In an otherwise unremarkable article about cell phone usage, I found this:

...The crossover occurred in the last half of 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with a nearly 3 percentage point jump in wireless-only households in the second half of 2008. The CDC released the new data on American cell phone usage Wednesday...

...The jump in wireless-only households is the largest six-month increase the center has recorded since it began collecting the data in 2003, said Stephen J. Blumberg, a CDC health scientist and the author of the study...

If Obama and Congress want to save a few bucks, maybe they should look into getting the CDC back on target and leave this sort of "study" to outfits like Gartner, and all the various pollsters.

It was bad enough with all the faked up firearms shit they wasted money on - even those could quasi-understood if you put your tin foil hat on, took a big gulp of left wing KookAid, and squinted your eyes a bit after gobbling 10 hits of blotter acid.

But, <cough> <cough> cell phone usage? Please...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:50 AM | Comments (42)
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Genghis is taking another night off to heal. Which, like Ace, probably involves a tranny hooker and a bottle of Val-u-Rite.

Unlike Ace, G-man is not the John in the scenario. And there's no telling what the bottle is really for. He's a trooper though, and prides himself on being willing to try just about anything in the name of expanding horizons like his hero, James T. Kirk.

Hey, speaking of Anatomy, let's go around the Scientific world in 5 links or less. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:54 PM | Comments (204)
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Allah headlined this "Glenn Beck Kicks Off ACORN Spokesman for Racism Accusation," or something.

I skipped it. Who cares?

And then Nice Deb told me it was Scott "Shivering Douchechills" Levensen, the most odious, oily spokesman since, I don't know, mob lawyer Bruce Cutler.

Worse than that, really.

The previous worst spinners ever where these two guys, accused of making off with a man's leg, disguised as a tiger (in Africa). But Levensen blows them away.

The part I'm talking about is about 6:00.

Posted by: Ace at 05:54 PM | Comments (88)
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Snark, again: We're talking about gay marriage opponent President Barack "Hope and Change" Obama. From the Drudge link, citing a coming NYT story:

"Just four weeks after the Iowa ruling, Obama -- who opposes gay marriage but campaigned as a self-described 'fierce advocate' of gay rights -- is under increasing pressure to engage on a variety of gay issues that are coming to the fore amid a dizzying pace of social, political and legislative change,' reports the paper's Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

Marion Barry, by the way, says there could be a "civil war" over gay marriage, in the black community, because it's so unpopular there. I mention this, of course, because Obama's most fervent pillar of support is the black community.

In related news, Andrew Sullivan was spotted gripping his knees and crying hysterically on the floor of his shower, like Glenn Close in The Big Chill.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (170)
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Scientists don't know why the big poisonous spiders have come out of hiding to scuttle across streets and into homes.

I have an idea: Global warming. They're trying to get us to adopt a cap-and-trade regime.

Australia is known around the world for its large and deadly creepy crawlies, but even locals have been shocked by the size of the giant venomous spiders that have invaded an Outback town in Queensland.

Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as “bird-eating spiders” and can grow larger than the palm of a man’s hand, have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane.

Earlier this week locals spotted an Australian tarantula wandering towards a public garden in the centre of town where people often sit for lunch. They called in a pest controller, but not before using a can of insect spray to paralyse the spider.

Audy Geiszler, who runs Amalgamated Pest Control in Bowen, said that the spider was a large male with powerful long fangs and was so big that when he placed it – dead – in the palm of his hand its legs hung over his fingers.

Mr Geiszler said that he had been inundated with calls from worried locals reporting sightings of the giant tarantulas, which have been pushed out of their natural habitat over the past month by heavy, unseasonal rain.

"There have been a number of reports. It's not plague proportions but a number have been spotted around the district,” Mr Geiszler told The Times today shortly after receiving a call from a resident who had spotted another spider on the outskirts of town.

Ah. "Heavy, unseasonable rain." I was right. Global warming.

Bonus: These types are sometimes called "whistling spiders" because they whistle (or just hiss) when disturbed or readying themselves to attack. Which is kinda creepy, you know?

Thanks to Arthur K.

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (121)
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Legalization proponents claim that legalizing will lead to 1) increased taxes as more economic activity (which should be taxed, if the rest of us are paying) will be taxed, and 2) crime rates will fall. These points are strongly debatable.

First of all, drug dealers are already required to report their ill-gotten income to the IRS. Even if they don't say how they acquired their loot, they're still to declare it. There is no exception for criminally-earned income. Ask Al Capone.

So the idea that just because drugs are now legalized -- or even merely decriminalized, which still makes them contraband -- will suddenly cause millions of drug-dealers who pay no (or almost no) income tax to start offering the government a strict accounting of their revenue seems, what's the word, fanciful.

To get that kind of compliance, and to cause a sea-change in the thinking of the under-the-table drug traders into on-the-books tax payers, would require a fairly massive and aggressive detection and enforcement effort by the IRS, which would, I imagine, approximately rival the level of police intrusion that we'd supposedly no longer experience in a decriminalization regime.

Next, the idea that criminal drug-dealers will suddenly become law-abiding drug dealers is perplexing.

Let me explain. Drug dealers do not deal drugs because it's a family tradition, like alfalfa farmers in Montana. They do not choose to deal drugs because they just love dealing drugs.

They are criminals, by choice. They have chosen to deal drugs, choosing that particular trade, over other criminal activities, not over legal activities.

What they are after is money. The choose to smuggle, manufacture, and sell drugs because it makes them a lot of money. And even though this money comes at a high non-monetary cost -- namely, intrusive investigations by cops, bizarre personal lives, and the prospect of spending many years in jail -- they've chosen this profession. The monetary benefits, they've decided, outweigh the non-monetary costs of obtaining the money.

Now, legalization opponents often suggest that drug dealers who make large profits on their product will simply continue selling drugs in a decriminaliztion regime, despite the fact that profits will drop to normal levels. Like, what a shopkeeper makes, maybe 6-10% profit on any particular item, rather than the 200-1000% profits they currently enjoy in a regime of criminalization.

This is silly. The drug dealers are drawn into the trade by the profits, not the product. They are willing to risk prison in order to get those profits. They became drug dealers in the first place for those profits.

In a decriminalization regime, such profits-at-the-expense-of-lawbreaking types will not, by and large, simply start selling legalized pot at small 6-10% mark-ups. If they were content with such mark-ups, they could have just bought a 7-11 franchise, or opened up a comic-book shop. They didn't. And they didn't, of course, because they want the profits. They don't care about the drugs per se. They have chosen a profession in which they're willing to make huge profits in exchange for risks to their freedom and lives.

The option of selling legal, normal-profits good was open to them, as it has been open to everyone. They chose against it. If they were content with this level of small profit for lots of work, they could have just opened a hardware store after making a certain level of money in the drug trade. By and large, they don't currently do so, so they won't do so if drugs become an good which earns a more typical profit level.

Which means that the criminals now selling high-profit contraband will not now suddenly turn to selling normal-profit legal goods. Again, they always could have done that; they chose against it. Instead they will turn to other huge-profit criminal activities, whether selling other contraband or heisting your TV out of your home.

To some extent, I guess, there will be "layoffs" in the criminal sector, because a nation can only support so large of a criminal industry (and will only permit so large of a criminal industry). So there may be some reduction in criminal behavior -- but many, perhaps most, of our current criminal class which just happens to be in the drug trade will turn to other criminal activities which afford them the profit levels they seek. If pot no longer offers those profits, they'll turn to importing women into forcible prostitution or armed robbery. Or whatever. What they won't do is become respectable businessmen, making normal levels of profits at the costs of lots of work and financial risk.

Because, again, they always had the option to a toy store. They didn't, not because they're so in love with the profession of the drug trade, but because they're in love with earning profits their legitimate skill-set and abilities wouldn't normally entitle them to. The one part of the skill-set they have, the one thing that makes them money, is the willingness to kill and beat people who threaten their trade, and their willingness to be killed or imprisoned in pursuit of that trade. Their skill-set, in short, is mostly the acceptance that life is cheap, and that is ultimately what makes them their nut.

And the legalization of drugs will not change this. They will not become more skilled in legitimate ways than they were before; their stock in trade will continue to be violence and a willingness to break laws and chance jail. And they will simply migrate to other criminal endeavors.

One last point: Legalizing drugs does no eradicate the black market. It merely shrinks it. There will continue to be a large black market of illegal drug dealers who sell to prohibited persons -- namely, kids and young adults who aren't allowed to buy drugs legally, everyone from 10 - 21.

Yes, I suppose we would free up resources to better combat this smaller, more manageable black market. But the black market doesn't disappear; it never does.

As legalization opponents say themselves: Criminalizing a drug doesn't get rid of it, it simply increases the profit margin on trading in it. And thus we will still have plenty of illegal dealers, and still have a robust (if diminished) trade in illegal drugs.

These points don't make the case against decriminalization; but is nevertheless important to debate in terms of reality, not the unicorns-and-ice-cream fantasies the decriminalization proponents usually offer.

Kill the Gangs and the Mexican and South American Narco-Lords? This is another benefit of legalization, it is contended -- make drugs legal, and the profit margin drops to a small level, and you effectively put the big organized crime groups out of business. And the smaller ones too.

Is it true?

No. Or rather, sort of yes, but mostly no.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (335)
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Someone tipped me to this but I said I hadn't heard about it and it seemed unlikely to me.

I was wrong.

Section 4. Prohibitions. A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Montana and
that remains within the borders of Montana is not subject to federal law or
federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress
to regulate interstate commerce. It is declared by the legislature that
those items have not traveled in interstate commerce. This section applies
to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured in
Montana from basic materials and that can be manufactured without the
inclusion of any significant parts imported from another state. Generic and
insignificant parts that have other manufacturing or consumer product
applications are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition, and
their importation into Montana and incorporation into a firearm, a firearm
accessory, or ammunition manufactured in Montana does not subject the
firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition to federal regulation. It is
declared by the legislature that basic materials, such as unmachined steel
and unshaped wood, are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition and
are not subject to congressional authority to regulate firearms, firearms
accessories, and ammunition under interstate commerce as if they were
actually firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition. The authority of
congress to regulate interstate commerce in basic materials does not include
authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition made in
Montana from those materials. Firearms accessories that are imported into
Montana from another state and that are subject to federal regulation as
being in interstate commerce do not subject a firearm to federal regulation
under interstate commerce because they are attached to or used in
conjunction with a firearm in Montana..

Essentially, then, any weapon may be manufactured (or modified, using "generic parts" from other states or other parts manufactured in Montana) and will be free of all federal regulation and law whatsoever. Only Montana law will control such weapons. And as I understand it Montana itself has very few laws about weapons on the books.

The rest of the law is actually just a legal argument, phrased as a law, explaining why federal law does not apply to Montana, unless it wants it to. (The 10th Amendment is cited.)

Here's a link to an AP story.

Montana is trying to trigger a battle over gun control — and perhaps make a larger point about what many folks in this ruggedly independent state regard as a meddlesome federal government.

In a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month, the state is asserting that guns manufactured in Montana and sold in Montana to people who intend to keep their weapons in Montana are exempt from federal gun registration, background check and dealer-licensing rules because no state lines are crossed.

That notion is all but certain to be tested in court.

...

Carrie DiPirro, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, had no comment on the legislation. But the federal government has generally argued that it has authority under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to regulate guns because they can so easily be transported across state lines.

...

Montana's leading gun rights organization, more hardcore than the National Rifle Association, boasts it has moved 50 bills through the Legislature over the past 25 years. And lawmakers in the Big Sky State have rebelled against federal control of everything from wetland protection to the national Real ID system.

Under the new law, guns intended only for Montana would be stamped "Made in Montana." The drafters of the law hope to set off a legal battle with a simple Montana-made youth-model single-shot, bolt-action .22 rifle. They plan to find a "squeaky clean" Montanan who wants to send a note to the ATF threatening to build and sell about 20 such rifles without federal dealership licensing.

If the ATF tells them it's illegal, they will sue and take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if they can.

At the first link, it's noted that the law will make silencers legal, and I suppose this will also permit weapons like the AR-15 to be converted to fully-automatic capability. (Which I understand is a fairly easy modification.) Unless Montana also outlaws such weapons. I don't know if state law does outlaw them or not. Wrong: See correction below.

Gonzalez v. Raich: DrewM. points out that a similar challenge to federal commerce-clause authority recently occurred with regard to private cultivation of marijuana. And the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 the power of the commerce clause (which, in strong form, seems pretty much absolute) overcame state law to the contrary.

In a 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court held that the commerce clause gave Congress authority to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana, despite state law to the contrary. Stevens argued that the Court's precedent "firmly established" Congress' commerce clause power to regulate purely local activities that are part of a "class of activities" with a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The majority argued that Congress could ban local marijuana use because it was part of such a "class of activities": the national marijuana market. Local use affected supply and demand in the national marijuana market, making the regulation of intrastate use "essential" to regulating the drug's national market. The majority distinguished the case from Lopez and Morrison. In those cases, statutes regulated non-economic activity and fell entirely outside Congress' commerce power; in this case, the Court was asked to strike down a particular application of a valid statutory scheme.

This is a recent case (2005) and it commands a 6-3 majority, which is much better than average in these sorts of divisive cases about starting assumptions and basic principles.

However, the court distinguished between economic and non-economic activity. Drug cultivation seems at least somewhat more of an economic activity, affecting the "stream of commerce," than gun modification. I suppose it's possible the court can distinguish this if it wants to, or allow some of it while striking much of it down. For example, it could permit modifications while still upholding the fed's power to ban wholesale, straight-from-the-factory manufacture of prohibited arms. One can make an argument that most (but not all) drug manufacture is intended for commercial purposes, whereas most (but not all) gun modifications are intended strictly for personal use and hence are "non-economic" in impact.

One could.

Machineguns Still Prohibited: ThomasD alerts me to the exception in the law for weapons that fire "two or more projectiles" with a single trigger activations. I read that, but for some bizarre reason I could only imagine it meant duplex cartridges (cartridges which contain two bullets, both fired at once) or even shotgun pellets.

It didn't occur to me, despite wondering about machine guns, that this specifically excluded automatic weapons from Montana's in-state protections. And yet -- it does. So obvious, and I missed it.

And several commenters tell me it's not as easy to convert a semi-automatic weapon to fully automatic as I imagine.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (133)
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He says he doesn't support legalizing it. Although there is a sorta-famous moment in Pumping Iron where he lights up a big fat joint after winning a competition.

So I guess there will be a debate.

As California struggles to find cash, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday it's time to study whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use.

...

"Well, I think it's not time for (legalization), but I think it's time for a debate," Schwarzenegger said. "I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I'm always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect did it have on those countries?"

That reference -- to "other countries" decriminalizing drugs -- seems likely to be a stealth endorsement of the idea, despite his denial of such. He's probably referring to a recent paper on Portugal's experience with drug decriminalization, published by the CATO institute, finding that decriminalization worked like gangbusters.

Supposedly. The paper is written by Glenn Greenwald, whom I distrust for obvious reasons. (He's a confirmed liar and hack.) I'm not sure how thoroughly CATO vetted the piece; if they did a good job on that front, and we can assume that most of what Greenwald claims is true, it's persuasive.

If we can't assume that, it's just another series of claims by a legalization enthusiast.

Time Magazine has a digest of the paper's conclusions, if you want to skip Greenwald's turgid super-smart piece. Time is of course just regurgitating what Greenwald wrote so there's no evidentiary value here; it's just a brief summation.

It really depends on whether CATO can/did substantiate these claims. Which I don't know.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Unanswered (at least in the Time piece) is whether The Netherlands had a similar experience, or if Portugal is an outlier. Time makes a big deal about telling us the Netherlands did not technically decriminalize drugs -- the laws are still on the books; they just don't enforce them -- which makes me suspect that the Netherlands have not had a particularly reassuring experience with de facto decriminalization. (Thus the rush to distinguish the two countries.)

Special Note: As of yet I haven't seen this paper debunked, so as of yet we're seeing one side of the debate. (At least as regards these specific claims.) Again, I have no idea if Greenwald is on the level or just lying. Again.

And I have to emphasize he may be cherry-picking Portugal while ignoring the bad experience other countries have suffered. Even if they technically didn't decriminalize per se, but rather just stopped enforcing laws on the books.

England, I think, barely enforces drug laws. Quite frankly the US seems fairly lax on these issues, too, except as regards dealers and kingpins. I'm not at all certain how much stress the technical off-the-books status of decriminalization will bear.

Via Hot Air, with a video report from FoxNews on the story.

Decriminalization, I think, is now the mainstream opinion on this topic among the wealthy or near-wealthy -- the "elites" -- from both sides of the aisle, so it's a good guess that this is going to happen at some point. The elites usually get what they want.*

* Which is not meant in a snarky manner. And my old reservations about this are more tentative now, to be honest. So I'm not really broadcasting a firm opinion on the merits here; but I do think that that if I'm right that the libertarian position on this has become the dominant thinking among the upper middle class and upper class, the way to bet is that it's going to happen. From abortion to gay marriage, the positions held by that cadre on social mores have a way of winning out, eventually, whether they're right in a particular instance or very wrong.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (142)
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So says the National Enquirer, the only media organization bothering to cover this story. (And not just due to the fact that the story is "beneath them," either: Enjoy the media's laser-like focus on the Bristol Palin-Levi Johnston feud, surely a critical issue that our nation must confront at some point.)

"Rielle - probably naively - now realizes she had held onto a false promise that if she continued to take part in the cover-up John had engineered, they'd be together in the future," a close source told The ENQUIRER.

"She was willing to protect John for the sake of the child. She agreed to allow a crony of his to claim he was the baby's father, and she even kept the name of the father blank on the birth certificate.

"But now she can see there's never going to be a future with John - and she feels he's lied about his promise to keep Elizabeth from trashing her in the book," the insider divulged.

"Rielle is so infuriated by his and Elizabeth's actions that she's throwing her loyalty to him out of the window!"

The source added: "Rielle wants the paternity of her daughter Frances finally established. It could ruin John for good because even after admitting the affair, he vehemently denied being the father!"

I don't even know why he denies it.

I assume the paternity test is offered up as a bargaining chip, and what she really wants is child support, even if it's an unacknowledged lump-sum payout sort of child support.

They'll come to a settlement, which is easy for Edwards, as he's got a ton of money, and we'll never be the wiser.

Which is fine. But I don't understand how this story doesn't rate a single reporter from the straight MSM, whereas the Bristol-Levi fight doeos.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (49)
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The senior bondholders will stand behind junior, unsecured debtholders (read: the unions), despite what their contracts and bankruptcy law and the 5th Amendment's prohibition against "takings" might say.

And, surprise surprise, the government has forgiven $7.5 billion in loans (and interest payments) we were all told we'd get back, just the same as we got back the Iacocca-era loans.

Eh, it's $7.5 billion. Not even a rounding error in Obama's budgets.

(But his $100 million in cuts are serious attempt to curb government spending, you know.)

More: Names of Dissenting Bondholders Released. Chum for Obama's minions.

The names of nine dissident Chrysler debt holders were disclosed Wednesday, but a number of others chose to avoid the spotlight first put on them a week ago when President Barack Obama publicly chastised them for not supporting his plan for the automaker.

The nine lenders, which include previously disclosed members Stairway Capital Management and OppenheimerFunds Inc., represent just $295 million of Chrysler's total of $6.9 billion of secured debt.

Obviously these people have legitimate concerns about their safety. But I guess that's the whole point of releasing their names.

And another article on says that Obama "expects" to be repaid on part of the $7.5 billion.

The reality now is that the face value [of the $4 billion bridge loan] will be written off in the bankruptcy process," said the official, who added that the 8% equity stake that Treasury will be receiving as part of the company's reorganization is meant to compensate taxpayers for the lost money.

"While we do not expect a recovery of these funds, we are comfortable that in the totality of the arrangement, the Treasury and the American taxpayer are being fairly compensated," said the official."

...

The Obama administration official said that other money being made available to Chrysler, such as the $4.7 billion that will go to the company as it exits bankruptcy, will be a loan that the government expects to be paid back. In addition, that loan will be secured by company assets, unlike the previous loans to Chrysler.

Well, the dissident bondholders had secured debt, and that's not being repaid.

Correction: The $7.5 billion is already gone; the $4.7 billion is a new loan, Geoff tells me. I think he's right, but it's not clear to me. For now, I guess, it's less of a correction than a question mark.

Thanks to Geoff A. (Anti-Harkonen Freedom Fighter Geoff).

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (180)
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