Recently in Justice Category

I just finished the book "An Act of State", detailing William F. Pepper's claim that the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a government-arranged assassination, rather than the act of a single racist. Beyond that, Pepper suggests President Lyndon Johnson had a mistress (and mother of his only son) who worked in Jack Ruby's Vegas club - suggesting the possibility of a link to the assassination of President Kennedy. Specifically, President Johnson is quoted by the alleged mistress (Madeleine Brown) as saying, at a party reportedly also attended by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and future President Richard Nixon the night before the Kennedy assassination "After tomorrow, those [deleted] Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat, that's a promise."

It was also interesting to read Pepper's description of the U.S. Army having a secret unit on hand as a backup plan in his claimed assassination plot against Dr. King.

Later in the book, the author goes off on a rant about the evils of the post-9/11 administration, in terms that are very familiar to me from working at a University, but inadvertently makes an important point many (including Pepper) appear to have missed, namely that election of a Democrat as President may actually make such matters worse, rather than better. Specifically, the New York Times, which has been such an eager watchdog against Republican misdeeds in recent years, is described in the book as helping the government hide the truth of what really happened to Dr. King. And though I lived through all those events myself, this is the first I've ever heard about President Johnson having a mistress, let alone one with a possible connection to the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

I feel sure the author and I would disagree about a great many subjects, but I was particularly impressed by his understanding of what Dr. King was attempting to do for poor people in 1968 - which Pepper considers the reason for Dr. King's death.

Here is his analysis of Dr. King's thought (see pages 163-168):
"The Copernican revolution, which postulated the thesis that the earth was only one of the planets revolving around the sun and that the sun itself was one of countless living stars in the universe led to a confrontation with the prevailing perception that divine revelation, not science, was the most valid source of knowledge about life and how it should be lived. The intellectual and moral authority of the church was weakened and gradually eclipsed by the elevation of materialism. Matter emerged as primary with physical measurement and only things suitable for scientific study deemed capable of providing explanations to issues, problems, or events. Scientific inquiry and reason were the fonts of all knowledge.

After reading this chapter, I finally began to understand the anti-globalization movement. I don't agree with it, but do at least now understand its concerns.

But what really got my attention was Pepper's 2003 prediction of the current market meltdown: "It is interesting to note that the growth of margin debt - debt incurred by stock investors - had risen on February 29, 2000 to the level it was on October 1, 1929..."

Pepper foresaw a silver lining in such a cloud: "Should an economic disaster similar to that of 1929 engulf this nation and the wold, there may emerge an opportunity to rebuild this great Republic with a vastly different set of values and priorities...

Should the unthinkable occur it would certainly be a challenge. Whether we as a people would be up to meeting it without the likes of Martin Luther King in the vanguard is another question, but I have always been amazed at the resilience of human beings of whatever race, culture, station or stripe."

Finally, Pepper reminded me of Dr. King's challenge for such a time as this: "Through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools."

Is anyone else sick of the constant media attacks on Sarah Palin? Personally, I'm offended by both the attacks on Sarah Palin for being a woman, and by those on John McCain for being old. Clearly someone has forgotten that both women and old folks vote! On the bright side, I've been very pleased by the lack of racial animus in this election. As others have noted, about the only time the race card has been played this year has been when the Obama campaign itself has chosen to do so.

But getting back to the attacks we have been seeing, against Sarah Palin, I'm afraid we've entered a "Pravda" era - one in which the broadcast and printed media publish only propaganda. In such an era, truth can be found in such publications and broadcasts only indirectly.

For instance, I'm now sure Sarah Palin is proving to be an effective candidate. If she weren't, she'd simply be ignored by the mainstream media. But she's not being ignored. Rather, she's been attacked constantly and in every possible way ever since her nomination, in a way that is rarely tolerated against Democrats. (Unfortunately, the same folks did the same hatchet job on Hillary last Spring.) That tells me Sarah (like Hillary) is doing a wonderful job of getting out her message.

One other manifestation of the "Pravda" era in our media now is that I really can't tell who's ahead in this election. The media proclaimed Barack Obama the winner back in January, and haven't slacked off in that opinion since. Likewise, polls the media chooses to discuss agree on Obama being ahead. But those polls were amazingly wrong during some of the primaries this year, particularly when they proclaimed Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in various states Hillary ended up winning.

The great unknown in this election cycle is how many Democratics who supported Hillary will vote for Sarah.

It ain't over til it's over. And either way, hopefully for Sarah it's just the beginning.

Update: Helen McCaffrey (director of Women's Watch, Inc.) is also offended by the attacks on both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.
"I cannot predict who will win the presidential campaign, but I already know who will lose big: all women.

Agreement on issues is not required, but Palin merits respect."

Update2: The election is over, and Palin lost, but the attacks still haven't ended. Allegedly-Republican sources are even now attacking Sarah via the all-too-happy-to-repeat-such-venom-from-anonymous-sources mainstream media. My guess is that this is intended as a pre-emptive strike, to prevent her having a chance to run again, by folks from both parties who consider themselves better than "hillbillies from Wasilla." Given that Obama too is from "flyover country", our self-ordained "betters" in DC, NYC & LA may want to curb their retoric while there's still anyone left who cares what they have to say about anything.

There are already many theories as to why Republicans failed this time, but to me it's been obvious for a couple of years that big government, pork barrel spending and intolerance are not winning issues for Republicans, and not good for our country either long-term. Sarah Palin is part of the answer to that.

Tom Coburn, one of the few remaining Republicans in Congress for whom I retain respect offers a similar explanation here, along with a reminder to reach across the aisle.:
"conservatives should be the first to accept the olive branch President-elect Obama has extended to the opposition and help him achieve results in the areas where we agree, such as the need to review the budget line by line and eliminate programs that don't work.

Conservatives need not despair because our ideas never go out of fashion. America was founded on a healthy distrust of activist government. Today, conservatives stand ready to remind the public why it's better to err on the side of too little government rather than too much."

Update3: The New York Times now admits the infamous attack on Sarah Palin's not knowing Africa is a continent was a hoax, a hoax in which they and other liberal media were all too eager to believe, just as when an obviously-faked memo was used in the previous election to try and claim President Bush avoided military service. Here's the interesting story from the NYT blog on how the Palin hoax was created. Interesting how the mainstream media seems to be belatedly discovering their conscience, now that their anointed candidate is safely headed for the White House.

Update4: A lingering mystery from the recent election is why John McCain is still defending Barack Obama against provably-true charges regarding Obama's choice of friends and pastor, yet not defending his own running mate Sarah Palin against even proven-false charges.

Update5: This seems exactly right to me.
"From the beginning of '08, the accepted wisdom was that no matter whom the Democrats nominated, they would deliver to the Republicans an ignominious defeat. But this year's defeat was anything but the complete rout it was supposed to be.

When asked to choose among some of the GOP's top names for their choice for the party's 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin."

Here's a short article by Roger Kimball about my home area of Chicago that suggests serious trouble both now and in the near future:
"* In the last six months, 292 people were murdered in Chicago.
* In the same period, there were 183 Americans casualties in Iraq.

* The Illinois State pension fund is $44 billion in debt. That's the worst in the country. Thanks, folks!
* Cook County, wherein Chicago sits, not only put JFK in the White House back in 1960 by encouraging everyone, dead or alive, to vote early and vote often, but it also has the highest sales tax in the United STates: 10.25 percent.
* Meanwhile, the Chicago school system is one of the worst in the country."

I've been joking that Illinois will go for Obama even if every dead person in Chicago has to vote five times. Behind that is a conversation I had as an election judge a few years ago with a fellow election judge about how he had personally been sent out to graveyards on election day in 1960 to find hundreds of votes for JFK. He could tell me that freely because the statute of limitations had run out. So far as I can tell, nothing in our area has changed since to prevent a recurrence.

I'm definitely finding other places to shop, now that my county has the highest sales tax in the country, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

I wonder where those missing pension dollars will be found, given that they are guaranteed by the Illinois constitution? There's no point blaming most of the state employees; they put up their share of pension contributions. It's our state government that never actually got around to funding pensions properly, even back when Republicans were in charge in Springfield.

There's also been some obvious abuse by entities goosing up the last year of pay of favored state employees, since the pension is somewhat based on the final salary. There was an effort this year to require such entities to personally kick in any added pension costs for such goosing, but I don't recall that reform effort succeeding.

One recent ray of hope in IL was State Senator James Meeks' effort this fall to bus poor kids from the south side to rich northern suburbs to call attention to the educational plight of city kids. I haven't seen any actual results from the campaign yet, but it's great to see even some Democrats now see school choice as good for kids otherwise forced into the worst schools.

We fostered one of those kids last fall, and it was amazing how much better he did in a suburban school When he arrived in October, he was a second grader who couldn't count to ten. Two months later, he'd advanced a year educationally - doing first grade level work, but the most telling fact for me was that when he went back into Chicago schools they put him in an honors class in his original grade! If that's typical, no wonder Meeks wants those kids educated anywhere else.

Mark Satin has just written an extremely interesting and insightful article for his Radical Middle Newsletter on this non-obvious premise: The Bible is our one essential political book - and we need it now more than ever.

In his article, Mark describes his own recent first and second reading of the Bible, and what he sees of value in it for all of us.

Right away, Mark lists five reasons for the importance of the Bible today:
-- It asks all the important questions that need to be asked (and answered) before we can move wisely into the 21st century. . .
-- It provides a place where left and right can meet, dialogue, learn.
-- It tells difficult truths about human nature.
-- It reminds us of our positive human potential.
-- It calls us to new and better political perspectives.

Further, Mark is sure he's not alone:
"According to Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow, traditional forms of community may be disappearing - but support groups are arising to take their place. About 40% of American adults are involved in support groups at this time . . . and about 44% of those are involved in groups that are described by participants partly or entirely as 'Bible study groups.'
In other words, 17.6% of all American adults - about 40 million people - are engaged in Bible study at this time.
Support groups 'seldom make the headines,' Wuthnow says. 'They are not the stuff that reporters care much about.' But that doesn't mean they're not out there, deeply influencing the culture - including the political culture"

Mark continues with many profound specific insights. Here's one I found particularly interesting, having just read an entire book about the Exodus that neglected to make this simple and (once you think about it) obvious point:
"John Buehrens, former head of the Unitarian Universalist Association, summarizes one take on Exodus as follows:
1. Wherever you live, it is probably Egypt [i.e., Bad - ed.]
2. There is a better place, a world more fair, full of promise and hope
3. The way to it is through the wilderness. There is no other way to get from here to there except by the hard way, being tested as we go "

As always, read the whole thing. And while you're at Mark's site, be sure to also look around for other gems, such as this one from four months ago.

Our church challenged us to eat like the rest of the world this week. That is, not much in terms of quantity, and not much in terms of variety. One goal is for us to know what it feels like to be hungry most of the time.

It began today, and so far I've had one new realization - no leftovers! When my lunch consisted of a single serving of rice and beans, I found myself digging out every last grain of rice and eating it. Likewise the single serving of rice, chicken and veggies tonight.

The feeling of hunger I already know, since the True Hunger weight management system I follow ensures I feel hunger before eating at most if not all meals anyway. (This is a simple secret of the already-thin, who only eat when hungry. Duh!)

One other big change for me personally is drinking mostly plain water for the week - with no diet soda, and no fruit juices.

We are advised to be sensible about health, so I'm making sure I get enough calcium, and hopefully enough calories to maintain the muscle I've worked so hard to develop in place of visceral fat in the past four years. But I'm still making sure it all totals far under my usual 2,200C/day, so I get the full effect. I can't remember ever doing such a thing before when I wasn't overweight.

Tomorrow we have guests arriving from Ecuador for the week. It will be interesting to see what they make of our efforts to eat as they eat. It will also be interesting to see what effect this has on my exercise this week.

Whatever we save on groceries by eating this way (about $100 in our case) we are asked to donate to help feed hungry children in Zimbabwe. The next phase will be for us to help pack literally tens of millions of meals for them. That too will be a good experience, though I'm very concerned about how we'll ensure our food doesn't become yet another weapon used by that sad nation's dictator (Robert Mugabe) to reward supporters and punish opponents. I know we'll try to channel aid through churches, and hope that is a sufficient protection.

One other important point was made in this past weekend's message: there are several levels of poverty. That's an important distinction, because folks we think of as poor in this country are generally still rich by world standards. As one citizen in Soviet era Russia said after viewing a propaganda film about the evil U.S., "I want to live where the poor people are fat."

The truly poor in our world live on two bucks a day, tops, without safe water or health care. Short of becoming the World's policeman (and probably not even then), we can't do much about the many nations with vile despotic governments whose policies ensure hardship. But that leaves many other countries where we can help. And part of that help is for the ecologically-minded among us to stop harming folks further by discouraging the use of DDT to stop malaria, and trying to prevent gifts of genetically-modified food to the starving.

After the Chicago Transit Authority more or less set fire to all its funds in recent years and then had the gall to ask the State to bail it out, our state legislators have faced the unenviable task of finding some way to keep public transit operating now and in years to come.

Having just done so, their reward was to have our state governor amend their bill to make it also provide free mass transit to senior citizens, no matter how wealthy they may be, and with no provision for paying the added cost of his "generosity."

If the governor gets his way, in a few years I too will qualify for an entirely-free ride, rather than the reduced fare I'd previously have already qualified for. Meantime, I'll have lots of new taxes to pay to partly make up the difference.

What really bugs me about this is:
1) This idea could and should have been debated by the legislature this Fall, rather than being sprung as a last-minute surprise by the governor.
2) There are a lot of wealthy Senior citizens. Why do they need help, rather than for instance, DCFS kids and the handicapped?
3) Once Metra is entirely free for any group, homeless members of that group will use it as a daycare center, much as they already use the CTA - riding around the system all day long for a single fare.
4) Somebody eventually has to pay for giveaways. Since the presenting problem is that the CTA is out of money, proposing to make it give away even more seems DOA. Fortunately, one thing both parties in our legislature seem to agree on lately is halting the governor's latest follies.

Update: I was too optimistic - the Governor won.

Mark, leader of The Fitness Race just sent me a great quote from Bush the Elder (George Herbert Walker Bush, President #41): “Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes…There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people.”

Our senior pastor, Bill Hybels has a very similar one, regarding money, that I also endorse. It goes something like this:
"The reason God allows some people to have greater riches than others is so they can do greater good."

The idea was that some good works require major resources. That ties in nicely with Jesus' teaching in Luke 12:48: "... Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required..."

I was shocked to learn last week at the Willow Creek Association's Leadership Summit that among Willow Creekers who are participating members and consider themselves fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ, only 50% tithe.

In my opinion, even atheists in America should tithe to whatever causes they consider good, because no people in history has ever had the resources we now enjoy. Giving back a tenth to help others seems the absolutely minimum required, even if our only goal were to keep others not so blessed from rising up against the injustice of our having so many more resources.

A week ago today, I lost my only brother. I was never as close to him as I wanted to be, and never knew him as well as I wanted to, but we did both try to improve that, especially in recent years.

We were of different generations, me about four when I hid his army hat in hopes of keeping him from having to leave so soon after a visit. Ironically, I (the 60's kid) was the conservative and my brother the liberal on most political/cultural issues. But over the past decade or so we made a point of talking regularly about issues, and always found middle ground that wasn't just dividing the baby but a real win-win for all, in a way our real political leaders seldom do. (We both also moved toward the middle politically over the years.)

He was generous to a fault, literally. Mom used to worry about him giving away too much. And he really wanted to change the world for the better. He gave his life to bringing justice and opportunity to poor folks all over the World. Somehow the justice and opportunities rarely lasted more than a few years, until the next coup in whatever land he was helping ended his efforts there. But he was friend to some pretty famous people in the process.

He was once asked to be the undersecretary of Treasury by the Nixon administration, despite being a life-long Democrat. He turned down the opportunity, perhaps because it came after Watergate. He also turned down a chance to aid economic reform in Iraq after the current war there, saying he was allergic to mines.

As a young college grad, he worked for a big corporation that makes detergent. That much is in his obituary. What isn't mentioned is the night that something went wrong and covered every car in the parking lot with soap suds, both funny and useful in convincing him another career was in order.

I was jealous of him once. Ours was a very hierarchical family, so when Dad died, the only thing I actually wanted to remember him by, a transistor radio, went to my brother instead. But I knew that was our mother's wish, so I didn't blame him. And those who know me as a life-long gadget lover know it didn't keep me from buying my own radio later.

The way in which he inspired me most, though, was in the area of health and fitness. I was always overweight, at least in my own mind. Even when I weighed 130# in seventh grade, I was sure I was fat, and perhaps I was, compared to other kids. But my brother never was, and as such was the only one of us six kids never to be at least occasionally and somewhat so.

He was also active, walking regularly to work. Despite all that, he needed quad-bypass surgery 22 years ago. That motivated me a bit at the time. I'd walk briskly with him on his 3 mile walks afterwards, but he'd have to slow down for me, making it a shock later when he was no longer able to walk as fast as me due to complications from that surgery.

It wasn't until I reached that age myself, the age at which our Dad died, that I got serious about losing my extra weight and getting fit, not for another year or two but hopefully for the rest of my life. I was just barely smart enough to realize I didn't want to need the same surgery, and that if I'm still here, it's because God still has work for me to do - work I couldn't do while obese.

So it's perhaps fitting that this weekend will be focused around saying goodbye to my brother on Saturday, and then participating in my first triathlon on Sunday. I know my brother would approve, and know that as a life-long Christian he'll be watching from a better place, one where he can again walk as far and fast as he wants.

I owe one other debt of gratitude to you, brother. Thanks for taking point in settling the issue of selling the family farm that so divided the six of us and our cousins for years. I can only imagine the pain that would still await us if that were still now to be done without your help. And if that were the case, I would not be writing these words from the home we love so much.

We never know what a day will bring. A week ago, I thought you were fine, ill but in no danger of quick death, until suddenly you'd died - quickly, ahead of the sister who expected to die first, still in good health, and ahead of the sister who hasn't really been happy since her husband's death.

I know a bit of that last pain, having grown up with my mom after Dad died. Though she never considered herself happy without him, she figured there was a reason she was still here, and set out to make the best of each day she was given.

That's good advice to us all in time of loss: use what you still have, because you still have it for a reason. In her eighties, Mom penned the line "November too has its beauties." As I age, I take that as a promise.

I give thanks for one other thing: I also have a new brother, a friend closer than a brother, who plans to be with me for the funeral. Although we are of very different backgrounds, we are alike in so many ways it's scary. We'll do that triathlon together Sunday, and for both of us it will be an important step in a long journey toward fitness. It will also be the second time we've stood together this year in the face of death. On the coldest day of last winter, we buried Mike's wife. Life is short, and if it were the only one, we Christians would be of all people most miserable. But thanks be to God, it is not only for this life we have lived.

In the new world to come, both my brothers' thirst for justice is fulfilled, and there are none treated unfairly. Plenty of time for answers too, for all the tough questions that bother us now.

And no, it's not just a fairy tale. I know that because I've been there, long ago in a near-death experience. I trust, that having been accepted as I was then, despite my many sins, that I have nothing to fear either in what remains of this life or in what lies beyond. I serve a risen Lord, and look forward to the day when my brother by birth. my brother by friendship and I will all serve Him together in a land where there are no more divisions, and justice runs down like a river and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Much as I'd like to punish Republicans for abandoning freedom for all and fiscal economy as core values, Democrats continue to prove themselves an even greater threat to my values.

I thought it idiotic when the perpetrators of a possible trial run for aircraft terrorism reacted to being caught by suing those who reported suspicious behavior to authorities.

However, I consider it even more idiotic for anyone in Congress to now resist the idea of giving immunity to those making such reports.

In the mid-'60s, Phil Ochs wrote his "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" protest song about all the people who stood by and didn't get involved in the Kitty Genovese murder.

Horrible though it sounds, such lawsuits would ensure we get more such behavior in future by not protecting those who get involved from being sued.

Just as citizens are protected by Good Samaritan laws that allow them to offer medical aid without risk of resulting lawsuits, those who alert officials to possible preparations for a terror attack also need protection from suits.

Here's the story per the Washington Times:
Democrats are trying to pull a provision from a homeland security bill that will protect the public from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack, according to House Republican leadership aides.
...
Rep. Pete King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Steve Pearce, New Mexico Republican, sponsored the bill after a group of Muslim imams filed a lawsuit against U.S. Airways and unknown or “John Doe” passengers after they were removed for suspicious behavior aboard Flight 300 from Minneapolis to Phoenix on Nov. 20 before their removal.

“Democrats are trying to find any technical excuse to keep immunity out of the language of the bill to protect citizens, who in good faith, report suspicious activity to police or law enforcement,” Mr. King said in an interview last night.
...
“I don't see how you can have a homeland security bill without protecting people who come forward to report suspicious activity,” Mr. King said.
...
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, initially opposed the legislation for fear it would lead to racial profiling.

Some relatives had a kerfuffle this week over the question of family versus host obligations.

We have a relative who lives in a retirement home and has health issues. Another relative issued an invitation to attend an opera downtown. The question then became, whose moral obligation is it to make the plan work?

The one issuing the invitation feels it's up to the relative's children, pointing out that if the invitee had been my mom, one of her children would have made sure she got to go.

On the other hand, my mom would rather have died than have any of her children "guilted" into helping her attend an opera. She was determined never to impose on her children as she herself felt imposed on, caring for an invalid mother.

I consider it the obligation of a host issuing an invitation to a shut-in to make all necessary arrangements, rather than expecting someone else to do so without first getting enthusiastic agreement.

This is particularly true where trust between the one issuing the invitation and those nominated to do the work is in short supply.

When I was in sixth grade and taking square dance lessons, my parents offered a ride to a girl in the neighborhood who was also attending the class. Arriving at her house, I was sent to her door to ring the bell and escort her to the car, even though I would have been happy just to honk from the drive.

To me, that illustrates two aspects of the current issue:
1) the invitation included all steps necessary, and
2) the one expected to get out of the car, walk to the door and ring the bell would have appreciated being consulted.

With this incident as prelude, the family reunion may truly be a blast this year, and unfortunately I don't mean that in a good way. Such an outcome truly would have saddened my mom, who wanted her children to remain close, and knew that takes work when we are so diverse.

There are lots of candidates for our most important freedom:

President Roosevelt in 1941 offered the Four Freedoms::
Freedom of speech and expression
Freedom of every person to worship in his [or her] own way
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear

Glenn Reynolds makes a good case for the right to keep and bear arms being the most important freedom not just here but worldwide.
"not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed."

But the freedom I personally am most thankful for is the secret ballot. In my opinion, without that one, all the others can gradually be taken away. Democracy itself loses any useful meaning when votes of the people (the "demos") can be coerced, as they always can be when those with power can personally identify those who don't vote "correctly."

This, by the way, is the problem with doing public opinion surveys in unfree countries - most interviewees will offer to a stranger only the officially-sanctioned opinion on every issue. If, for example, you lived in the Palestinian Territories, and a stranger came to your door asking whether you favor peace with Israel, would you dare to say so?

Surprisingly, Congress is today considering taking away the right of the secret ballot in union elections (H.R. 800.) If that somehow passes in both the House and Senate, I sincerely hope President Bush will find and use his veto pen. It's ironic that a party named for democracy, and usually very concerned about human rights, would want to take away the one I consider most important of all.

I've recently enjoyed an Email dialog with friend and commenter "Paul" about this study:
"An analysis by the Illinois Department of Transportation found that minorities made up 28.5 percent of the driving population but accounted for 31.8 percent of traffic stops in 2005.

Stats are found here."

My initial comment:
"This shows both the benefits and perils of such studies.

Further, since we haven't yet reached that goal of fair competition (especially among skin colors), our other goal remains to level the playing field - but not by requiring equal outcomes from every individual competition."

To that, Paul replied:
"So long as black drivers are 333% more likely to be searched than white drivers (statewide), you have to wonder if we're ready for colorblindness yet."

Instapundit links to an excellent article about a phenomenon called "mobbing" by John Gravois in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
"When songbirds perceive some sign of danger — a roosting owl, a hawk, a neighborhood cat — a group of them will often do something bizarre: fly toward the threat. When they reach the enemy, they will swoop down on it again and again, jeering and making a racket, which draws still more birds to the assault. The birds seldom actually touch their target (though reports from the field have it that some species can defecate or vomit on the predator with "amazing accuracy"). The barrage simply continues until the intruder sulks away. Scientists call this behavior 'mobbing.'"

Unsurprisingly, there are human equivalents:
"Inspired by Lorenz's writings on animal mobbing, Leymann coined the term "workplace mobbing" to name the phenomenon. He defined it as "an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker."

To flesh out the concept, Leymann drew up a list of 45 mobbing indicators. It amounted to an impressive catalog of bureaucratic nastiness: 'You are interrupted constantly'; 'you are isolated in a room far from others'; 'management gives you no possibility to communicate'; 'you are given meaningless work tasks'; 'you are given dangerous work tasks'; 'you are treated as if you are mentally ill.'"

As it turns out, higher education is fertile ground for mobbing:
"Though no two mobbings are alike, Mr. Westhues often describes a kind of stereotypical pattern for the escalation from storm to full-bore twister.

And then, Mr. Westhues says, chances are, you leave. Whether you win or lose the proceeding, whether you are dismissed or fully reinstated, whether it is due to exhaustion, disgust, illness, or (God forbid) suicide, you cut your losses and get out."

Who gets mobbed?
"Essentially, Mr. Westhues says, anything that can be a basis for bickering can be a basis for mobbing: race, sex, political difference, cultural difference, intellectual style. Professors with foreign accents, he says, often get mobbed, as do professors who frequently file grievances and 'make noise.' But perhaps the most common single trait of mobbing targets, he says, is that they excel.

'To calculate the odds of your being mobbed,' Mr. Westhues writes in his most comprehensive book on mobbing, The Envy of Excellence: Administrative Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors, 'count the ways you show your workmates up: fame, publications, teaching scores, connections, eloquence, wit, writing skills, athletic ability, computer skills, salary, family money, age, class, pedigree, looks, house, clothes, spouse, children, sex appeal. Any one of these will do.'"

Administrators who encourage mobs, however, may do to at their own peril:
"Professors seeking to eliminate one of their colleagues cannot get very far without the backing of the administration, he said. And in cases where many professors are pitted against one, administrators' first instinct will often be to side with the majority.

But because mobbers tend to be so impassioned and sloppy in their reasoning, Mr. Westhues argued, administrators who side with them may suffer for it later. Mr. Westhues's research provides numerous examples of mobbing victims who have walked away with fat court settlements, and of administrators who have walked away without their jobs."

Also, as Instapundit points out, "Fortunately, the Internet seems to serve as an effective antidote."
"But then something strange happened: People outside the department turned against the letter signers. FrontPage Magazine published a long, vitriolic article on the incident under the headline 'Academic Witch-Hunt.' The campus newspaper also published a story that was largely sympathetic to Mr. Bean. 'I had two direct ancestors hung as witches at Salem,' Mr. Bean was prominently quoted as saying. 'I don't plan to be the third.' In the same article, another professor was quoted describing Mr. Bean's troubles as 'a classic case of mobbing.'

Before long, the e-mail in boxes of the letter signers were crammed with hate mail."

My reason for posting this is that as I read the article, I realized I myself was mobbed a few years ago. Fortunately, as it began, I already knew my sister had successfully survived a similar experience, so was prepared to endure and overcome with God's help whatever came my way. Also fortunately, both faith and previous careers had prepared me well for the experience.

To anyone else experiencing mobbing, I offer the encouraging news that I am better for the experience, and the key mobbers have moved on.

Programs funded by governments to help those in real need somehow almost always end up not achieving stated goals, no matter how long they continue and no matter how much is spent in the attempt.

According to William Easterly, this is the result of too many worthy groups pursuing too many worthy goals in ways that leave no one in particular accountably responsible for achieving any single measureable result.
"UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown recently gave a compassionate speech about the tragedy of extreme poverty afflicting billions of people, with millions of children dying from easily preventable diseases. He called for a doubling of foreign aid, a Marshall Plan for the world’s poor. He offered hope by pointing out how easy it is to do good. Medicine that would prevent half of malaria deaths costs only 12 cents a dose. A bed net to prevent a child from getting malaria costs only $4. Preventing 5 million child deaths over the next 10 years would cost just $3 for each new mother. ...

However, Gordon Brown was silent about the other tragedy of the world’s poor. This is the tragedy in which the West already spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last 5 decades and still had not managed to get 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent 5 million child deaths."

As for a solution, Easterly suggests feedback and accountability:
"The two key elements necessary to make aid work, and the absence of which has been fatal to aid’s effectiveness in the past, are FEEDBACK and ACCOUNTABILITY. The needs of the rich get met through feedback and accountability. Consumers tell the firm “this product is worth the price” by buying the product, or decide the product is worthless and return it to the store. Voters tell their elected representatives that “these public services are bad” and the politician tries to fix the problem."

This makes sense. At the office we are currently having problems with our primary vendor being unable to do two simple yet important tasks well. The problem isn't that they don't mean well and try hard. Rather, it seems to be that they attempt too much, attempting to implement so many cool new ideas that none of them end up quite working the first time out, let alone arriving with proper documentation.

What's the cure? In my opinion, each of those two tasks needs to become the primary responsibility of a particular person, who knows they will be held personally accountable for the success or failure of that task. Nothing concentrates the mind on a task like knowing its failure or success will result in significant personal consequences.

I experienced that personally about 15 years ago. I'd just been hired to manage a new computer lab. Just one problem -- two weeks before its scheduled opening, the lab didn't exist. Seeing our cool new jobs just about to evaporate, my new assistant and I personally found and positioned all the furniture for the new lab that very day. The rest, as they say, was just paperwork.

Wizbang makes three excellent points about illegal immigration:
1) The U.S. is one of the easiest places in the world to which to immigrate legally. Those who can't be bothered to immigrate legally are line cutters, who should not be rewarded.
"These people, for whatever reason, hold themselves as above those rules. They consider their own circumstances as more important than others, and they don't need to bother with following the procedures that everyone else has to.

They're line-cutters. They're cheats. I don't like people who do that in daily life; those that do that are spitting in the faces of all those who are following the laws and coming here legally and properly, and on their behalf I am angered."

2) The argument that we need illegal immigrants to do the tasks others won't is the same bogus argument that used to be made in favor of slavery.
"...indentured servitude might be a better comparison to illegal alien labor than actual slavery. But the essence remains the same -- the notion is that a cheap source of labor is being exploited and used through fear of the power of law."

3) It's a bad idea to keep laws on the books that are not intended to be enforced, as it both teaches disrespect for the Law, and allows authorities to treat disfavored groups differently than favored groups.
"Laws that are unenforced merely cheapen respect for all other laws, and that's a nice start towards anarchy."

I'm in favor of permissive immigration laws regarding anyone who truly wants to become a real American, including learning about and adopting such American values as speaking our language and respecting the freedom of all our citizens.

Any newbie who cannot abide others also being free should not let the door hit them on the way out.

Earlier thoughts on this issue are here.

Update: Albion's Seedlings offers an excellent one-line summary of the issue:
"Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two."

Update2: The was a huge march by illegal immigrants yesterday in Chicago. The crowd was estimated at 100,000, and I can well believe it, as they filled the street where I work two miles from the march site for four straight hours. They marched to oppose an immigation bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Reflacting on the march and my earlier comments above, I now have 3 immigration goals:
1) Make it easy and cheap to enter legally for all who want to become real Americans (learn and practice American values, such as freedom for all.) Since we citizens have chosen not to have enough children to maintain our economy, we will need the assistance of immigrants, just as America so often has in the past.

2) Give everyone who is here legally, citizen or immigrant, a secure national ID card, rather than insecure substitutes like Social Security cards. Without the card, you wouldn't be able to work or obtain benefits, and employers and bureaucrats who violated that would be punished as severely as the still-illegals they hire or assist .

3) Put up fences to deter anyone from trying to bypass the process of legal immigration. Now that we have folks desirous of entering our country with weapons to do us harm, it is imperative that our borders become more secure. If this is not done, and another 9-11 results, the consequences for illegals may be extreme. Better to avoid that by bringing those who aspire to become like us legitimately into the family now, while barring all others at the gate.

We need to remain in the United Nations, but only to retain our veto power over its actions. I no longer see any valid reason for us to fund, or try to reform, or care about the U.N. in any way. It is now officially as useless as the League of Nations that preceded it, and by continuing to exist helps primarily those the World would be better off without, while abandoning and actively harming those it was created to help.

Worse, by continuing to be treated respectfully even by those who know how far it has fallen from its originally lofty ideals, it allows those in the non-reality-based community to continue pretending the U.N. is better than, and a useful counterweight to, the worst of all possible countries (us), even as the falsity of such assertions is proven anew each day.

Journalist Mark Steyn does an excellent job of summing up the United Nations in the current issue of Imprimis.

Here are my favorite quotes from the article:
"If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. "

"The actual head of the Oil-for-Food racket, Kofi sidekick Benon Sevan, has resigned, having hitherto insisted that a mysterious six-figure sum in his bank account was a gift from his elderly aunt, a lady of modest means who lived in a two-room flat in Cyprus. Paul Volcker’s investigators had planned to confirm with auntie her nephew’s version of events, but unfortunately she fell down an elevator shaft and died."

"Western proponents of Kyoto and some of the other loopy NGO-beloved eco-doom-mongering concepts up for debate in Montreal at the moment have at least this much in common with psychotic Third World thugocracies: they find it hard to win free elections, they regard transnational bodies as useful for conferring a respect unearned at the ballot box, and they are unduly troubled by the lack of accountability in global institutions.

Those of us who believe that big government is by definition remote government—and that therefore the UN’s pretensions to world government make it potentially the worst of all—should, in theory, argue for withdrawal from the organization." [MITM Note: We need to stay involved just enough to retain our veto over what would be done in the name of the U.N. in our absence.]

"the logic of the post-Cold War UN is to be institutionally anti-American. The U.S. could seize on Kofi Annan’s present embarrassment and lean hard on him to reform this and reorganize that and reinvent the other and, if it employs its full diplomatic muscle, it might get those anti-U.S. votes down to…a tad over 80%. And along the way it would find that it had “reformed” a corrupt, dysfunctional, sclerotic anti-American club into a lean, mean, functioning, effective anti-American club."

"When the tsunami hit last year, hundreds of thousands of people died within minutes. The Australians and Americans arrived within hours. The UN was unable to get to Banda Aceh for weeks."

"It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and a quart of dog mess and mix ’em together, the result will taste more like dog mess than ice cream. That’s the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn’t that they’ll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters or seven-eighths of the way. Indeed, the UN has met the thug states so much more than half way that they now largely share the dictators’ view of their peoples—as either helpless children who need every decision made for them, or a bunch of dupes whose national wealth can be rerouted to a Swiss bank account. "

Update: One way to be mentally ill is to worry too much about why particular people don't like you, in the vain hope that if you just changed this or that you could achieve universal popularity. Some folks seem to want our country to do the same, assuming that if anyone anywhere bears us ill will, we and we alone must be at fault.

I'm a big fan of self-improvement, and not having too high an opinion of oneself. However, I am ultimately concerned about pleasing only our "audience of one" (God.)

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out why the U.S. is unpopular. We are the "King of the Hill", and the one thing all other players agree on in that game is opposing the current king, merely because that player is where all the others would rather be.

Personally, I think the World should offer daily thanks that it is us in that role, rather than any other nation or group with designs on that position. Those who think otherwise might profitably reflect on how their favorite rights would fare under, for example, Chinese hegemony. And if our world were ruled by Sharia law, what are the odds abortion would still be legal, or gay pride parades permitted?

Update2: I'm reading an assigned book on the "plight" of the Palestinians, and find myself arguing with nearly every page. Here is an excellent story indicating once again why the Palestinians are not only innocent victims of evil Zionists, and why the United Nations has been worse than useless in helping Palestinians in finding successful and peaceful solutions to their many difficulties.

Money quote: "While the United Nations deals with the rest of the world's refugees with a single agency - the UN High Commission for Refugees - the Palestinian refugees have their very own agency, UNRWA, with a particular mission.

MANY OF UNRWA's employees are members not only of mainstream Palestinian terror factions such as Fatah, but of the Islamist Hamas group as well. UNRWA suffered a major embarrassment when its former director, the Norwegian bureaucrat Peter Hansen, admitted as much two years ago, saying it was no big deal. Indeed, in the recent Palestinian election, a number of UNRWA workers were Hamas parliamentary candidates. "

As I write this, there is a lot of agitation by Hollywood celebrities to save the life of California gang leader "Tookie." There was also recently a great furor of Singapore's execution of drug dealer "Mumia." As usual, in both those cases, liberals tended to view the matter differently than conservatives.

On the other hand, via the blogosphere I've just learned about the case of Cory Maye, another man sitting on death row, who both liberals and conservatives thus far agree is innocent. Despite that, there are not yet any Hollywood celebrities or prominent politicians pleading his case, and that's just wrong.

Briefly, a policeman helping execute a search warrant on a duplex broke in late at night, and may not have immediately identified himself as "police". The occupant, a black man with no criminal record, was home alone with his 18 month old daughter in a bad neighborhood. Awakened by an unknown person invading his home, he woke up, grabbed a gun and killed the intruder.

The dead policeman turned out to be Ron Jones, the son of the police chief in Prentice, MS. As a result, instead of apologizing for disturbing Maye's sleep and fixing his door, his jury found Maye guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to die.

I learned of this here , here and here

If you agree charging Maye, let alone executing him, appears unjust, you may want to join blog Silent Running in sending a letter to Governor Barbour on Cory Maye's behalf. Further, if you know a famous politician or rich celebrity in need of a deserving cause, or a really good lawyer in need of pro bono work, Cory Maye needs all our help.

Update: Entry above corrected to indicate the search warrant did cover both sides of the duplex. Updated info here.

Update2: Corrected again, to indicate the jury wasn't all white. Updated info in the first comment here, which, by the way, is the first sign I've seen of the regular media noticing this case.

Update3: Another correction, to indicate this wasn't a "No Knock" warrant, and the police report they did knock, though Maye disagrees. (All corrections are of info from the original source, and all updates are from that source.) Here's the latest.

Update4: Lots of transcripts from the trial are now posted by the original blogger on this issue (Radley Balko) here.

Update5: A whole lot of new info from the original blogger, who has just returned from a trip to investigate all this personally. Compelling reading!

According to this story, a Hampton Inn in Brookhaven, MS recently asked some Hurricane Katrina evacuees to check out so it could honor other reservations.

At first I didn't understand this at all - either way the room is rented, so why kick out an already-paying and potentially long-term customer in favor of another potential customer?

The possible explanation described by the story seems vastly worse: "Hurricane evacuees — often several family members packed into a single hotel room — can be a burden on hotel staff. They also use more water and electricity, and do not spend much on food and incidentals.

They "could be occupying a room that could otherwise be occupied by a higher-paying guest who's spending lots of money on telephone, food and beverage," said Bjorn Hanson, a hotel industry analyst with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York"

I hated that logic when the U.S. Supreme Court used it in Kelo v. New London to justify using eminent domain to take a taxpayer's land and give it to another taxpayer expected to owe more taxes, and it doesn't sound a bit better now. I can just hear the innkeeper of Bethlehem explaining why the stable out back is sufficient for pregnant Mary because other guests out-spend Joseph.

A vastly-better response came from a nearby competitor:
"At a Comfort Inn across the street from the Hampton Inn in Brookhaven, assistant manager Amanda Smith said no one was being asked to leave.

'What would you do? They're homeless. You can't turn them away. It's morally wrong. I'd rather inconvenience our people with reservations,' Smith said."

La Shawn Barber recently asked for comments about reparations for slavery. This was my comment:

In my opinion, the big issue in the reparations discussion isn't pigment but poverty. Almost everyone now alive is descended from some slave somewhere, as slavery was practiced almost everywhere for thousands of years (and even considered humane compared to offing defeated opponents.) Figuring out who deserves reparations for slavery based only on heritage would be difficult.

On the other hand, we need to get serious about helping life-long Americans with significant African heritage among our citizenry who are not making it in America through no obvious fault of their own to join their more-successful peers in the ownership society, for the good of us all.

My suggestion for this would be to gradually transfer ownership of public housing to its tenants. Naturally, lots of education about what it means to own a condo as part of an association of owners rather than rent an apartment as an individual would be needed. There would also need to be strong protections against recipients being conned out of the new property for years to come.

The benefit to the government of such a plan is that it would transfer assets to the poor immediately, but the bill for doing so would be paid very gradually over thirty years, as bonds that financed affected buildings are paid off.

IL State Rep. Paul Froehlich has just written an excellent PDF-format review of a new DVD called "American History in Black and White" (available here.) Both the DVD and Froelich's review point out some important but little-known facts regarding the civil rights records of the two major political parties:
"* The Republican Party was founded in 1854 on the principle of preventing the spread of slavery, while the Democrat-controlled Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision (1857) declaring blacks non-persons.

* Senator Dirksen (R, IL) provided the crucial votes to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act over a Democrat filibuster."

Rep. Froehlich adds these comments:
"Cook County Republicans belatedly understand something that hasn’t dawned on most of their counterparts elsewhere. The GOP cannot hope to ever win countywide elections until it figures out how to attract a healthy share of minority voters."

"...if the GOP is to make significant inroads in winning back black and other minority voters, Republicans have to make some changes. We will have to restore the pursuit of justice as a top priority. Republicans should take the lead, for example, in reforming the criminal justice system that convicts too many innocent minorities. Republicans should also recognize the injustice in gross school funding disparities and propose ways to reduce it other than giant tax hikes."

Paul also points out the problem of the "Nixon Southern Strategy, however, that [Republican National Chairperson] Ken Melman recently apologized for in a speech to the NAACP."

To this, I would add:
One difficult part of the problem is that if getting votes from this (or any other) constituency becomes a contest of which party can promise to do the most, then almost by definition the party that favors more government has to win.

The down side of benign big government is that money it spends on your behalf isn’t spent as effectively as you would yourself have spent the dollars it takes from you. But that only matters to those who actually pay those dollars to the government. Voters who receive more from the government in benefits than they pay in taxes will be a tough sell for the benefits of small government.

However, such folks may still appreciate a less-intrusive government. Another tough balancing act for Republicans is how to be properly concerned about defense in time of war while still protecting civil liberty for loyal citizens?

I’d suggest Republicans consider a principled stand against the existence of all laws that are not intended to be enforced, especially those that can be misused against minorities.

For instance, if the real speed limit on I-90 is 70, why is it listed as being 55? I understand from a friend who lives on the South Side that speed traps are now being used there in construction zones. That is fair if the same speed traps are also used as often in other parts of town, but otherwise could have an unfairly disparate racial impact.

Regarding that response, Rep. Froehlich adds: "We'd be repealing most laws if we kept only those we enforce consistently. I think we should be concerned about racial profiling."

The Daily Herald has an excellent account of two Chicago churches using this week to bridge racial divides, by (among other things) literally crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama together. Work responsibilities did not permit me to attend, but the Middlewife is there and thoroughly enjoying it all.

"In the 40 years since, a lot has changed, but a lot has not, says Meeks, the passionate preacher and state senator, and Hybels, religious mentor to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

And what hasn’t changed won’t, they say, unless their powerful, 20,000-member congregations join together to bridge the racial divide and work toward social justice."
...
"Hybels said the march and the tour are just the surface of a reform in his church and a shift in direction toward concentrating on social justice issues and working in the inner city.

It was there the first nightsticks were swung on Bloody Sunday."

The above story is a followup to this one and this one from earlier in the week.

The Chicago Tribune also offered advance coverage of the trip.

Update: Here's another excellent story about the trip from the Daily Herald. It was the headline story on the front page two days after the earlier story above.

"'There are a lot of white folks who believe the church has no business talking about public policy issues,' he [Pastor James Meeks of Salem Baptist] bellowed, receiving a wave of nods and calls of 'That’s right.'

"Meeks and Hybels say the trip is just the beginning, but solid plans for the partnership will take time. For now, the touring church leaders are charged with convincing members it is a good idea."

Update2: Rev. Donald Sensing makes a good relevant point today in his new SOAPY (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer & Yielding) blog.
"It is not unanimity Christians should seek, but unity. John Wesley quoted 2 Kings 10:15, which says in part, 'If your heart is as my heart, give me your hand.' Wesley said that Christians 'will allow others the same liberty of thinking' which they desire should be allowed themselves. 'He bears with those who differ from him' ..."

Friend Paul forwarded an excellent article from Frontpage Magazine about the morality of defended borders.

Here are a few choice quotes:
Western nations face a challenge unique in history: to save ourselves from open-borders chaos and cultural destruction without becoming, in our own eyes, "racist," "mean," "exclusivist," and "un‑Christian."

...a world state can only exist by depriving individual nations of their right of self‑government, indeed of their existence, and by subjecting all mankind to the rule of a distant and unaccountable regime. Therefore, based on all our experience of politics and human nature, a world state could not be just...

If a democratic country has a large and culturally different immigrant minority, the native majority cannot readily announce that they are against the continuation of more immigration, because if they did so, the immigrant group, who are now the majority's fellow citizens, would feel that the natives regard them as undesirable.

"Would you turn away Jesus if he was at the border?"

In opening America's borders to the world, our political leaders are not following any divine scheme, but are indulging an all‑too‑human conceit: "We can create a totally just society," they tell themselves. "We can stamp out cultural particularities and commonalities that have taken centuries or millennia to develop. We can erect a new form of society based on nothing but an idea. We can ignore racial and cultural differences and the propensity to inter‑group conflict that has ruled all of human history. We can create an earthly utopia, a universal nation."

...the Tower of Babel is not, as neoconservatives have often said, a multicultural society which breaks down because it lacks a common culture based on universalist ideals. On the contrary, the Tower of Babel represents the neoconservatives' own political ideal—the Universal Nation. And the moral of the story is that God does not want men to have a single Universal Nation, he wants them to have distinct nations.

In the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, there are still distinct nations, and kings of nations, and these are the glories of humanity which are brought before the throne of God, and there transfigured in the light of Christ.

Instapundit also touched nicely on this issue today:
My own sense is that immigration is a good thing, so long as immigrants want to buy into the American Dream. Assimilation is good.

I'd also like to keep out the terrorists, while not treating decent people like trash.

I too have a few thoughts on the matter:
America, unlike most countries, is held together by a shared idea, rather than shared physiology. The social contract here is that all who desire freedom are welcome, so long as they also respect freedom for others.

I have no qualms about removing from America, and preventing re-entry thereunto, anyone unwilling to respect the freedom of others. There's no shortage of other places one can be free of freedom. But there absolutely is a shortage of places with freedom for all, so those must be defended.

It is also easier to destroy than to build, so those who build must defend against those who seek only to destroy.

A practical result is that America can accept immigrants only at the rate at which they can be assimilated, and only those immigrants who value our culture. It isn't that we would turn a multicultural stew back into a melting pot. Rather, that some added ingredients ruin any stew, and must therefore not be added.

Chief among these, at the moment, are those willing to unfairly deny others the freedom they seek for themselves. I can no more easily tolerate the immigration of one who sees women as property than one who sees a particular race as property. They may come from places where such things are believed, but only if they are fleeing the horror of such awful ideas.

As Israel is newly discovering, good fences make good neighbors. It would be sad to have to fence all of America's borders, but war is sad, and we are at war. We didn't choose that war, but we must win it or watch freedom again disappear from Earth.

Much as I would love to welcome every immigrant who comes to America, if there is to be an America to which they may come, those who seek only to destroy must be forced elsewhere.

I've always had a hard time understanding Ezra's command to the ancient Israelites returning from Babylon to divorce their foreign wives. That seemed cruel, as did the commands earlier in the conquest of the Promised Land to kill all the "wicked" previous occupants of that land.

But I've also seen the consequences of ignoring that advice. Both then and now, there was a precious idea to be preserved rather than diluted and lost by allowing those who disrespect the idea to remain within the community devoted to that idea.

At the same time, I'm troubled by the similarity of my argument here to one made by a former co-worker, who though she valued tolerance above all other values, saw no need to be tolerant to the intolerant. In actuality, she was merely permitting folks to agree with her, as any who thought differently were labeled intolerant.

Much as I want to defend the idea of freedom, it can't only be my idea of freedom, or it isn't very free.

OK, enough from me. Your thoughts?

About a year ago now, Hale DeMar, a Wilmette IL restaurant owner had his home burgled twice in two days. If I recall correctly, the first time a car was stolen from the garage. The second time, the burgler entered the house by crawling through a dog door. That wasn't a wise move, as the homeowner was present and armed. The burgler was shot, but amazingly, the homeowner was the one in trouble afterwards.

Wilmette has a local ordinance against handguns. The usual response to such incidents is to confiscate the handgun from the homeowner. But for some reason Wilmette attempted to prosecute.

That lit a fire under the Illinois legislature, which just passed a new law (720 ILCS 5/24-10) over the veto of the Governor to allow use of a firearm to defend one's property, even in localities where owning firearms is illegal. That this happened under a Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature indicates Senator Kerry isn't the only Democrat who sees some value in gun ownership.

Here's a link for more info about the bill.

Personally, I'd rather use a non-lethal Taser than a gun for home defense, but for some reason that's still illegal in Illinois. One alternative is a home defense shotgun. Folks seem to think a 12 gauge model with open choke and an 18.5" barrel is best. Although debate continues about shells, it appears that inside the home even rock salt acts like a slug, but with the benefit of not also penetrating neighbors' homes after passing your own walls.

A recent Jeff Jacoby column reports "There were two must-read stories on Page 1 of the April 26 New York Times. One, headlined "Abortion-rights marchers vow to fight another Bush term," reported on the massive pro-choice rally that had flooded the nation's capital one day earlier. The other, "Militants in Europe openly call for jihad and the rule of Islam," described the rise of Muslim supremacists who make no secret of their goal: the conversion of Europe to Islam, by force if necessary."

Jacoby's point? "there is a vastly greater danger � especially to women � than the president of the United States: the global jihad being waged by militant Islamists, like those described in the other New York Times story."

And who has done something about that danger? "Today the Taliban dictatorship is gone and Afghanistan's 12 million women are free of its cruel fanaticism. For that they can thank the US military and its commander-in-chief � the same commander-in-chief so stridently denounced on the Mall last week as an enemy of women."

Read the whole thing here.

Charles Krauthammer makes a similar point in this recent column, suggesting "For the jihadists, at stake in the war against the infidels is the control of women. ... The case the jihadists make against freedom is that wherever it goes, especially the United States and Europe, it brings sexual license and corruption, decadence and depravity. ... Which is why the torture pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib prison could not have hit a more neuralgic point. We think of torture as the kind that Saddam practiced: pain, mutilation, maiming and ultimately death. We think of it as having a political purpose: intimidation, political control, confession and subjugation. What happened at Abu Ghraib was entirely different. It was gratuitous sexual abuse, perversion for its own sake. That is what made it, ironically and disastrously, a pictorial representation of precisely the lunatic fantasies that the jihadists believe � and that cynical secular regimes such as Egypt and the Palestinian Authority peddle to pacify their populations and deflect their anger and frustrations."