“Ultimately, we should spend less time talking about whether nominees’ views are “out of the mainstream” and more time focusing on whether they are correct. For the most part, presidents of both parties are likely to nominate judges who are within the mainstream of their side of the political spectrum, and that mainstream is also likely to enjoy considerable public support (even if not always a majority). But when one side’s mainstream is deeply at odds with the other’s, that suggests that one or both are also badly misguided.”

Ilya Somin thinks that Judicial Nominations and Competing Constitutional “Mainstreams” should be more about judges who are correct.

“there is a big difference between distinguishing between nominees with right and wrong views and distinguishing between those who are inside and outside of the mainstream. A mainstream view of the Constitution can be badly wrong. Indeed, if mainstream liberals are right about constitutional interpretation, that implies that the mainstream conservative view is badly wrong, and vice versa. Similarly, an extremist view can be correct.”

The measure of this is in the split on decisions. The fact that there are so many decisions split 5:4 or even 6:3 indicates that being correct is either overly-difficult or not really in the picture. That is an underlying fundamental law problem.

Gun disgust?

“Productive conversations about guns can thus be difficult because the anti-gun movement gives little to no weight to the values of private gun ownership. That is because “gun disgust” engenders a bias against guns.”
…
“Gun disgust is also one of the primary reasons gun-control advocates promote laws that have little to no effect on reducing gun violence. On many questions, the debate over the effects of gun-control laws on crime is surprisingly uncontroversial.”

Trevor Burus says that The gun debate is a culture debate and explains why he thinks so.

Another seasoned infantryman weighs in on Seven Myths About “Women in Combat”.

“Pity the truthful leader who attempts to hold to standards based on realistic combat factors, and tells truth to power. Most won’t, and the others won’t survive.”

The myths are that the issue is about women in combat when it is really about women in the infantry, that combat has changed in substance, that the proper measure is just physical capability standards, that infantry provides a path for promotion, that it’s a civil rights issue, and that it’s just fair. Each is summarily dismissed.

yet the myths persist as they are held with a fierce abandonment of reality by certain folks for reasons that just aren’t that clear.

“Given how easily information is available to those who want it in an age of 24/7 cable news and the Internet, it’s hard to imagine what new messaging technique or device will get people to pay attention who clearly don’t want to. Scarier still is the prospect that people know and don’t care.”
…
“Clearly, something is missing in a critical mass of American voters when assaults on our interests and security abroad arouse no righteous anger either at the perpetrators or the politicians who caused the attacks and then tried to misdirect the citizens about the real causes for partisan electoral advantage. Something is missing when voters shrug away patent lies about oil production, and ignore policies that are hampering an industry that can create jobs and radically change our foreign policy calculus by liberating our energy needs from thug regimes who use our dollars to attack our interests. So what’s missing?”

Bruce Thorton asks: “Where’s the Outrage Over Obama’s Lies?” and encounters a fundamental problem. If there is no interest in intellectual integrity, then what? What do you do? What can you do?

“What is going on in America when the once upon famous description “Banned in Boston” has now morphed into a quasi-religious liberal campaign to ban almost everything, almost everywhere?”

Jeffrey Lord makes a list and wonders about America’s New Theocracy.

“The question is not that liberals are obsessed with banning. They are. The real question is — why? Well beyond the specific person or thing they seek to ban — what compels people in a free society to go out of their way to ban someone or something that a considerable number of their fellow citizens see as part of the warp and woof of American society?

The answer, it appears, derives from the leftist longing for control. And the perceived threat that the object of the ban is seen as posing to that control.”
…
“And so it goes with the liberal desire to control not just their life but your life. A desire that is now sanctified as the Gospel of Banning.”

Busy bodies can become really dangerous when they elevate their interference in other people’s lives to governance. The trend is to push the line so far that it inhibits growth and development and that is a path to poverty, disease, and unhappiness.

Testimony before a legislative committee can be enlightening not only in the testimony presented but also in the questions asked and the behavior of the committee members. Here’s an example — Democratic Party to Rape Victim: You Were Screwed Anyway!

“She had a permit to carry a pistol but was unarmed when she was attacked. Ms. Collins was treated sensitively by Republicans on the panel, but when the questioning turned to Democratic Sen. Evie Hudak, the Democrats’ war on women was unleashed.

The Democrat ridiculed Ms. Collins, telling her that “statistics are not on your side.” She said that Ms. Collins had rudimentary training in martial arts, yet the rapist overpowered her. She suggested that the rapist would therefore have been able to wrest her gun away and use it against her, if she had been carrying. This is, of course, a non sequitur. A small woman probably can’t outwrestle a large, strong man, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t shoot him. This is why the 19th century Colt .45 was referred to as “the Equalizer.” The Democrats’ treatment of this rape victim is appalling
…
The most important point here is the woman’s right to choose.”

There is a difference. It can be easily seen and observed. Those who posit that ‘both sides are the same’ are suffering delusions and an inability to make basic discriminations in behavior observations.

“I can’t have anything unless I can prove I need it? Since when? So now is it the case that everything which isn’t provably necessary is instead forbidden?”

Steven Dan Beste notes the problem in the questions about Why does anyone need a high-capacity magazine for their pistol? Why does anybody need an AR-15? that comes up in the arguments about guns.

“I own lots of things that I don’t need. It’s called “Freedom”; I don’t have to ask permission from my betters to buy things, and I don’t have to offer justification for doing so. It’s nobody’s business but my own if I buy things I don’t need, as long as I don’t rob a bank to get the money I spend.”

It’s called “Freedom” – the question is really about just how much government should interfere with individual freedoms. You can see how that one is distorted from honest debate to useless argument with such things as ignoring unpleasant realities and the use of logical fallacies.

As for reason and logic, consider Mark Almonte’s answer to the question Why does anyone need a high-capacity magazine?

“There are several reasons for civilians to own high-capacity magazines: the right to possess the necessary means to effectively defend themselves, misconception of bullet stopping power and shooting accuracy, and the issue of multiple attackers. Additionally, on a net balance, there are benefits to the community when law-abiding citizens own guns with high-capacity magazines.”

When you are dealing with people who feel that members of a civilized society should have no need for personal defense – else it’s uncivil or perhaps because the police will do that job – then there is no basis for trying to discuss the idea of responsibility for personal defense.

The reality of a shooting situation is why the fantasies of one shot, one kill, immediate stop with any personal weapon are not helpful. It is why the AR-15 is gaining over the shotgun as a home defense weapon. Any weapon will require proper training, a good aim, and, more than likely, multiple hits to achieve the desired effect. But that is reality, not the fantasies that often drive the argument.

Related to this, see Colorado Fights Concealed Carry on Campus: Why, Exactly?

Looks like another university president made the mistake of being scholarly. Scott Johnson pulls together the story about Persecution and the college campus

“James Wagner has found himself in a familiar position and he has dealt with it in the familiar fashion. Speaking as the president of Emory University, he praised one of the constitutional compromises with slavery. …

In substance, Wagner’s point was certainly defensible. There would have been no Constitution without its compromises with slavery, but the compromises were just that. They ceded ground to the defenders of slavery, but also to the opponents of slavery. The resulting provisions allowed Congress to cut off the slave trade after twenty years. The three-fifths clause not only enhanced the representation of slave states, it also limited it.
…
On most college campuses, however, Wagner’s comments cannot be defended, and Wagner has not even tried. In response to the outrage that has greeted his article, Wagner has performed the ritual self-abasement necessary to such occasions on college campuses”
…
“What is really needed is advice on how to communicate one’s thoughts under the illiberal and indeed tyrannical conditions that prevail on college campuses. Suggested reading: Persecution and the Art of Writing, by Leo Strauss [Amazon affiliate link]. One must learn to speak ironically, conveying one’s true thoughts between the lines. A footnote for college presidents on campuses such as Emory’s: if you can absorb Strauss’s teaching, you must be sure never to mention his name or his writings.”

Debate in academia has been replaced by ideological argument that seems completely ignorant of the intellectual integrity that used to be the hallmark of an educated person.

“It’s bad enough that we’re on the verge of losing all of the consumer protections that keep the price of basic voice service reasonable and ensure the most vulnerable stay connected. But by putting the last nail in the coffin of the public telecommunications network, AT&T’s plan poses an even greater threat to the future of American innovation and internet freedom.

This is because the internet itself would not exist if it were not for a delicate balance of public policies that made sure the public telecommunications network was an open platform: Anyone could use it as a building block for innovation.”

Derek Turner describes How AT&T Is Planning to Rob Americans of an Open Public Telco Network and you have to think about what he says very carefully to get to reality through the bias.

The issue is an effort by telephone companies to ditch the old circuit switched networks in favor of packet switched networks like the Internet uses. This is not a matter of ‘robbing Americans’ but rather of trying to catch up with cell phones and Internet voice communications (e.g. VOIP). There is the assertion about the markets with several clues about the bias.

“an uncompetitive broadband market. Our broadband providers enjoy the kinds of high profit margins that would make a 19th-century robber baron blush. And our ability to use these networks to communicate openly and freely is under constant assault. Meanwhile, consumers in other countries not only have better access, but they pay far less for far better services.”

High profit margins? By what measure? What about build-out capital costs and the issues of dealing with massive growth and rapid technology changes? Uncompetitive? With the cell phone companies and the cable companies competing for broadband market share and the growing presence of free wifi not to mention the esoteric broadband solutions like satellite and fiber one wonders just what is meant by “uncompetitive.” Just because you don’t like the price of a service does not mean that someone is trying to “rob” you in an uncompetitive market.

The price of basic local and long distance voice service is now essentially free. That isn’t reasonable? Not to a socialist, it seems.

He’s got some Sobering thoughts on gunfights and the police mindset after reading a 2 part 5 keys to winning gunfights (from a cop who’s ‘been there’ repeatedly) at PoliceOne.com.

The environment flavors the mindset and the police work in an environment that makes it difficult to see ‘normal’ anymore. The routine of wearing body armor is a constant reminder. That is why it’s us vs them, why there are teams that take on a military persona, why cameras get confiscated despite lawsuits and disciplinary action.

Hinderaker provides the closing statement of Senator Jeff Sessions – Plutocrat Jack Lew Is Confirmed, But Sessions Embarrasses Democrats – that explains a lot about that problem in Washington D.C. right now.

“What was notable about the vote was not so much the outcome as the challenge that Senator Jeff Sessions threw down before his Democratic colleagues–try to defend Jack Lew, and if you can’t defend him, don’t vote for him. One thing is for certain: the Democrats had zero interest in trying to defend Lew’s record. They spoke for a total of 17 minutes on his behalf, while Sessions spoke for 2 1/2 hours, in several installments through the day.

Sessions’ closing statement was an eloquent indictment not only of the plutocrat Lew, but of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. It is quoted here in its entirety”

There are some who are trying to get the word out. The Lew vote indicates that not many are hearing anything.

It is posted as Three Reasons Conservatives are Losing the Battle for America. The worry?

“In a word, we are observing the regression of a culture…one that is moving away from sophistication and proudly stepping backward from civilizing attempts. We have seen primitive behavior in our own culture and others: when people look to a label or a skin color as all that need be said about a person; when information from trusted sources of information are grossly biased so only one side is heard or even “exists”; and when physical or administrative violence against people is belittled, laughed at or ignored. It’s a cultural regression and, as the unifying, reassuring legal structures and precepts wither, as information sources become untrustworthy, and as physical and administrative violence worsens, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.”

The three reasons? First is an electorate that is glued to a paradigm with unrelenting fierceness where reality, not matter how blatant, just doesn’t matter. Second is a media cohort that participates in and reinforces this paradigm. Third is the political techniques that create the paradigm for the sake of winning power.

“Political correctness is a capital political concept because: the participants silently acquiesce to its dictates; it’s a self-modulating system where groups of people self-monitor and groom each other into conformity; through unspoken or overt threats of censure, it propagates itself; and, among the willing, it inevitably leads to the control of thought. If we freely restrict our speech to only “allowed” topics, in short order we restrict our thinking as well. In the end there is no more powerful political tool than thought control, which is why mastery and management of information is a central issue in all totalitarian regimes. What has required the overt elimination or forced domination of media outlets in most autocratic regimes has been yielded up easily by our group-think media, who now march along in near lockstep while trumpeting their independence. Political correctness must be a beautiful thing to behold if you’re a politician inclined toward domination.”

There is another item to note in this essay in that it is rational and provides examples. It does not promote ideology but rather an hypothesis supported by reason and measure. That is a counterforce to what he describes and one can only hope such an approach and awareness grows.

It is the tale of regulatory burden, croneyism, and who you know: California Regulatory Burden.

“a 3-1/2 year story of an obviously wealthy gentleman trying to get the local planning board and later the California Coastal Commission to allow him to build a house on his residential-zoned land. I sat up for hours last night reading through it. 42 months and $3 million later, he still is not even close to having his approvals. It is interesting to see his respectful-of-authority tone shifting over time, until at the end he is writing about how he has shifted his company’s new office and expansion from California to Texas.”

The worst part of community is ostracism. How it’s done has changed but the ugliness has not.

Karl Rove recently stirred the pot by suggesting that Republicans focus campaign efforts more on who could win rather than who rang the right chimes. The idea is to look at the big picture and weed out the cruft that really wouldn’t help achieve goals. J.R. Dunn describes the situation as How the Left Dupes Conservative Voters.

The history goes back to the 2000 election and the ‘revelation’ of a candidate’s drunk driving record.

“The program operates counterintuitively, by manipulating the beliefs and convictions of the voters to misdirect or negate their political activities. Rather than persuade voters to act against their own interests or to vote against their convictions, the left, with the aid of the media, manipulates those very convictions — public morality with religious voters, conservative ideology with traditionalists or tea party voters, and various stances on single issues, to persuade voters to waste their votes on obscure or bogus candidates, to throw support to hopeless or seriously flawed “pure” candidates, and in some cases not to vote at all.”

It is a typical military strategy. Confuse the enemy just enough to impair effectiveness just enough to be able to tilt the odds.

A bill presented to the in Washington state legislature is getting some attention. This is likely because it so well illustrates the nanny state approach to society with the idea that government employees are somehow special and better than the citizens. See the story Sheriffs can inspect homes for safe gun storage in Washington state under Democratic weapon bill.

“A new bill working through Washington state’s legislature would allow local sheriffs to enter homes of gun owners to ensure their weapons are properly stored.

The bill, pushed by Democrats, allows police to search where and how assault weapons are stored — as well as how safely they are stored, according to its text, listed in the state’s online legislative directory as SB 5737-2013-14.
…
The definition of a “safely and securely” stored weapon is left largely to law enforcement to decide.”

What with the ‘law enforcement’ killing so many innocents in the recent LA manhunt, the problems of prosecutorial indiscretion, the arrests for public video recording, the problems that resulted in ‘must issue’ laws for concealed carry licenses, and so forth, one has to wonder about just what is driving this sort of idea sufficiently to craft a bill and put it up for legislative vote.

“By any historical marker, the future of Americans has never been brighter. The United States has it all: undreamed new finds of natural gas and oil, the world’s pre-eminent food production, continual technological wizardry, strong demographic growth, a superb military and constitutional stability.

Yet we don’t talk confidently about capitalizing and expanding on our natural and inherited wealth. Instead, Americans bicker over entitlement spoils as the nation continues to pile up trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Enforced equality rather than liberty is the new national creed. The medicine of cutting back on government goodies seems far worse than the disease of borrowing trillions from the unborn to pay for them.

In August 1945, Hiroshima was in shambles, while Detroit was among the most innovative and wealthiest cities in the world. Contemporary Hiroshima now resembles a prosperous Detroit of 1945; parts of Detroit look like they were bombed decades ago.

History has shown that a government’s redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private-sector’s creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.”

HANSON: Why do societies give up?,

The Washington Times

. It is fuel for the thinking man.

“If fluoride is potentially dangerous in large amounts, isn’t it best to avoid it altogether? Not necessarily. Yale clinical neurologist Steven Novella, one of the authors of the well-respected blog Science-Based Medicine, put it to me this way: “Everything is toxic at a high enough dose; everything is safe at a low enough dose.” Yes, even water and vitamin C can be deadly when you consume too much. And the idea that something bad at high doses is also necessarily bad at low doses is based in part on the assumption that dose-response effects follow a linear pattern, but many scientists now think that biological responses are more complex than that. Some substances may only be dangerous beyond a certain threshold, while others may follow U- or inverted-U-shaped dose-response curves, such that substances have unexpected effects at high or low doses. (The anti-cancer drug tamoxifen, for instance, can stimulate tumor growth in small amounts.)”

Melinda Moyer got curious after hearing some rumors about the effect of flouride in water on children. See decided to check it out and reports on the question “Does Fluoride Make Your Kids Dumb? (Don’t trust the influential doctor who says yes)” at Slate.

Some people are gullible, some are skeptical, but one has to wonder about those who make it a life’s work to promote and promulgate fear and uncertainty with a complete lack of intellectual integrity. As Moyer illustrates, it often doesn’t take much effort to qualify the rumors and FUD mongering that floats all over the place.

“Once upon a time, the mortgage market was a safe and staid place where widows and orphans could lend to responsible borrowers paying reasonable prices for sensible housing. But a combination of lax regulation, political opportunism, Wall Street (and Fannie Mae) greed, credulous investors and speculative borrowers turned the mortgage market into a horrible mess that cost this country as much money as a foreign war. Let’s try not to do the same thing with our municipal finance system, shall we?”

WR Mead worries about California: Already Stoking the Next Big Financial Crash?. The state has authorized municipal bonds that run interest only for decades.

“It is starting out innocently enough. Looking to expand a number of aging school facilities but loath to raise the taxes necessary to pay for it, California cities have opted to fund school construction projects with capital appreciation bonds, which allow school districts to borrow money now while putting off payments for decades. It sounds like a great deal, but it has one major drawback: The interest rates involved push the eventual price tag to many times the original amount—sometimes as much as ten times more.”

This is basically what happened in the real estate market. Inflation in housing values became considered a given and money was loaned on that basis. The Government pushed loans that were otherwise unsound and impractical. That bubble burst to horrific effect but the desire for ‘free money’ continues. There is concern about student loans and the fact that they don’t provide a real return on investment when it comes to money loaned to a student compared to occupational advantage. Now we see local governments hurting for funding for all the frills and fancies that so many have come to see as a necessary part of government services. The funding for those desires is being pushed off to the children. That has been ongoing as the pension funding problem is already bankrupting cities.

Perhaps this is a way to distribute income? It is the rich after all who are the only ones that can invest money. So when the investments go belly-up, it is essentially just re-distributing their money to the poor and needy depending upon government services. The fact that this sort of thing tends to bankrupt countries doesn’t seem to register with many.

“Among the most troubling questions from this episode is why the Internet’s ability to spread information at gigabit speed didn’t result in the story being killed.”

It’s FREE! It has the taint of mysterious (i.e. magic) technology! The media says it’s true! The government is going to do it – for everybody, for FREE! Feels good. Must be.

but it isn’t.

Wi-Fi “as free as air”—the totally false story that refuses to die – Journalism goes wrong and just keeps getting worse. Jon Brodkin tells the tale.

“The story is still out there. Three days after anyone who knew what they were talking about debunked the free Wi-Fi myth, three days after the Post was notified of their mistake, the false story is still published on the Post website and many other sites as if it were true all along.”

This is one of those things that doesn’t pass the smell test but there aren’t many in the surface media who have any sense of smell any more, it seems and their audience is also quite gullible for pipe dreams. That is called a positive feedback loop and the result is not pretty. What Jon notes is the problem of stimulating just a little bit of critical reading. It seems to be an impossible task.

On the one hand is Walter Williams on Women in Combat. There is a difference by gender in important military related variables.

On the other hand is David Horowitz on the difference between political parties.

“Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies.”
…
“There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.”
…
“Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.””
..
“Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.”
…
“It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it.” … “The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents.”

There is a difference and a politician isn’t just a politician. What drives people influences their values and that influences their tactics. It is why any argument that takes the basis that ‘both sides do it’ is flawed in its first premise. It isn’t just a matter of difference of opinion. As the old saying goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That applies here as well. One side hits in the gut while the other side is trying to tell you that such hits will hurt. One is concrete and the other abstract. One is emotional the other rational. One wants to feel good and the other to be good. That difference makes a difference.