It was a hard-fought election, filled with many frustrating twists and turns, but in the end, John McCain has conceded and Barack Obama has accepted victory. We have a new president.

I worry about the “tests” that are promised for our new president, and whether he’ll be up to them. For now, I can only pray the Gods will grant him the wisdom he needs to succeed, and guide him in the path he must follow to protect our nation, by the nose, kicking and screaming if need be.

But for now, there is one bright side I wish to mention.

The race card is dead.

From this day forward, neither I nor anyone else need ever hear blacks laying the blame for their lot in life at the feet of white racism, or a racist system, or oppression by The Man. Ever.

The race card is deceased, defunct, and departed.

There is far more, now, of the grave than the gravy train about it.

It is room temperature, metabolically challenged, and taking the great dirt nap.

It is not sleeping, stunned, or pining for the fjords.

It is an ex-card.

It has shuffled off the mortal coil, given up the ghost, and headed into the light.

It has cashed in its chips, bought the farm, and paid its last dues.

It has failed its last saving throw.

Its birth certificate has reached its expiration date.

It has kicked the bucket, turned up its toes, and hopped the twig.

The race card is dead.

D. E. A. D.

Dead.

There is no need for affirmative action programs, quotas, or set-asides. There is no need for reparations, as there’s nothing left to repair. The system was repaired ages ago, and is being used avidly and effectively by all those capable of seeing what’s in front of their faces. Let it be known by all that any who tries to play the race card is making excuses for his own lack of drive or initiative.

Getting elected to the top office in the nation is not easy. In the entire history of the world, only forty-four people have managed it. One of them is black.

He has achieved. He has played the game according to the rules, rather than sitting back and whining about how racist and oppressive they are. To all other blacks, I strongly suggest you go and do likewise.

On another list I follow, the majority of those contributing were wringing their hands over the thought that an initiative to amend the State Constitution has qualified for the ballot, and the fear that their fellow Californians won’t “do the right thing” and vote it down.  However, they are buoyed by the hope that the flood of same-sex marriages over the next five months will make it infeasible to undo, no matter what the voters decide.

I’ve held back in that forum — there are plenty of other things that are more fun to fight about.  But one comment, where someone referred to marriage as a “magic word”, got me to thinking, and to asking a question no one else seems to ask very often:

Why should a society have an institution like marriage in the first place?

When I proposed that question, the first answer I got was another question:  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to raise a child when you’re a single parent?”

Aha!  It’s about children.  If you’re entering into a marriage, it’s for the sake of any children that may issue.

The next sound I heard was a bit of back-pedaling, and a statement that childcare was part of the reason for marriage.  After all, if we consider it purely as an institution focused on children, it becomes a lot harder to justify same-sex marriages.

What about other reasons?

Well, another person mentioned inheritance.  Marriage provides clear rules of inheritance.  But then so does having kids, and so does having a will.   If you want someone to inherit your property when you die, you can arrange it without combining two lives into one.

Love and commitment are frequently mentioned criteria.  But you can love whomever you wish.  You can love more than one whomever.  You can move in to a building together and form a commune.  You can make public statements of commitment, and invite friends to witness, and have a party, and make a big to-do over it.  Why do you need a to tell a bureaucrat at the hall of records you love this or that person?  He’s not going to send you any wedding presents.

Child care?  Sharing of household duties?  Sharing of resources?  Our culture has all kinds of legal mechanisms for this sort of thing without requiring that people join their lives together.  Day care center and school staff don’t have to marry the parents of their charges — it’s enough to have a binding contract for services.  If you want to build a support structure around the parents of a child, where resources can be shared, the family could form a corporation.  That takes care of community property, and inheritance.

Marriage is more than just love and a ceremony of commitment.  It’s more than a way of sharing resources and labor.  It’s even more than building a structure to raise the next generation.  There is a magic inherent in marriage that people seem determined to ignore.  There are religious roots.

A big clue lies in a special privilege extended to married couples — neither member of a married couple can be compelled to testify against the other in a court of law.

This is an amazing privilege.  It’s very rare in our society.  I can think of three other areas where such a privilege exists: doctor-patient, lawyer-client, and priest-penitent.  And even these only apply during communications that take place while the doctor, lawyer, or priest are engaged in their profession with their clients.  Lawyer-client privilege doesn’t cover remarks I make in a casual conversation with a friend who happens to practice law.  But a spouse is never off duty in this regard.  Everything that passes between a husband and wife is privileged, and none of it can be compelled in a court of law.

Why create a special relationship in the law, and endow it with this kind of power?

In the Bible, and in other religions, marriage combines two lives into one.  In many senses, man and wife become “one flesh”.   If we take this seriously, we realize that compelling a man to testify against his wife is the same as compelling the wife to testify against herself.  Marriage is a religious and spiritual union of two individuals, far beyond anything mere law can achieve.

A society either believes this and acts accordingly, or it doesn’t.

With the latest ruling from the California Supreme Court, as well as the Massachusetts Supreme Court and several European nations, we’re seeing cultures abandoning this belief.  Marriage is becoming one way of arranging one’s personal affairs, not much different from forming a corporation or legal partnership. The magic is going away.

And in the regions where the magic has been pulled out of marriage, people are increasingly not bothering with marriage at all.  They either have children out of wedlock, or they decline to have them at all.

I suspect one of three things is going to happen in California, and in the rest of the United States.

1)  The people will overturn same-sex marriage laws.  Over the objections of the LGLBT community (the first “L” is “Liberal”), marriage will remain defined as one man and one woman.  (If the people stand up to the Islamic community, it will remain defined as only one man and only one woman.  We’ll see.)  Status will remain quo.

2)   The State will continue to recognize same-sex marriages, and will require anyone who offers a benefit to married couples to offer the same benefit to same-sex couples.  (If the Islamic community is noisy enough, the law will be extended to cover polygamous marriages — probably through the back door by bullying large corporations into compliance.)  After a First Amendment fight where churches may or may not retain the right to grant religious marriages only to those who meet their religious criteria, they will quit having anything to do with civil marriages at all.  If you want to be married in your faith, your priest (or priestess if you’re a Wiccan) will marry you.  If you want a civil marriage, go to a justice of the peace and get your civil paperwork.  But don’t try to pretend they’re the same thing.

3)  The same as #2, except the churches are forced to go along.  All forms of marriage lose their magic.

It’s interesting.  Where marriage loses its magic, people tend to forego it.  Without that magic, marriage really is “just a piece of paper”. And where marriage disappears, so does reproduction.  Mark Steyn has written a book about the impact of lower reproduction rates, and those areas where marriage has gone out of fashion are declining.

Like it or not, a strong religious foundation for marriage, indeed for life as a whole, pulls people out of the present and turns their mind toward the future.  And it’s this view to the future that gives us goals, and a reason to bring children into the world.

If you’re living for tomorrow, children are the future.  If you’re living for today, children are a nuisance.

I don’t expect scenario #3 to take place in the US.  Perhaps we’ll see both #1 and #2 in different states.  If we do, we’ll see the states that preserve marriage outbreed the states that don’t.  And the churches and other groups that preserve marriage and honor its magic in their own ways will prosper over those that don’t.

The future will be filled with people who consider children the future, and the people who consider them a nuisance will go extinct.

Hopefully, they won’t find a way to take the rest of us out with them.

…has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come.

My goodness!
What evil lurks in this executive order?
Well, according to Kelley and Turner:

The order declares that the CIA program “fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3,” provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency.”

OK, that sounds pretty reasonable to me, what’s the downside?

In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not “done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual” — even if that is an inevitable consequence — the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.”
It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in “good faith” in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America’s clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.

……
Wow.
That’s all I can say.
I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not sure if this is the sort of loophole that would actually work, even if the executive order were actually phrased the way it’s presented in the op-ed piece.
The Post was kind enough to link to the executive order in question, so I went and read it.
It covers a couple of issues.
First:

On February 7, 2002, I determined for the United States that members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are unlawful enemy combatants who are not entitled to the protections that the Third Geneva Convention provides to prisoners of war. I hereby reaffirm that determination.

Nevertheless, the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program (DIP) will extend certain protections to detainees anyway.
The executive order states that detainees will not be subject to:

(A) torture, as defined in section 2340 of title 18, United States Code;

(B) any of the acts prohibited by section 2441(d) of title 18, United States Code, including murder, torture, cruel or inhuman treatment, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, rape, sexual assault or abuse, taking of hostages, or performing of biological experiments;

(C) other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel or inhuman treatment, as defined in section 2441(d) of title 18, United States Code;

(D) any other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited by the Military Commissions Act (subsection 6(c) of Public Law 109 366) and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (section 1003 of Public Law 109 148 and section 1403 of Public Law 109 163);

(E) willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation, or using the individual as a human shield; or

(F) acts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices, or religious objects of the individual

So, in context, we see the clause that Kelley and Turner object to is part of a list of forbidden practices. Indeed, it has the appearance of being a catch-all. It covers a number of acts, such as the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib, which may not have run afoul of parts (A) through (D). And then, for good measure, part (F) bans treatment that is normally not considered objectionable, but might be so for members of certain religions. (E.g., bacon for breakfast.)
So, my “good faith” reading of these clauses, “in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose”, is that the order is designed to make it as difficult as possible to mistreat detainees. Clauses (A) through (F) seem designed to rule out, as much as possible, ways of getting around the rules. I believe, in order to get from this order to Kelley and Turner’s statement that:

…as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not “done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual” — even if that is an inevitable consequence — the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in “willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.”

you have to torture and abuse the plain intent of the document.
(So why does section (E) not ban all personal abuse, even if the intent is not to humiliate? Because there are lots of widely-accepted practices which can easily be held to be humiliating for a detainee.
Strip-searches and cavity searches take place in prisons all the time, and I imagine detainees are also subject to them. Medical exams, even fairly non-invasive ones like my physical last month, involve a certain amount of exposure and close contact that could be interpreted as humiliating. I read section (E) as keeping the burden of proof on the detainee to show that any alleged humiliation is indeed gratuitous and not the inevitable consequence of some legitimate procedure. Otherwise, a detainee could tie things in knots by simply declaring anything at all “outrageously humiliating”.)
Just to make matters worse for Kelley and Turner’s case, the executive order also provides that:

…I hereby determine that Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions] shall apply to a program of detention and interrogation operated by the Central Intelligence Agency as set forth in this section. The requirements set forth in this section shall be applied with respect to detainees in such program without adverse distinction as to their race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth, or wealth.

In other words, if Kelley and Turner are serious in the charges they’re leveling, they’re stating that the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War provides inadequate protection for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Not only is the Geneva Convention inadequate, it remains inadequate in conjunction with U.S. Code bans on torture, murder, cruel and inhuman treatment, outrageous acts of personal abuse, and religious denigration.
The way I read this, Kelley and Turner are relying on a tortured interpretation of this executive order as an excuse to throw a hysterical fit over the Evil Bush Administration. As with certain other people I’ve read, they are not motivated by opposition to torture, but by hatred George W. Bush. In this case, no amount of protection for detainees will ever be seen as sufficient because it’s being administered by Bush.

I’m  curious to know how many who agree with this argument  would  agree with  programs like  privatization of  Social Security, Medicare, Education, and so on.  Wouldn’t withdrawing government support for these programs encourage recipients to take responsibility for themselves?

Donate George Bush’s stem cells for early primate research

The car was a BMW with shiny black (unmarred) paint.

I wonder how long a car would retain its finish if it sported a bumper sticker reading:

Donate John Kerry’s medals to a war hero

Just asking.

For example: Medicare is more efficient than privately-funded health care? Well, Medicare has an overhead of 1%, and the overhead for private health care is between 10% and 30%. But…

“Overhead” includes not just profit and administrative costs, it includes the cost of collecting the money to feed the system itself. It’s a commonplace of public finance that the deadweight costs of taxation finance are 20% of the sum raised through that taxation. That deadweight hasn’t been included in our Medicare costs, meaning that the truly comparable overheads are in fact 21%: slap bang in the middle of our private sector range. Let us take this as our first example of your results being dependent upon what you’re measuring.

Then there’s the question of how you measure the quality of a health care system.

There’s a story of a land where the law required doctors to fly a red flag outside their offices for every patient who had died in their care. One man was shopping for a doctor, and he saw offices with lots of flags outside them. Then he spotted one with only three flags, and went in.

The doctor looked up and exclaimed, “I never expected so many customers my first week in business!”

The point is, you need to make sure what you think you’re measuring is what you’re actually measuring.

We’ve got a system of rankings of health care systems. France and Canada are in the top 10, the USA, despite spending more, at number 37. But let’s look at how those rankings are composed:

To make the definition of the composite easier to understand, these survey results have been rounded to the nearest one-eighth so that the final weights to be used are 0.25 for health, 0.25 for health inequality, 0.125 for level of responsiveness, 0.125 for distribution of responsiveness and 0.25 for fairness of financial contribution.

Do you see that? Only 25% of the weighting is about the actual health care received. A similar amount is awarded for the equality of care received. So, imagine, say, the Canadian system, everybody waits the same amount of time for a hip replacement, in the American one some get it very quickly, others get it after a long wait: it doesn’t matter that everyone in the US waits a shorter period of time than anyone in Canada: the Canadian system would be scored as better here. I’m not saying that those waiting times are actually true, I’m simply pointing to the effects of the weighting: inequality in treatment times is as important here as the actual treatment itself.

Indeed, dependent upon how these numbers are manipulated, it could be that a system where no one has hip replacements would be better rated than one where some do immediately and some wait six months.

The point that Professor Whitman makes is also there: the fairness of financing.

More importantly, the distribution of household contributions will obviously decline when the government shoulders more of the health spending burden. In the extreme, if the government pays for all healthcare, every household will spend the same percentage of their income – zero – on healthcare. In other words, this measure of health outcomes necessarily makes countries that rely on private payment look inferior.

The moral of the story: When you reduce a complicated system to one “figure of merit”, it’s always a good idea to check some known examples for reasonableness.

Just to hammer the point home. On this system of measurement, the actual level of treatment in the US could fall, but the amount tax financed rise: and the US would be declared to have improved its system. Yes, really, a decrease in the absolute level of treatment could mean a rise up the rankings.

Which rather means that the ranking system isn’t of all that much use to us here.

…a Canadian judge’s passing remark – “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ” – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.

“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”

The left-wing blogosphere has erupted in a fit. Left wing bloggers are shocked and appalled that Justice Scalia supported torture. And indeed, one blogger, one of the “canaries in the coal mine” that I follow, declared himself “Croggled and appalled“.

Over at the American Constitution Society blog, the issue has drawn some comment. Most of the comments declare Scalia to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Supreme Court:

This man is a fool and a poltroon and a blight on the profession, evil and dangerous, not just for his positions, but for his willingness to so lower the bar with respect to valid conclusions drawn from true premises.

We see more measured comments at the wsj blog.

This post at Think Progress has drawn any number ov comments. According to the commenters, Scalia is busy shredding the constitution and should be impeached. Another major thread running through the comments is exemplified by:

Wow. Scalia is basing his legal opinions on a fantasy TV show? Our republic is dead.

And

Do any of these prominent repugs live in the real world, or are they all unable to distinguish fact from fiction?

Southern Beale commented in a post:

Would someone please remind the dumber Republicans among us that Jack Bauer is a fictional character?

Well, I’d be willing to bet that Scalia is well aware that Jack Bauer is a fictional character, and that the show “24″ depicts fictional events. Any takers?

Even with a fair trial, we tolerate the ability of police officers to stop and detain people, using deadly force if needed. In many cases the police can subject suspects to very coercive methods of interrogation. Some of these, like the offering of plea bargains, are little more than legalized blackmail.

However, as soon as you offer anything except the most stringent condemnation of anything bearing the label “torture”, all hell breaks loose. If you dare question whether it’s really that far out of bounds you are considered evil incarnate. There is almost no attempt to address the substance of your remarks, and every attempt to declare your opinions illegitimate.

Although Scalia and others at the panel raised serious issues in the discussion, the noise in the left-wing hemisphere of the blogosphere denounced him for failing to reject torture out of hand. The only possible reason any of these people can imagine is that he’s evil, he’s determined to eradicate all trace of due process and civil rights, and he’s a sworn enemy of the Constitution.

Well, there is one more reason. Obviously, he must be stupid. He’s so stupid that he can’t tell the difference between a TV series and reality.

The “principled” opposition to torture blithely assumes that anyone who doesn’t agree with them wholeheartedly and unreservedly must be operating from stupidity or evil, or maybe both. This is a very convenient point of view – it saves those who hold it from ever having to think. If everyone who disagrees with you is motivated by evil, or is blindingly stupid, there’s no point in arguing with them. He’s a Conservative – end of issue.

But there are real, weighty, meaty issues to deal with. Some of these were dealt with at the panel discussion.

Does the end justify the means if national security is at stake? On 24, the answer is, invariably, yes.

“[Scalia argued] that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis.”

“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”

While Judge Scalia argued that doomsday scenarios may well lead to the reconsideration of rights, in his legal decisions he has also said that catastrophic attacks and intelligence imperatives do not automatically give the U.S. president a blank cheque – the people have to decide. “If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically, as the Constitution requires, rather than by silent erosion through an opinion of this court,” he dissented in a 2004 decision.

Do the ends justify the means?

Personally, I’d say they do, but the question is, how far? To say that the ends never justify the means is to commit the same error committed by one who defines torture as “any physical or mental coercion – any.” Life is a series of trade-offs. That’s one inescapable truth. Those who insist the ends never justify the means would rather there were no such trade-offs, but they’re in for disappointment.

So the issue is not do we ever get our hands dirty, the question is how much dirt is compatible with our notions of a civilized society.

But that’s an argument that requires thought and consideration. It’s far easier to adopt a stance of ideological purity and declare all disagreement unprincipled by definition.

She’s a spoiled brat. She’s grown up in an environment where she’s learned she can either buy or charm her way into whatever she wants, or out of whatever she doesn’t want.  She’s finally run up against something she can’t manipulate her way through, and it’s a shock to her system.

I hope she draws a lesson from all this.

More interesting is the fight between the Judge Michael Sauer and the Sheriff’s department.

The judge is obviously irritated by Hilton’s behavior, and she’s made some really boneheaded moves.  I suspect he wanted to throw the book at her, and that’s why his orders specifically include instructions that forbid house arrest, work furlough, or anything else that would have her anywhere outside of jail until her term is up.

The problem is, the judge doesn’t seem to have jurisdiciton over this sort of thing.  Prisoner treatment is largely the responsibility of the sheriff.  I think that also includes decisions about where prisoners will be housed.

And in addition, I’m told that in cases like Hilton’s, it’s fairly typical for a prisoner to be released after serving 10% of the sentence.  The prisons are that overcrowded.  I think the Sheriff may have screwed up by putting Hilton on house arrest for health reasons. I suspect that had Hilton been treated just like any other prisoner, she’d be out now.

But Judge Sauer wants Hilton punished, and so he’s going to attempt to dictate terms where he doesn’t have jurisdiction.  He and the Sheriff are in a battle, and Hilton has the bad luck to be in the middle of it.   She’s not just being punished for her probation violation, or for her contempt of court, but also because the Judge is irritated with the Sheriff.

The Sheriff’s department released her into house arrest.  Sure, maybe Hilton’s temper tantrum had something to do with it, but the Sheriff’s the one who made the call.  What was she supposed to do?  Chain herself to her cell?  (And the Sheriff was in a pretty nasty position. The last thing he needs is for a high-profile prisoner to die while in his custody.)

On friday morning, appearing by phone was not sufficient for Judge Sauer.  He ordered deputy sheriffs to pick her up and bring her to court.  She finally shows up at eleven-thirty.

So is this her fault?  No, it’s the fault of those deputies, but the Judge is probably taking it out on her.  Her sentence has been bumped back up to 45 days.

But the fight between the Judge and the Sheriff goes on.  The Sheriff has been ordered to show cause why he shouldn’t be held in comtempt of court, and I suspect the defense will involve pointing out that the Judge is overstepping his bounds.

Maybe the loser will be put in the cell next to Paris Hilton.

Proponents of the immigration bill making its way through Congress are constantly claiming “it’s not amnesty”. For example:

Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without any penalties — that’s what amnesty is. I oppose it.

— President Bush.

Seriously – If I stole your car, and someone passed a law reducing my penalty to a $100 fine, and I got to keep the car, I might find the difference between that and “amnesty” not worth talking about.

I’ve been having a debate with someone in a forum with a very slow turn-around time. It’s a newsletter that’s published once a month, so each cycle of the “discussion” takes two months.

Anyway, she believes the federal response to New Orleans after Katrina was slow – and indeed, slower than to areas which were more likely to have voted for Bush. I disagree.

After going back and forth, I decided I needed to get some references together, and so I started paging back through my favorite blogs to collect links and reports.

I’m still in the “C’s”, and today I looked at Clayton Cramer’s archives. Now, what I examined seems to have focused mainly on the breakdown of social order that happened in the wake of Katrina, and included links to news accounts of some things that turn out not to have happened after all.

One of the links, though, was extremely curious. In Clayton’s blog, as he says:

A couple years ago, during the Katrina disaster, I linked to a CNN report and quoted it:

Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN’s Chris Lawrence reported.

One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.

“It’s a war zone, and they’re not treating it like one,” he said, referring to the federal government. …

One of my readers ran into that posting of mine–and noticed that the CNN report at that link no longer said anything like that. It was much, much more upbeat. Nothing about the police snipers on the roof. Did I copy the wrong link? Did I have a brief attack of delusion, and make something up?

Well, some people might have done just that. However, after having read Clayton’s blog for a while, I doubt he’d do that. Furthermore, he included a link. If he had made up the citation that was supposed to be at the other end of that link, he’d have to realize the first person to click through would notice. He’s smarter than that.

Heck, I have a compost pile smarter than that.

Furthermore, as he points out in today’s post:

Nope. Lots of other people linked to that same CNN page, and quoted the same text. Like http://paulsplanet.blogspot.com/2005/09/fall-of-new-orleans_02.htmlhttp://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002476.html .

There were bloggers who quoted CNN exactly as I did, although with no link to the story: http://knemeyer.com/dk.cfm?a=cms,c,318,1 and http://www.flaregun.org/?feed=rss2&p=51 and http://gutternickle.net/blog/index.php/2005/09/02/something_i_don_t_want_to_forget_about_k

We could assume there was a conspiracy, I suppose. Everyone in it would have to have had the same text to work from, and would have to have agreed to post it, on their blogs, and link to the same article (or include no link at all). And then sit on the truth for a year and a half now.

No, after applying Occam’s Razor, I have to conclude CNN has changed the contents of that file. And in a distinct contrast with standard practice for reputable bloggers, nowhere has the company flagged this as an edit.

Did something go down the memory hole? If that story was inaccurate, they should have identified it as inaccurate, and updated it. This dramatic transformation of a story that played a big part in creating bad press for President Bush really smacks of something very Orwellian.

At 3:00 this afternoon, I found this extremely curious.

I thought Clayton would find it equally so.

By 4:00, after Instapundit had picked up on it, it occurred to me it was pretty darn important.

Folks, this was a link to an archived article. Take a look at the link format:

<http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.impact/index.html>

“cnn.com” is, of course, CNN. Then we have the year, the directory for US news, the month, the date, and then the topic folder name. (Index.html is the default filename for any folder, and is the first file a browser will look for at the end of a URL unless directed otherwise.) This URL has every appearance of a permanent reference, identified with topic and date.

Now, I’m used to clicking on a link and finding that the file has been removed. Those are called “volatile links”. But this is different. This is a file which doesn’t say today what it said yesterday, and there’s no reason given for the change. Somebody saw fit to edit the historical record without comment, and without notice.

Frankly, if CNN did this to one archived story, how many others have been similarly adjusted? If we look into the archives at CNN, are we getting an accurate picture of CNN’s coverage of events, or are we seeing how CNN wishes it had covered them?

Folks, this one’s big. If we can’t trust CNN to be honest about what it’s reported in the past, what does it say about what they’re covering now, or may cover in the future?

For the sake of completeness, here’s what I wrote, in a bit of a hurry, at 4 PM today.

By “torture”, I mean the word, not necessarily the action.

I’ve been putting in my two cents’ worth on this subject for a while, and I think it’s time I state, for the record, where I stand on the subject.  For the record, torture is bad. Torture is not a nice thing to do to people.  Torture should not be condoned except as a last resort.

That being said, I’ve seen a great deal of hysteria on the subject of torture.  I was first drawn in to discussing the topic by the statements of a trained interrogator for the Army.  He said, flat out, “torture doesn’t work.”

With those three words, he lost any credibility he may have had in my eyes.  The problem is, torture does work.  Everyone knows this.

Let’s ignore “traditional” uses of torture, such as punishment, control of behavior, and even letting off steam for the captors.  Let’s take the claim as meaning, “torture doesn’t work at obtaining information.”  This is also false.  This story in the New York Times and the interview I transcribed here both give accounts where torture did, in fact “work”.  That is, the prisoners who were tortured gave up useful information in time to do something with it.

If that’s not “working”, then we need a new  definition of “work”.

The opponents of torture, even in its mildest forms, continue to state as dogma that it doesn’t work.  It would be one thing if they took a more nuanced position.  I could understand, “torture doesn’t work as well as other techniques we use”, or “effective as torture may be, it causes more damage to society than the information is ever worth”.  The first is a statement that could possibly be true.  The second is a value judgment the kind everyone is entitled to.  But to state, as an unqualified statement of doctrine, that torture doesn’t work, is to insult my intelligence.

And I don’t put up with insults very graciously.

Now, I’m not discounting any of the “kinder, gentler” methods.  I’m perfectly willing to accept the testimony of people like retired Army Colonel Stuart Herrington (in this interview with Hugh Hewitt) that these soft methods work. I also recall an article, years ago, about a policeman’s accidental discovery. He didn’t have any chairs for a prisoner in the interrogation room, so he gave the prisoner the chair he would have used, and stood during the interrogation.  It turned out that he got more information from the prisoner when he was seated in a comfy chair.  It seems when you relax your body, you’re more likely to relax your defenses.

However, to make the case, as some do, that because these methods work, torture doesn’t — you might as well tell me that because you can get where you need to on a bicycle, cars don’t work.

Again, if you want my support, don’t insult my intelligence.

Finally, here’s where we get to the title of this post.  Opponents of torture have been known to define “torture” in ways that make no sense.  They wind up labeling “torture” any number of things you or I would never consider “torture”.  As an example, here’s a definition offered by an Army interrogator:

Here is my definition. You will (because you have already) disagree.

It’s very simple.

Any physical or mental coercion.

Full stop. Any.

So the cold room, out of bounds.

The standing up for hours, out of bounds.

Feeding him food against his religion, out of bounds

Slapping him around,just a little, out of bounds

Telling him his family will never know where he is, out of bounds.

Not feeding him as the troops of the detaining power, out of bounds.

It is just that simple.

And it has the advantage of being both morally right, and working.

According to this definition, the process of making a plea-bargain arrangement with a prisoner is “torture”.  So is sending a kid to bed without supper, or even telling him “no TV until your homework is done.”

If this definition doesn’t insult your intelligence, maybe you should check and make sure you have some.

So my position on torture is,  it’s not nice.  In fact, it’s evil. If you’re going to resort to it, you’d better be using it to avert some greater evil.  Period.

It’s interesting to see the disdain, and even the outright hostility to the “ticking time bomb” scenario on the part of opponents of torture.  I think the reason for this is the same as the dogmatic statement that “torture doesn’t work.”  If we look at the scenario, we wind up weighing evils to see if we can tell which is greater and which is lesser.  Opponents of torture are absolutists.  They can’t bear the thought that there might be things that are a greater evil, so they refuse to consider the possibility.  And by decreeing that torture doesn’t work, they hope to remove any threat that such an evaluation might ever have to be made.

It’s a pity that facts keep getting in the way.

China’s plan to keep the skies sunny and clear during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing shows how far weather modification has come, climatologists say.

If a storm approaches the city, the Chinese said they would seed the clouds with silver iodide to force rainfall, cleansing the air and ensuring spectators and athletes stay dry.

(Source)

It’ll be a nice trick if they can pull it off. But it’s not that easy:

When silver iodide is dispersed in clouds, it can cause moisture to condense, similar to the way water condenses on the outside of a cold drink in a glass on a hot day, Mr. Hoffman said. However, if too much silver iodide is added to clouds heavy with moisture, it can overwhelm their ability to condense, thereby stopping the rain.

Scientists must make educated guesses about how much silver iodide should be dispersed and the best time for it.
….
In addition, tampering with the weather can create unplanned consequences, he said.

“There is also the chance that the seeding will produce hail where it wouldn’t have happened otherwise,” Mr. Lilly said. “I wouldn’t want to be subject to the lawsuits.”

I bet the Chinese government knows all about the concept of sovereign immunity.

John McCain has spoken ex cathedra on the subject of torture on Fox News.

WALLACE: How would you fight the War on Terror differently than it’s being fought now?

J. MCCAIN: I would probably announce the closing of Guantanamo Bay. I would move those detainees to Fort Leavenworth. I would announce we will not torture anyone.
….
We cannot torture people and maintain our moral superiority in the world.
….
WALLACE: Senator, you talked about torture. Former CIA Director Tenet now says that the intelligence that they got from harsh interrogation techniques against some of these big Al Qaida types, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the intelligence they got from them using, reportedly, things like water-boarding, extreme temperatures, was more valuable than all the other CIA and FBI programs.

Were you wrong? I mean, this is the CIA, former CIA director, saying this. Were you wrong to limit what CIA interrogators could do?
….
WALLACE: But when George Tenet says…

J. MCCAIN: I don’t care what George Tenet says. I know what’s right. I know what’s morally right as far as America’s behavior.
….
WALLACE: … when George Tenet says we saved live through some of these techniques…

J. MCCAIN: I don’t accept it. I don’t accept that fundamental thesis, because it’s never worked throughout history…..

In other words, don’t confuse me with facts, I know I’m right.

(now, those who read this regularly will know my stand on the use of torture… suffice it to say, because I can’t let it pass; and the energy to fulminate on this is taxing, and I slept poorly, my back hurts, the sun was in my eyes and I lost the ball in the lights, that I hate it, with a passion deep and abiding. With so strong, and visceral a reaction that I want to hurt people who say it’s useful much less those who try to argue needful),
(link)

He has other hysterical rants, including one in which he declares people who voted in favor of coercive interrogation to be “breaking faith” , and declaring Bill Clinton “damned” because he “bought into” the possibility that extreme methods might be needed in interrogations..

I can accept statements like “torture is so evil, no good we can obtain from it would redeem it”. I can accept that he considers torture so immoral that it’s a deal-breaker for an otherwise acceptable candidate.

What I can’t accept is the blanket doctrinal statement that “torture doesn’t work”. I’ve seen news pieces that show torture does, indeed, work. Bill O’Reilly interviewed Brian Ross of ABC News, and got him to admit that torture had, in fact, produced usable information from captured terrorists. Last week, there was an article in the New York Times about how Iraqi police were beating captured “insurgents” to obtain information, and this had led to the discovery of facilities where people were making IEDs.

If that’s not “working”, we need another definition of the term. Unfortunately, examples like this don’t seem to make any impact on those who claim “torture doesn’t work” as an article of faith.

One of the arguments presented by the “torture doesn’t work” acolytes is that under torture, a prisoner will tell the interrogator exactly what he wants to hear. Andy McCarthy addresses this at The Corner at National Review Online:

…it is just plain bluster to argue, as McCain continues to insist, that coercion never works and he doesn’t care what anyone else says. As his answer on the ticking-bomb demonstrates, even he doesn’t believe that.

Common sense tells us it is preposterous to claim that an interrogee will always just tell his interrogator whatever the latter wants to hear. That claim might have some validity if the purpose of interrogation was to wrangle a confession to be used in some sort of show-trial. But the point of interrogation for intelligence purposes is to find out what is going on, not to fix blame. Usually, the interrogator won’t know what he wants to hear, and will be asking open-ended questions. The interrogee will have no way of knowing the “right” answer; if he does not resist, his choice will be to provide true information or false information, and sorting that out is a matter of corroboration.

Sometimes the information will, indeed, be false — just as criminals who testify in exchange for leniency sometimes provide false information because they know the value of their cooperation to prosecutors (which determines how much leniency they get) calls for them to inculpate other people. But very often, the information from such criminals proves to be true. That, of course, is why we permit the government to offer incentives (like generous plea deals, money, relocation, etc.) to get people to cooperate. Our experience tells us that just because people have an incentive to lie — even a powerful one — does not mean the information they provide will be false. Often it is true. That is not an argument for widely permitting coercive interrogation; but it does underscore that McCain and others should stop making the silly claim that coercion never works.

Alas, it’s not a matter of common sense.  It’s a matter of religious dogma.  Those who oppose torture, or even coercive interrogation, no matter what, are not doing so because doesn’t work.  That’s a convenient claim they make to bolster their case.  Their opposition to coercive techniques is based entirely on their own sense of moral outrage, and anchored in their faith that they are on the side of good, right, justice, and morality.

The claim that “torture doesn’t work” is a red flag.  True Believers will ignore any facts that get in the way of their absolutist moral statements.

Another red flag is that many of these True Believers only object to “torture” if it’s being carried out by the current administration.  But that’s another topic.

Contamination, riots, rate increases, scandals. From Atlanta to Manila, cities are confronting the true cost of water privatization.

….

Atlanta’s water service had never been without its critics; there had always been complaints about slow repairs and erroneous water bills. But the problems intensified three years ago, says Certain, after one of the world’s largest private water companies took over the municipal system and promised to turn it into an “international showcase” for public-private partnerships. Instead of ushering in a new era of trouble-free drinking water, Atlanta’s experiment with privatization has brought a host of new problems. This year there have been five boil-water alerts, indicating unsafe contaminants might be present. Fire hydrants have been useless for months. Leaking water mains have gone unrepaired for weeks. Despite all of this, the city’s contractor — United Water, a subsidiary of French-based multinational Suez — has lobbied the City Council to add millions more to its $21-million-a-year contract.

Dismal, ain’t it?

Well, as you will have noticed if you followed the link (or just moused over it), the article comes from Mother Jones Magazine, which is not known to be a fan of capitalism.  Let’s look at what they have to say about Atlanta:

“Atlanta was going to be the industry’s shining example of how great privatization is,” says Public Citizen’s Jackson. “And now it’s turned into our shining example about how it maybe isn’t so great an idea after all.”

On a cloudy August day that brought a welcome bit of drizzle to drought-parched Atlanta, Mayor Shirley Franklin lugged a seven-pound bound volume off a shelf and heaved it onto a table in her office. The report, prepared by a committee she appointed shortly after taking office last January, contained the city’s case against United Water. It detailed violations of federal drinking-water standards, including one instance in which levels of chlorine rose to six times the level the company agreed to in its contract. The report also listed a string of maintenance problems ranging from broken security cameras and gates to open manholes and water-main leaks that went unrepaired for weeks. Some residents had to wait months for basic repairs, even though the company’s contract specifies that some repairs must be made within 15 days. In fact, United failed to complete more than half of all required repairs in 2001, and it allowed rust and debris to build up, so that when the boil-water alerts forced the company to flush the system, brown water flowed from the taps.

Finally, the report noted, instead of improving collections of unpaid water bills as promised, United actually allowed collection rates to drop from 98 to 94 percent, costing the city millions of dollars.

United has succeeded at one thing, according to the city: cutting its own oper-ating costs, chiefly by reducing the water- works staff by 25 percent even as demand for water in burgeoning Atlanta keeps rising. Staff reductions were partly responsible for the company’s service troubles, the report indicated, as were higher-than-expected repair expenses: Last year United demanded that the city provide an additional $80 million for unanticipated maintenance costs. The increase was blocked when a lone City Council member refused to sign the revised contract.

As it happens, there is a perspective from the other side available.  The Reason Public Policy Institute has an analysis of what went wrong, and right.

 …in the past few months several issues have arisen in Atlanta regarding the performance of the water system, contractor payments or change orders, and the status of the system before the contract was entered into. Ultimately, while not perfect, the Atlanta water privatization presents a valuable opportunity from which to learn—if nothing else, it teaches us what not to do.

This is a lengthy analysis, drawing on a number of sources. It’s interesting to compare the RPPI account of what happened with Mother Jones’.  Among other things, we read that some of these problems may not have arrived with United Water.

Before privatization operating costs ran about $50 million a year with poor service and a major need for modernization. Then Mayor Bill Campbell decided to privatize water operations as a way out, although he did not generally support privatization. In general, there was not much initial public support for the proposal. However, it went forward and United Water was eventually selected with a winning bid of $22 million.

Entering the contract negotiations phase the city had little idea of the exact location of water mains in the city, or their condition. The city did know that a high percentage of treated water was not billed, and probably leaked out between the treatment plant and meters. United Water (UW) insisted that the city make warranties on the system, but ultimately the city held firm and none were made.[15]

….

Fast forward to this summer [of 2003 -- KL], Mayor Shirley Franklin issued formal notice to contractor UW that they were not in full compliance with the terms of the 20-year contract reached in 1997. She noted that problems included: staffing levels, bill collection, and meter installation and repair. This came as UW was seeking an additional $80 million dollars for services they claim were provided outside of the contract.

….

UW was given 90 days to “cure” complaints in four key areas: insufficient maintenance, poor bill collection,[16] tardy meter installation, and an improper letter of credit. As of October 31, 2002 , the city reported that performance had improved but more improvement was needed. A scorecard will be used to evaluate the performance, which both sides agreed to, since it will be measuring actual outputs and outcomes rather than subjective measures.

….

Still at issue in Atlanta is whether or not UW deserves more than the $21 million a year they are paid. UW is contending that the city grossly underestimated basic repairs and maintenance. Assumptions were built into UW’s fee proposal. For example: that 1,171 water meters per year would break, requiring repairs—but in reality, 11,108 broke; another was that 101 main breaks would occur in a year—actual equaled 279; and yet another was that 734 fire hydrants would require repair—when 1,633 needed it. Essentially UW assumed that the system would require one level of repair, when a different much higher level of repair was needed.

Ultimately the problem resulted from poor data, or in some cases no record keeping. The city did not have good records to establish a baseline—either data wasn’t kept, wasn’t kept accurately, or existed but was understated due to bureaucratic malfeasance. However, some of the blame must fall on UW. All of the bidders knew about the lack or quality of data ahead of time before they bid. Furthermore, UW has a lot of experience running old systems (older and larger than Atlanta ’s) and they should have built that expertise into their proposal.

Blame falls on both sides. However, Mother Jones doesn’t stop at tearing apart the Atlanta privatization experiment. She generalizes:

Atlanta’s experience has become Exhibit A in a heated controversy over the push by a rapidly growing global water industry to take over public water systems. At the heart of the debate are two questions: Should water, a basic necessity for human survival, be controlled by for-profit interests? And can multinational companies actually deliver on what they promise — better service and safe, affordable water?

The obvious conclusion in the article: No.

Such incidents point to a fundamental problem with allowing private companies to take over public water systems, says the Pacific Institute’s Gleick. In attempting to make attractive bids for long-term contracts, companies often underestimate the cost of maintaining a water system, and so are forced to either skimp on staffing or demand more money to keep turning a profit. “At least when you have public utilities, the money they take in stays in the community,” Gleick says. “With the private companies, the profits are going to go out of your community, out of your state, and probably out of your country.”

RPPI, on the other hand, begs to differ.

Atlanta’s experience with water privatization is not typical. Satisfaction with water and wastewater privatization has been very high, with over 90 percent of communities choosing to continue privatization at renewal time.

RPPI would advocate fixing the problems with the 10% that don’t meet the standards, and staying with the 90% of the cases that do.  Mother Jones would junk the whole system.  But then, MJ is not a fan of private enterprise.

In the end, the debate is about more than money. Taking responsibility for a community’s water, Muller argues, is simply not the same as running a sports stadium or a cable franchise. “Water is the worst thing to privatize,” she says. “It’s what we need to live. I think that’s key to the whole debate — are we going to lose control over functions that are essential to life?”

What would they ask for next? Government-run grocery stores?

Update:  Over the weekend, the link to the Mother Jones piece seems to have disappeared.  I guess someone realized the end of 2002 can’t  really be considered “current” in April of 2007.

Nevertheless, I’m leaving this up, both because I did a lot of work on it, and because the same newsletter had a link to a piece at alternet.org railing against privatization.  I think this post can be an antidote to the hysterical tone there, as much as anywhere.

Turkey has reached a crisis over radical Islam, as their recent elections have created a precarious position for the tradtionally secular democracy. Abdullah Gul, the candidate for the leading party, will become Turkey’s next president despite his history of supporting Islamists. The army has announced its intention to defend secularism, a most decidedly blunt warning to the Parliament not to elect Gul. The situation looks ripe for a civil war or a coup d’etat.

Turkey has what Jerry Pournelle calls a “reset button” in their government.  As long as the state remains secular, the military stays out of the way.  If it becomes Islamic, the military sweeps in, removes the Islamic government from
power, and then heads back to their barracks while the people vote in a secular government.

This time, the threat may be enough, at least partly because everyone knows the threat will be carried out, if necessary.

Therefore,  I propose the following rules to be enacted into law.

• Stricter rules of engagement in fires, including strict limits on how close any fire fighter may approach a fire.  In no case should any fire fighter actually enter a burning structure.
• A strict timetable for removal of forces from any particular fire.  If a fire can’t be brought under control within a reasonable time period, it should be declared a lost cause, and a strategy of containment should be implemented.
• Eventual redeployment of fire fighters away from high-risk areas.  Fire stations in high burn risk areas will be closed down, and fire fighters will be redeployed to desert areas, wetlands, glaciers, and salt flats, where their risk of injury will be greatly reduced.

I encourage everyone to write, call, or e-mail their legislators and encourage them to adopt this three-point firefighter support plan at once.

After a bit of initial chit-chat, he hit me with a hypothetical that he had already bounced off a couple dozen of my fellow job-seeking classmates: “A potential case comes to you. You’re not sure whether the alleged perpetrator is guilty or not. What do you do? Do you bring the case to trial?”

I had spent the previous six months working for the Massachusetts Attorney General as a 3:03 attorney, which meant that even though I was in law school I functioned pretty much as a full-grown Assistant Attorney General. I had appeared before numerous courts throughout the Commonwealth and shared office space with some of the state’s most stone-cold prosecutors. I easily fielded the hypo.

“It’s a prosecutor’s job to do justice,” I told my interviewer. “Since the prosecutor in this instance doesn’t think the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he would be doing something that he knew was an injustice if he got the accused convicted. He shouldn’t bring the case.”

…

I walked out of the interview room beaming. But the grin was smug. The only reason I was able to so effortlessly handle the hypothetical was because I had become so thoroughly schooled in the typical prosecutor’s platitudes by walking amongst them for the past six months. What I had told my interviewer was a total crock, and certainly not indicative of the way things worked in the real world.

…

The prosecutors that I worked with at the Attorney General’s office were great fun. They were gunslingers. They worked hard and played hard. But, in spite of my fondness for these people, I have to admit that navel-gazing sessions on the meanings of justice weren’t in their repertoire. They sought convictions. Convicting famous people was better than convicting anonymous foes. Headlines were better than anonymity. In short, justice was a game.

…

PATRICK FITZGERALD IS A PROSECUTOR. He came to the Valerie Plame affair with his typical agenda – get someone thrown in jail. It was Scooter Libby’s misfortune that he was the one without chair when the music stopped. It was his greater misfortune that there wasn’t a bigger fish nibbling on prosecutor Fitzgerald’s line. If there had been, Scooter Libby would still be a mostly anonymous public servant today.

Did Scotter Libby break the law and perjure himself before a Grand Jury? As a legal fact, yes. A jury has said so, and that’s that. Of course, juries make a lot of things legal facts that shouldn’t be.

And there it is.  Theory says a prosecutor’s job is to seek justice.  Theory says a prosecutor has the responsibility to drop a case “in the interest of justice” if he doesn’t believe there’s a crime to prosecute.  At the end of the OJ Simpson trial, Marcia Clark attempted to work this into her closing argument.

Practice says a prosecutor is judged by his success rate, and success is measured by how many people are convicted.  That means, If the prosecution turns its sights on you, it is the enemy, and actual innocence is not a defense.  Your only defense is the existence of other people, whose guilt is easier to prove, and whose conviction can be added to a prosecutor’s record with less effort.

Update:

Jerry Pournelle writes:

Tip for the day: never speak to any FBI official or other Federal investigator unless subpoenaed and under oath. Don’t even tell them the time of day or where you were five minutes ago. Ask Martha Stewart for details.

It used to be we thought of “our police” and “our FBI.” These are different times. They like to play gotcha now.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that reached into the highest levels of the Bush administration.

….

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has led the leak investigation, said no additional charges would be filed. That means nobody will be charged with the leak and Libby, who was not the source for the original column outing Plame, will be the only one to face trial.

….

Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame’s identity and whom he told. Prosecutors said he learned about Plame from Cheney and others, discussed her name with reporters and, fearing prosecution, made up a story to make those discussions seem innocuous.

Libby said he told investigators his honest recollections and blamed any misstatements on a faulty memory. He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Libby was convicted of telling investigators something which, on investigation, turned out not to be true.  He was not under oath at the time, but apparently Federal law makes it a crime to lie to someone who is investigating a crime. 

If you, personally, are asked questions by a police officer, and what you say turns out not to be true, you may wind up in court, trying to prove your recollections and the state of your mind to a jury.

I suspect the safest approach is simply to take the fifth whenever you’re questioned by government official.  “I’m sorry, but on the advice of counsel, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.”

If people want cooperation, they need to change the law to remove possible booby-traps.  They may not like it, but it’s true.

Patrick Ishmael at The News Buckit picked up an Instapunk challenge and scanned lefty and right blogs to assess their usage of George Carlin’s “Seven words you can never say on television.” The results:

And this is what I found, using what I deemed – through a mix of TTLB and 2006’s Weblog Award lists – to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. I couldn’t account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn’t make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin’s “seven words” versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1. …

And the list has a few glaring omissions:

Update @ 9:16am: Great point by reader Joe.

What? No Democratic Underground? No IndyMedia? No FreeRepublic? No Townhall? No FrontPageMag?

And thus, the numbers:

Democratic Underground: 947,000
IndyMedia: 206,000
FreeRepublic: 4010
TownHall.com (minus HH blog): 156
FrontPageMag: 11,800

It only gets worse… 1537788 [Leftyblog filthies]-to-37285 [Rightyblog filthies]. 41-to-1. Holy mackeral.

Nastiest after Democratic Underground and IndyMedia were Kos with 146,000 and Huffpost with 78,200.

On the Right, the biggest blogs were pretty darn clean: The big three of LGF, Instapundit and Michelle Malkin had less than 500 between them. The milblogs tended to be the fetid ground on the right, but the spiciest of them, Ace of Spades, couldn’t even string together 10,000 nasties.
So what does this poster think the difference says?

Why the gulf? On the Right, of course, there’s a respect for social norms that just doesn’t exist on the Left. There’s also faith (I miraculously quit swearing right after accepting Christ) and respect for others.

On the Left, there’s rebellion and the urge to shock, timeworn traditions that go way back (how many remember Country Joe & the Fish’s Vietnam Rag or Pearls Before Swine’s song complete with the Morse code lyric dit dit dah dit, dit dit dah, dah dit dah dit, dah dit dah?)

But that’s not enough to explain a million profanities. There is also in the swearing, I believe, an acknowledgment that their logic is weak, their history is weak, their policy is weak, and there’s nothing they can do to change any of that. Stuck with the belief system they’re stuck with, losing the logic arguments as they do, marginalized intellectually, their frustration rises.

The difference is real. Pick your favorite explanation for it, or come up with some of your own.