The Fundamental Arrogance of Ron Paul’s Isolationism

Normally, I don’t like to pay much attention to Ron Paul.  He isn’t going to be the nominee, and his positions on foreign policy are so wildly wrong, it almost doesn’t seem necessary to even take them down.  I mean he is the only Republican running who might convince me to vote for Obama.  That is how little I like him.

But this morning I get a pair of headlines that really illuminate a point about his thinking.  First, via Brietbart by way of Weasel Zippers, we have this clip of Ron Paul explaining that the reason why Iran is pursuing nukes is because we are threatening them.

Yes, really.

Meanwhile, via Hot Air, we get this from Fars, the official Iranian mouthpiece:

The wife of Martyr Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, who was assassinated by Mossad agents in Tehran in January, reiterated on Tuesday that her husband sought the annihilation of the Zionist regime wholeheartedly.

"Mostafa's ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel," Fatemeh Bolouri Kashani told FNA on Tuesday.

Bolouri Kashani also underlined that her spouse loved any resistance figure in his life who was willing to fight the Zionist regime and supported the rights of the oppressed Palestinian nation.

Iran's 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, a chemistry professor and a deputy director of commerce at Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was assassinated during the morning rush-hour in the capital early January. His driver was also killed in the terrorist attack.

Observations on Jeremy Lin and Anti-Asian-American Prejudice (and False Alarms)

So apparently this is the theme of the day, bigotry towards Asian Americans.  Indeed, when I was watching last weekend’s Saturday Night Live, it was the subject of the opening sketch:

And yes, that NY Post headline, “Amasian!” is real:

And it’s pretty repugnant.  What does his race have to do with anything?

Well, then again this story suggests a certain relevance, from Cheaper Than Therapy:

Wringing Good Out of the Evil of Whitney Houston’s Death

Update: Prompted by a comment by JD over at Patterico's, I have to say this is probably the best way to remember her.



What a fabulous voice, and a horrible waste.  And as noted in the Washington Post, you can buy a copy of this as a single and the proceeds will go to 9-11 related charities, it seems.

--------------------------

So this night we learn that Whitney Houston has died.  There is no official cause of death but...

We all know what it was.  In some way or another, more than likely drugs killed her.  I mean feel free to wait for verification, but we all know it.  We saw it coming a mile away.

I admit I chuckled a little in watching the outrageous clips on The Soup, but part of me felt profoundly sad watching her downfall.  I am not saying I am a superfan or anything I am not, but she had a gorgeous voice and for years she seemed like a nice, normal, very “together” kind of woman.  She seemed like the kind of person who could be a positive role model to girls everywhere.  And now she is a cautionary tale.

I admit listening years ago to the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., had a profound effect upon my thinking.  One phrase that stuck with me in particular was this one: “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.”  He said that standing by the grave of three little girls who were murdered by Klan terrorists while attending Sunday school, but it is a phrase that has a broader application.

If Whitney Houston died of drugs, that is an evil.  I won’t call her evil.  I generally try to be a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin-kind-of-guy.  Well, I try.  But her death is an evil and a horrible waste.  And if there is any good that can be wrung from it, it is as a warning.  Drugs took her down.  It took this beautiful, talented, classy woman down.  And if that convinces one person to quit, or never to start in the first place, then there can be some redemption in this otherwise horrible, pointless end to her life.

And I hope Ms. Houston can find peace in the next life.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

Once Again, the Obamacare Mandate is a Violation of Freedom of Speech

Update: Obama just announced his "compromise" which is pretty much what was predicted and as usual pretends everyone is playing politics, except him who rises above everything.  Right.

So all week there has been this uproar about the recent ruling that religious employers—like churches or church-based hospitals—would be required to provide “contraception,” a popular euphemism for a set of rules that include coverage for the abortion pill.  Last Sunday I was at a Catholic church and just about the entire homily (or “Sermon” to us Protestants) was reading off a letter in protest of this policy.  And today we get word of a weak “accommodation” where the religious based employers will not have to provide it in their insurance policies, but the insurance companies would still have to provide it to the policy-holders.

So how does that work?  Ordinarily insurance works by taking a large number of policy holders’ money and putting it into a pool and then distributing the benefits to policy holders.  Instead of that, it won’t be officially offered as part of these employers’ plans, but it will be part of the package of benefits they offer, paid for presumably by the common pool.  Which, gosh sounds like exactly the same thing but with the usual governmental layer of red-tape, regulation and bull____.

Of course that is only the rumor of the offer, and possibly even a trial balloon, so maybe that won’t be the final proposal.

But the funny thing is that I addressed this very issue a few months back and pointed out that this is positively a reason why the Obamacare mandate (to employers or individuals) is unconstitutional.  You see very often the argument against the mandate focuses on the idea that the Federal Government doesn’t have the power to force you to buy a good or service.  And they are certainly right.  But you can say more than just that the Constitution doesn’t affirmative grant the power.  You can say that the Constitution affirmatively prohibits the Federal Government from enacting such a mandate.  There is also a positive right not to buy a good or service from a private company, in the First Amendment.

There is, after all, a right to boycott.  As I wrote over a year ago when discussing the Liberty University case (a less-famous Obamacare challenge by Liberty University and scattered individuals):

Friday Frivolity: The Really George? Really? Edition...

So today George Lucas is celebrating the re-release of the beloved Star Wars franchise, in 3D, starting with...

Wait, this can’t be right...  Really?  The Phantom Menace?  He thinks that is the movie to start off with?  Not, say, Star Wars, which now we are all required to call Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope?

Um, okay.  And if that is not enough to annoy the crap out of the fanboys, well, he now is trying to deny history.  I mean this may be a generational thing, but remember when you were watching the original Star Wars and Greedo had the gun pointed at Han Solo and Solo keeps him distracted until he could pull out his gun and shoots the guy right then and there.

Well, sorry, you were wrong.  Greedo always shot first.  So says Lucas (via Hot Air):

THR: People can get fanatical about the movies — how does that make you feel? The puppet vs. CGI Yoda ruckus, and the who-shot-first, Han Solo or Greedo furor come to mind.

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

It’s the same thing with Yoda. We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.

If you look at Blade Runner, it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday and there are all kinds of different versions of it. Star Wars, there’s basically one version — it just keeps getting improved a little bit as we move forward. … All art is technology and it improves every year. Whether it’s on the stage or in music or in painting, there are technological answers that happen, and because movies are so technological, the advances become more obvious.

Now, look I don’t get all worked up about the changes in the 1997 version.  It’s annoying, but I guess I can happily ignore the whole thing, but this is just insulting to our intelligence.  Yes, Han did shoot first, and we were not confused on this point, George.  Watch for yourself:

You changed it in the re-release, George.  Just admit that.  You didn’t like how things would look to kids, so you changed it.  Don’t insult our intelligence by saying it was this way all along.  Because it is the B.S. involved that annoys me this morning, not the change itself.

PETA Should be Sanctioned For Its Suit Claiming that Orcas are Covered by the Thirteenth Amendment

Strap yourselves in because this is a long one, as I get into some philosophical and moral issues, before I get to the bottom line.

So via Hot Air we find out that a Federal Judge has ruled remarkably that an entire class is excluded from the Thirteenth Amendment.  Who is this group that has been shockingly excluded from protection from being enslaved and/or subjected to involuntary servitude?

Orcas.

You know, these things:

(Those whistles and clicks translate to “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home.”)

Yes, that is right, PETA filed suit claiming that Orcas were protected by the Thirteenth Amendment and therefore Sea World had unlawfully enslaved them and otherwise treated them horribly.  You can read the complaint here.  I have been trying to locate the motion to dismiss and any opposition to that motion that PETA filed, because that would contain more meaty discussion of the central legal issue—whether the Thirteenth Amendment applies to non-humans at all.  But so far I have had no luck finding that, so consider this a bleg.

Look, I am not unsympathetic to the idea that at some point a being becomes sentient enough that the law should provide some protections to them.

[The next paragraph contains a minor *SPOILER* about my novel Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History (which you can purchase here).  Bluntly, it reveals something most people would figure out by the end of the second chapter.  But if you would prefer to be surprised, skip the next paragraph.]

For instance, the main character in my novel is an alien, and at one point an FBI agent points out to him that our criminal laws did not protect him from harm, saying “the laws on murder cover only humans. You shoot a dog or a chimp, it isn’t murder. At worst, it is cruelty to animals. Now maybe you would be lucky and the courts would interpret the laws to include a non-human like you, but wouldn’t you rather get a guarantee on that subject?”

[Spoilers end.]

In Which Brett Kimberlin, Convicted Terrorist and Perjurer, Tries to Get Me Killed (In My Opinion)

(This is my latest entry in the Kimberlin saga.  To catch up on the whole thing, use this link.)

First, I am sorry to everyone for the very light blogging.  Mind you, I have been writing up a storm, on my off-time, but most of it is not for public consumption.  Maybe someday the whole story will come out, but as I said before, sometimes it is malpractice to share what I know with the whole world.

But the subject of today’s entry is not one of those times.  Now some people might argue that Brett Kimberlin is reformed.  They might say, yes, Brett did horrible things in the past.  He is, after all, a convicted terrorist known as the speedway bomber Kimberlin v. White, 7 F.3d 527 (6^th Cir. 1993), he was held liable for the death of Carl DeLong, Kimberlin v. DeLong, 637 N.E.2d 121 (Ind., 1994), and Kimberlin is also a convicted perjurer, Kimberlin v. White, 798 F.Supp. 472 (1992), but he has been released from prison and now he has learned his lesson and he would never try to harm another person again.  Or so the argument goes.

Well, it looks like the reformation didn’t exactly take.  You see on January 5, in my opinion, he literally tried to get me killed.

Proof That Hollywood’s Anti-War Propaganda Has Claimed Lives

This isn’t a call for censorship, but for responsibility.  You see about a year ago, an Islamofascist idiot killed two of our airmen, and two Americans helped to apprehend their killer and there have been developments in the case:

Germany's government presented the nation's highest civilian award Monday to two Americans who helped apprehend an Islamic extremist after he attacked a U.S. Air Force bus last year and killed two airmen.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich awarded the Federal Cross of Merit to U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Trevor Brewer and civilian airport employee Lamar Conner, both of whom chased the suspect until police could apprehend him, saying their deeds "were an example for all of us."

Arid Uka, a 21-year-old Kosovo Albanian, is currently on trial for the March 2 slayings and has admitted to the charges. He faces up to life in prison, and a verdict and sentence are expected Thursday.

And what motivated the attacks?  Well, let’s hear from the Islamofascist himself:

Uka gave a teary confession as his Frankfurt state court trial opened in August, saying that the night before the attack he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film "Redacted," taken out of context.

Uka told the court the video prompted him to do anything possible to prevent American soldiers from going to Afghanistan.

Breaking: Gabby Giffords to Resign

It’s sad, and infuriating, but it was also the right thing to do, given her situation:

Giffords to step down from Congress

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will step down from Congress this week to focus on her recovery, her staff announced Sunday.

"I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week," Giffords said in a video message.

Giffords, a third-generation Arizonan who served five years in the state Legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006, will not seek re-election this fall.

Giffords vowed to return public service.

"I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country," she said.

(Source.)  Any political assassination—or in this case, an attempt at assassination that rendered its victim significantly disabled for some time to come—is a slap in the face of democracy.  As I wrote over at Patterico’s a while back:

I don’t know or particularly care what she stood for on each of the issues.  She could have been for everything I am against and against everything I am for.  Because to me the issue is higher than normal politics.  It’s the fact that she was chosen to represent her district and as such they are entitled to the representative they have chosen.  And one man has vetoed that decision, an act that is unacceptable in a Republic.

It’s Admirable to Call Women B*tches? A Fisking of Althouse

I generally like Ann Althouse, but I think she went really wrong with this one.

So yesterday there was a rumor that Jay-Z had decided to stop using the word “b*tch” in his music, prompted by the birth of his daughter.  This was based on a poem he allegedly wrote which said:

Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich

I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch

I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it

Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it

Which kind-of sort-of indicates that he was swearing it off, and that led to an editorial in the Guardian which led to commentary by Althouse.  And then a while later, Rolling Stone reports that the whole thing as false (leading Althouse to update the story).  Of course one might suspect that Jay-Z was floating a trial balloon and when his fans reacted negatively, he decided to pretend he never said it, but really I am not interested in whether this story is true or not.  I am interested in Althouse’s reaction to it, before the Rolling Stone article came along dispelling the rumor.  So leaving out the update where she mentions the Rolling Stone article, she writes:

Now that he has a baby girl, Jay-Z will eschew the word "bitch."

Is that enough?

Is it even admirable? If you do something only when you've acquired a self-interest, it seems to me it would be more admirable to continue doing what you were doing before.