, or something like that. So even if they say they "aren't religious," clearly, most of them are. Meanwhile, here in the United States, more than 80% of the population considers itself Christian.

That being the case, honest dialogue with Christians, as well as other people of faith, strikes me as something sensible to have.

You guys are just going to have to deal with the fact that some people like me have heard the Gospel, understand it extremely well, and still say "no thanks."

Furthermore, on this blog I have occasionally been critical of atheists (actually, I'm critical of atheists a whole lot), of some Jews, of many muslims, and of some Christians. Of the latter, the Christians I'm usually the most critical of are those who declare that the religion of Islam is an inherently violent, inherently terroristic religion, and that we should just "face up" to the fact that the entire Muslim world is the enemy of the United States and of Western civilization.

If you don't think such people exist, just spend some time at blogs like Little Green Footballs, or hang out at some of the Christian blogs where they feel free to bash away at all the flaws they perceive in Islam but take huge umbrage at any criticism of their own faith.

As someone who grew up Christian, who could be considered "culturally Christian," and whose family is almost entirely made of up Christians, I don't hesitate to say: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

I believe in and support America's Global War on Terror. I do not support muslim-bashing or the notion that we are "fools" if we do not "admit" that the "true enemy is Islam."

Some time ago I got an email from a Dean's World commenter asking me why I don't like the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I never answered because I had to think hard about it. But here's what he asked:

"According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "Jean Jacques Rousseau attempted to reconcile the natural rights of the individual with the need for social unity and cooperation through the idea of the social contract."

"Do you agree with this assessment? And is your dislike of Rousseau's ideas somehow rooted in the belief that natural rights and social contract cannot coexist?"

First off, I don't happen to believe that natural rights exist. You only have any rights at all because the rest of us pretty much agree that you do. Even if we disagree with some right that the law gives you, most of us agree that it's more important to respect the Rule of Law which sustains that right than to ignore it. So even when we don't like the result--say, we don't think you have a "right" to an abortion--most of us agree that respecting the law which gives you that right is more important than defying the law in order to prevent you from exercising that legally-given right.

In short: there are no "god given" rights, and there are no "natural" rights. There are only those given by the law. Without that, the only rights you'll ever have are those you can demand for yourself by brute force--and that becomes "might makes right," and it becomes chaos and oppression.

I view civilization as a long, tortuous, torturous, climb up out of the muck and mire. We as a race have, over thousands of years, pulled ourselves out of the primitive existence that Hobbes referred to as "Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, & Short." (Which, by the way, also happens to be the name of my law firm. [budoom-chee!])

At the core of Rousseau's philosophy, on the other hand, was the notion that civilization was ruinous and evil and corrupting. He believed that man in his natural state could be described as the so-called "noble savage," uncorrupted and untainted by the oppressive nature of civilization.

Mind you, if you look at anthropological data, that view of the "noble savage" is not, entirely, without merit. If you look carefully at what archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered, primitive hunter/gatherers generally lived somewhat longer, somewhat healthier lives than the more technologically advanced primitive agrarians. Their lives were just less stable and secure. But there's no evidence that they were ever less warlike, less cruel, or more enlightened in any meaningful sense--and theirs was obviously a dead-end path. If you look at any people living in primitivism today, the vast majority of them are delighted to latch onto things like radio, television, t-shirts, cars, vaccines, antiobiotics, and all those "corrupting" influences of civilization. We now live longer, safer, more secure lives than any primitive peoples.

There's a good reason why most primitive people are quick to grab the tools and comforts of civilization: primitivism, real primitivism, sucks ass. Furthermore, despite Hollywood romanticism, primitive people are no more "enlightened" than we are, and are just as inclined toward bad behavior when put into situations that encourage bad behavior.

Rousseau on the other hand chose to attack civilization as corrupt and evil by its very nature.

Rousseau also believed in the so-called "blank slate," wherein children were basically born uncorrupt and perfect, and that they only ever turned out bad if they were poorly raised. What caused poor childrearing? Why, civilization of course!

This "blank slate" thinking, the idea that there is no such thing as human nature, is probably responsible for more death and destruction in the last 100 years than any single philosophical idea in history. For it led the Marxists, the Fascists, and many others to believe that if you just repeated certain slogans often enough, they would become a reality. The ultimate expression of that thinking was Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Rousseau went to great lengths to describe ideal childrearing techniques, which basically involved parents doing as little as possible to inculcate values or morals in them. His theories on this were given great credence by many wealthy dilettantes, which is doubly amusing because Rousseau himself was a gigantic a*****e as a father: he had many children with his wives and mistresses, all of which he immediately threw into orphanages.

Rousseau was also a huge believer in emotion and sentiment over reason and logic. Better to cry and show your real emotions than to reason things out. Sentiment was more important to him than common sense. Marry this with his ideas of the "noble savage" and the idea that civilization is corrupt and evil and that children would turn out perfect as long as you avoided any civilizing influences, and it laid the path--in my view--for the idea that facts don't matter, human nature doesn't exist, and if we just raise kids with the right ideas, the world can be perfected.

I believe it was only a short step from there to the most murderous philosophies the world has ever seen. The Communist and Fascist experiments were based on that same basic idea: if we all just believe in a specific ideal, we can have Heaven on Earth. And if anyone gets in the way of that, well, they're just reactionaries and need to either be re-educated or destroyed.

Thus was born Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler--really, all of the worst ideologies of human history.

Although I am not a social conservative, and I have criticisms of some of those on the other side of Rousseau on many issues--religious conservatives share many of his same flaws, in my view--I honestly believe he was probably the single most destructive, not to mention just plain asinine, philosopher who ever lived.

I'm pleased that I'm not the only one who thinks so. While I've been chewing on this question for at least a month, this discussion over at Methuselah's Daughter finally got me off my duff enough to write about this. (And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one out there who thinks very little of "noble savage" romanticism.)

Mainstream media in England, WATCH OUT:

The Conservative Right is to turn to new American campaigning techniques and the internet to try to revive the party and overcome what it sees as opposition from the metropolitan Establishment. Only weeks away from the general election, senior Conservatives will open a new front today in the battle for ideas by creating a website advocating “social conservatism”.

It will invite people to bypass the media and put forward their own views on how the party should evolve.

The Times Online's political editor, Philip Webster, goes on to write:

The faction behind it.... wants people to use the increasingly popular practice of “blogging” — writing online diaries — to break the power of the broadcast media.

The toppling of Dan Rather, the veteran anchorman of evening news programmes on CBS in the United States, after “bloggers” exposed as false documents about President Bush’s military record is being cited as evidence of the way that the internet has given new power to ordinary people to influence events.

The website — conservativehome.com — is being started today by Tim Montgomerie, who was political secretary to Iain Duncan Smith when he was Tory leader and was head of the Conservative Renewing One Nation unit under William Hague.

It is independent of the Tory party, though supportive of it, but the website will inevitably be seen as the start of a fresh debate about where the party should move in the event of a third successive election defeat.

So as in the case of the Internet in its best moments (which are interspersed with its worst hack moments of knee-jerk ideology on both sides) the site will open up a major conversation on where that party should be headed:

The website combines the concepts of a think-tank and online newspaper and its aim is to provide a forum for the revival of Conservative thinking and policies. Mr Montgomerie is an expert on American politics and the way that the Right has used websites to bypass the mainstream media, which is felt to be broadly hostile to conservative ideas. It is funded by donations from private individuals.

The site will suggest a values-based approach to politics. It will favour tax relief, oppose British membership of the euro, support the strengthening of marriage and back pre-emptive action in the War on Terror. It will also advocate a broader form of conservatism, opposing the sale of arms to repressive regimes and suggesting that a “bias to the poor” should be its defining mission. Students will be a key target.

In its first phase, conservativehome.com is to try to persuade what it calls “social conservatives” to back the Tories at the election. The second phase will follow immediately. At that point, it will begin to urge Tory supporters and natural conservatives, particularly within the faith communities and environmental movement, to support “one nation” conservatism.

Don't be surprised if this kind of thing becomes the norm. If you follow the development of political races around the world, U.S. campaign techniques were basically cloned in various companies. The role of blogs as a useful tool for actual political parties or dedicated activists — plus the truly intellectual role of blogs being places where people can hold freewheeling conversations of ideas — can't help but spread throughout the world.

Rick Heller did a search on the terms "religious right" and "religious left." Guess what kinds of things he found?

Today is a day when many around the world take a needed break and savor a deepth breath.

It's Easter, a time of remembrance for Christians - and a time when traditions are passed on to young people.

The Seattle Times profiles some church goers and notes:

Three people from different walks of life, each with different ways of practicing their faith. Yet, at a time when Christianity has become politicized and polarized, these three also express a certain unity in what they believe it means to be Christian.

Today, some 159 million Christians in the United States, and about 1.9 billion worldwide, will celebrate Easter, marking the day they believe Jesus was resurrected. Orthodox Christians use a different calendar and will celebrate Easter on May 1.

I'm Jewish so I can give you this tidbit. Jews use a different calender with dates such as 100 B.C.F. — Before Chinese Food. But we digress:

Many churches deliver messages of hope. Others, tie in a holiday with the headlines.

And amid it all, a man suffering a bunch of ills in Rome marks the holiday in an unusual way for him...but he marks it nonetheless:

ROME — Pope John Paul's own suffering kept him physically away from his flock for the first time on Good Friday, but he appeared to the faithful via video, adding poignancy as Christians reflected on the suffering of Jesus on the most solemn day of the church calendar.

The faithful who gathered at the Colosseum for the Way of the Cross procession cheered and waved torches as the 84-year-old pontiff appeared in profile, sitting alone at the chapel watching the ceremony on a television screen under the chapel's altar.

John Paul sent a message to the crowd that was read by his vicar for Rome, Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini. In it, John Paul said he was spiritually among those at the Colosseum, recalling Christ's last hours.

"I also offer my suffering, so that God's design is completed and his word walks among the people," he said in the message. "I am near all those who in these moments are tested by suffering. I pray for each of them." It was touch and go whether to do this at all:

Vatican TV had installed giant television screens at the Colosseum to allow the Pope to appear via video linkup from the Vatican, but officials waited until the last minute to decide on the Pope's appearance, depending on his health.

Thousands of people gathered for the ceremony, and on the plateau overlooking the Colosseum where the Pope used to sit there was a torch-lit cross.

"We will miss him, but we know he's here, even if not physically," said Cecilia Paolombo, a 20-year-old Italian Girl Scout who was giving out torches to the faithful.

Some would say that's the story of Easter itself.

FOOTNOTE: I'm always struck this time of year by how well religions pass these traditions onto their children. I get to see this in my other incarnation. This week I did family shows for the festive Jewish holiday of Purim. Today I do my traditional one (they always want it the same time) for Easter Sunday, this time at a private residence in Carlsbad, CA. Kids always show that they know their religious holidays and live them, not just acknowledge them...

Sit at the pier watch the sun go down
Another lost little boy in a big old town
I want to laugh I want to cry
But no matter how hard I may try...

(No Googling)

...but does she belong on Mars?

We periodically love to remind readers that there are some unsung heroes out there in the Blogo-you-know-what -- the news aggregators.

They seldom get the kind of praise they deserve. The You-Know-Who Report gets all the publicity, since it runs SCREAMING HEADLINES and is closely allied with one political party. But there are some sites that are lesser known that are superb if you want to find out what's going on (and often more accurate than that other more famous site).

Here are a few of our favorites: Pundit Drome which gives you a quick look at a cross section of blogs (including Dean's World and a site I actually read several times a day, The Moderate Voice). WARNING: It is addicting.

The Roth Report which uses the format of The You Know Who Report. Sassy, hard-hitting and updated constantly. Conservative site. The Drudge Retort: Same idea, super-efficient as it delivers the goods. Liberal site. Dilby News Monitor is a relatively new site that is also patterned after THE SITE WITH THE SCREAMING HEADLINES (a virtual clone in fact) except it's smack dab in the center. It also has a SUPERB collection of streaming video links plus other extremely useful information you don't get on most news aggregators. Watching America which serves up foreign news stories related to the United States. Many of these are translated an only available in English on this site. Updated each day and a joy to read. Memeorandum is an ingenius site that takes an issue, gives you a link to click on articles that have high traffic -- and a cross section of blog writers that it tracks. Offers op-ed as well as breaking news stories and blogger reactions to them (click on the links). The Daou Report also gives you a cross section of bloggers on issues, from varying viewpoints. So good it was bought by Salon (in other words, you have to suffer through watching an ad to get to it).

Centerfield also has a great news blog aggregator...but at this writing the site won't come up. We'll revise this later Sunday if it does.

...and guess what country he's in? Can't? Read this.

Yet another problem for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay...this one is a biggie, a question raised about his credibility on the Terri Schiavo case.

It seems the Los Angeles Times did a little research and found out that Rep. DeLay's father had been bedridden some years ago and the family had to decide what to do — so they pulled the plug. But perhaps in those days he was merely a part of the Culture of Death:

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy unfolding in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the raging debate outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family standing vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly re-elected to a third term in the House, DeLay waited all but helpless for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to champion political intervention the Schaivo case. He pushed emergency legislation through congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And he is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.