The first thing Governor Switchback needs to change

If I understand Kansas's process correctly, the bar association elects 5 members to a committee and the governor appoints 4. That committee submits a list of names (I think 3) to the governor, and he appoints one of those three named to the court.  Which means that even with a conservative governor, house, and senate, if liberals controlled the bar association*, they could continue to put hand-picked liberals on the Supreme Court. Even over the wishes of every elected official and even every voter in the state.

Perhaps it is ironic that the above chart calls Kansas' arrangement "elitist." The history of such an arrangement goes back to the Kansas Populist - in the historical sense of the word - heydays and was specifically designed to introduce "expertise" into the process, to keep "corrupt" politicians from abusing the process and putting unworthy judges on the court.  After all, who could know better than other lawyers what lawyer was most qualified to sit on the Supreme Court? But it speaks to the incredible naivete' of Progressives both then and now.  Yes, one can make a good argument that lawyers may know best**, but it also assumes that what is best for the lawyers is what is also best for the rest of us, or that lawyers will put the interests of the public over their own interests, or that lawyers are somehow immune to the political machinations and temptations to power that Progressives found so abhorrent in politicians***.

Not to mention that as soon as you take the selection of members of the government's most powerful branch out of the hands of politicians - in other words, when you grant "independence" from the voters - you remove the reality of self-government.

UPDATE: Governor Switchback is on the case. Well, that's a relief.

* hey, it could happen. 
** I happen to think it a meaningless argument, because there is no objective qualification for the 'best' person to sit on the court.
*** The existence of the Fed shows that the same argument works for bankers as well.

When will fat become a matter of theology?

Science gets in the way of the Baptists'* favourite whipping boy:

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

The interesting thing to note in the above is not that heavy drinkers outlive non-drinkers, but the AA explanation: those abstainers used to be drinkers. To err is human, but so is to make data conform to your own prejudices. AA is no more guilty than Christians are in this respect.

To understand the point it is not even necessary*** to go to the Bible; all that is necessary is to ask why it is that the American Christians' opposition to any drinking stands in such stark contrast to a) the rest of Christendom, and b) historical Christianity. The answer is that for much of America's early history, pretty much everyone was drunk pretty much all the time. It has been alleged (based on a still-existing bar tab) that the 55 delegates to the Constitutional convention drank "54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer and seven bowls of alcoholic punch" in a single evening, two days before they signed off on the Constitution. The amount of liquor they drank in colonial times was phenomenal, far more than we drink today. They drank at pretty much every meal, including breakfast. They probably drank (gasp) too much.  And that has consequences, in family, in health, and in society.  The result was that during the Second Great Awakening, the ascendant Baptists, Methodists, and other reformers formulated a theology that fit hand in glove with the reforms they wanted.  One reform was to deal with the societal wreck that alcohol was making; an easy solution was to emphasize the biblical admonition against drunkenness to the point where you get the 18th Amendment. In order to stop the damage of heavy drinking, they promoted abstention, which kills you even faster.

Which makes me wonder****, how long it will be until we formulate a theology of thin?  I'm quite serious. America is a fatassed nation, and the damage wrought to personal health by obesity is everything alcohol was and more. There are biblical admonitions that compare gluttony and drunkenness. At some point, there is going to be a severe and broad based***** societal reaction against fat, and I will not be surprised - in fact I fully expect - that just as preachers harp on demon rum, they'll harp on demon french fries. It's a simple matter of logic and time. Logical consequences eventually arrive.

No, this is not to say I think we ought to develop such a theology: the last reason to change your theology is because of society. But it's also the easiest. Almost as easy as making up reasons for why it's not your fault that people who follow your advice die early.

* This is not to single out the Baptists**, they have just been the loudest for the longest over this.
** some of my best friends are Baptists
*** or at this point helpful. I mean, it's not like Americans are the only people who have bibles or know how to read them.
**** since I do not believe that people, as a whole, learn from mistakes.
***** Prohibition was not the result of a few sourpussed Baptists tricking a nation, the consensus for it was broad, deep, and built over a period of 7 decades or more.

Killing them softly (II)

Obama pummels the Democrats:

Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections? Several environmentalist groups ... are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) ...

You might say that even considering enacting what is effectively a new tax on hunters and gun owners--seemingly the only non-liberal group the Obama administration hasn't yet intentionally provoked--is less-than-perfect timing for the already beleaguered Democrats as the midterm elections approach.

They can't help it. They really can't. Modern Democrats are the Ouroboros Party, the snake that consumes itself, and this is just another tail-chomping example. But Weekly Standard misses the issue - or at least how the issue will be presented.  This is not going to be fought as some kind of a back door tax on gun owners, "effectively" or otherwise.

Fairly or not, this issue will be the Obama Administration banning ammunition. It's going to be presented as the Democrats taking away Americans' ability to hunt and fish. And it's going to be effective. For people who claim to be modern, liberals consistently misunderestimate the power of the internet. And for people who claim to understand coded talk and "sending the wrong message," they have sure sent the wrong message here. The Obama administration, even if it backs off now* has sent the message that if it can't take Americans' guns, it will take their ammunition.

That may not be the message that they tried to send, which was surely more nuanced**. But that is the message they sent. Considering that Kansas already has a pro-gun constitutional amendment on the ballot November 2nd, if the EPA does ban lead bullets the day before, I wonder if there will be a single Democrat outside KCK elected to anything in this state.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. The comment period opened Friday, and that same day, "EPA today denied a petition submitted by several outside groups for the agency to implement a ban on the production and distribution of lead hunting ammunition..."

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

* It will, and will therefore outrage *both* sides, not just one.
** Ask President Kerry how well voters do nuance.

Did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?

It seems that rumors of the Tea Party's demise are greatly exaggerated:

UNALASKA, Alaska—On Tuesday*, in her home state, Sarah Palin's** favorite will probably get trounced. Joe Miller is widely expected to lose by a large margin to incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary—an embarrassing defeat for the former governor, who has endorsed Miller, but also to Miller's other major backer, the Tea Party Express.

"I don't think the Tea Party movement has much currency in Alaska," says Ivan Moore, an independent pollster based in Anchorage. Moore's poll in July showed Miller down by 32 points, and other polls have come up with similar numbers.

Not surprisingly, Steve Wackowski, a campaign spokesman for Murkowski, agrees that backing from Palin and the Tea Party Express is more of a liability for Miller than anything else.

Yeah, well, how'd that turn out, former Senator Murkowski?

UPDATE: Libertarians are crazy, but hopefully not stupid:

Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai told me it's too late for Murkowski to file to have her name appear on the ballot as an independent, so that would need to be a write-in effort. There is a Libertarian candidate in the race, Frederick Haase, who could choose to step down. The Libertarian Party could then select a replacement for him on the ballot.

While it's legally an option I suppose, I'd bet that the Libertarians of Alaska are having a good giggle over it. There's no way they would want to lose an election with Murkowski as their candidate. And even less chance they'd wish to win with her.

* It's difficult to appreciate the epic asskickingness of Miller's victory until you realize that Slate published this article the day before yesterday's primary election.
** I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin, but I do so admire her ability to make her enemies drool and shake. Perhaps no one since Ronald Reagan has shown such a natural ability to inspire mindless hatred in, well, the mindless.

That's because if pull your head out

You won't need him anymore:

In most cases, a financial adviser will recommend not to pay off your mortgage ahead of time...

I get this all the time, especially from friends and family with big houses and who are broke*. Someone, somewhere told them that it's a good thing to have a mortgage because you can deduct the interest, and the more you pay in interest, the more you can deduct.

That for every dollar I give away to the bank, I might avoid paying somewhere between 10 and 35 cents to the government has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard***. It's like a woman who spends the day shopping for shoes and only calculates how much money she saved. If you saved so much money, where is it?

Now, perhaps if you have to choose between paying credit card debt and and mortgage, the mortgage is the lesser of two evils. And perhaps if you have some relatively risk-free investment that is paying you more than you're paying in interest (especially if it is in a tax-deferred account), then that might be a better use of the money. But paying interest just for the sake of paying it is idiotic.

But perhaps we should not be too hard on financial advisors, because there is a method to their madness, or at least to their training:

When you begin a career as a Financial Advisor, you might want to work for a financial or insurance company or a bank...  Once you get experience, you can become self-employed. About a third of all Financial Advisors are self-employed...

It would be uncharitable to say that your financial advisor thinks you ought to have debt because that's in the best interest of his immediate employer. But it's probably not inaccurate to say that those who trained him - whether bank or financial company - trained him to see the world the way they want to see it. That world is not full of financially independent people. It's full of people with big houses and bigger mortgages, telling each other that paying interest is the road to happiness.


* Thankfully it's not so much now that they are no longer getting "rich"** on real estate.
** even broker. 
*** It was after hearing this for the dozenth time that I firmly concluded that most people simply do not listen to themselves. 

Why won't you believe us?

When the press keeps telling you Americans you're wrong:

Poll Shows One in Five Americans Wrongly Believes Obama Is Muslim... nearly one in five Americans incorrectly believes that President Obama is a Muslim... people wrongly believe the president is a Muslim... The poll found that 18 percent of those surveyed wrongly identified Obama as Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009... The misinformation continues to exist despite the president's own declarations of his Christian faith and the statements of his spiritual advisers.

Now the funny thing* about this story is not that the press cannot seem to address Americans' opinions about their leader without editorial adverbs, but the seeming confusion and borderline panic on the part of the press concerning that particular opinion. "Look," they seem to be saying, "haven't we told you*** that he's not a Muslim? What will it take before you believe us?"

You would think liberals would be happy if 100% of Americans held that view, because not only would their messiah be the first black president, he could be the first Muslim one as well. They could congratulate themselves for how Muslim he is - he might even get another Nobel - just as they do for how black he is. Think I'm kidding? Then tell me why they cannot seem to write a story mentioning the man without pointing out that "Obama was elected as the first black president."

On the other hand, if Obama's race is not, to liberal journalists, the single most important thing about him, maybe there's a nefarious rumor going around that the president is not really black.

* But I was almost as amused at the White House's reaction to Franklin Graham's statement that Obama was born a Muslim under Islamic Law: "Franklin Graham is entitled to his opinion."  This is not really an area where one is entitled to an opinion, any more than one may opine about the speed limit on a given stretch of highway or how many votes a dead Democrat gets in Chicago**.  It's a question of fact. I don't know whether Graham is right about the law or wrong about it, but it is what it is regardless of his opinion.
** However many it takes.
*** 5 times on page 1

I wish I'd thought of it

While hanging out with the history faculty this morning, I learned that a student somehow acquired an autographed copy of the aforementioned and soon-to-be eviscerated book, Jill Lepore's "Encounters in the New World: A History in Documents," and gave it to Dr. Schick as a gift. To this unnamed person, I quote King Osric:

What daring! What outrageousness! What innocence! What arrogance!

I salute you.

Socially acceptable rebellion

Who you gonna believe?

The White House website or your own lying unemployment check:

With tens of thousands of projects funded and millions of Americans on the job today, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been 16 months since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. And with so many jobs saved and created already, you might think that the Recovery Act’s greatest impact is behind us.

But it’s not.

As the summer heats up, it is becoming clear that it could quite possibly be the most active season yet when it comes to recovering our economy. There are Recovery Act-funded projects breaking ground across the country that are creating quality jobs for Americans and economic growth for businesses, large and small.

This summer is sure to be a Summer of Economic Recovery.

If we are right in the middle of the Rockin' O-Force Summer of Recovery Tour, then someone needs to tell the lying Bureau of Labor, which reported this morning the "surprise" jump of jobless claims to just over half a million for the week, its worst measurement this year. 

"...given the trend of claims it looks like the economy ran into a wall in August," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-MitsubishI UFJ in New York.

But that's not a wall. It's a 100-foot high amplifier. Are you ready to rock and roll?

UPDATE: Rock on!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Home-builder sentiment unexpectedly fell for a third straight month in August to its lowest level in nearly 1-1/2 years, according to a survey on Monday that pointed to a weak housing market...

PHILADELPHIA (Bloomberg) - The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s general economic index unexpectedly fell to minus 7.7 from a positive July reading of 5.1. Economists projected the measure would rise to 7...

This band needs to get some new roadies, I think. All these thing "unexpectedly" falling are harshing my mellow.

Zoinks!

Here we go again

I was reading recently that the Vikings were in talks with Jeff Garcia just in case Favre didn't come back. Garcia is 40, as is Favre. Heck of a coincidence.

I don't think the lack of a 40-year-old quarterback was precisely the problem. But hey, what do I know?

Welcome to the school of Ted

But, Mama, that's where the fun is

Permission to shred granted:

I want you to become a werewolf and rip this book to shreds. I want you to find and discuss 5 different items with problems or deficiencies or outright errors you can find in this book. First, identify the item, and then tell me what’s wrong with it... Approach this assignment as if you are the meanest, nitpickingist, angriest person you can imagine. Give no quarter...

Intimidated? She’s a professor at Harvard, writes for the New Yorker, has published books, and you’re a beginning M.A. student. This is published by a reputable press, not some vanity press. What could possibly be wrong? That attitude. Just because Lepore is well known and Oxford University Press is a recognized academic press doesn’t mean there can’t be errors. Well, you say to yourself, maybe very tiny ones, hardly detectible by someone just starting advanced study. You’d be wrong about that. Very wrong. There are many problems with this. It’s an embarrassment. Don’t be intimidated. You can do this.

See, this is why I love Dr. Schick's classes*. In what other place do you get permission to tell the teacher that you know more than your textbook?  But it's also why I'm generally unimpressed not only with credentialism, but with the peer review process as well. My first quick skim through the book I found a lot more than five errors, and not just little ones. The Holy Family is not Mary, Jesus, and Anne.  The Iroquois creation legend does not parallel the Immaculate Conception. Adam was not created alone on the sixth day. Isidore's T-O map does not reflect the Trinity** any more than it reflects the tripartite nature of Irish clover. Dr. Schick is correct, the book *is* an embarrassment.

But it is not merely an embarrassment. Because the errors all point a certain way, because they all tend to share a certain taint and lean toward a particular spin***, it would be tempting to chalk it up to the poor scholarship of a single ignorant if opinionated feminist historian. Who just happens to sit on Harvard's faculty. But this book has multiple editors and has passed the peer-review process - in which credentialed experts are supposed to discover and fix any inadvertent errors that might have slipped through. Therefore one must accept that what the book says is being said on purpose, and that those scholars who signed off it share in its errors, either through their ignorance or through their desire to teach those errors and omissions as truth. But most importantly, because the book is a junior-high history textbook - meant to share the institutional memory of mankind with those who have no way of knowing any better - one must also come to the conclusion that we are dealing with a blatant piece of feminist/leftist propaganda.

"Don't be intimidated" is exactly correct. Just because a PhD author is a member of Harvard's faculty is not evidence that she knows what she's talking about, nor even that she's telling the truth if she does. It may be evidence, however, that many ninth-graders in schools that feature Ivy-league textbooks would get better history if they spent their class time playing Napoleon: Total War.

* The above in an excerpt from his syllabus for my fall class.
** I just picked out a couple of the theological blunders. The historical ones are, quite possibly, worse.
*** Which I could accurately summarize as "European + male = bad"

Outdoorsy tip of the day

Killing them softly

Obama pummels the Democrats:

Obama’s comments placed him squarely in the middle of the controversy over a Muslim group’s plans for a mosque near the site of the 2001 attack – and in turn, transformed an emotion-laden local dispute in New York into a nationwide debate overnight...

And Democrats – at least the ones willing to comment at all — could barely contain their frustration over Obama’s remarks, saying he had potentially placed every one of their candidates into the middle of the debate by giving GOP candidates a chance to ask them point-blank: Do you agree with Obama on the mosque, or not?

While others have answered the question better than I could*, I would note that all this time I thought it was going to be Biden who continually set off these kinds of unnecessary firestorms. To my amazement, he's actually been very good** for quite a while - or at least his gaffes have been manageable. With all the talk recently that Obama would seek out a new running mate for 2012, I'm wondering if Jumpin' Joe might be thinking the same thing...

* I agree with Obama, FWIW
** by which I mean "quiet."

This is sure to end well

Reduced to blather

Mohamed El-Erian* accidentally recognizes the helplessness of the Fed:

El-Erian said the central bank can only do so much to foster growth and avoid deflation. The Fed has spent the past three years on a route of aggressive rate cuts and purchases of trillions in various securities but is running out of measures it can take...

"Fed policy is not enough. You need to do more than that to get off that road," he said.

The beauty of that statement is that, right up until the Fed failed, it was assumed by El-Erian and his ilk that the Fed had all the tools it needed to "foster growth and avoid deflation." After all, if the Fed couldn't do those very things, why does it even exist?** But now, after three years of doing what everyone believed would avoid exactly what we ended up with, what's a Central Bank to do?

Asked what needs to be done, he said, "First, selling a vision, a long-term vision as to what the policy response is to restore growth and employment. And second, to fill it out with proper structural policies."

The Tuesday Fed meeting is likely to end with the central bank assuring markets it will use "all viable instruments" to prop up the economy, El-Erian said.

However, it is less certain "the extent to which the Fed will push banks to lend and will push investors to take more risks."

So if trillions of dollars' and three years of rate cuts didn't work, the Fed needs to a) sell a vision of doing even harder exactly the sorts of things that have already failed, and b) push investors to take more risks.

Surely neither one of those carries unforeseen costs. Right?

* In case you've never heard of him, he's co-CEO of the world's largest bond fund and manages, oh, about a trillion dollars. Most of that debt has your name on it.
** he asked rhetorically.
*** after all, the 'good' ideas have all been used up.

A reading from the gospel according to Harry

Harry's not playing the race card here so much as he is explaining, in a nutshell, how he and most Democrats view the world:

1) The Democrat party helps the helpless.
2) Members of minority groups are, by their very nature, helpless.

Therefore it follows that minorities* ought to submit to, vote for, and identify with their Democratic patrons - i.e. white guys like Harry. Why a minority would want to make a different choice frankly and admittedly baffles them:

"I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, ok? Need I say more?" 

Only that if he had his way, that would not even be allowed.

* meaning "everyone but white or East Asians males." In Democratic parlance, "minority" has nothing to do numbers - which is how one can have logical abominations like "majority-minority districts" or women-as-minorities. It has to do with whether the Democrats view them as unable to feed, bathe, and wipe themselves.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

"That's My Congress" gives Senator Switchback a Progressive Action Score of 4 out of 100. Yeah, I'll take it.

UPDATE: No, this is not good behavior:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Sam Brownback stopped Thursday in Colby to propose greater investment in crop genetics research and development of secondary markets for agricultural produce...

"This must be done in public-private partnership," he said.

The weasel stays for the time being.

Pink Frustration

Progressives and Mythology

An essay* for sale all over the net spreads both on pretty thick:

The Progressive Era was a period in American history in which improving working conditions, exposing corruption, improving the way of life, expanding democracy, and making reforms were the objectives at hand... Democracy flourished during the Progressive Era. Many new plans were constructed to help the American People. This was the true goal of all Progressives, to help the American society.

Democracy** flourishes under progressivism with one caveat: your vote had better not and will not be allowed to change anything. It sounds like a harsh condemnation, especially in light of many changes wrought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that promoted "direct" democracy, like the election of senators by the voters, female suffrage, direct party primaries, or initiative and referendum. The problem is that while the voter's hand was following the shell, the ball was removed from the game completely.

One New York high school explains Progressive reforms at a local level:

Commissioner Plan: Cities hired experts in different fields to run a single aspect of city government. For example, the sanitation commissioner would be in charge of garbage and sewage removal.

City Manager Plan: A professional city manager is hired to run each department of the city and report directly to the city council.

The idea of re-forming city councils with at-large districts and mayors who were members of the councils was to bust up the city machines and the bosses who ran urban ethnic politics, replacing them with credentialed professionals. The idea was that professionals could and should run government, and this is what is taught.

But did you see what happened there? Voters are voting for people to sit on the city council, but the actual governance is now done by hired professionals (usually progressives themselves, who get into that kind of thing) who do not answer to voters or even to a mayor, but to a part-time council. Like Peter Gibbon, these commissioners have eight bosses. Unlike Peter, that's not a problem because administrators don't really answer to any of them. They are the experts, and most often the councilors defer to them.

The same thing happened at the national level: even while more voters had more people to vote for, the actual decision-making power in government was devolving to "independent" agencies and commissions run by a network of credentialed professionals not uncoincidentally known as Progressives. The Fed is the most powerful one, but most rules of actual governance are kicked out by commissions like the consumer Products Safety Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which are established and granted broad authority in the laws that elected officials pass but do not read.

Once aquired, this independence is jealously protected, always, and any attempt to rein in the independence of (for example) the Fed is met with howls of derision, not only from the agency, but from the agency's clients as well, who are the real beneficiaries of the agency's actions. A man you've never voted for says this independence "allows the Federal Open Market Committee to make monetary policy in the longer-term economic interests of the American people***, rather than in the service of short-term political imperatives." What it means is that the Fed does not answer to the voters but does what it wants most of the time. You can vote for one of a hundred senators who refuse - at the Fed's behest - to even audit the Fed, but you do not vote for any of the nine professional bankers who actually set interest rates and issue the actual dollars that are in your pocket.

The Progressives gave voters more democracy, by which is meant more things to vote on**** and more people to vote for. And all they took away in return was the government those voters were electing people to run.

* The essay itself may be rather a ninth-grade production, but it's useful because, well, that's what they are teaching in the ninth grade. And at the graduate level. 
** not being particularly democratic myself, it's not the lack of democracy that bothers me about Progressivism, but the deception. 
*** as determined by bankers, who as we know have no interests which are not shared by everyone.
**** so long as voters give the correct answer. If they answer incorrectly, they will either be asked again or the result with be thrown out by the courts.

Delegitimization

WSJ's James Taranto reads the tea leaves:

When the Supreme Court takes up Perry v. Schwarzenegger--perhaps under the name Brown v. Perry or Whitman v. Perry--the justices will rule 5-4, in a decision written by Justice Kennedy, that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

This accepts the conventional assumption that the court's "liberal" and "conservative" wings will split predictably, 4-4. Yet while Kennedy cannot be pigeonholed in terms of "ideology," on this specific topic, he has been consistent in taking a very broad view of the rights of homosexuals.

I'm inclined to think he's exactly correct. Yet very few people, I think, are talking about the really important issue that is at play here, and it's not whether men can legally marry men, it is whether a government in which a single unelected justice has the power to overturn not only state and federal law, but millennia of western culture, will continue to be perceived as legitimate.

This is not a small question, which is why the studied silence surrounding it is so surprising.  But let's begin with a couple of facts* upon which to build our discussion:

First, there is no such thing as gay marriage in history. Proponents of homogamy often talk about it in terms of fairness and of benefits and of visiting loved ones in the hospital, and yet the fact remains that such a thing has never, ever existed, anywhere, until very recently. Whether the reasons for its non-existence are good ones is irrelevant, they have been universally sufficient for 100 generations or more - 100 generations where the vast majority of people have been married. The forcible overturning of the definition of one of society's foundational relationships is perhaps the hugest issue this court will ever undertake, and perhaps *could* ever undertake.

Second, there is no such thing as gay marriage in the Constitution, much less a requirement that states suddenly allow it. In order to argue that the 14th Amendment** demands the enshrinement of gay marriage in current law, one must argue that it was established in fact in 1868, when the Amendment was passed. But no one is going to believe that, simply because the idea is ludicrous on its face. There is no sense in arguing the point, people are simply going to conclude that the justices are making it up***.

But that leads to a third fact (or the real problem, if you prefer). The perception of legitimacy is the basis for the reality of it, and the loss of perceived legitimacy is more important than whether the court is actually acting within its legal powers or not. If the justices are truly making it up, then they have assumed the powers of the legislature and we no longer have representative government - it's a simple matter of definition - but so long as the court confines itself to areas where people don't pay much attention, it does not hurt their legitimacy.  But if the Supreme Court is widely perceived as taking upon itself the final power to arbitrate the foundational relationships of Western culture, and that decision is as blatantly ludicrous and offensive as insisting that men may now marry men and there's nothing the vast majority of voters can do about that, will those people still believe that they have a representative and legitimate government?  And if they no longer believe, deep down, that their government is legitimate, can it continue to rule them (mostly) without violence****?

If people believe they have no representation and no recourse, if they believe that their government is blatantly attempting to overturn their culture*****, that leads to real trouble. Should our current "nascent recovery" tip into a deflationary depression as it seems intent on doing - it can lead to real, real, real trouble. 1920s Germany-trouble. 1775 or 1860 America-trouble.

The Supreme Court is not about to merely inflict a wound on themselves, but on the perceived legitimacy of this entire government. They cannot help themselves: their very Progressivism will compel them to do it, sooner or later. And if the politicians elected to represent people simply throw up their hands and say, "Hey, if the court wants to overturn 2500 years of marriage, we can't stop them," an angry, hungry, and deeply offended people might just find somebody who will. 

* Many would call them opinions, and that's fine. But they will be perceived as facts by an overwhelming political majority, which makes it a distinction without a difference.
** Or whatever amendment is actually chosen. Liberals, while they can be counted on for result, often surprise with route.
*** and for good reason.
**** Dred Scott (1857) was a similar decision where the court overturned political compromise by force, and its destabilizing effect on the nation is well-attested. This blatant power grab by the Southern-dominated court, "... helped to precipitate the Civil War, [and] has long been considered one of the court's great 'self-inflicted' wounds." (Findlaw Supreme Court Center.)
***** See "Machiavelli, Niccolo" for relevant historical examples and prescriptions.

Acts and scholarship and rubbish

I mentioned back in March that one of the things I wanted to do in all the time I spent ignoring my blog was to undertake a good study of Acts.  And while the days are counting down before my fall historiography class starts, and while I have undertaken the creation of a second Dragon Age mod (bigger and I think better than my first), it doesn't mean I have not gotten to it. I haven't finished it*, but I have read a half-dozen books and a couple dozen scholarly articles and have reached something of a tentative conclusion: while Luke knows what he's talking about a significant portion** of "bible scholars" simply do not. Or will not.

Case in point: Acts 18 puts Paul in the Greek city of Corinth at the same time as the Roman consul Gallio, and an inscription discovered in Corinth makes Gallio the Consul there around 50-51ad. While there, Paul was accosted by Jews who objected to the Gospel, they brought Paul before that magistrate, and he acquitted Paul because he had no interest in Jewish squabbles. So the "hard date" upon which much of Paul's chronology is attested by archaeology. That does not stop some bible scholars from attempting to use presumption to negate Luke's claims of what happened there.

I was particularly amused by a couple of quotes which expose and explain the methodology which, like kids in a lake who kick up muck on purpose, serves only to obscure the view of other swimmers. The first is from Leudemann's "Paul" (p.160), which says,

As regards to the trial of Paul... Gallio reacts in a manner which Luke considers exemplary for the representative of the state involved in controversy between Jews and Christians. This insight prohibits us from viewing such a trial of Paul as historical.

Think about that for a moment. What the author is saying is that if Luke records an outcome that he would see as favorable, we must disbelieve him. That Gallio basically said, "I don't care about your Jewish squabbles****" could not have been recorded because Luke was happy at the outcome or because Gallio truly didn't care whether Jesus was the Jewish messiah, but is taken as conclusive evidence that the trial never occurred.

Imagine if such a rule was applied to other history. Because Caesar recorded that the Gauls agreed to his demands, that "prohibits us from viewing" his conquest of Gaul as historical.  Because a New Orleans Saints website says that the Saints won the Super Bowl this year - a very favorable outcome indeed - that "prohibits us from viewing" such a victory as historical.  It's rubbish, and nowhere could it possibly be applied except in the isolated world that is bible scholarship.

A second example is not as obvious, but just as silly:  

"...from a redaction-critical perspective the highly tendentious nature of Acts 18 makes probable that its structure as well as key elements within its narrative owe their existence to the creative ability of the author of Acts." 
-- Dixon Slingerland ("Acts 18:18, The Gallio Inscription, and Absolute Pauline Chronology," 1991)

In other words, Luke made it up. Never mind that the "tendentious structure" is largely made up of the author ignoring what the text plainly says in favor of what he wants to it say*****. And never mind that this article is almost in toto an attack on the probabilities of other historians, replacing them with his own, less-attested ones. The author's presumptions (in this case, a "redaction-critical perspective") dictate that we can know nothing, or at least that we can know nothing worth knowing. Of course, this is exactly the kind of scholarship that gets quoted in Time magazine as authoritative.

Acts is an excellent piece of history, explaining the reasonable reaction to the Jews to the treasonable actions of the Christians, so long as one approaches it with the kinds of presumptions that can be applied to all history, not ready-made ones especially for the bible, designed mostly to kick up muck so no one else can swim.

* when is a study of this nature truly "done"?
** I am, of course, tempted to say, "a majority" or even "a vast majority," but while that might be acceptable under the rhetorical looseness I am so fond of, I find it hard to say when my subject today argues against the scholarly consensus*** that "eighteen months" means "a year and a half."
*** "Scholarly Consensus" is perfectly acceptable in history, as it does not pretend to be science. Or at least it should not make such pretensions.
**** "If it were a matter of wrong or lewd actions, it would be reasonable that I should hear you Jews. But if it's merely a question of words and names and your law, look to it yourselves. I will not judge such matters." - Acts 18: 14b-15. It's the same response one might expect if Baptists sued Jehovah's witnesses today over their teachings in regards to the Trinity.
***** One example must suffice. The author claims that Luke's Acts 18 section "consistently creates, shapes, and organizes materials so as to discredit Jewish populations within the Roman Empire." This section "begins by reminding the reader how the emperor Claudius found it necessary to expel all Jews from Rome..." The implication here is that Luke goes to some length to show how horrible the Jews were, necessitating or at least deserving Claudius' response. 

What Luke actually said was this: "After these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. He found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus but who recently arrived from Italy with his wife Priscilla (because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome) and he stayed with them" - Acts 18:1-2.  

Luke mentions the Claudian expulsion in passing to explain why Roman Jews Aquila and Priscilla were in Corinth at all, yet Slingerland makes it somehow an attempt on Luke's part to smear Jews as a group.

Out of the mouths of babes (II)

Out of the mouths of babes

When Jesus said there was no greater prophet than John the Baptist, he wasn't kidding:

Archaeologists in Bulgaria claim they have found remains of John the Baptist while excavating the site of a 5th century monastery on the Black Sea island of Sveti Ivan...

Christians believe John the Baptist prophesied the birth of Christ and baptized Jesus in the River Jordan. According to the Gospels, John was put to death by beheading on the orders of the local ruler, Herod Antipas.

Given that John the Baptist* was six months old when Jesus was born, for him to have prophesied the birth of Christ is quite a feat.

UPDATE: The comments are a hoot.  My favorite thus far? The guy who refers to a previous poster as "Bob the Misinformed" and then says, "the first reference to Jesus were by Pseutonius, three hundred years later." Funny, I must have missed that historian.

For the historically impaired, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (aka Suetonius) wrote his history of the Twelve Caesars sometime around 110ad. In his books, which are rather a "People Magazine" type of history, Seutonius states of Claudius that, "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." (Claudius 25).

Historians have argued over whether "Chrestus" is a personification of the Jewish/Christian argument over "Christ." Given the violent tumults created among the Jews** for this very reason in other Roman cities recorded in Acts (c.f. 16:22, 17:5, 18:12, 19:23-41, 21:27-34), which was published almost a half century before Seutonius, I am inclined to believe that is exactly the case.

* Pictured, however inaccurately, lower left.
** Now when I say, "among the Jews" here, what I mean is "between Christian Jews and Jewish Jews."  Early in the church, and especially in its first generation, the leaders of the Christian church, with very few exceptions, were Jews and considered themselves such. 

Mythical dragons

Daily Mail points out another one:

It is one of the most recognisable dinosaurs, part of the Holy Trinity of childhood favourites alongside the brontosaurus and the mighty T-Rex.

But now scientists say that the fearsome three-horned triceratops may never have existed.

Instead new research has raised the possibility that the triceratops was just a young version of a different dinosaur known as a torosaurus.

I guess that makes two of the "holy trinity" that never existed, as the brontosaurus also exists only as a plastic toy.  It was rather funny the time I tried to explain to a friend that brontosaurus was just an apatosaurus with the head of a camarasaurus stuck on it.  She simply refused to believe it - scientists had said 'brontosaurus,' and that was that*. That attitude is sadly prevalent in modern America - and it's no different from the medieval credulity many science bloggers and their sycophants spend so much time mocking.

But there is one interesting fact that often gets overlooked in these arguments about genus and specie and who is descended from whom. I quote the ultra-accurate wikipedia:

Apatosaurus excelsus (originally Brontosaurus) was named by [Othniel] Marsh in 1879. It is known from six partial skeletons, including part of a skull, which have been found in the United States, in Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. Apatosaurus louisae ... is known from one partial skeleton which was found in Colorado in the United States. Apatosaurus parvus was originally known as Elosaurus parvus, but was reclassified as a species of Apatosaurus in 1994.

Now I don't know how many skeletons of the dragon formerly known as Elosaurus parvus are floating about, but I do find it interesting that the other two species of apatosaurs are based on a total of seven partial skeltons and part of a single skull**, spread over finds in four western states.

Now, perhaps that's enough evidence to come to solid conclusions about species and descent, or perhaps it's not.  I take the fact that, 120 years after the discovery of triceratops**** we're still arguing over whether it even existed, to be supportive of the latter.

* well, that wasn't that: ten years later she informed me that it had been discovered that brontosaurus was just an apatasaurus with the head of camarasaurus stuck on it. Yes, I acted surprised.
** Which is why, of course, Marsh needed to borrow one*** from camarasaurus.
*** he didn't technically borrow the head, just the idea for the head.  Marsh thought the head of brontosaurus ought to look like the camarasaurus, so he simply built one for his display that looked similar.
**** but not the discovery of a single complete skeleton, a story which ought to sound familiar.

Oh, no! We suck again!

I sure miss JD Booty right about now.

Props

Obama gets half now:

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- The Obama administration's planned drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq is proceeding "as promised" and should lead to an end of America's combat mission there by the end of August, President Barack Obama said Monday.

And he'll get the rest when we're the rest of the way out at the end of next year.

Frowns and Shenanigans

Charlie and Maxine raise plenty of the former by the latter:

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues...

“House Democrats are paying a price for OCE’s focus on black lawmakers,” added a Democratic insider close to House leaders. “But that doesn’t change the fact that voters are going to see two African-Americans on trial in the House while they see no action against white members with ethical problems.”

One explanation for why explaining why voters "see no action" against white lawmakers with ethics problems is that they are more likely than black to quickly resign when caught with their hands too far in the cookie jar. This can be read a couple ways, and spinners gonna spin. In the case of those that resign, they eventually find jobs on Wall Street, K Street, or various boards and are taken care of outside the limelight, until they can receive a future executive branch appointment.  Disgraced black lawmakers may find less of a career path there for various reasons only tangentially related to their race*. 

One more point that may explain white lawmakers' quicker exits (or blacks' slower) is noted in another story, "Neither lawmaker, both Democrats, faces electoral jeopardy." Corrupt white lawmakers generally face competition from within their parties if they are keelhauled, whereas black politicians are more likely to rally around a comrade, even an obviously corrupt one. But so long as voters in Harlem and South Central are satisfied with openly corrupt lawmakers, well then that's what they'll get. Democracy and all that. Pardon me if I don't cry over your city's other woes**.

But the big question is, why is Charlie Rangel going to force a trial that will take place right in the midst of the fall campaign***? Given that this was supposed to be The Most Ethical Congress in History, a pair of corruption trials is going to add to the baby-seal beating that the congressional Democrats are about to receive. Do you think Charlie doesn't know that? Of course he knows it - he's counting on it.

The irony is that while Charlie can probably get legislation passed more easily in a Democrat-run congress, his personal haul will be better in a GOP-dominated one. Just as only Nixon could go to China, only the Democrats can haul Charlie up on ethics charges: if the GOP did this, there would not be "questions" of racism, but high-decibel accusations on every talk show in America and lots of people marching in circles.

So by forcing the trial now, when the Democrats are at their weakest, Charlie and Maxine and the rest of the MECBCIH**** are telling their distinguished colleagues, the ones that will lose their jobs, "Back off from us or we'll sink the whole lot of you. And we'll still be here."

And you know what? Charlie's right.

* A black lawmaker who has focused on urban issues his entire career may find he is less in demand afterward than a white one who has spent his time making friends in the finance or defense industry. 
** Don't feel bad, I don't cry over any city's woes but my own. And I don't live in a city.
*** Democrats really are poor schedulers, all things considered.
**** Most Ethical Congressional Black Caucus in History.