Damn, this was a hell of an email. RCL just put me some f'n' knowlege in a big way, dropping hot links like rappers name-check fast-food joints.

I just formatted it and added a little here and there. The rest is his.

The Passion of Justice Ginsberg

..."[U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsberg gave a speech defending the Supreme Court's use of foreign law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution," National Review notes in an editorial...

-- from the Washington Times.

By all means, let's bow to the superior wisdom of Mrs. Ginsberg and look abroad for constitutional guidance. What could it hurt? Well, let's check the record.

...A 42-year-old German man who confessed to killing, dismembering and eating another man who he said agreed to the grisly act was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison...

A German court convicted Armin Meiwes of manslaughter on Friday, ruling he had no "base motives" in the crime and sparing him a murder conviction...

They said he filmed himself dismembering the victim before he ate him so he could "admire himself as a human butcher."

... But Meiwes' lawyer argued that the slaying was a "homicide on demand." He said it was a form of mercy killing – because the victim gave his consent to be killed and eaten...

Brandes had travelled from Berlin in reply to an internet advertisement seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption."

... "For him, it was a nice death."

-- cite

...Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform...

cite

...Ahmad Turki al-Saab and two other Shiite Isma'ilis were arrested after talking with a Wall Street Journal reporter about the April 2000 confrontation between Saudi Arabian security forces and members of the
Shiite Isma'ili community in Najran province. All three remain in prison...

cite

RCL opines:

What's troubling is that judges and the judiciary will be the sole arbiters of which foreign laws will impact American jurisprudence. The people, who through their legislators are responsible for making American laws, will have no say in which foreign laws are employed. There is no mechanism for any legislative control of which foreign laws are used.

If I understand this correctly, in essence, there will be two sets of laws. One will contain laws created by domestic legislation. The second will be foreign laws, of which the domestic legislative branch will have no part of creating. For all intents and purposes, they are introduced into our legal system ex nihilo.

The judiciary has sole proprietorship over the foreign set. The relationship between the two sets will be one-way, the foreign laws impacting the domestic as deemed appropriate by the judiciary.

If I was a lawyer or constitutional scholar, as opposed to my current incarnation as a mouth-breathing redstater, I think that this arrangement might disturb me.

...

Slice like an f'n' hammer, RCL. Like a Viking.

And that's the point. There are foreign laws that say just about anything you might want, from the ludicrously lenient to the draconian-deadly. The judiciary has awarded itself the power to make up American law wholesale -- a privilege, of course, restricted by the Constitution to persons called "legislators" -- through this back-door judicial importation of "foreign law."

The foreign laws they prefer, of course.

American legislators could borrow from foreign law if they liked as well. In fact, they often do. But the liberal activists of the judiciary have now created a new basis for flat-out judicial lawmaking, in express contravention of the Constitution they are charged with interpreting. Any time they don't like a domestic law, they can import a foreign law they prefer -- claiming, rather unpersuasively, that such a law now represents "global legal norms" or some such nonsense -- and replace the American law as they like.

It's not really anything they haven't been doing for at least fifty years in earnest. But the fact that they are now arguing for a new basis for doing so seems to indicate they intend to do so a lot more.

And they have even less to restrict them by using this new basis. Previously, the courts have been required to claim that watershed decisions -- decisions overturning fifty or a hundred years of jurisprudence -- were somehow dictated by the "precedents" that came before, that somehow what the law had been now required the exact opposite. Or that a "national consensus" had emerged. Or that something in the actual Constitution somewhere contained a secret "emanation" requiring a result.

But there are almost no such limiting factors as regards foreign law. There are hundreds of differing statutes and procedures for every point of law all over the world. And the judiciary now merely needs to select a group of countries they deem sufficiently evolved, claim this small group of countries now represent the "prevailing foreign law" that now informs the 200+ year old American Constitution, and impose whatever foreign system they like.

Who died and made them Kings, I wonder? Apparently George III.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 PM | Comments (20)
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Okay, I guess I should start mentioning this.

I'm going to be on coughInternetcough radio this Thursday at 3:00 EST. Well, I won't be on at 3 pm. I'll be on sometime during that hour.

I wish you weren't all so f'n' stupid so I wouldn't have to explain these moronic details to you. It gets tedious. A man of my intellect should be doing great things, not explaining this kind of stupid crap to a bunch of dribbling imbeciles.

The show is Citizen Journalist, with Jeff Goldstein/Protein Wisdom and Bill Ardolino/InDC Journal.

You should probably listen, because it's probably going to be a train wreck.

Jeff and I Yahoo IM'd last week -- first time ever; no idea why this happened -- and let me tell you, there's nothing worse than two guys who think they're each funny talking to each other. All of our jokes were met by the other with grim stone-faces, and yeah, those grim stone-faces came through loud and clear on the internet.

I think at one point that little bastard actually piped in a .wav of crickets chirping.

After I said I needed to wrap it up, Jeff's concluding thoughts were:

This has been painfully extended for me, as well.

Kind of funny, but in a funny-because-it's-true way.

You know what they call that? On-air chemistry. It was crackling like direct current in that bzzz-machine in Frankenstein's lab, baby.

Train. Wreck. Make sure you listen. It'll be wrenching and cringy like reality TV, except with less-attractive people.

(I should point out that we actually did have a good laugh at one point, but I really can't say what that was about. And, in any event, I don't expect that feat to be duplicated this Thursday.)

More Possible Train Wreckage: Oliver "Filet-O-Fish" Willis somehow weaseled out of going on the show last week, and has been invited back again.

Could it be...? Oh, that would be just too much fun.

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 PM | Comments (27)
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Three things fascinated me in high school: the possibility of arresting or even reversing the aging process by modifying the body's DNA, and the enormous breasts of my 10th grade lab-partner Stacey Cosgrove.

Well, I never got a chance to see Stacey's rack, and, alas, I probably never will, but The New Editor tips 1,000+ year life spans may be just a quarter-century away:

Time may indeed be on your side. If you can just last another quarter century.

"By then, people will start lives that could last 1,000 years or more. Our human genomes will be modified to include the genetic material of microorganisms that live in the soil, enabling us to break down the junk proteins that our cells amass over time and which they can't digest on their own.

People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for near-immortality.

The key to these medical breakthroughs? The miracle science known as "nanotechnology."

Okay, let me be honest: that last line about nanotechnology? I just completely made it up. I just threw it in there, hoping that Instapundit would get a geek-boner over it and throw me a freakin' link already.

But, you know: everything's going to be nanotech in the future anyway, so it's not a big lie.

Here is my new plan:

1) Stop smoking for the next 25 years.

2) Become effectively immortal.

3) And then start smoking again, this time like a Viking.

Chuckleheaded Weisenhemer Update: Paul Z, who's a real frickin' wise-ass if you ask me, enthuses:

You mean if I can hold out another 25 years I get to spend a millennium as a 73-year-old? Pinch me.

How about I just come down there and sock you right in the snoot, Smart-Lip?

Posted by: Ace at 06:25 PM | Comments (30)
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From Craigslist:

Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy.

Looking for nsa fun. I am into older men, but I have courted some youthful boys before.

I have a lightspeed capable ship and can come to you. I can host, provided you come to my Star Destroyer, currently in the greater Tattooine system.

Force sensitivity a plus. No imperial soldiers please, that would just cause drama in the Senate.

Sure, it's a goof, but then, he really did get into that costume for the pic.

Thanks to Scott, who cruises around on the Craiglist boards as "Girth Vader."

Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (15)
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This from the very fair-and-balanced and certainly-not-a-liberal at all Elizabeth Bumiller.

In telling us what is actually on Bush's iPod (surprising and cool choice-- My Sharona) Bumiller feels the need to mention that CCR's Fortunate Son -- about, of course, the children of the rich avoiding service in Vietnam -- is not on Bush's iPod.

There are probably more than eighteen million songs that aren't on Bush's iPod.

Bumiller -- objective and nonpartisan and not slanting her stories in the least -- feels compelled to recall the AWOL nonstory in a puff-piece about iPod music choices:

As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."

Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection."

Nonetheless, Mr. McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had not gone so far as to include on his playlist "Fortunate Son," the angry anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that Mr. Fogerty sang when he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ("I ain't no senator's son ... Some folks are born silver spoon in hand.") As the son of a two-term congressman and a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam.

This is one for her clip-book. It's pretty hard to work in a nasty partisan attack into a silly piece like this, but damn, did she manage it with aplomb.

And shamelessness.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (43)
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A lot of liberals questioned ol' Ace's posting of a fundraising letter written by Barack Obama in support of Robert Byrd (D - 12th division of WV Night Riders).

Well, I had a pretty good source for that. A very partisan source, to be sure, but a source that does all sorts of opposition research, if you know what I mean.

At any rate, this Chicago Sun Times article confirms the Obama letter:

"Senator Robert Byrd was one of the first senators I met with when I came to the Senate three months ago,'' Obama wrote in an e-mail sent out on behalf of the political action committee run by MoveOn.Org, the liberal advocacy group.

"Senator Byrd understands the history, the importance and the role Senate plays in our government -- at 87 years old, he's the most senior senator. He has spoken out passionately against a Bush foreign policy that has alienated our allies throughout the world. Today, he is fighting an attempt by Republicans to change the 200-year-old rules of the Senate that would allow Republicans to ram federal judges through the Senate with no regard for what others might say. Above all, Robert Byrd understands just how sacred the Constitution of our country truly is and fights every day to protect it.''

And it's paying off big-time, as the man says:

Obama's March 29 online letter to 3.1 million MoveOn.Org members, along with a note by MoveOn.Org executive director Eli Pariser, raised more than $500,000 after just nine hours online. By the time the special appeal was ended March 31, a total of $834,000 was collected.

Football Fans for Truth has some fun matching up quotations from the Democratic Party's Odd Couple.

Chances are they don't agree on the advisability of "dying a thousand times" rather than seeing our country becoming "degraded by race mongrels."

Which calls to mind (my lazy, re-posting mind, at least) Top Ten NBA All-Time Greats, According to Senator Robert Byrd.

Vintage Porn Bonus: No, really vintage porn. I'm talking pornographic clay sculptures from the Neolithic Age.

You know the good thing about Neolithic Age pornographic clay sculptures?

No implants. And also: No Ron Jeremy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (7)
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...to "warn the world" of the "threat" posed by the illusionists.

The only "threat" these guys pose is to the endangered tigers they're always making disappear (seriously-- some of them must not come back; they can't be batting 1.000 when it comes to re-appearances), and, not to be insensitive, but it seems that the tigers pretty much took care of that threat already.

Ford, 32, a former kicker for the Oakland Raiders, has been ruled incompetent to stand trial and sent to a mental health facility for treatment.

Well, obviously. Laces out! Laces out!

Thanks to NickS.

More... from Dave at Garfield Ridge. Funny stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (17)
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Winning Writers is offering 3000 clams in total prizes for the best war-poetry submitted to them.

Now, I just have a caveat. This email came to me unsolicited. The email claims that Winning Writers was selected as one of Writer's Digest's 101 Best Writing Websites of 2005, but as far as I can tell only the 2001-2004 lists are available online, and Winning Writers does not seem to appear on those lists. Writer's Digest is a legitimate magazine, and if they have Winning Writers on their list that would seem to indicate it's a quality site, but... I don't see any results for 2005.

The entry fee is $12, and the deadline is May 31. It's normal to charge a fee for this sort of contest, and the $12 fee is pretty low (fees for scriptwriting contests can be $50 or $75), but again, I can't personally vouch for the site. But if you've got a yen for rhyme and meter and want to write about war, maybe you want to take a $12 chance.

But you're not going to win anyway. I've seen all your work. I just don't think a haiku about the 1st ID "slicin' like a fuckin' hammer" is going to take the prize.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (13)
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The best case for allowing "transgendered" (broadly defined) persons to use the restrooms of their choice is that their sexuality is not directed towards the persons they will be sharing the bathrooms with. A man who identifies as "female" is probably not aroused by women himself. (Although he may actually covet female sexual organs in a different way -- in that he wants to possess them -- which may cause a different sort of discomfort for actual women he shares a bathroom with.)

That does, I admit, make a certain amount of sense.

But the progressive left is wildly inconsistent on this point

Witness their insistence that gay men be allowed to serve as troopmasters for the Boy Scouts.

Now, if it's the case that someone who is male but female-identifying should be allowed to use women's bathrooms -- on the theory that he is simply not sexually attracted to women -- shouldn't we say that gay men ought not to be allowed to lead Boy Scout troops, because they are, in fact, attracted to males?

In the one case, it's "sexual preference decides; actual biological sexuality means nothing." In the second case, it's "actual biolotical sexuality controls; sexual preference means nothing."

Am I alone in feeling there's a bit of an inconstency here?

I would never be allowed to be the troopmaster for a Girl Scout troop, or whatever you call older Girl Scouts. The reason is obvious-- I'm a straight male. I'm not a pedophile, I'm not particularly attracted to underage girls... but let's be honest, some underage girls are as developed sexually as true adult women, and let's be honest again, no one wants to take that risk with their daughters.

And, speaking personally, I wouldn't want to take that risk with anyone's underage daughter, either. I wouldn't want to cross that line; I woudn't even want to be in that vicinity of that line. The further I am from that line, the better.

Shit happens. I knew a guy -- vaguely -- and not a sex-freak or pervert by any stretch of the imagination. He became a high-school teacher. He was a soccer star, so he coached... the girl's soccer team. And despite the fact that this guy wasn't someone you would have pegged as a sex-offender -- he always did well enough with women of his own age throughout his life -- he did end up having sex with several underage girls on his team.

He wasn't allowed to be a teacher again... for a couple of years. The teacher's union seems to be as latitudinarian on this issue as Major League Baseball is on steroid use. But that's a tangency.

The point is that when an adult is thrown in with underage children/teenagers to whom he is potentially sexually attracted, there is an obvious danger.

Now, many gays are offended by the idea that people don't want gay men leading underage-but-sexually-mature boys on camping trips in the woods. It unfairly brands them as "pedophiles," they claim.

Well, in that case, why shouldn't I -- a straight man -- be allowed to take a bunch of Girl Scouts on a little sleepaway trip, too? Does the fact that I'm being "discriminated" against on this score mean that I, too, am being unfairly branded as a "pedophile," or at least a potential one?

Gays insist that they are statistically no more likely to engage in pedophilia as straight men. Perhaps that's true; although it seems to me that the stats only "prove" this when one begins defining homosexual sex between an adult and a boy as "straight" behavior, on the theory that many male-directed male pedophiles identify as "straight." Well, they may identify as straight, but I have trouble accepting gay sex with a boy as straight sex. It seems, I don't know, homosexual to me-- by definition.

But that, again, is a tangency.

I am willing to accept that gays are no more likely to engage in pedophilia than straights. But I am not willing to accept that they are less likely to do so -- or, to put it another way, that straight men are more likely to engage in pedophilia than gays.

And if it's deemed perfectly safe to allow a gay man to camp in the woods with underage boys, and yet not acceptable at all to allow a straight man to do similarly with underage girls-- what other message can we take from this strange double-standard? Apparently a gay scoutmaster is to be trusted implictly, because of course no gay man has ever had sex with an underage boy.

But a straight man cannot be allowed anywhere near underage girls, because, of course, we are the true pedophiles. We just can't help ourselves.

Not sure what any of this means. Except that the left, as usual, seems to be fond of applying different rules to similar situations depending on the "progressive" outcome they seek, no matter how little sense it might make.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (60)
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Dudes are now allowed to use women's bathrooms. It's about f'n' time:

Earlier this month, a New York security firm settled a case that charged the company with unlawfully discriminating on the basis of "gender identity." In two incidents, representatives of the firm had questioned the use of the women's restroom by persons who, while biologically male, identify themselves as female.

By so doing, the firm thereby violated New York City's Human Rights Law, as construed in official guidelines promulgated in 2002. The settlement requires the defendant to pay each claimant $2500 and to take measures to comply with the law in the future.

Just days earlier, in an unrelated case, a New York State intermediate appellate court had issued a contrary ruling. The court concluded that the city's ban on transgender discrimination is not violated by requiring transgendered persons to use the restrooms designated for persons with their biological sex.

Resolving the conflicting authorities may require further administrative, legislative and judicial action at the city and state level. In the meantime, New Yorkers and others will be left puzzling over a surprisingly difficult question: Who should be permitted to use the men's and women's rooms, respectively?

Hmmmm... just an idea. How about men use men's bathrooms, and women use women's?

Transendered persons--people whose dress, mannerisms, speech patterns and social interactions do not match the typical pattern for those with their biological sex--are frequently victims of unfair discrimination.

A biological "man" who experiences life as a woman, and who speaks and dresses accordingly, may be no less capable of performing surgery or balancing corporate accounts than a man (or woman) who happily accepts the gender society prescribes for him (or her). And yet the transgendered person will, because of prejudice, have a harder time finding a welcoming employer.

Accordingly, it is perfectly appropriate, and indeed, laudable, for New York City's Human Rights Law to prohibit gender identity discrimination.

Note that the concept of "transgenedered" has been defined rather expansively here. It's not merely restricted to those who have undergone (or are undergoing) sex reassignment surgery, or to those whose genitals are indistinct or hermaphroaditic (as is the case with Hoke Malokey and, of course, JeffB.).

No, it also includes "people whose dress, mannerisms, speech patterns and social interactions do not match the typical pattern for those with their biological sex." Which, you know, also seems to include transvestites -- the majority of whom are actually straight, I'm told. (They just like to feel pretty... and who can blame us?)

I have no doubt that those afflicted (and I'll catch heat for that word, of course) with an ambiguous sexuality are subject to discrimination, conscious and unconscious, subtle and overt.

But I also think that women are entitled to know their bathrooms are a penis-free zone. That does not strike me as an unreasonable expectation.

It may be that there large corporations can, and should, provide "Co-Ed" or "Other" bathrooms on every other floor as a reasonable accomodation to that tiny fraction of the population whose sex is indisctinct or subject to debate. Somehow, though, I think New York's ultraliberal judges will find that the "every other floor" rule inherently discriminatory -- hell, half of three people working at a large corporation whose sex is indistinct might have to take the stairs or elevator to make a pee-pee -- and that there is an inherent stigma associated with "Third Way" bathrooms.

Questions like this always involve a balance of the competing (and legitimate) interests of a minority population and the majority. But for the liberal judges that invest the northeast courts, there is no balance -- the minority always prevails, and the majority's interests are always trumped.

So, ladies, you're on notice. If you're kinda hot and headed to the can, I just might decide I'm feeling a bit more in touch with my feminine side than usual. And I trust the New York Courts will back me up in my quest to spy through the cracks in the bathroom-stall's door.

Thanks to RCL.

Posted by: Ace at 07:11 AM | Comments (32)
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