Memorial Day

Monday, May 28th, is Memorial Day, a day that the people of our nation have set aside to remember our fallen warriors. Well over a million American service members have died in the wars and conflicts this nation has fought since the first colonial soldiers took up arms in 1775 to fight for our independence. They’ve died on American soil and on foreign soil, they’ve died at sea, and they’ve died in the air. Every one of them gave his life for this country, for our people, and our way of life. They gave their lives so that generations yet unborn could live in a free nation. Each was a loved one cherished by family and friends. Each and every death was a loss to their family, to the community, and to the nation.

The observance of this day was born of compassion in 1863. As the Civil War raged on, mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, and other loved ones were cleaning Confederate soldiers' graves in Columbus, Mississippi, placing flowers on them. They noticed nearby Union soldiers' graves, overgrown with weeds. Grieving for their own fallen soldiers, the Confederate women understood that the dead Union soldiers buried nearby were the loved ones of families and communities far away. Laying aside the deep hatreds of the bloodiest and most fearsome war this nation ever fought, they cleared the tangled brush and weeds from those Union graves as well as their own soldiers' graves, and laid flowers on them all.

Soon the tradition of a "Decoration Day" for the graves of fallen soldiers spread. On May 5,1866, when the Civil War was over, Mr. Henry Welles of Waterloo, New York, closed his drugstore and suggested that all other shops in town also close up for a day to honor all soldiers killed in the Civil War, union and confederate alike. It was a gesture of healing and reconciliation in a land ripped apart by conflict.

For decades, Memorial Day has been a holiday when stores closed and communities gathered together for parades and other celebrations with a patriotic theme. Memorial Day meant ceremonies at cemeteries, speeches honoring those who gave their lives in the service of our nation, the laying of wreaths and the playing of Taps for our dead. A day for remembering the ideals and values those soldiers stood for, and died defending. Sadly, many Americans have lost this connection with our nation’s history. All too many Americans today view military service as little more than images seen on television and in movies. It seems fashionable to accuse the soldier of being a warmonger, forgetting for a moment that the soldier hates and fears war more than anyone, for it is he who must ultimately pay the butchers bill. But inevitably he goes where our government sends him, suffers privation, hardship, and mortal danger, to do battle with those who would destroy our country.

For a growing number of the American people, Memorial Day has come to mean simply a three-day weekend, a camping trip, barbecue, or a major shopping day. Families might still gather for picnics, and old soldiers still salute the final resting place of a friend or relative, but for many Americans, the spirit of remembrance…is absent. Americans owe a great debt to those who sacrificed their lives so that we could live in a free nation. We can only begin to repay that debt, by not forgetting them, by remembering what they did, and honoring what they stood for. It has been American soldiers, with their courage, strength, and their blood, that have given us our nation, and have since kept it safe. In the words of Charles M. Province:

"It is the Soldier, not the reporter,

who has given us Freedom of the Press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet,

who has given us Freedom of Speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer,

who has given us the Freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer,

who has given us the right to a fair trial;

and it is the Soldier--

who salutes the flag,

who serves the flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag--

Who allows the protester to burn the flag."

Several years ago, at our Memorial Day ceremony here in Grangeville, the keynote speaker pronounced one particularly meaningful sentence that has burned itself into my mind. As he handed a young lady in the audience a small American flag, he said: “Always remember, that it was an old soldier who gave you that flag.”

On Memorial Day, please join me in remembering those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this nation and our people. And perhaps you’ll also join me in a silent prayer for the well-being of those young Americans who once again go in harms way on foreign battlefields.

And thank God that we still have the few who are willing to risk all... defending our country.

Flight of Fancy

18 May, ‘07


I’m going to wander far afield from my usual ranting about politics and instead take a short flight of fancy about the future. Consider a few science fiction subjects for a moment, whence they came, and where they might take us. I don’t know of anyone who isn’t at least somewhat familiar with the TV show “Star Trek”, its assorted spin-offs, and the various movies. Generally they’re easy to follow, entertaining, and they don’t really try to present some deep social message, being just the kind of TV program I’ll watch on occasion. To make their story lines plausible, the writers have developed quite a line of “Star Trek Physics”, including all sorts of futuristic gadgets that perform miraculous feats, such as faster than light travel via the “Warp Engines”, along with an endless source of power by way of anti-matter and “Dilithium crystals”. Then we have the “Transporter” that beams people all over whatever planet we’re visiting this episode, they have voice addressed computers, a “Replicator” that can instantly manufacture a new uniform (or a hot cup of coffee) on command, and of course that wondrous replacement for six-shooters or Buck Rogers ray guns, the “Phaser”.

I often talk to people all over the world by way of the Internet. Many of those folks are educators, scientists, engineers and technicians from a wide assortment of fields having to do with spaceflight and some rather futuristic scientific investigation as well. Generally they enjoy Star Trek for many of the same reasons I do, but I’m very cautious in speaking to them about the science and physics of Star Trek, as some of them get really upset when you compare their pet theories, or mainstream scientific beliefs, to “crackpot science” and “impossible” doings.

Back at the turn of the twentieth century it was generally accepted by scientists that Physics research was a dead field, as we had already learned “all there was to know about the physical world”. The Wright brothers were belittled in the press, as it was a well known fact that it’s physically impossible for man to fly. It was also believed physiologically impossible for the human body to withstand the stress of travel at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour. (At one time it was speeds of over five miles an hour!) In the early twentieth century everyone “knew” that rockets couldn’t fly in space because there was nothing for them to push against. I suspect those were the same people who insisted the world was flat, despite Columbus’s little yacht trip. That the Moon is made of green cheese was still believed by many people until Apollo 11 brought back a box of moon rocks. In the late 1940’s, President Truman’s science advisor insisted that it was impossible to put anything into Earth orbit, as no rocket imaginable could possibly carry that much fuel. A very few years later Sputnik was flying over our heads every ninety minutes or so.

Enter the world of Science Fiction, before it became the realm of dungeons and dragons, witches and warlocks, and a few hyperactive vampires. The first artificial Earth satellite was described in a science fiction story titled “The Brick Moon”, written in the 1860’s. Shortly thereafter Jules Verne wrote about man’s first trip to the moon, and also mentioned nuclear power. Robert Heinlein did an excellent job of describing the technical difficulties of leaving the Earth, reaching the planets of our solar system, and living on them, in the early 1950’s. Later he described fully a functional nuclear powered rocket fifteen years before NASA began building and testing them. Isaac Asimov described a futuristic human society and the problems of living with intelligent machines. Arthur C. Clarke described communications satellites in the 1940’s. In the 1960’s he described a “Space Elevator”, which is today being developed by a Seattle based aerospace firm. Fantasy and wild dreams? Perhaps. Heinlein was a graduate of the US naval academy at Annapolis, and a highly trained engineer. Asimov was a professor of bio-chemistry at Boston College. Clarke was a British electrical engineer who was instrumental in developing radar during WW II.

Star Trek as Sci-Fi is a lot of fun, along with being the freely admitted inspiration to a lot of today’s scientists. And many of those gadgets, impossible as they are, may not be all that impossible, or that far in the future either! “Warp Drive” engines and faster-than-light travel? Well, in Einstein’s relativistic universe nothing can travel faster than light. But Quantum Mechanics indicates that it is quite possible to exceed light speed. NASA is presently doing laboratory experiments with a rotating magnetic field “warp drive” system that might make the stars accessible to us after all. I haven’t figured out just what a Dilithium crystal is, but anti-mater certainly exists, and many of the technical problems involved in its use as a power source have been solved. The problem is in gathering enough of it in one place to be usable, without an accident vaporizing half the planet!

Scotty’s transporter might be coming down the pike as well. The University of Vienna recently demonstrated the electromagnetic transmission of matter! On a sub-atomic scale of course, but apparently it did work. We’ve also got a “replicator” of sorts. A British company is marketing a computer printer that “prints” solid objects. Called a “Fabber”, its capabilities are somewhat limited at the moment, but are being rapidly developed. The couch potatoes dream… “Hey computer, whip me up a cigar and a bottle of beer.” And voice addressed computers are also on the market today. Those of us who were around in the 1950’s should remember many of the “Car of the future” and “Home of the future” predictions. Stop and think about it and you’ll see that nearly everything predicted back in those days are available to us right now, if we can afford them.

The twin worlds of science and technology are making tremendous strides in our modern times, and give every indication of producing a number of near miracles in the not so distant future. And it’s not just physics and spaceflight either. Medicine, communications, transportation, energy, and even manufacturing are all seeing tremendous strides forward. If the politicians don’t wreck things first, I’m quite optimistic about our grandkids inhabiting a wondrous world that we of today would be very hard pressed to recognize.

I grumble and growl a lot whenever learned people make pontifical declarations of this or that or the other thing being impossible. They of all people should well know that nothing is really impossible to the human mind, it’s just that we haven’t learned how to do it… yet.

Isolationism

11 May, 2007


The American concept of “Isolationism” dates back to our colonial days. The thirteen colonies were populated by people who had fled Europe, where there was religious persecution, economic privation, and constant war. Their new homeland was looked upon as a place to make things better than the old ways. The sheer distance and rigors of the voyage from Europe tended to accentuate the remoteness of the New World. The roots of isolationism were well established years before independence, notwithstanding the alliance with France during the War for Independence. Thomas Paine stressed isolationist ideals in his work “Common Sense”, which presents numerous arguments for avoiding foreign alliances. Paine's writings exerted so much political influence that the Continental Congress strove against an alliance with France and gave in only when it appeared highly probable that the war for independence would be lost without one. Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address, admonished the new nation; "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." With this in mind, the United States remained politically isolated all through the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, an unusual feat in western history. Historians have attributed the fact to the geographical position of the United States, protected by the wide expanse of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

From every side, everyone knows that isolationism is obsolete and dead in this age of H-bombs, strategic bombers, and guided missiles, but is it really? It’s my contention that our national interests would be much better served by a return to an updated version of the isolationist policies that stood us in good stead for our first hundred and fifty years as a nation. However, I do not propose that we lock ourselves behind our borders and look at the world through rose colored glasses, but like everything else there are various degrees of isolationism, both political and economic. Certainly we belong, like it or not, to the world community, and we cannot escape the responsibilities that accompany that membership. And yes, it is in our best interest to see that the world is a peaceful community. But no one either expects, or wants, the United States to be the world communities self appointed policeman. That function properly belongs to the United Nations, and is the sole reason the UN was established in the first place!

It is not in our national interest to forcibly export our moralistic or political system on a world that neither understands nor “appreciates” the finer points of American life.

Quite literally we need to pull in our horns. We need to establish diplomatic relations with all countries, and explain in simple and no uncertain terms exactly what we feel our national interests are, and what our national policies will be. Once that is clearly understood, we should bring all the troops home, secure our borders, and build up our national defenses to a stage that no sane foreign politician has any desire to pose a threat to the United States, and expose himself to the inevitable outcome of armed conflict. Certainly we have several traditional and long standing allies whom we should invite under our defensive umbrella, but acceptance should be by their choice, not because of our demands.

We should further call for a program of world disarmament to the point where isolationism again becomes militarily practical. Specifically, America is threatened now by those weapons, H-bomb missiles, disease germs, and chemical gases, which can quickly span the old protection of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We are not threatened by foreign tanks or machine guns or infantry. It is, therefore, the principal task of an American foreign policy devoted to American interests not to bring about further unrest and hatred, but rather a universal scuttling of these weapons. If we all returned to no more than the old "conventional" weapons, and preferably even to the muskets of yore, then America would no longer be endangered, and we could then be sitting, fat, dumb, and happy, on our side of the ocean. I do feel that threats to world peace, such as we experienced with Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, should be squashed by an overwhelming American military might as soon as they raise their ugly heads. But it is not our duty, and certainly not in our interest, to interfere in every regional or tribal conflict that troubles the world. Again, that is the mission of the UN, not the US.

If there is one thing I have learned through the years, leadership is best accomplished by setting a good example, not through force. We erroneously expect the rest of the world to jump on the bandwagon of “democracy” because that political system has served us well. We forget that few peoples in our modern world have any experience with freedom of choice, instead they are, and have for millennia, been ruled by everything from tribal leaders to kings to dictators. Their societies literally cannot function in a political atmosphere wherein the population is not constantly being told what to do by the “authorities”. (A system that is also rapidly developing in the “politically correct” American society today.)

In our rather simplistic worldview, we get all upset because the Russian experiment in democracy is faltering. Yet we refuse to understand that the Russian people have had absolutely no experience with any but dictatorial governance (Boyars, Tsars, and Party Secretaries) in their entire history. We expected Iraq to become an overnight democracy despite the simple fact that they, along with the rest of the mid-east, have had nothing but a theocratic political system for nearly fifteen-hundred years, a land where Kings, Sheiks, and Imans abound, jealously guarding their special privileges. Mexico and points south have for several hundred years labored under a political system based on patronage by the rich, not freedom of choice. We forget that nearly all of Africa and much of south-east Asia have tribal based cultures, where everyone other than the immediate tribe is viewed with suspicion, and generally considered to be evil, dangerous, and to be destroyed at first opportunity.

Democracy is after all a slow growing ideal, and is very fragile. So, rather than nurturing democratic governments around the world, we try to replace other political systems through covert political activities and big business dealings. Then, when that doesn’t work, we send in the Marines! Such a program certainly doesn’t seem to be winning us many friends around the world, or building many democracies. Perhaps the US should try leading by example for a change.

Small Wars

4 May, 2007

Great powers often perform poorly in wars against weak enemies waging irregular warfare, the so-called guerrilla or “small” wars. America's defeat in Vietnam, the national humiliation in Lebanon and Somalia, and now the continuing problems in Iraq underscore the limits of U.S. conventional military superiority. Such “weak” enemies as we have faced in the last forty years generally have a greater will to win because they have a greater interest in the war's outcome. In Vietnam for example, the US waged a limited war while the North Vietnamese communists waged total war. The communists sacrificed the lives of 1,100,000 soldiers to win, whereas the United States gave up after losing 58,000 men. Irregular forces can employ superior strategies as well. In Vietnam, the communists fought against a politically impatient America, and a tactically inflexible US Army. They denied decisive targets to U.S. firepower and wore down America's will to fight. Our form of government also worked to the communists' advantage, considering that democracies have a quite limited tolerance for any war that the citizens do not regard as essential.

Another key factor in great power defeats in small wars is the insurgents’ access to foreign assistance, which can reduce or even eliminate the effect of material inferiority. External assistance may be the most common point that enables insurgent success, as few insurgencies win without it. French support clinched the American victory in the War of Independence, Soviet Bloc support allowed the North Vietnamese to continue fighting, and Iranian support may yet bring about American defeat in Iraq.

Americans are at a distinct disadvantage in wars against materially weaker enemies, because we tend to separate war and politics, normally seeing military victory as an end in itself, and because the higher levels of the U.S. military are strongly opposed to counterinsurgency warfare. The American way of war is, as British strategist Colin Gray observed, “apolitical, impatient, ahistorical, culturally ignorant, technology-infatuated, firepower-focused, profoundly conventional and sensitive to casualties. It is permeated by an unwillingness to accept the German war philosopher Carl von Clausewitz's dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means.” Political policy is the guiding factor after all, and war the instrument of that policy.

For most Americans, the only goal of warfare is military victory, which forbids allowing external political considerations to influence military operations. Yet military victory is a beginning, not an end, because the object of war is to ensure a better peace. Approaching war as an apolitical enterprise encourages inattention to the challenges of converting a military victory into a following political victory. Insurgencies are, first and foremost, political struggles which cannot be won by military means alone. Pursuit of a purely military victory discourages planning for the second and by far most difficult half of war for a regime change (the “exit strategy”), and establishing the conditions for successful political reconstruction. Those who gave us the war in Iraq apparently (and rather naively) assumed that the politics of post-Saddam Iraq would somehow fall neatly into place once the Baathists were out of power. Perhaps they didn't want to think about the possibility of insurgent resistance, because they recognized the Pentagon's aversion to any counterinsurgency mission, an antipathy born of the lost war in Vietnam, and an obsession with America's post-Cold War conventional warfare supremacy.

The Pentagon that went to war in Iraq in 2003 expecting a short, cheap and politically decisive victory had long forgotten (if it had ever understood) the imperatives of successful counterinsurgency operations, which includes minimal use of force, primacy of political responses, integrated civil-military operations and separation of insurgents from the population. The result was a slow, excessively violent and politically empty response to the growing Iraqi insurgency. U.S. political/military actions in Iraq probably created more insurgents than it removed from the battlefield, and the American lack of a viable political policy may well have doomed the entire effort from the start, particularly so as the invasion force was far too small to secure more than a small part of the country after the Iraqi army was defeated.

America's military culture detests politically messy small wars. Counterinsurgency demands forbearance, personnel continuity, foreign language skills, cross-cultural understanding, historical knowledge, judicious force employment, and civil-military integration. None of these are virtues to the US military, or to the American approach to war. Americans view war as a suspension of politics and apparently think the politics will somehow sort themselves out once victory has been achieved. All of this raises the question: Why should the United States continue to enter wars it is not very good at winning (and for which sustained domestic political support is highly questionable)? A more realistic policy would be to abstain from small wars of choice, and place the protection of national interests ahead of moral crusades intended to export American political values. Such a policy would have spared the United States the agonies of Lebanon, Somalia, and now Iraq, all places where our national interests do not justify intervention.

Desert Storm could be politically justified, as the Iraqi military threat to mid-eastern oil supplies was a direct threat to the security and economic interests of both the United States and Europe. The current war in Iraq however is an entirely different situation. Saddam’s Iraq, like most other Arabic nations, was, either directly or indirectly, supporting Al-Qaeda. This however was a political problem that should have been approached through political rather than military means. If a bit of muscle was found to be needed, it could have been judiciously supplied by military Special Forces operatives rather than a full scale invasion. Instead, we found ourselves involved in a more or less conventional war, that we somehow managed to turn into a rather nasty and very expensive civil war through Republican political ineptitude! Now, to make matters even worse, we have a Democratic led Congress that apparently has no understanding of the threat posed to the western world by militant Islam, demanding an end to American involvement (basically yet another American surrender), no matter what the cost to American prestige, damage to our national policies, or the danger to our allies. Whatever happens next, the US has received a black eye that we’ll be a very long time recovering from.

Perhaps we really should “throw the scoundrels out”, as Politics as usual at Sodom-on-the-Potomac seem to be doing us a severe disservice.

Castle Doctrine

27 April ‘07

There is an old saying that we’ve all heard numerous times, “Every mans home is his castle”. That saying, and the logic behind it, has it’s roots in the provisions of the ancient Roman legal codes. In essence it claims the right, for every person, to defend their home, family, and possesions from criminal attack, with whatever force or violence is necessary or appropreiate. Generally refered to as the “Castle Doctrine”, it simply states that in any place legally occupied, such as one's home, car, or place of work, one may stand their ground against an assailant without fear of legal prosecution by the state.

The opposite of a "castle" principle is the “Duty to Retreat”, which is the case in most U.S. Northeastern states, such as Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. A duty to retreat infers that you must immediately leave the area when faced with violence, even if it means you will be abandoning your family to whatever fate. Castle Doctrine laws in the U.S. are sometimes referred to as the "use of deadly force" or "no retreat" laws, merely confirm that the individual does have the right self defense. Depending on the state, this right may extend to the automobile or the business or any place where one has a legal right to be (a campground or park, for example).

Opponents of this Castle Doctrine law have referred to it as a "shoot first" law, implying that it allows people to "shoot first, ask questions later" any time they feel threatened. However, even with the Castle Doctrine in effect, all laws pertaining to the use of deadly force still apply. The law still requires the citizen to prove the ability, opportunity and intent of an attacker to do grave bodily harm to the person exercising his or her right to self-defense. Critics now acuse the “radical right” of distorting a principle in which they claim “A thousand years ago our ancestors realized that if civilization was to move forward, the obligation was on everyone to retreat.” (I’ll bet that idea was cheered on by the barbarians!) Their concept of civilization is quite simple, when confronted with violence; the person being attacked is always expected to retreat from any threat. When faced with a home invasion, rapist, mugger, carjacking, armed robbery, whatever, retreat or surrender is the rule, not the exception.

Those opponents apparently fail to understand the problem, or the reasoning behind Castle Laws. First, they claim such laws mean a return to the “Wild West”, and that more guns would put more people in harm's way, effectively saying that legal gun owners are always the aggressors. For all their bad advice, a couple of things the anti-gun folks cannot deny; 1. Police have no duty, and in many cases no legal right, to protect the individual before a crime has been committed. Nor are there nearly enough police officers available to even consider posting a cop at everyone’s front door. In all fifty states, the police don't really have to come when called, much less arrive in time. Certainly we can expect them to try (that’s why we pay taxes for police protection), and they usually do, but they have no real legal requirement to do so, as the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that we have no constitutional right to police protection. 2. Citizens in this country already possess the legal authority to use deadly force when facing grave danger. This fact is often denied by those folks who encourage you to turn around and run, or to dial 9-1-1 and do nothing until the police get there. That’s really not good advice to give the person who’s responsible for the safety and well-being of his wife, children, and his own life, when abruptly faced by an armed and violent criminal. Self defense is a civil right, so the anti-gun activists try to get us to forego that right with the emotionally hysterical language of “Wild West”, “easy access to guns”, “illegal guns” and “Harm's Way” instead. As if our average American citizen is completely irresponsible, or a criminal himself. In the case of a home invasion, burglary, carjacking, or even simple assault, the illegal weapon is much more likely to be found in the possession of the criminal, not the aggrieved property owner. In criticizing the Castle Doctrine, anti-gun activists are handing out advice that gets people killed by turning their backs on aggressors (walking away), by waiting for the police while the aggressors carry on as they wish (call 9-1-1 instead), and by being talked out of their quite legal authority (don't resist violence), basically it attempts to con the citizens into voluntarily giving up their civil rights and legal authority.

An argument often used against self defense is the wail “but it might be a kid!” OK, it might be. But is there any real difference between a violent, armed juvenile intent on doing grievous bodily harm, and a violent, armed adult intent on doing the same? If anything, the juvenile criminal is all the more likely to panic and kill somebody than is an adult. Certainly it’s not going to make the least bit of difference to the unarmed and undefended family that’s being massacred while politely waiting for the police to arrive. Personally I’d much rather be feeling sorry for that kid’s family after the fact, than to be burying my wife or grandkids while the cops try to catch him. If somebody forces his way into my home and points a gun at my wife, I certainly have no intention of politely offering him tea and crumpets!

As the nations press debates whether more guns or less can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in Kennesaw, Georgia, a town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms. 25 years ago, responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill, Kennesaw unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite predictions of "Wild West" shootouts and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting, as a victim, attacker or defender. The crime rate dropped for several years after the passage of the ordinance, and today is significantly lower than it was the year before passage of the law.

The States with Castle Doctrine Laws currently in effect include; Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.

Humm… strangely enough Idaho’s not on that list. Maybe our state legislators need a nudge to remedy that oversight.

Global Warming

20 April ‘07

I think I’ll spare the politicians this week, and instead discuss another subject that concerns us all, seems to have been in the news a lot lately, and has Al Gore climbing the walls. That subject is global warming. First off, yes, I do think global warming is real, and I do think it’s something that’s going to cause all of us a lot of discomfort for a long time to come. But I also question much of the stance taken by environmentalists concerning its causes, and particularly it’s “cures”. Admittedly I’m not an environmental scientist, nor do I know how to juggle statistics to substantiate whatever position I happen to support. However, I do think that common sense is a much more useful tool than what in many cases is turning out to be little more than well publicized junk science.

The global climate has shifted and varied widely for billions of year, perhaps since the Earth first had an atmosphere. The oldest geo-climatic records have allowed us to reconstruct climatic changes fairly reliably over the last 500 million years. During this time, the global climate has moved from extensive periods of warmth with tropical conditions extending nearly to the poles, to periods of extreme cold several times, each cycle lasting 100 million years or more. Although today we are concerned about global warming, we do in fact lie in the middle of an ice age, which began 40 million years ago when the permanent ice sheets formed over Antarctica. The change from the much warmer global climate which existed during the age of dinosaurs (when the global average temperature was perhaps 10°C higher than at present), is thought to have been caused by changes in the distribution of landmasses, and the associated changes to energy redistribution throughout the entire climatic system.

Within the present interglacial period, further fluctuations in the global climate can be seen in the climatic records, and more recently in the instrumental records. During the last 1000 years, the climate has moved from a period of comparative warmth to a "Little Ice Age" between the 16th and 19th centuries, with changes of between 0.5 and 1°C in the global average surface temperature. A one degree variation may not seem like much, but when considering the size of the planet, that’s a lot of heat energy! Although it is not clear what has caused these climatic shifts, variations in the Sun’s energy output, ocean circulation and the occurrence of major volcanic events are believed to play an important part. Most recently, since the beginning of the 20th century, we have entered a renewed period of warming that some scientists claim is the result of mankind's enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect, through pollution of the atmosphere. I don’t think that any intelligent person could deny that human activity does have a measurable effect on the Earth and its climate. But the question currently being battled over is just how much of this warming effect is actually due to human causes, and how much stems from natural causes. The global average temperature is now about the same as it was during the warm period about 1,500 years ago, although still much lower than it was during the age of the dinosaurs.

So what drives climate change? Solar energy is of course the prime mover. A third of the sun's energy is reflected back into space after hitting Earth's upper atmosphere, but two thirds gets through, driving Earth's weather engine. Consider the possible results of a small increase in the sun’s energy output, and the solar energy dose we receive each day. A balance of gases maintains Earths livable temperature. Known as "greenhouse" gases because they trap heat inside the atmosphere, and reflect a portion of that heat back to Earth's surface. These gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Covering two thirds of Earth, oceans are the planets primary heat sink and energy transport system. The oceans and marine life also consume huge amounts of carbon dioxide. While water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas, clouds also affect evaporation, both cooling the Earth by reflecting solar energy, and warming the Earth by trapping heat being radiated up from the surface. The whiteness of polar ice and snow reflects solar heat, helping to cool the planet. A tropical forest will soak up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, but once that land is cleared for agriculture or new cities, that part of the CO2 “sink” is history.

Humans magnify warming to some extent by adding to the greenhouse gases naturally present in the atmosphere. Fossil fuel usage is usually blamed for rising carbon dioxide levels rather that the mega-tons of CO2 released annually by volcanoes. On the other hand, humans create temporary, localized cooling effects through the use of aerosols such as smoke and sulfates from industry, which reflect sunlight away from Earth. A recent scientific study has, with considerable fanfare, determined that New York City is responsible for 1% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. So what are we expected to do with that little detail, ban New York City? The environmentalists have been ranting and raging for years about the human causes, and now, at the start of the 21st century, the political left is making it their newest electioneering cause as well. Al Gore, inventor of the Internet and the famed “hanging chads” of Florida’s elections (who I understand is also known as the “Goracle” among his Hollywierd friends), is busily promoting himself as the Guru of global warming, and apparently has a yet unannounced plan to save the world from it’s Republican ways.

A few years back, I inadvertently got myself into an on-line global warming “discussion” with a few somewhat rabid environmentalists. You can probably imagine what they had to say when they found out that I was a rotten, nasty, evil wildland firefighter, and thus interfering with natures plan to renew the forests. Their idea of saving the planet was that all humans (with the exception of environmentalists of course) should immediately run out and commit mass suicide, leaving those with the proper appreciation of nature to stick around and “repair the damages”. I won’t get into my response to that idea… although my computer didn’t melt down, it was kinda singed around the edges.

As an interesting side note, European spacecraft have recently shown that the climate of Mars is warming nearly as much as Earths for some unknown reason. I suspect Mr. Gore will shortly discover that the Mars rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity” are the sole cause, and in yet another Hollywood release demand that NASA immediately withdraw the robot vehicles from Mars.

Militia

13 April, ‘07
“An armed man is a free man. A disarmed man is a slave”.
Anonymous

In writing about the federal courts recent rediscovery of the Second Amendment, I decided to do a bit of research into the concept of the “militia” in the United States of America, as it applies to the Second Amendment. The wording of the second amendment to our Bill of Rights seem fairly simple and straightforward to me, so I’m quite puzzled as to why so many American politicians, jurists, and academics can’t seem to understand, even if imperfectly, their meaning.

According to an on-line encyclopedia, the English language term "militia" is derived from the Latin: miles /MEE-lace/: a fighter or warrior, and -itia /EE-tee-ah/: a state, quality, or condition. In its original sense militia meant "the state, quality, or condition of being a fighter or warrior." In common usage, a "militia" is a group of citizens who have taken up arms to respond to a violent emergency. Thus the bearing of arms changes the status of a person from peaceful citizen, to warrior citizen. This is apparently a complex semantic issue to some people.

In general, there are three types of militia; The Constitutional, or unorganized militia, which consist of every able-bodied man ages 18-45 who can be called into active service through congressional power and who, according to various militia acts (Militia acts of 1792, 1852, 1903) are encouraged to train in marksmanship with arms provided by themselves in order to prepare them for military service. The Select-militia, which originated in early state forces and the constitutional militia, consist of State and Federal militia forces like the National Guard and Reserve formations, which were created by statutory law rather than constitutional power. The third type are the so called private-militia forces, which are made up of unorganized militiamen who have, on their own authority, organized into para-military organizations based on their own interpretation of the concept of the militia. These militia believe that private militia are supported by the principles of the common law of England (as found in Blackstone's Commentaries) and the intentions of the Founding Fathers of the United States as found in the Annals of Congress and various other publications of the period. These are the folks that gathered so much bad press a few years back, and somehow managed to attract a few mental cases like Timothy McVeigh.

The delegates of the Constitutional Convention granted Congress the power to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining (regulating and training) the Militia," as well as the power to raise an army and a navy. The US Congress is granted the power to use the militia of the United States for only three specific missions, "To provide for the calling of the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." The Militia Act of 1792 clarified whom the militia consists of; " Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia”

The National Guard was created by the Militia Act of 1903, as a federalized portion of the State militias which were converted into regular troops kept in reserve for the United States Army. The National Defense Act of 1916 later amended under the National Guard Mobilization Act to place all National Guard units under the control of the United States Army, making them regular troops, and effectively ending their status as constitutional militia forces. The current United States Code, Title 10 (Armed forces), section 311 (Militia: Composition and Classes), paragraph (a) states: "The classes of the militia are: (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."

As to “disciplining” the militia as noted above, the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) is a US government chartered program that promotes firearms safety training and marksmanship training for all qualified citizens, with special emphasis on youth. Any U.S. citizen who is not legally prohibited from owning a firearm may purchase a military surplus rifle from the CMP, provided they are a member of an affiliated gun club. The CMP was created by congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act, while its history traces back to the late 1800s, when programs were first established to help ensure that the general populace could shoot straight, in case the militia had to be raised to defend the country. Due to a nearly total information blackout in the mainstream media, most Americans are unaware of the governments stated policy on firearms training. That policy was updated, practically in secret, by the 1,000 page National Defense Authorization Act of 1996. Title XVI, (Public Law 104-106, 10 February 1996) created the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety (CPRPFS) to take over administration and promotion of the CMP, from the US Army.

Trench Coxe, an American political economist (1755-1824) who attended the constitutional convention at Annapolis, explained (in the Pennsylvania Federal Gazette on June 18th, 1789) the founders' definition of who the militia was and why they chose to create it as follows: “Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

To my redneck mind, this indicates that the militia presently consists of all able bodied citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 residing within these United States, and not merely a mob of kill crazed, anti-government, right wing fanatics, as commonly portrayed by the mainstream media. Further, the US government expects all those militiamen to possess privately owned firearms, and to practice regularly with their weapons, which is why we have the second amendment protecting our right to keep and bear firearms, rather than an all encompassing nation-wide Brady bill. Finally, the militia exists to execute our laws, as well as protecting the nation and its citizens from foreign invasion, and insurrection. They also exist as a means to keep the federal government on the straight and narrow.

‘Nuff said?

Rediscovery

6 April, 2007

Tragedy struck the political left all across America a few days ago when a federal appeals court, in overturning the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, ruled that the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed by the District. The court's ruling was apparently based on a radical interpretation of the recently rediscovered 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Washington Post, upon hearing of the decision, suffered editorial apoplexy. It called the court’s reading of the Bill of Rights “A Dangerous Ruling,” that has given "a new and dangerous meaning to the 2nd Amendment." Apparently the Post reads the amendment as “The Population of the Nanny State, being composed of irresponsible rednecks, rejects, and retards, must not be allowed to have Arms”, a definition that goes clear back to the 1970’s. "This radical ruling will inevitably mean more people killed and wounded as keeping guns out of the city becomes harder," the Post continued, sagely foreseeing a day when the district might not be the gun free enclave of liberal sanity that also happens to be the current murder capital of the United States. Adrian Fenty, the district's mayor, is apparently disturbed by the decision, stating, "I am personally deeply disappointed and quite frankly outraged by today's decision. Today's decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia." It's sorta hard to argue with the mayor when you look at the cold hard facts: today's murder rate is only 26% higher than it was when the gun ban was put in place in 1978, down from a peak of only 128% higher in 1991. With results like that, I'm not sure D.C. can really afford to have its gun violence "decreased".But its not just Washington D.C. that is at risk from this unexpected discovery of the Bill of Rights. The mayor is also worried that the anarchy caused by Constitutional limits on government power could spread, commenting: "It has national implications with regard to gun control statutes across the country. It's the first time that a federal court has said that the 2nd Amendment restricts or prohibits gun control." Ahh… Mr. Mayor, you don't count the 2nd Amendment itself? The one that was specifically intended to prohibit gun control? Of course this might be the first time a Federal court has read that far into the Constitution, considering the difficulty in trying to get past the "separation of church and state" part of the 1st Amendment.

A number of leftist sources praised dissenting judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, who opined that the gun ban was constitutional based on two quite brilliant legal deductions. The first being that the District of Columbia is not a state (as in "necessary to the security of a free State…"), so that the 2nd Amendment did not apply to that part of America, which sets a wonderful precedent for America's other territories. The second insight was that despite the right belonging to "the people" in the amendment, it actually belonged only to the militia as an organized military force. To believe that, you have to believe that the United States is the only nation on Earth that needs to guarantee its government, in writing, the right to have an army… which is possible I suppose, if Thomas Jefferson foresaw the attitude of the modern Democratic Party towards the US Armed Forces. The mystery of whether the amendment guarantees the people or the military the right to possess weapons disturbed a number of commentators. Consider this gem featured on MSNBC: "Now, the issue is 27 words. That's the 2nd Amendment's section on the right to bear arms. I'm going to read the 27 words. They say 'a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' Now, it's a long-standing legal question in America, and largely unresolved, although partisans on both sides will say it is resolved but a majority of scholars would say it isn't. What does that mean? Does that mean that militias have the right to possess guns or individuals?" The Washington Post was not afflicted with uncertainty, stating that the amendment applied only to militias, and that the ruling was part of an "unconscionable campaign, led by the National Rifle Association… to give individuals 2nd Amendment rights." Gosh, I’ll bet you thought that was led by the Founding Fathers clear back in the 1780’s when they wrote our Constitution.

What the left does not get about the 2nd Amendment is that it is not about the National Guard, or sporting firearms or gun collectors. It does not guarantee the government an army, nor does it guarantee civilians the right to hunt, or to shoot skeet. It's about the right of the people to maintain some portion of the ultimate power of government, violence, to themselves. The Founding Fathers reserved the primary powers of society to the people, through the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They guaranteed the power of law through the right to vote. They guaranteed the power of wealth through the right to private property. They guaranteed the power of ideas through the right to free speech. And they guaranteed the power of violence (or at least the ability to commit it) through the right to bear arms. Those four powers of man, law, money, thought, and violence, were divided among all the people and not reserved only to the government, the well connected, the rich, the socially approved, or the military. That's the basis of our Republic.

But the primary reason behind the hysteria is that for decades the political left has interpreted the Constitution as saying whatever they happen to want it to say. The actual words did not matter. When words -- even just 27 words -- mean exactly what they say, then the power to dictate law from a "living" Constitution disappears, and liberals are reduced to trying to persuade people that they are right thinking, which is often a very daunting task. So… you can bet your boots the liberals will appeal this court decision. Then to, who knows what other “dangerous” Constitutional amendments might be rediscovered?

Choice

30 March, 2007

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
Thomas Jefferson


It seems I like to pick on the President a lot, so in the interest of fairness I’ll give George W. a break for today, and pick on FDR for a change. For starters, keep in mind that I was raised as an Irish “New Deal” Democrat, and was taught at my grandfathers knee that FDR could do almost anything except walk on water. However, in the decades since I’ve come to form a somewhat different view.

Undoubtedly Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man, and he probably was the best available to hold office during the great depression. He did, I think, greatly aid in keeping the nation from imploding in the mid 1930’s, and he did lead the country to victory during WW II. However, FDR also had a few rather strange and somewhat unpopular political ideals for his time, ideals that started the United States down the garden path that leads to rampant socialism, and to our present era of government by decree. In the first hundred days of his presidency, Roosevelt signed 15 major pieces of legislation designed to relieve the suffering of millions, and extricate America from the Great Depression. Several of which were later refuted by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

In a national address he stated that in addition to the inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution, Americans had a right to “a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.”

Fine words and fine ideals certainly, words designed to strike a chord in the minds of Americans struggling through the trials and tribulations of the depression era. But in his speech, FDR didn’t say it all. Rejecting our Constitutionally established limited government, autonomous society, and free economy, he assumed that a society of “equality” can only be brought about by the powerful, even unlimited regulation of a welfare state. What he envisioned was essentially a Marxist state, brought about without the “armed revolution of the proletariat” required by Lenin.

In contrast, the founding fathers of the United States felt that “liberty” and “equality” were compatible, and that one brought about the other. They believed that all people were equally endowed with certain natural rights, and certain inalienable political rights. Less idealistic than FDR, they also recognized that differences are an integral part of human nature. Regardless of our ideals, we all know that some people are better at this job than at that one, some are more handsome or beautiful than others, some people make good scientists, engineers, or businessmen, while others do not. Some people are just plain smarter or more industrious than their neighbors. All in all, some people are more equal than others, a fact that all the best intended laws, rules, and regulations ever devised by man cannot change.

Forcibly separating the various mechanisms of political inequality, the Constitution limits the powers of government to protecting our political rights. FDR’s “New Deal” socialism on the other hand, denies the existence of political rights, and instead requires government to guarantee the equality of our social and economic status. It ignores the historically proven fact that while any individual may rise to whatever social or economic level his persona allows him in a free society, attempting to force absolute economic equality on a society only drags everyone down to the level of the lowliest member of that society. Such forced equality stifles individual genius and initiative, denying all and sundry the right to excel. Instead it forces everyone into a common, and equally mediocre, mold. We have only to look at the former Soviet Union to see the long term results of a state directed economy and forced “equality”.

Ronald Reagan obviously did not believe in FDR’s New Deal socialism. In his first inaugural address he quickly pointed out that “Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem”, a warning this nation has yet to heed. He was speaking of the economic troubles facing the nation at that time, and the inherent inability of government to effectively control the economy of a society that is not itself strictly controlled. He was also speaking of the rapidly growing power of a bureaucratic and intellectual elite in our nations capitol that was undermining, in his view, the ability of the people to control what has become an unelected government. Where Roosevelt thought that the American people consented to be ruled by government in return for government guaranteed security, Reagan felt that the Constitution guaranteed individual freedom, dignity, and choice, rather than a monthly government check from the welfare department. If we intend to remain a free people, then we must reestablish the rule of law under the Constitution, rejecting the idea that a handful of select elites should have the power to make our decisions for us. The two concepts are not compatible, nor is there a safe and comfortable middle ground.. We can be a free people who happen to have a government, or we can have a government ruling a subject people.

Certainly some aspects of Roosevelt’s socialized society such as our existing Social Security program can, and probably should, be adapted to our free society, but any such adaptation must be done with extreme care lest it once again become the proverbial tail that wags the dog.

We are rapidly nearing the point where American citizens will no longer have a choice in the direction our country takes. Those who prefer Roosevelt’s version of America need only wait for public apathy and the steady increase of bureaucratic power over our lives to bring about a completely socialized nation. Those of us who prefer Reagan’s vision of America had better get off the sofa and start working long and hard for a return to the constitutional limitations on government that once made us the greatest free nation in mankind’s history.

Anti-Government

23 March, 2007

In the course of a recent conversation, I was somewhat indignantly accused of being “anti-government”. Considering many of the subjects I talk about, and my opinion on those subjects, such an accusation shouldn’t have come as any real surprise. So, lest I be pounced upon by Homeland Security, let me clarify any possible misunderstandings… no, I’m not anti-government, I’m anti BIG government. My idea isn’t that government is particularly evil and must be overthrown or destroyed, but rather that the best government is the least government, and that government should be severely limited in what it’s allowed to do. That comment is, I’m sure, going to upset a lot of people with a more progressive political agenda than I have.

Anytime people interact, they require a few basic ground rules to limit their interpersonal conflicts. When only a very few people are involved, customs and taboo’s work fine, as long as everyone understands what the rules are. When larger groups are formed, things change slightly. First the customs have to be codified (the law) to minimize misunderstandings, and a mutually agreed upon individual (a judge) is usually selected to arbitrate disagreements. Lawyers, or their predecessors, developed when those codified customs were allowed to get to complex for the ordinary citizen to readily understand. Then again, obviously someone was needed to enforce the rules, so enter the police, by whatever name they are called. “Government” exists to direct those functions, and almost always a local tough guy stepped up to make new laws, push everyone around, and “coordinate” things, becoming the Chief, King, or whatever. The King usually surrounded himself with a small elite that ruled the rest of the population in the kings name. In most cases this elite gained their position because they had ancestors who were better hunters, better warriors, smarter, or more likely were bigger and stronger bully’s than the rest of the group.

Religion also had to get involved. There was always somebody around who claimed to speak in the name of “The God’s”, and due to a gift of gab, could quickly explain everything from a crop failure to a spectacular comet in terms that any superstitious villager could readily understand. In return for constantly impressing upon the commoners that the Gods had ordained that the King should rule, the King let the local Shamans collect even more taxes, grab up a lot of prime land, and pretty well do as they liked. Even today, much of the world’s population still believes in the “Divine Right of Kings”. Apparently some of them still believe in the sacred aspects of comets as well.

As the rulers consolidated their power, things got very simple. The “Law of the Land” was such that a Nobleman could do pretty much as he wanted, and the only illegal activity was for a commoner to protest. The rulers and their warriors had a monopoly on weapons and armor they needed to survive a knock down drag out fight, and went on to develop their self-proclaimed authority. They got to extort “taxes” to support themselves with, and push everybody around. In most societies the educated priesthood developed into an entrenched bureaucracy that got to rub elbows with the rulers, live quite well at the expense of the working commoners, and not incidentally, to push everybody else around. The folks without weapons and fighting skills got to be pushed around, pay taxes, and were allowed to be the servants, serfs and slaves. Then, as now, government is little more than a small group of people ordering another, larger, group of people around. This is accomplished by intimidation, through control of the police and armed forces.

According to political theory, government exists to do those things that the people can’t do for themselves. Things like selecting leaders, creating borders, collecting taxes, starting wars, negotiating with the folks on the other side of the river, and passing even more of those innumerable pesky laws I guess. Fast forward to our modern era and you’ll note that while many of the names have changed, things are still pretty much the same. The United States government was formed to arbitrate disagreements between the states, oversee national defense, handle relations with foreign countries, coin money, run the postal service, and similar tasks. For the most part it did its job in a competent manner, with a minimum of fuss and feathers. As time passed however, our government grew into a bureaucracy that assumed more and more of the duties that rightfully belonged to the individual states. Following the Civil War, states rights were effectively ended by a powerful centralized government that has constantly grown larger and assumed most of the rights and duties of the states, making state government more or less superfluous. Rather than concentrating on the duties specifically assigned to the national government, and leaving us to handle our own local affairs, we find the feds now trying to control most aspects local government as well, and even interfering with our private lives, “for our own good”. Personally, I think I’m much better qualified to determine what’s good for me, than is a do-gooder bureaucrat located several thousand miles away!

Since the failure of the “Contract with America” a few years back, we haven’t heard much about Term Limits. I however, still consider that idea to be well worth enacting. The Republican “revolutionaries” of 1994 started with the best of intents, and wound up beguiled by the perks and privileges of national office. With term limits, those perks wouldn’t have nearly as much meaning, greatly reducing the temptation to continue increasing federal power. Then to, if we could put a five or ten year hiring freeze on federal bureaucrats, and then lock the government into that manning level, they wouldn’t have enough people to do much more than what the national government was intended to do in the first place! Plus we could save a lot of tax money as well, on the grossly oversized federal payroll.

Real ID

16 March 2007

It’s been said that no one should underestimate the capacity of mid-east politicians for making a bad situation worse. Humm… Yeah… maybe we ought to be saying the same about US politicians as well. Amid all the rhetoric about national security, terrorist threats, the patriot act, immigration controls and such, public officials, in their never ending zeal to appear to be doing something about terrorism, are now sending us off on a perilous course to a future in which every movement and financial transaction of American citizens is subject to federal monitoring and surveillance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced that American citizens will have until 2013 to be outfitted with new digital ID cards. The announcement offers a five-year extension to the deadline for states to issue the ID cards, and proposes creating a national database that would include details on all 240 million licensed American drivers. Homeland Security is considering standardizing a "unique design or color for Real ID licenses," which would effectively create a uniform national ID card. The states must submit a plan of how they'll comply with the Real ID Act by October 7, 2007. If they don't, their residents will not be able to use picture IDs to board planes or enter federal buildings starting on May 11, 2008.

The “Real ID” cards must include all drivers' home addresses and other personal information printed on the front and in a two-dimensional barcode on the back. The barcode will not be encrypted because of "operational complexity," which means that anyone with access to the card would be capable of scanning and recording the holders personal data. Incorporation of a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is also under consideration.

This sounds a lot like a new and improved U. S. version of the international drivers license. Again a picture (which never really seems to look like the card holder), his address and his date of birth are listed. Then we start adding things like the holders social security number, sex, driver's license or identification card number, and signature. Physical security features are designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes, and must be include a common machine-readable technology. The details are not spelled out, but left to the whim of the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Transportation and the individual States.

There is considerable disagreement about whether the Real ID Act institutes a "national identification card" system. Some claim the new law only sets forth national standards, but leaves the issuance of cards and the maintenance of databases in state hands; therefore, it is not a true "national ID" system, and may even forestall the arrival of national ID. Others argue that this is a trivial distinction, and that the new cards are de facto national ID cards, thanks to the uniform standards and the linked databases. The problem is, it doesn't matter how well an ID card works when used by the millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system will probably fail when used by someone intent on subverting the system, how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited. The first problem is the card itself. No matter how secure we make it, it will certainly be counterfeited by someone. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names. Even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn't be bribed, the initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents ... all of which would be easy to forge. Adding to that problem, about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost each year, which will require an entirely separate security system to handle the legitimate issue of replacement Real ID cards.

Additionally, any ID system involves people... people who regularly make mistakes. We’ve all heard stories of bartenders falling for fake IDs, or sloppy ID checks at airports and government buildings. It's not simply a matter of training either; checking IDs is a mind-numbingly boring task, one that is guaranteed to have failures. Biometrics such as thumbprints show some promise here, but also bring with them their own set of exploitable failure modes.

The main problem with any ID system is that it requires the existence of an immense database of private and sensitive information on every American, one widely and instantly accessible from airline check-in stations, police cars, schools, banks, hotels and so on. Such a database would be a hodgepodge of existing systems, databases that are sometimes obsolete, often incompatible, usually full of erroneous data, and generally unreliable. As computer scientists, we do not know how to keep a database of this magnitude secure, whether from outside hackers or common errors by the tens of thousands of insiders authorized to access it. And when the inevitable worms, viruses, or random failures happen, and the computer goes down, what then? Is the entire country supposed to shut down until the system is restored? We’ll also have an inevitable flood of security “identification check points” and the resultant long lines and delays to tolerate, every time we might want to go somewhere.

Proponents of national ID cards want us to assume all these problems, and the tens of billions of dollars such a system would cost… for what reason, the promise of being able to identify someone? Would it have done any good to have known the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? The goal is to stop terrorist acts, and to do that we must know their intentions, even though their identity has very little to do with that… prior to the explosion. There is far more security in alert guards paying attention to subtle clues than in bored minimum-wage guards blindly checking IDs.

And what comes next? Looking into the future we can readily see our paychecks, bank accounts, and credit cards incorporated into a government guaranteed ID card. With that, money becomes obsolete, and everything is handled via computer and plastic. Plastic that can be lost, stolen, or forged. Plastic that can be voided at the whim of a minor computer glitch, and suddenly you find that not only is buying groceries impossible, but that officially you, and/or your bank account, no longer exist. How about our medical records, genetic data, insurance policies, computer passwords and passports? Do you really want your entire life on a plastic card that can suddenly come up missing? Keep in mind that once that first card is foisted upon us, everything else will follow along eventually, for "national security purposes", or the convenience of the government, or the UN, or even “XYZ Corporation”.

Some state governments already have come out against the Real ID Act--a move that effectively dares the federal government to continue when the states refuse to participate. At least eight states so far, including Arizona, Georgia, Maine, and Vermont, have had anti-Real ID bills approved by one or both chambers of the legislature, and hopefully many more states will join that effort. What we have here is little more than another panicky and ill considered federal “anti-terror” mandate, being dumped on the states to fund and implement.

Canadian Liberty

10 March, 2007

It would seem that our neighbors to the north are somewhat more concerned about civil liberties than we are. Canada's House of Commons voted last week to not extend provisions in the anti-terrorism legislation that allow for preventive arrests and forced testimony. Like the US, Canada hurriedly passed anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of 9-11, and now, unlike the US, the Canadians seem to have realized that these ill considered laws trample all over the rights of their citizens. It's the second time in a week that Canada has struck down certain portions of its anti-terror legislation. One of Canada's most contentious anti-terrorism measures was declared unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court, denying their government the means to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely while the courts review their deportation orders. Fortunately for the Canadians, their Parliament and Supreme Court haven’t followed the lead of the US government. When our Patriot Act came up for renewal, Congress meekly extended it for a couple of years, and the Supreme Court has yet to strike it down as unconstitutional.

For many years American “progressives” (that’s a politically correct way of saying left wing “liberals”) have been weeping and wailing about real or imagined human rights violations committed by nearly every country in the world. They hold the American version of democracy up for all to see, as a shining example of government protecting individual rights. In itself that’s all well and fine, even if we don’t have a quite spotless civil rights record. But following the 9-11 terrorist attacks we passed the deceptively named “Patriot Act” which violates not only human rights but our constitutional law as well, and quite effectively turns the United States into a police state. All the liberals seem to have done since it’s passage is shed a couple of tears and mumble something about keeping the public safe, while the conservative right pontificates about national security!

Had anyone suggested to past generations of Americans that this nation needed laws giving the federal government free rein to ignore the provisions of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, we’d have heard thundering denouncements from congress, the supreme court would have been up in arms, and the president would have written “veto” in big red letters all over everything that crossed his desk! Any politician who favored such legislation could have immediately kissed his government career good-by! The American people would simultaneously have been rioting in the streets, liberally equipped with tar, feathers, torches, pitchforks and muskets! Whoever first suggested such a travesty would have been well advised to catch the next ship to France! Had Abe Lincoln tried passing such an act in 1865 as a means to combat another rebellion, the Grand Army of the Republic would have been marching on Washington!

Today we have a somewhat different situation. The President of the United States, a man who took a solemn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, proposed that the nation ignore our constitutional rights and give unprecedented police powers to the federal government. Our elected representatives to Congress, men sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, stumbled all over themselves to pass such legislation. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court, composed of highly qualified judges sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, seem to ignore the whole thing! … meanwhile, the American people sit back, basking in their government provided “security”, swilling bottled water, watching mindless “reality” shows on TV, and complaining about the government not providing them with enough “entitlements”!

The American people desperately need to wake up! The Patriot Act literally dumps our Constitution and everything it stands for in the waste basket. Ignoring the Bill of Rights, it allows the government to declare anyone, citizen or not, a “terrorist”, arrest them, and toss them in jail forever, just because some minor government functionary doesn’t like the color of their eyes! If you disagree with a politician, you can be declared a potential terrorist, and jailed until somebody decides you’ve changed your ways! The foundation of our nation, our Constitution, provides everybody, citizen or not, with certain protection of the law. It does not allow the law to mistreat or imprison anyone until they have been proven guilty of a crime. The torture of prisoners, such as the government now claims is a necessary tool in the war on terror, is completely forbidden! Carried to its logical extremes, the Patriot Act allows our federal government to decree what you can say, think, or do. Any opposition to actions of the federal government could get you declared a suspected terrorist and “enemy of the people”, subject to warrentless arrest, incarceration without trial, questioning under torture, and finally execution, all in the name of “public safety”! What’s the next step, black clad, submachine gun toting internal security police standing on every street corner, making sure we properly salute the thirty foot tall picture poster of “our glorious leader”? We fought a war with Nazi Germany over their treating people that way, and we went through a long and difficult Cold War with the Soviet Union over their treating people the same! Now, the United States of America, a nation born in a war against tyranny and since become the worlds bastion of individual liberty, now hands over to our government those same police powers, without so much as a whimper of protest! What happened to all the fine prose about the rights of free men, of our support of liberty, and the vehement protests over violations of those individual and civil rights?

It’s high time we, all three hundred million of us, inform our elected representatives in no uncertain terms, that we will not tolerate this violation of the rights and the liberties upon which this nation was founded, and demand… nay, order, the immediate and total repeal of the Patriot Act! If they fail to do so, then we can readily elect representatives who will repeal this nefarious invasion of our rights. (That’s supposing that the next election isn’t cancelled due to a suspected “terrorist threat”.) We are a nation, as President Lincoln quietly stated at Gettysburg, “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”, not a nation of disenfranchised serfs dedicated by the government, to the governments welfare!

Meanwhile, the Canadians, God Bless ‘em, have begun to take the torch of liberty from our faltering hands.

Presidential Popularity

2 Mar, ’07

It seems of late that the established media has become quite concerned about the popularity of George W. Bush, and his future place in the history books. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course political literature loudly proclaim that Mr. Bush the younger is rated very low in the polls, that the public lacks confidence in him, and now the buzzwords include claiming that he’s one of the worst presidents ever. That last part comes with a raised eyebrow of course. The February 26th issue of U.S. News contains a long article concerned with “Americas Worst Presidents”, which includes a list of those the author (Jay Tolson) consider to be failures. Based on an updated 1948 historical study, many of these so called failures were some of the pre-civil war eras most inept presidents, and interestingly enough most of these “worst” men were quite conservative, and are not seen as being either progressive or liberal enough by modern standards.

The list of the ten worst presidents include Buchanan, Harding, Andy Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Grant, Harrison, Hoover, Nixon, and Taylor. (Hoover and Nixon are tied for 9th place.) I’ll argue placing Andy Johnson and Herbert Hoover on the list, although the rest were at best rather ineffectual during their terms, with Nixon being a hard luck type that got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The primary question being asked in the article; “Is George W. Bush’s presidency shaping up to be the worst in U.S. history?”, and goes on to note that “you hear this question more and more often these days”. Perhaps an easier question would be, what makes a good, or even a great, president?

Consider, particularly in this day and age, that good communication skills are a necessity. I suspect that President Bush should probably get a C- on communications ability, as, despite having an Ivy League education, he doesn’t seem to speak a language the eastern liberals can understand. The media seems to enjoy pointing out his numerous gaffes and occasional word mispronouncing, but I rather think that if we had wanted an English language professor for president we’d have elected one.

Next a President must be lucky. To be considered great, a president must be handed crises that appear spectacular in the media, and yet can be readily solved at minimal cost, leaving the office holder to come up smelling like the proverbial rose. Considering that the 9-11 attack came like a bolt from the blue and generally taking everybody by surprise, the president definitely came up short in the luck department. Nor have things been much better for him with the War on Terror and the Iraqi War. Nobody in Washington seems to realize that once a military victory has been won, it’s time to send the combat troops home and let the diplomatic set from the State Department take over. The military is good at smashing things, but they don’t have much experience or training at the job of nation building. Now it’s to late for that as we’re faced with a full scale guerrilla war mixed into a religious civil war, and the US military is not very good at fighting those things either, with “guess who” taking the blame.

The national economy has been another hard luck story for the president. For one thing most people don’t seem to realize that a sitting president is faced with economic problems initiated a couple of terms in the past! Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the “Crash of ‘29”, yet the roots of the great depression dated clear back to Woodrow Wilson. The economic slump Mr. Bush is blamed for began under Slick Willie Clinton. You might also consider that even the economic experts have yet figured out how to regulate the economy of a free market society, but yet again it’s considered the sitting presidents fault.

Corruption in government is another item that historians and the media like to grade a president on, and seemingly Mr. Bush fails here as well. What they don’t mention is that corruption is quite common at all levels of government, and the bigger the government the worse things get. The problem President Bush faces is that the situation in Iraq is tailor made for corruption. When hundreds of billions of dollars are administered by thousands of career bureaucrats, big business sees it as manna from heaven and sends in the lions, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bills. The administration of Ulysses S. Grant is commonly considered to be the most corrupt in our history, with good reason. Yet U.S. Grant was an incredibly honest man. Somewhat naive in the ways and means of politics perhaps, but he was undoubtedly an honest man, once nearly jailing his own father for trying to make a quick buck off the Army during the Civil War. He was also the president that started cleaning up an entrenched federal system that made corruption standard procedure. Unfortunately Grant, Bush, nor any other president can pronounce from on high “Go Ye Forth and Sin No More”, thus changing government procedures overnight. Government corruption can be dug out by the roots and eliminated of course, but it’s a difficult job, particularly so under wartime conditions.

Nor has the president had a lot of luck with his staff and advisors either. Initially he was praised for calling back so many of his fathers advisors. But then the press, and the public, soon noticed that political goals of many of those people remained fixed in the early 1990’s rather than the present. Essentially the president was being ill served by his staff and advisors. I admire loyalty to one’s subordinates, but Mr. Bush carries it to extremes! When your advisors fail you, repeatedly, it’s high time to start looking for new advisors, something Mr. Bush has failed to do. With this failure he’s brought on much of his own bad luck.

No, I’m afraid that the soon-to-be-written history books are not going to be kind to President George W. Bush, or at least not if they’re written by the socialist left. A well thought out and unbiased history still wouldn’t put him in the ranks of the great presidents either, but at least he’ll probably be considered a reasonably competent and well meaning man, faced with a lousy situation, and a horrible run of somewhat self induced bad luck.

Modern America

23 Feb, ’07

The United States is currently the world’s only superpower, with a couple of other nations and the European Union not far behind. Economically we’re a powerhouse, and will remain so as long as we don’t sell what’s left of our industrial base to foreign countries. (I understand that Daimler-Chrysler is now considering selling off the Chrysler part of the operation. Anyone gotta lot of pocket change?) We’d be in even better shape if we could stop buying foreign oil, and start producing our own. Our agricultural industry leads the world in productivity and seemingly feeds half the people on the planet, at prices that keep the independent American farmer nearly broke. We produce, and utilize, more energy per capita than anyone else on the planet. The American educational system produces some of the greatest scientific minds in history (and some babbling idiots as well). Our standard of living beats most other places all hollow. Whenever NASA can get up enough nerve to fly the space shuttle (or anything else) we lead the world in off-planet exploits. The US Armed Forces are second to none, and have a habit of romping and stomping all over anybody we’re at war with. We are, in theory, the freest and richest nation in the world.

All in all, we’re doing pretty good, right? Well…

On the “flip side” we do have a few problems. We produce more air and water pollution than anybody else due to an ageing industrial infrastructure and a lot of gas guzzling SUV’s. Our transportation system is falling apart and we’re running out of ways to cobble it back together. We’re rapidly running out of natural resources, and the environmentalists scream bloody murder whenever we try to utilize whatever renewable resources we have. Half our population can’t afford any more than rudimentary medical care. The cost of living is skyrocketing while productivity and wages can’t seem to play catch-up. We do appear to have an awful lot of homeless people living on the streets, and far to many people are forced to survive on various types of welfare. Our great cities are slowly dying, becoming little more than crime ridden ghettoes of the poverty stricken, who have either lost hope, or never had any hope to begin with. We worship diversity to the point we’ve become a nation of rabid minorities rather than a nation of Americans. The country appears to be flooded with illegal drugs, and law enforcement seemingly can’t get a handle on the problem. A good number of our politicians and business executives probably belong in jail rather than in office, but with our rampant crime rate our prisons are so overcrowded we don’t have the room to incarcerate them all! Our taxes go up and up, with the national debt increasing even faster. (About the only thing that increases faster than the national debt is the size of the federal government.) Government sticks its long nose into everything we do, and tries to regulate all facets of our lives. At the same time, disregarding our wants and wishes, our government keeps getting involved in other countries internal affairs, which certainly doesn’t make us many friends, and tends to alienate the few friends we do have. The proclaimed goals of our political parties have developed to the stage where our leaders are so busy fighting each other that they seem unable, or unwilling, to find a solution for any of the problems facing the country.

So, how do we get our country back on track, and start attacking some of these “not so good” points about America, in a time when our national leaders squabbles only widen that chasm?
One thing I have learned about our Founding Fathers experiment on Representative Democracy is that it’s not a spectator sport, and change does not happen on its own. After the last sixteen years of "reality impaired" government that we have endured, I believe we need change, and not a change from political left to right and back again. Rather we need a shift away from established political parties with their constant infighting for power. President George Washington warned us of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party" during his Farewell Address to his newly founded Republic. It was his fear of what political parties would do to the nation that led him to draft his Farewell Address. He stated these political machines would eventually become, “Potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reigns of government, destroying the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” We have borne witness to this truth by watching the leadership of the Republican Party deteriorate from “fiscally conservative, small government politics,” into small factions of self serving, Big Government Republicans. We have seen the leadership of the Democratic Party shift from the crusading, reform “party of the working man”, into rampant socialism determined to drag everyone down to a “cradle to the grave” government directed welfare program, proclaimed to be “for our own good”.

America, wake up. Give in to the likes of these self serving people and Abraham Lincoln's prediction of destruction from within may well come true. There is not a country in the world that can be considered an honest threat to the United States today, unless we continue our politically induced downward spiral. Now this country faces a new threat -- one that will not go away. It is a threat even more serious than WWII, because money, industry and technology will not defeat it. It is a threat of defeat from within. It is a threat of a faltering economy because of a lack of resources, or even the simple threat of such a loss brought on by terrorism. It is a threat created by the American people trusting the inept. It is a threat created by people wanting change, and perilously believing that the “other party” can successfully deliver that change.

The two party system has served us for a long time, sometimes well, and sometimes bordering on disaster. Now, with our very freedom endangered by our own politicians, it’s high time that we make a serious change in the manner we select our national leaders.

Cheap Labor

16 Feb, ’07

A recent report by the Washington Post claims that aliens working in the United States are sending $25 billion in cash back to Mexico annually. An additional $25 billion is transferred to Central and South America, with yet another $16 billion U.S. dollars vanishing into Asia. That cash draining out of the United States was predominately earned by illegals, and a few green card workers. That’s money illegals made taking jobs from America’s middle class workers. It was also reported that illegal aliens in the United States comprise the second largest underground economy in the world. An economy that does not pay $301 billion in income taxes annually. Instead, you pay those taxes. Politicians and corporate America call such illegals “cheap labor”, or by presidential definition, “They do the jobs Americans won’t do.” What the president doesn’t tell you is that illegal aliens work for the equivalent of slave wages, on which no legal, taxpaying, citizen could support a family, operate a car, or even buy the groceries. Now, corporate America wants even more cheap labor, and it appears that the government is giving it to them by further relaxing immigration and border controls.

Let’s examine the oxymoron of “cheap labor” as it applies to our new 20 some million person “illegal” working class. For example, take an average illegal alien with his wife and five kids. He works for $6.00 an hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax even if he presented a counterfeit social security card. But at the end of the year, if he files an income tax return, he receives earned income credit of up to $3,200.00. His “anchor baby” children each received free hospital care at $5,000.00 per birth which totals $25,000.00 of a hospital’s funds. Since illegals don’t have to pay, hospitals pass the costs on to you in higher rates. Illegal children also receive K-12 education at your expense. Some quick math shows one of his children’s schooling at 13 years times $7,000.00 per year equals $91,000.00. By including all five kids, you’re paying about $364,000.00 in taxes to support those five school children from another country. When you add up free breakfasts and lunches at $5.00 per meal, we have another $9,000.00 per year in food.

When you calculate the cost of schooling for the reported 380,000 anchor babies annually, it turns out that “cheap labor” costs the American taxpayer $34.5 billion annually for education in already overcrowded schools. It costs roughly $1.9 billion to pay for their hospital births each year. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, an illegal alien working in the USA will create a net drain on the American taxpayer of over $55,000.00 during his lifetime. In a more recent report, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation reported that cost at $100,000.00. Because of his wage enforced poverty, and his children, an illegal alien qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent. He and his wife qualify for food stamps and you can bet they draw them. Additionally, his wife, kids, and he, qualify for a lifetime of free medical care. Current estimates show over 3.1 million illegal alien children are attending U.S. schools. Their parents qualify for financial relief from energy bills. If they become disabled, they may qualify for Social Security Income. The average illegal child requires a bilingual teacher at a cost of $9,200.00 a year each, times five kids, equals $46,000.00 annually, but, of course, the kids don’t want to learn English in the barrios of New York, Miami, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles. They could care less! The children of legal citizens then suffer from a severely degraded educational system. To give you an idea of what illegals working in our country costs us, Lou Dobbs at CNN reported on his program of Saturday, November 4, 2006, education for illegals in New York cost taxpayers $5.0 billion annually while California’s illegal population, now over 3.1 million; costs them $6.0 billion annually. When you add in the $1.6 billion in federal funds to support the 618,000 convicted illegal aliens sitting in our state and federal prisons, you really can’t define them as “cheap labor” much longer. You can’t define them as “slave labor” either. You can define their lives as “free room and board” provided by the taxpayer. When you look at the millions of American working poor now standing in the food stamp and unemployment lines, with billions of your tax dollars paying for their welfare and medical care--the real meaning of illegal aliens working the jobs that Americans won’t do for less than minimum wages brings a whole new understanding to “cheap labor.”

On December 12, the United States government carried out one of the largest nationwide operations against illegal immigrants at their workplaces in U.S. history, arresting 1,300 people at six meat-packing plants owned by the Swift Company. The government later charged some 200 of the people detained with identity theft and other crimes, but most of the illegal aliens were simply deported. The raid on the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, a small town in the Texas panhandle, saw 75% of the local population arrested as illegal immigrants. Over the course of the plants 30 year history, it’s reported that hourly wages decreased by 50% as increasing numbers of illegal aliens were hired at reduced wages, while legal citizens were forced out of their jobs.

It’s estimated that over 35,000 illegal aliens are currently employed by Idaho’s agricultural industry. The economic strain on local government is such that Canyon County has filed lawsuits against the local employers of illegals, in an attempt to regain at least some of the county funds spent on caring for those illegals. Cheap labor? Only for the corporate world.
When one entity feeds off another being, it’s classified a parasite. Today, Mexico, Asia, Central and South America are devouring the United States like parasites. Worse, our elected parasites in Washington, DC make this ongoing situation possible by ignoring our immigration laws. They allow illegal alien “parasites” to suck the financial life-blood out of our country, while they slowly destroy our social and cultural integrity.

I’m not opposed to immigration as such. I am however opposed to the problem of illegal immigration being ignored by our elected officials. Perhaps it’s time we informed Congress, and the White House, that we did not elect them to turn a selective blind eye towards some of our nations laws.