When enough people excite themselves sexually, it goes from disgusting to depraved.

Thus, media self-abuse sessions are depraved.

I mean, seriously, go read this. So many like minded people agreeing that they do a great job, all together? What other profession could do this and not laugh itself silly about itself? Don't even say "lawyers" -- we tell more lawyer jokes than the rest of you combined. This would be like Congress having hearings on itself, and issuing a grade of "A++!"

Josh Marshall: Still a hack.

Someone, someday, must explain to me why I get LoFi publishing some days, and HiFi others.

Hilarious parody -- and I think I might have a new addition to the leftward links.

Via Welcome to Rantville.

Mike Martz is still an idiot, Volume III.

Bulger is "still growing?" Y'all've got a fully grown QB on the sidelines, moron.

I wanted to write something pithy, something uplifting, something that would make the heart sing its way into the weekend and distract us from the fact that one of our two major political parties has not merely gone slightly mad, but has done so in a way that simply screams out for large doses of psychoactive medicine (Our best chance for electoral victory is if millions of Americans go hungry and thousands more die at the hands of terrorists -- that'll show the bastards for even once speaking favorably of BUSH in an opinion poll).

Couldn't. Sorry.

What I decided to do instead was to point out that this, while mean, is also hilarious. And right.

When Hurricane Gilbert -- Category 5 and winds that could knock a young Dolly Parton on her side -- was on a dead-on collision course with Houston, where I lived at the time, there were three categories of humans:

The survivors, i.e., those smart enough to pack everything up and get ready to haul ass inland as fast as possible;

The 'tweeners, i.e., those for whom either fate or finances made it impossible to leave thusly (or who were smart enough to want to live, but not smart enough to leave), and who thus battened down the hatches and made sure to have enough bottled water and dry goods to last a week; and

The morons, i.e., The Guys Who Proved Darwin Right, which is to say, the ones who thought that a Category 5 with gusts over 200 miles an hour would lead to some sweet waves, and, Dude, I've got my board, Dude, I've got my boat, let's rock!

I regret that Gilbert did not hit Houston, because, first, it scoured the Yucatan, and quite frankly, Texans were in a better position to take that damage than the largely poor inhabitants of that peninsula, and, second, because some filtering of the gene pool is desirable.

Charles In Charge: The Porn Years

NOT OFFICE SAFE. I found out the hard way.

That said, this post led to this post, which led to the comments, which led me to Google the names "Nicole Eggert" and "Erika Eleniak" in an unfiltered image search.

Do so, and (1) be impressed, (2) be ashamed, and (3) be amazed at how quickly celebrity dies for attractive young women.

Via Ben -- aw, heck, he says it best:

Oh, and one last thing: Al Franken is so going to hell.

So, it appears, is at least one writer for The Onion.

Why I never link to Matthew Yglesias. Never. Fortunately, Tacitus plumbs the depths for us.

Oh, for reference: No bishop needed to excommunicate the Nazis. Back then, catechesis was a little better, so every Catholic knew that initiating or taking part in mass murder leads to excommunication by nature of the act itself. In the same way that a doctor who is "Catholic" who performs abortions is consigned to Hell without the bell and the book, so were any "Catholic" Nazis -- especially those who directly aided the mass murder.

And the Pope didn't excommunicate Hitler because the man wasn't Catholic, and wasn't Christian. It would be like formally telling me I'm no Wiccan -- I coulda told you that. Hitler renounced Christianity in his early teens. I know, many liberals suspect that all devout Catholics are closet Nazis, but y'all are gonna have to work a little harder to prove it.

One last: Apropos of this slander:

And we haven't even started talking about Croatia yet -- there's a story to set your blood boiling.

News flash: That particular Franciscan was excommunicated officially. Those others who were not, were excommunicate de facto. Did some "priests" take part in atrocities? I'd be shocked if they didn't -- they are human, and prone to err as any other. Are they in Hell now? One can but hope. Does this mean that the Church is Evil? Please.

Let's not start comparing body counts among competing ideologies here, o secular humanist Matthew.

Clarification on that last item:

(1) The new model is in pre-production. The engineering team expects it to roll off the factory floor around, sigh, April 15th.

(2) Technically, this will be the second model of that generation of [Crowns] -- which still leaves us below replacement rate. As we cannot have .2 children, we shall have to simply put in the long hours to produce a new model in the not-too-distant future.

(3) If there's any doubt, given the usually dry nature of my writing, about how I feel about this:

I'm:

(a) ecstatic;

(b) elated;

(c) overjoyed;

(d) enraptured;

(e) jumping up and down (well, I was a little while ago);

(f) happier than a pig in shit; and -- for those who know me well, let us not forget:

(g) scared out of my mind that something is going to go wrong. (The last time, the doctors threatened to prescribe me sedatives. I do not foresee being calmer this time.)

Some time ago, I promised to explain why posting has been light the last couple of months. Well, in no particular order:

(1) I'm not all that bright. I don't really have that much to say.

(2) I've been getting settled into the new job.

(3) We moved. That took longer than you'd think.

(4) No internet access at home. Long story.

And now, for the big announcement:

(5) The [Crown] family: Keeping the population above replacement rate since 2001. (Actually, the extended [Crown] family has been doing that for centuries.)

A few points for an otherwise busy morning:

* Overrated. That deadly defense means nothing if (1) your offense is poop, and (2) your kicker gets blocked three times, including on an extra point. Ain't the kicker's fault if it happens that often, kids.

I'd personally like to see Gruden taken down a few pegs. This is a nice start.

* Also overrated. The Bengals, kids. You beat the Bengals by three. I don't care how psyched everyone is about the new coach, they're still the Bengals until proven otherwise. Super Bowl contenders my @*$.

* I've neglected to mention this to date, but one of my best friends in da whole wide woild, Jimmy, is headed off to Kandahar, to do contracting for Halliburton. (Gasp!) I wish him luck; it might seem crazy to a lot of folks, but I see why he's doing what he's doing. Stop in -- he'll be back to blogging on his site soon, and we can get a first hand report on the state of Afghanistan.

* Turn signals are our friends, kids.

* As a rule of thumb, only an idiot gives away the starting quarterback's job because the starter got injured. Mike Martz is an idiot. Warner is one of the highest-rated passers of all time, can read a blitz like no one's business, is deadly accurate, and knows the offense backward and forward. But Marc Bulger benefits from Mike Martz actually using Marshall Faulk in, you know, the game, so Bulger starts.

Moron.

* Woo hoo!

* (First item:) HAHAHAHAHA. Suuuure. Have we, as a nation, turned into a bunch of women? Actually, that's not fair to my wife; she'd kick someone's ass before admitting she's "afraid." "John Ashcroft scares me," "Antonin Scalia scares me," "W. scares me," and so on. Grow a pair and go to battle, if you don't like them.

* Those right-wing scare mongers have taken over the Guardian! Stories like that one, and this one, are just propoganda designed to force women into back-alley abortions!

I joke, but someone somewhere is probably thinking exactly that right now.

* It's called withdrawal, Bill, and it's a sign of illness. Seek help.

"Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
Where were the upright ever destroyed?

As I have observed, those who plow evil
and those who sow trouble reap it.

At the breath of God they are destroyed;
at the blast of his anger they perish.

The lions may roar and growl,
yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.

The lion perishes for lack of prey,
and the cubs of the lioness are scattered."

-Job 4:7-11


Why do You stand afar off, O LORD?
Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?

In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted;
Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised.

For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire,
And the greedy man curses and spurns the LORD.

The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him.
All his thoughts are, "There is no God."

His ways prosper at all times;
Your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
As for all his adversaries, he snorts at them.

He says to himself, "I will not be moved;
Throughout all generations I will not be in adversity."

His mouth is full of curses and deceit and oppression;
Under his tongue is mischief and wickedness.

He sits in the lurking places of the villages;
In the hiding places he kills the innocent;
His eyes stealthily watch for the unfortunate.

He lurks in a hiding place as a lion in his lair;
He lurks to catch the afflicted;
He catches the afflicted when he draws him into his net.

He crouches, he bows down,
And the unfortunate fall by his mighty ones.

He says to himself, "God has forgotten;
He has hidden His face; He will never see it."

Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up Your hand.
Do not forget the afflicted.

Why has the wicked spurned God?
He has said to himself, "You will not require it."

You have seen it, for You have beheld mischief and vexation to take it into Your hand.
The unfortunate commits himself to You;
You have been the helper of the orphan.

Break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer,
Seek out his wickedness until You find none.

The LORD is King forever and ever;
Nations have perished from His land.

O LORD, You have heard the desire of the humble;
You will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear

To vindicate the orphan and the oppressed,
So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror.

-Psalm 10


Today kinda snuck up on me: intellectually, I knew what today would be; but it only hit me when I got into work this morning what today was. I have nothing terribly insightful to say, except these:

I do not now, and will not for the foreseeable future, trust any modern Democrat to try to the limits of Executive power to stop another September 11th from happening again. Roosevelt? Truman? Kennedy (John)? Scoop Jackson? The last of those men died or became Republican years ago. I vote Republican, generally, because of abortion and taxes. But even if the two parties reconciled unfavorably on those issues, I'd still vote Republican, because alone among our political parties -- Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Whatever -- I can trust Republicans to do what must be done to stop vicious men from slaughtering my family in their sleep.

Necessarily, when bad men are trying to kill you, you must sometimes kill them to stop them from killing you. Sometimes, they will admit no other argument.

I could care less about sixteen words. A vicious man who would certainly have destroyed us given a chance holds power no more. That is enough.

The Left is proof that good intentions can lead inexorably to evil.

As an otherwise fairly dense fellow once said, we're still coming for you, you bastards.

UPDATE: Wanted to note Senator Cornyn's clarion words of today:

"The passengers on Flight 93 were everyday Americans, men and women with jobs, with families, with dreams. Like all of us, they made promises to their loved ones before they boarded that plane: promises of vacations and baseball games, of presents and anniversaries, small promises and big ones. Some promises don't come cheap; some cost us nothing; others require that we risk all, even our very lives.

The crash site of Flight 93, nestled in the quiet hills of Pennsylvania, is filled with memories of the promises those heroes made and will never keep."

As the Senator notes, we now have a duty to keep the promise they made that day.

Victory.

Reading comprehension is a condition precedent to textual critique, Mr. Sullivan.

Compare:

Sullivan: "Anything to distract from the real scandal, I guess. Dulles' proposals for reform of the Church amount entirely to greater obedience to Rome, subservience to ecclesiastical authority, maintenance of the existing structures, and penance from the laity. I.e. more power for him. Funny how that happens, doesn't it?"

Dulles: "Some of the alienation between different groups may result from mechanisms introduced in the wake of Vatican II. The Council exalted the episcopacy to an unprecedented peak of power and responsibility. No normal individual is capable of being at once the chief teacher, the leading mystagogue, and the principal administrator for millions of Catholics, responsible for a huge array of parishes, schools, universities, hospitals, and charitable organizations. Bishops are also expected to be in constant consultation with pastoral councils and senates of priests. Within the diocese the bishop holds the fullness of legislative, judicial, and executive power.

In addition to their tasks within their respective dioceses, bishops are regularly engaged in the deliberations and decisions of the national episcopal conference to which they belong and in some cases have assignments from one or more of its multiple committees. A number of them are also involved in the government of the universal Church. They occasionally serve on congregations of the Holy See, and take part in synods of bishops. No wonder that there are failures in the handling of certain assignments of priests and other personnel.

According to the job description in the official documents, the bishop ought to be a man of high culture, firm in faith, solid in orthodoxy, a paragon of holiness, graciously winning in personality, able to assess the talents and weaknesses of others, skilled at managing large corporations and conducting fiscal policy, eloquent in the pulpit, fearless under criticism, indefatigable, and always self-possessed. Do we have in the United States a sufficient supply of priests with all these qualities? Many of the candidates being elevated to the episcopate, it would seem, are men of ordinary abilities, kind and hardworking, but incapable of measuring up to the almost superhuman responsibilities of the office. They run the risk of being morally, psychologically, and spiritually crushed under the burdens. As a prime structural problem, therefore, I would single out for special attention the episcopal office. What can be done to restore the priestly and pastoral ministry of bishops to its position of primacy?

In this context the relationship between clergy and laity may need some reconsideration. The distinction of roles, clearly spelled out by the Second Vatican Council, can be overstepped from both sides. Bishops, in their zeal to give explicit pastoral direction on every question and to control everything that goes on in their diocese, sometimes infringe on the proper competence of the laity, whose responsibility it is to apply the gospel to the circumstances of the marketplace, the professions, and political life. But the laity should understand that doctrinal teaching, pastoral governance, and liturgical leadership are tasks ordinarily reserved to persons in holy orders, especially the pope and bishops." (Emphasis added.)

We can't be reading the same document.

Ha! Take that!

And that!

On a happier note, Ramesh Ponnuru works over Nick Gillespie (you have no idea how much fun it is to write that) here:

Gillespie's comment about Section 215 of Patriot makes sense only as part of his weaselly attempt to shift ground. Yes, it's true that this section of the law "allows the government to delve into personal records, including Web use, of people who may or may not be charged with a crime." So does every other surveillance law, both before and after Patriot. Neither the Fourth Amendment, the criminal surveillance laws, nor the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has ever exempted personal records from surveillance just because the person in question was not going to be charged with a crime. In the Fourth Amendment and criminal-surveillance contexts, the question is always where the evidence might be. If evidence relevant to a criminal investigation is in your house, your house can be searched — even if you're not suspected of anything.

Beautiful.

More Ponnurus -- which is to say, more non-lawyers who know the law better than most lawyers -- show up, and I'm out of a damned job.

I personally think he left out the standing point as a sign of magnaminity.

Institutions of men never ever do wrong, and when they do, the whole thing is rotten to the core, or, Why I Don't Read Anything Andrew Sullivan Says About the Catholic Church. He has some usual screed about how some truly evil men did horrible things to their fellow humans in the name of Christ. (No link; he's wandering into Josh Marshall territory.)

No, seriously? That happens? Can a Church really claim to be doing right when some of its members do ill?

Grow up, friend. The Church is the Bride of Christ, the Pilgrim People of God, and, yes, an institution of human beings. We're all touched by Original Sin. We are all tainted. The sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are given to doing terrible things to each other at times; when they have power, they are more tempted to do so. Otherwise, how do you think they Kennedys get such warm receptions out of the priests, bishops, and Cardinals with whom they consort? (Fascists then socialists and now baby murderers -- not the best Christians ever, y'know?) The miracle of the Church is that frequently, through Christ's intervention, men do really good things more often than not.

I'm sorry that Christianity stigmatizes sodomy. I'm sorry that God spoke so. I'm sorry that life is horribly unfair.

Rules of the game, friend. No one's forcing you to stick around.

Ramesh Ponnuru has a good read on Bobby Jindal, a subject near and dear to many conservative minds, including my own.

I'm a nutty right-winger. I admit it.

Lileks isn't, and says quite well something I was getting at yesterday:

This reminds me of a gentle tut-tutting I got from some guy on a webpage I stumbled across post 9/11 - he was just so . . . bemused at how I’d lost my grasp on reality. I had been describing my reaction to the men who’d kill my daughter for the glory of Allah: give me the gun, show me the cave. The author of the piece suggested I would be perfect for the role of the WW2 black-out warden who scolds people for half-closed windowshades.

Why, it’s almost as if I thought we were at war, or something.

Obviously the guy had no kids. I’m not saying childless people can’t have a visceral reaction to terrorists, or that parenthood has imbued me with a special glowing Field of Righteousness - but until you have children you can’t quite realize what you’d do to defend them, because the emotion comes from a place you didn’t know too much about. The weeks after 9/11 we all thought that we were in for more of this - more planes, more bombs, and come the winter, Smallpox. I would jerk awake from nightmares where Gnat had the pox. You do everything you can to keep them safe - then this.

You really have no idea what you'd do until you fully understand you're a Daddy. Then, no amount of violence seems entirely unthinkable.

I haven't weighed in on much of anything lately -- an announcement in that regard will be forthcoming in future months -- but reading Clayton Cramer's bit on Paul Hill (here) got me thinking:

It's hard for me to feel any sympathy for Hill. If Paul Hill had destroyed abortion clinics, I could at least respect his fervent desire to stop what he considers to be murder. Property is always of lesser significance than lives. Killing an abortion doctor, except while that doctor is actually headed into the operating room to perform an abortion, doesn't qualify as justifiable homicide by any stretch of the imagination. It's not lawful to gun down a serial killer as he walks down the street, unless they resist arrest, or are engaged in an immediate act that threatens the life of another. Neither of these cases really fits what Paul Hill did.

Paul Hill clearly sees himself as the 21st century equivalent of John Brown, and I think that's a fair comparison--and that should tell you something of how I feel about John Brown--a man who was too willing to kill, and sometimes to kill innocents, in the single-minded pursuit of justice. All the time and money that Hill and friends have spent on this trial could have been spent in ways that wouldn't have taken a life or inflamed pro-choice sorts: civil disobedience, blocking abortion clinic entrances; leafletting and picketing. Even criminal actions such as property-only sabotage can be remedied with enough money. To quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven: "It's a hellava' thing when you kill a man. You take away everything he's got ..... And everything he's ever gonna have."

Any liberal who regards Paul Hill as a monster, but John Brown as a hero, is only upset that Hill objects to abortion. Anyone who lionizes John Brown clearly has no problem with Paul Hill's methods.

Cramer's right, more or less.

But I have two addenda to add:

Addendum One

I am torn over non-state-sponsored justice. The rational, lawyer part recognizes full well that letting vigilantes out to do justice runs all sorts of nasty risks, not least of which are breakdown in social order, and the enormous human, emotional, economic, and social costs attached to letting justice be done by angry mobs or individuals (who are unpredictable, given to waaay too much emotion, and are ultimately not accountable the way a government is). In my head, so to speak, I am fully cognizant of the need to monopolize government to the state, and the State alone. And I agree with that need. In my head.

But, if you believe, as I do, that deliberate abortion is simply institutionalized murder, then it is very hard to have sympathy for the men and women who raise their right hands, swear not to induce abortion, then go ahead and do it anyway for fun and profit -- even when they're killed in cold blood.

The problem is this. I am willing to kill to save my child. I'd slaughter every last one of you (and all one of you!) reading this to do so. If God blesses us with another child, I'd sever your silver cords faster than you can blink for that little one's life, without hesitation, whether he (or she or they) is (are) in utero or drawing air ex utero. Most fathers, I think, would admit to the same emotions if they're honest.

My child(ren) is/are not valuable because they are mine, however, but rather because they are children. I don't care if we're hardwired to throw ourselves in the way of harm to little ones, or if it's social conditioning. It is fact. Children are outside of rational calculus. They are, for a whole host of reasons, more important, more valuable than adults. This may or may not be logically provable -- I apologize for leaving it at that -- but it is true on any visceral level you choose to measure.

And so I must also point out that if you were advancing on a terrified child with a bloody knife and murder in your eyes, I would bludgeon you to death before I let you kill that child. I would feel no remorse for so doing. It matters not whether the kid and I share a significant level of DNA. It matters that you are looking to kill a child. Period. End of discussion. End of your life.

I doubt you'd find a jury outside of the PRM who'd convict me for that.

So, the question is this: If abortion is indeed child murder, why should I condemn Hill? For the doctor doing this thing is, of his own volition, murdering a child. And the doctor Hill killed murdered children for profit.

(Actually, I should condemn Hill for killing the bodyguard. Under no circumstances was that licit.)

There are all sorts of very good arguments about this. Good cannot come from an evil act, my Church instructs, and states that killing in cold blood is evil. Fair enough. But I wrestle with this: This begs the question of when that killing is not in cold blood. (More on that below.)

Too, there are collateral damage issues. The dead doctor's family was not morally complicit in his crimes, yet they hurt. The pro-life movement is damaged by a media that happily lumps murderers with good faith protesters (who abhor the murderers). Public sympathy for the ghouls who slaughter children aids the baby murder argument.

What I find disturbing about all of this is that -- under our law -- there is no way for these men to stand and say, Stop this evil thing to any effect. None. It cannot happen. Seven men with cold hearts committed us to this, and respect for the rule of law perversely mandates that we simply accept, on a limited basis, their murderous injunction. Those in favor of baby murder -- who never once cease to twist and avoid reality to justify their positions -- are safely in control of the situation. Those who want to change it are left with no legal options.

Put differently: There is a not small percentage of people in this country who believe that we willingly allow a Holocaust every four years. Yet they have no power to stop what they see as mass murder. Most will not act out violently; we cannot, however, be shocked when they choose to do so.

Addendum Two

Cramer implicitly refers to Augustine's great tracts on Just War. By way of illustration (to overcome Christian pacifism, in part), Augustine proposed (loosely) this hypothetical:

Suppose you have a young woman who is being stalked by a large man. He clearly intends to do her harm, but at the instant you reach the situation, he is in no position to harm her. It is clearly not morally licit to slit his throat on the off chance that he'll go through with it; you deny him the chance to repent and back away. It can't hurt, though, to yell, "Stop," or try to get between him and the woman.

Now suppose that he keeps coming. He still can't hurt her yet, but he's not dissuaded by your activities. It's probably not licit to wound or hurt him, because you're still denying him the chance to repent, and the young woman still faces no immediate harm.

The question, then, is when you can -- indeed, Augustine implies, must -- strike. For you see, at some point, he has ignored all of your blandishments, walked around you, and is going to rape or kill that young woman. If you stand by and let her die, you are complicit in her death. But what is that point? When he's drawn his sword? When he's within striking distance? When he raises the sword? When the sword is on the downswing? When?

This is a question I have wrestled with for fully seven years now, and I can't work it out: Abortion protests do not stop the murders. At what point -- knowing what that doctor is doing -- are you complicit in the murder, so long as you simply sit outside and chant? Or file briefs? Or whatever?

Let me be completely clear on this: I'm not advocating murder. Of anyone. But one question that no one who's willing to debate me honestly about this can or has answered to my satisfaction is this: Why is Augustine's hypothetical wrong in this instance? Why is killing the man who is about to kill babies illicit, but killing the man who is about to kill the young woman not? Don't hand me any hackneyed nonsense about a child in utero not really being a child; go read a biology textbook, then talk to me. And the "nonperson" argument is as risible as it was one hundred and forty years ago.

So? Any takers?