Scottish Nous

To Protect and To Serve

Officer tazes grandmother in a police station.  Repulsive sexist SFPD video skits provide evidence for and make light of widespread and longstanding police prejudice.  Corey Maye, a black man with no prior criminal record, is charged with capital homicide and convicted by a mostly white Southern jury.  He receives the death penalty for blowing the white son of a police chief off the planet.   Oh yes, after the door to the apartment in which his young daughter was asleep gets smashed down in a middle of the night raid with a suspect warrant based on an anonymous informant's tip about his neighbor.  [All via The Agitator]  This brings to mind Rice's recent words:

"Will there be abuses of policy [i.e., torture]? That's entirely possible," Rice said, "Just because you're a democracy it doesn't mean that you're perfect."

All happy now, yes?

US Government Begins Executing Mentally Handicapped

I have internet access again, so blogging should slowly pick up.  Today, I bring you these two  links, though they are not to, unfortunately, the most informative articles out there.  The question of the day is just how safe do you feel flying with the tax dollars of millions of Americans being wasted on a useless group of hooligans known as "Federal Air Marshals"? Very unsafe, somewhat unsafe, indifferent, somewhat safe, or very safe?  Before today, you might have thought that the correct answer was "indifferent".  But that was before today, when you learned that Federal Air Marshals gunned down a mentally handicapped man.  That's right.  The first man that this group of wannabe killers opened up fire on SINCE 9/11 was both bipolar and unmedicated.

Only Voters Have The Right To Complain

While I'm pointing out errata in local newspapers, maybe I'll mention that the Colorado Daily (now a slave to Scripps Howard) managed to irritate me with what appears to be a pathetic attempt at shilling for Referenda  C and D.  The article, using selective quotations to stir up support for C & D, was obviously aimed at college students fearful of tuition hikes.   But the conclusion, a  quotation of some Roger ------ [edit: last name removed by request] of Boulder, was the clincher:

If students don't vote, they have no right to complain if their tuition goes up.

Christina Hose, the article's author, seems to think people are  interested in the ridiculous and obviously false opinions of random Boulderites.  Is it just too much work to write an interesting and factual article?  Perhaps I'm wrong, but if I was asked to venture a guess, I'd say that Christina Hose was happy to be finding people she could quote in order to propogate her notions, among which, it seems, is the belief that the "right to complain" attaches only to those who perform some relatively useless action known as "voting".

Whether or not Christina endorses Roger's false assertion, the notion that rights attach to members of a socially active community of voters rather than to human persons qua persons needs to be banished to the void after being seen for what it really is: a rhetorical stategy, effective only through overuse and grandmother-like  aphoristic appeal, used by political zealots to secure the domain of political discourse for their mediocre ilk.  Those voting members of society who use this strategy to maintain the conversational high ground need to be pegged as nothing more than whiny little political perverts. 

Mr. Rogers, you can get your earplugs here.  What people like you have is a right to not listen to people who complain, and people like you can exercise that right however you choose, say, by not listening to people complain if said people didn't vote.  But unfortunately for people like you, that's where your right ends.  It does not extend - like some many-tentacled monster's pseudopod - to prohibit me from opening my mouth and expressing my distaste for a morally bankrupt political process designed around the forced redistribution of massive amounts of wealth.  The title claim is nothing more than a last resort for people incapable of argument.

De Finibus V

I'm simply expressing irritation that Tully's De Finibus V is available nowhere on the internet in English translation.  The Sophia Project has books I-IV, and Perseus has none of it.  What are all you Latin scholars busy doing?

Ward Churchill

[Disclaimer:  This post could be taken as very controversial.  For the most part, I'm just reporting about the events of my evening.  In no way should I be construed as claiming that the victims of 9/11 deserved to die (they did not), although I do leave open the question of whether or not the correct moral theory could implicate them as "guilty of some crime in some sense".  I also leave undiscussed what constitutes a just war (I assume there are just wars), and whether or not any nation might be entitled to engage the U.S. in military action.  All I intend to do is spark some thought, draw attention to the issue, and promote discussion.]

Ward Churchill, native American and chairman of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado, my current university, has raised the hackles of most of the state.  I was passing through the University Memorial Center (which houses the food court) today, and a local talk radio station was broadcasting live with the host calling for Churchill's expulsion.  I decided to sit down and listen for a bit, but only ended up catching snippets of the conversation as Pryor on Moore was far more interesting.

Idiots with Money

"I think some people have more money than sense," says Harry Griffin.  His near pun refers to "Julie", the  owner of the first ever cloned pet - a cat named "Little Nicky".  What kind of money did the rich bitch waste cloning her dead pookie-wookie "Nicky"?  A cool $50,000 USD.  "Julie" reports that "Little Nicky" is identical to the deceased "Nicky".  Of course, if the cats are identical, it follows trivially that their personalities are the same, as she claims.  But since she's such a stupid, irrational freak of nature, there's no reason to believe her.  I'd bet counterfactual money that had scientists kept her cash and substituted a cute little disenfranchised kitten from an animal shelter, she would have said the same thing.  And if she hadn't, newsflash... it wouldn't have mattered.  (Hopefully that's what they did.)  It would be cruel to wish the cat dies, so I'll instead hope that "Little Nicky" outlives "Julie" by the rest of his life.  And when she dies, she needs to be immediately incinerated so her genes can no longer pollute the world.  This from The New Scientist.

Is There a Muslim Next Door?

ABC News draws attention to a new survey by Cornell ressearches found here which points out that a vast minority of those with religious or republican predilections want the rights accorded to American Muslims, in virtue of their being American citizens, revoked drastically.  Some clippings:

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll...  The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way... The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government.

I suppose what's more amazing is that under  50% of the country doesn't rank so low on the idiot meter.  The irrational are hating on each other.  Ironic, don't you think?