The Insufferable Week in Review

This story relates that the insufferable Frank Rich will be moving his column from the Gray Lady's Arts section to a revamped News of the Week in Review.

A small step for Frank. A giant step for this fisker.

HT: American Digest.

Take Nanny Out to the Ball Game

The Congressional hearings on steroid use among professional baseball players show just how far we have to go to stop the growth of the "Nanny State." Members of both parties ranted and postured about this "problem." Baseball is a business. Why not let them take care of it, if it's a problem.

The rationale for government involvement usually is that professional ball players are role models for children, and if they are known to use steroids, young athletes will do so also. I doubt whether anyone idolizes professional athletes any more, and further, we should be wary of those who use perceived threats to children as an excuse for more and more regulation of adults.

Taking the Pledge

It seems improbable for it to lead to anything, but the Federal Election Commission is trying to figure out if blogging in favor of a candidate, or linking to a candidate's website is a political contribution subject to government regulation. Patterico says this:

This led to me wonder how unusual my position really is. I suspect that my attitude is widely shared by bloggers, including those who have signed the open letter to the FEC.

I think it's time to put the question to you directly. Who out there will make this pledge:

If the FEC makes rules that limit my First Amendment right to express my opinion on core political issues, I will not obey those rules.

Beldar and Billy Beck have clearly said this. Slim999, who bears a startling resemblance to Keanu Reeves, has created a blog for the express purpose of defying the FEC on this issue. I think that counts.

Judging from the comments I have read over the past few days, I believe there are plenty of others out there who feel the same way. Some of you have said as much in comments, and some of you have written blog posts that are consistent with my view. But I want to see if people will expressly make this pledge on their blog.

Who else will make this pledge? Do a blog post about it, e-mail me at patterico -AT- patterico -DOT- com, and I'll link it here.

I've always thought campaign finance reformers are sanctimonious nitwits and campaign finance regulation, other than the requirement of disclosure, takes a major bite out of the First Amendment.

So yes, I'll take the pledge.

Blogging Terri Schiavo

I haven’t blogged the Terry Schiavo controversy. There is something about it I find distasteful. I’ll admit I’m squeamish about dealing with severe disabilities, especially mental ones. I find offensive all the public attention to the private sorrow surrounding a woman in such terrible circumstances; and everyone is so certain of his position in an area where such certainty isn’t really merited.

That said, this has now become not only a public issue, but a national one, and I’ve thought about it a lot. And so I’ll share my thoughts.

How one analyzes this situation, first of all, depends a great deal on the facts. And the facts are in dispute with respect to her diagnosis, her prognosis, and her wishes.

Michael Schiavo, her husband, says she is in a “persistent vegetative state,” has no prospect of substantial improvement, and unequivocally expressed a wish to be allowed to die in such a circumstance. The trial court found this to be her wish, and found that it was so by “clear and convincing evidence,” which requires more certainty than an ordinary civil trial, where one can win with a “preponderance of evidence,” i.e., slightly more than 50 per cent, but less than a criminal trial, which requires proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” See a complete legal timeline here. The trial court also found that she had no realistic hope of recovery, indeed, that much of her thinking brain has been replaced by spinal fluid.

Her parents and the opponents of the court decision to remove the feeding tube, content that she is not dying, shows some signs of consciousness, has been neglected for many years, and would very likely improve if treated aggressively. They also question whether she ever expressed the wishes that Michael Schiavo claims she did. A good example is here.

If what the trial court found to be true is in fact true, and Terry Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state, there is no chance of restoring her to any form of conscious functioning, and it was her clearly expressed wish that in these circumstances she not be kept alive by artificial means, I believe, and I think most would agree, those wishes should be followed, and certainly the courts should not interfere, and even less should Congress do so.

The trial court applied the “clear and convincing evidence” test and found Terri’s wishes are not to be kept alive “hooked to a machine.” Although a feeding tube is not literally a machine, the distinction is one without a difference in this case.

The appellate courts will only disturb the findings of a trial judge on the facts if there is no substantial evidence to support it. Such findings are very rare. Although there were hearings on alleged additional facts, none has been shown to change or negate the ruling of the trial judge. You can read the trial judge’s ruling here (it’s a .pdf file).

Might the judge be wrong? Yes, but both sides have been well-represented, and the matter has been exhaustively appealed. Having read the opinion, my conclusion is that although something less than systematic, it showed a clear grasp of the fact and the basic legal rules on this issue, which make sense.

What is going on here? Several things, I think:

• The parents and their lawyers have been extremely persistent. Michael Schiavo lived with them for a long period of time. The trial court suggests that after Michael received a malpractice settlement he and Terri’s parents had a falling out over money, the parents wanting a share of the settlement.


• The anti-abortion movement has adopted this case as a cause celebre, either to advance its agenda or to use the case as a symbol of what they believe to a “culture of death” growing in this country. One adviser to the parents, for example, is Randall Terry, who made a career of organizing civil disobedience demonstrations at abortion clinics. Sincere or not, these folks have concerns that go way beyond the details of this one case.


• As a result of publicity and press coverage, millions of sincere Christians and other people committed to life believe the facts of the case to be much more in line with what the parents believe than with the court decision. If Terri Schiavo really were saying words, were responsive to contact and communication, and there were a body of serious medical opinion that said she could improve, removal of food and water, even if administered by tube, would be, as these folks believe it to be, morally questionable, and the rhetoric comparing her situation to that of condemned murders, who receive exhaustive state and federal review of their cases, would have some merit.


• Many have come to mistrust the judiciary. As our political system has thrust unpopular issues upon the courts, and more and more the courts have accepted the right to decide not just what the law says, but to find in the law what they think ought to be there, the level of distrust grows. For example, abortion never would have become so controversial if the states had been left to work the issue out legislatively; because unelected judges found an unexpressed penumbral “right to privacy” in the Constitution, to strongly held religious views about the morality of abortion is added a belief that judges are legislating by finding in the Constitution things that aren’t written there, that the majority of people does not agree with. How easy it is, then, to believe that Judge Greer in Florida is a thoughtless, life-destroying ogre rather than a trial judge trying to find the true facts and apply the written law to a difficult case.

Unless their motives are wholly mercenary, which I don’t believe. I can’t fault the parents. Parents cling to hope, and believe what they hope is true to be true.

I can’t fault those who sincerely believe a great injustice is being done for their concern about the case. Even a gravely disabled person is a human being. In an age where the fate of many is to be over-treated at the end of life, this case has a very poignant personal impact.

The suspicion of the judiciary is also well-founded. The recent decision on execution of minors is anti-democratic, inconsistent with past jurisprudence, and typifies a judicial departure from finding the law to making the law.

If, however, some in the pro-life movement are using the misery of a severely disabled woman and her family as a cynical ploy to obtain partisan advantage, their conduct is sleazy and opportunistic. Unfortunately, there are grounds to believe that this is the case.

Convinced as I am that doctors should never kill, and the resort to intentional “euthanasia” of human beings is beyond the pale, I am also convinced that keeping a person with no hope alive by artificial means (even a feeding tube, which is not a machine the way a respirator is), against their wishes, is also wrong.

I also believe that federalizing this issue is a bad precedent. True, if I believed the state of Florida was conniving in wrongfully killing Terri Schiavo, I would probably want the Feds to take a hand. However, when Congress intervenes in a single case, even a life-and-death case, our federal system, which is even now an important thing to preserve, suffers.

Update: changed "equally wrong" to "also wrong." More accurate, I think.

Update 2: Gerard over at American Digest has a contrary view, set forth with the eloquence we've come to expect. Food for thought.

Update 3: My second thoughts, including admission of a critical error, here.

YACT (Yet Another Conspiracy Theory)

LebanonMatters posts this satirical leaflet--reflecting an imaginary conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, although imaginary, not that atypical.

HT: Publius.

More On the Nazi Analogy

Victor Hanson Victor weighs in on the misused Hitler analogy.

It Really Is the Scarebus

This story reminds us of the joys of French technology. Reminds me of time in Central America that I got into a 737 and found the signs on the seats were in Romanian. White-knuckle time.

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder -- a structure over 8m high -- had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside.

Mercifully, the crew was able to turn the plane around, and by steering it with their wing and tail flaps managed to land at their point of departure in Varadero, Cuba, without loss of life. But as Canadian investigators try to discover what caused this near catastrophe, the specialist internet bulletin boards used by pilots, accident investigators and engineers are buzzing.

One former Airbus pilot, who now flies Boeings for a major United States airline, told The Observer: "This just isn't supposed to happen. No one I know has ever seen an airliner's rudder disintegrate like that. It raises worrying questions about the materials and build of the aircraft, and about its maintenance and inspection regime. We have to ask as things stand, would evidence of this type of deterioration ever be noticed before an incident like this in the air?"

Take a Boeing.

Does Comstockery Reign?

Frank Rich's latest once again sounds the alarm bells. Censors are apparently poised to throttle all creativity and freedom in the American media, and Anthony Comstock rides again.

Rich starts out by claiming that a post 9/11 telling of a very old joke at a roast for Hugh Hefner was a liberating moment, and excoriating a supposed post 9/11 trend to suppress everything from cartoon baby buttocks to federally sponsored history pamphlets. Frank goes on to praise the quality of NYPD Blue and Deadwood.

'Twould be tedious to go through all of Frank's examples. The ominousness of the threat to worthy forms of indecency as depicted in this column is odd, to say the least, because in past columns Frank made much of the irrepressible drive of the free market in masscult product toward the tawdry and the indecent, fueled as much by the red-state as the blue-state market. Which is it? Does the demand for such product guarantee mass-production of the vulgar, or are we on the verge of a new era of strait-laced suppression of the narsty?

It's hard to tell, if you read the guy from week to week. Frank's right, of course, that some excellent cultural products are raunchy. He's also right in his previous columns that suggest that there's a continuing demand for raunch regardless of quality.

I happen to like NYPD Blue, although I happen to think most of the bare-assed scenes are gratuitous. Even though it's beautifully produced, I gave up on Deadwood because I found the flow of profanity, although perhaps in character, annoying and unpleasant, and the show just too dark to follow week after week.

That's me. I happen not to like scary movies or violent movies, and hence never saw The Passion of the Christ in spite of the fact that it was an important cultural moment.

Should the government be suppressing this sort of thing? I think not. That there should be a time for families to turn on free TV without unexpected exposure to profanity, sodomy, or Dennis Franz's buttocks, does seem reasonable to me. The "parents can always turn it off" meme doesn't reflect how most Americans live. Should there be times and venues when Dennis's buttocks, the "f-word" and dirty jokes are available? If there's a market for this sort of thing, and there is, I don't trust the government to say no.

What I don't share is Frank's constant state of alarm. Plenty of good films, maybe more than we see today, were made when the Hays office limited what could be shown and said in Hollywood movies. The Republic and the culture survived, as they will survive the Rev. Wildmon, Bent Bozell, and Sen. Ted Stevens ringing the indecency alarm bells.

Sore Losers in Papeete

This report suggests that Gaston Flosse's buddies still don't get that fact that they've lost the Polynesian elections:

"The former ruling party in French Polynesia has accused the new government of engaging in a witch-hunt by appointing new Boards into key public institutions.

"The accusation comes after President Oscar Temaru's cabinet appointed new Board directors in French Polynesia's most prominent public companies."

"

Giuliana Sgrena Revealed

Jack Kelly, previously unknown to me, is a wise columnist. Here, he debunks the slanders of our soldiers by the recently released Italian columnistg, Giuliana Sgrena.

Among the revelations is the strange fact that the supposed hail of bullets only made one hole in Sgrena's vehicle.

The death of the Italian security man is unfortunate, of course, but the placement of the blame on our troops is also unfortunate and apparetnly unfair.

Sgrena comes across as an arrogant, anti-American harpy.

Gov. Moonbeam Sticks His Nose Out of the Teapot

There's been some discussion in our local rag, the Orange County Register, about the need to build more highways, as opposed, say, to light rail, which the libertarian Register despises. Who should emerge after a column criticized him but Governor Moonbeam itself, Jerry Brown, now improbably Mayor of Oakland. Moonbeam improbably claims to have been a master builder:

Assemblyman Ray Haynes' column, "Governor gridlock" [California Focus, Opinion, Feb. 16], claims that California came to a "grinding halt" and "stopped improving its existing freeway system" during the eight years I was governor. Nothing could be further from the truth.

During that remarkable period in California history - 1975 through 1982 - our state, with only 10 percent of America's population, produced one out of every four jobs in the nation and 102 miles of new freeway. That's nearly three times the amount of freeway miles added during the combined gubernatorial tenures of George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.

Haynes also ignores the fact that as the number of freeway miles increases, so does the cost of maintenance. During my administration, we made sure that sufficient sums were spent to keep our roads in top shape. The big problem then was that gas tax revenues became totally insufficient to fund all the projects people wanted. What was true then is even truer today.

Haynes is fooling himself and his constituents if he thinks our roads can be maintained and freeways expanded without raising the gas tax. If he can convince businessmen to build - at their expense - new toll roads, let's hear the proposal. And, while he is at it, please check in with the voters to find out how much they are willing to pay - either in taxes or tolls or both.

As for planning nightmares, let the Terminator in Sacramento break those boxes and get things moving. What Southern California needs is not cheesy political rhetoric but courage and wise action on the part of the governor and the Legislature.

The man who gave us the late unlamented Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird was in fact a complete bust as governor.

On the transportation front, how well I remember agonizing and interminable trips on the choked Santa Monica Freeway, out of which Gov. Moonbeam and his horrid highway chief, Adriana Gianturco, carved a "diamond lane" a.k.a. "HOV" or "High Occupancy Vehicle" lane. This lamebrained exercise clogged the freeway for months, all day and all night, until the public outcry finally forced a change.

This lamebrained scheme emerged full-grown out of the New Age ideology espoused by Gov. Brown and his acolytes. Force asceticism on the people. Solve perceived problems by punishing the hard-working and the law-abiding. Have it in for the passenger car and the lone driver? Make driving impossible! Concerned about gun crime? Forbid the law-abiding to defend themselves!

These were the apostles of slow growth and no growth, of "small is beautiful" and a swarm of other crackpot nostrums. It was in this era that the sad decline of our public life began in earnest.

Jerry Brown was a moonbat then, and he's a moonbat now, notwithstanding his attempts to rewrite history.

Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen!

The decline of one of many great American institutions is chronicled here:

"The heresy began with 'Double Stuffed' Oreos. This simple-minded d-oh moment came when somebody thought, 'Hey, let's double the stuffing!' It did not matter to them that the perfect proportion of white cream stuffing had already been achieved. Nope, this is the DoublePattyWhopper school of marketing drool: 'If one is good, two is twice as good.' Actually, if one is good, two in the same bun or cookie wafers is a bloody mess. And in addition, in order to get the double stuffing working correctly, they've upped the glue in the stuffing. No double stuffed Oreo comes apart neatly and cleanly. It always shatters. The pleasure of the original Oreo was that you could take it apart and have a chocolate wafer option. A bittersweet chocolate wafer option. Now even the wafer's been made sweet"

It's not just the decline of brands -- it's called market segmentation. Do we really need several kinds of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup?

Apparently the marketers think so.