Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, December 07, 2002

War Comes to Stanley - Again - This front-page above-the-fold story from Saturday's Strib about how Pearl Harbor and 9/11 came together in Stanley, North Dakota was strangely affecting to me.

If you've never lived in an isolated little prairie town, it's hard to describe how these sorts of things work.

Read it. It's good. And on this, the 61st anniversary of Pearl Harbor, it's good to keep these things in mind.

Freedom - real freedom - doesn't come cheap.

Whole Lott o' Problems Every time I criticize Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, I get email - good, solid, reasoned email from rational, thoughful readers of this blog, the kind I'm proud to know are clicking on "Shot in the Dark" - who point out that Lott's frequently been pilloried by a media that's fundamentally unsympathetic.

And yet, we have incidents like his comments at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party which have to make you wonder - where are his priorities? What is he thinking?

Republicans are even starting to wonder about Lott.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/7/2002 08:48:07 PM

Ground Rules Triple - I"ll admit it - I'm not the biggest sports nut. Yeah, I used to produce the MN North Stars in the eighties, and I was a stringer for WGN Radio's "Sports Round Table" (the original "Da Bearss" show from Saturday Night Live). But as a rule, sports websites generally do nothing for me, and sports radio (like KFAN) bores me catatonic (Note: Someone please tell "P.A and DuBay" that it's just sports). I always prefer sports I can play myself. Most sports web sites bore me stiff.

That being said, I'm a baseball fan. And this site, TwinsGeek.com is the most amazing read.

Highly recommended as we count down the two months of predictable football, played-out NBA hoops and one-note hockey 'til pitchers report for spring training.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/7/2002 06:23:44 PM

Armey - Yesterday, Dick Armey (R Texas) retired from his post as House Majority Leader. I listened to his speech, excerpted here on DrudgeReport. It was truly a stunning speech - I plan on finding the whole text. Here's a part I loved:
"We, the people, had better keep an eye on we, the people; that is, our government. Not out of contempt or lack of appreciation or disrespect, but out of a sense of guardianship. How do you use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such a manner that'll preserve our freedom?

"That is a duty to our very essence as a nation. Who we are, what is it about us that has set us apart in the history of the world is our love for freedom.

"As I said earlier, freedom is no policy for the timid. And my plaintive plea to all my colleagues that remain in this government as I leave it is, for your sake, for my sake, for heaven's sake, don't give up on freedom.
. Dick Armey's a great man. I'm particularly proud to note that he, also, is an expat North Dakotan - from Cando, just up the road from my own birthplace. He graduated from Jamestown College, my own alma mater, two years ahead of my father.

He's leaving to join the ACLU - perhaps one of the best moves the civil liberties organization could make to bolster its own credibility.

And for all that, the thing I'll always most associate with Armey is a line from a Dennis Miller rant several years back: "Dick Armey - that's like the most macho name ever!"
posted by Mitch Berg 12/7/2002 06:12:26 PM

Human Shields - So this Canadian news story starts with this lede:
Opposition to a war on Iraq has a long way to go before it rivals the draft-card burnings and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, but a new anti-war movement is growing muscle. Some Canadians already have left for Iraq to serve as human shields against bomb attacks on Baghdad. More will follow before Christmas.
Wow. The anti-war movement is growing!

By how much?

You have to look down to the middle of the story to note that:
Irene Vandas and Jennifer Ziemann of Vancouver are heading to Iraq on Friday. Vandas, a 32-year-old registered nurse, and Ziemann, a 30-year-old home-care worker, will fly to Amsterdam, board a plane to Amman, Jordan, then drive into Iraq all the way to Baghdad where they will live with Iraqi civilians. There, they will join friends Linda Morgan and Irene MacInnes, two Canadians who travelled to Iraq in mid-November.

The four Canadians,
Whoah! Four people!

Yes, I guess you could say they have a way to go before it's on par with the anti-Vietnam movement!

One of the Canadians said:
“I’m not too scared,” Vandas told CBC News Online the day before she left. “I think it will be a powerful experience.”
Four people! Or, given current exchange rates, 2.5 people...

Worse, the CBS injects what is either moral incompetence or bias into the discussion with this bit here:
The last time human shields were in the news was during the 1999 war in Kosovo, when NATO accused Yugoslavia President President Slobodan Milosevic of using civilians as human shields at strategic targets, such as bridges and power plants.
Did you catch that? The CBC is drawing a parallel between hostages, people herded at gunpoint to the neighborhood of important targets, and a bunch (four!) dottsy Canadians who, blinded by moral equivalence, are putting themselves in some semblance of harm's way.

The article goes on to make some other breathtakingly editorial comments. Check it out.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/7/2002 05:56:34 PM

Wow - So cool it's scary!
posted by Mitch Berg 12/7/2002 12:42:33 AM

Friday, December 06, 2002

What's In A Name- Firearms-Rights supporters should get a great laugh out of this one.

Citizens for a Safer Minnesota has been, for about a decade, the Twin Cities' main anti-gun organization. They've been behind the disinformation that has spearheaded most of the gun-control, and anti-gun-owners' rights, legislation in recent memory.

But they are apparently not so not with the paperwork.

Last spring, a couple of Twin Cities firearms-rights activists and lawyers - Joe Olson of Minneapolis and David Gross of St. Louis Park, both longtime Second Amendment activists and prime movers in Concealed Carry Reform Now - discovered that CFASM hadn't kept it's bases covered, according to this article from Gun Week:
Olson told Gun Week that he discovered that CSM had not filed its required annual registration for non-profit corporations, and as a result, the corporate names were, quite literally, up for grabs.

“There’s a box to check for inactive corporations, and they both came up as inactive. I pulled up the pages that describe their status and noticed that the tax-exempt organization had stopped making its annual filings in 1995,” Olson related. “I pulled up the lobby and they stopped making filings in 2000. I stared at that for about three seconds and remembered that, after 2000, if you failed to file for one year, you are (considered) dissolved.”
So - the name and trademark for Citizens for a Safer Minnesota now belongs - to citizens who actually want to make Minnesota safer for its citizens!

CFASM's woes won't end there. According to Olson in Gun Week:
The former CSM group could be in serious trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. Because the tax-exempt arm of the group has been dissolved for three years, since December 1999, they may have to pay taxes as an unincorporated association on all of their grant money and contributions for the three tax years that have passed.

Perhaps worse, Olson suggested that every one of their donors “have made contributions to a non-existent organization” and, as a result, may have to consider filing amended tax returns eliminating the charitable deductions they took, and pay the additional taxes and interest.

“The donors probably won’t get a negligence penalty,” he said, “but the entity should.”
. How much money does this involve? Good question.

More to come on this. I'll keep you posted.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/6/2002 11:44:59 AM

Medical Prying - Minnesota is doing its darnedest to beat the rest of the country to the goal of socialized medicine. Over the past decade, state mandates have driven the cost of health insurance into the "utterly unaffordable" range, ridden most of the traditional fee-for-service insurance providers out of the state, and via the fees brought more and more people to "MN-Care", our embryonic single-payer system.

Last week, an Administrative Law judge paved the way for the state to start collecting virtually all the medical data it wants to.

Blessedly, Governor-Elect Pawlenty opposes this:
``I understand the need for research,'' Pawlenty told KSTP-TV for its Sunday ``At Issue'' program. ``But I think this law goes too far in terms of collecting personally identifiable information relating to people's health conditions.''

The medical database would include everything from who has a stroke, an abortion or surgery to who takes Prozac. Health officials say information that identifies people would be either deleted or encrypted before it leaves the department in the form of a study or other release.

``I think they should be able to get the research done through generic fashion without identifying the individuals involved and I'm going to be looking potentially at calling to change that law,'' Pawlenty told the station.
The Governor could veto the legislation that would provide for this (whomever the governor is by that point). Get on the horn.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/6/2002 11:21:26 AM

Thursday, December 05, 2002

Concealed Carry Reform - As we slouch toward our next legislative session, many questions remain to be answered. One question that seems less and less in doubt is this: By the end of this session, Minnesota will join 34 other American states in adopting *some* sort of "Shall Issue" concealed carry law.

Minnesota Concealed Carry Reform Now has, over the last eight years, carried out perhaps the most amazing piece of grass-roots political organization in recent memory: in eight years, MN-CCRN has gone from being unable to get an audience with most legislators, to being an "A" list force to be reckoned with.

How much so? Two straight DFL gubernatorial candidates (Humphrey and Moe) had bucked the national trend by making opposition to concealed carry reform a key element in their campaigns. And both have been shredded. Now, that wasn't the only reason, of course - but if Minnesotans truly opposed "shall issue" reforms, you'd think they'd have expressed it at the polls, no? Pro-reform candidates have won the last two gubernatorial races.

In the meantime, the various iterations of the Personal Protection Act keep getting closer and closer. In the 2001 session, the MPPA passed the House, and came within two votes of passing in a hostile Senate.

Two votes. In a Senate that was vastly more hostile, at least in terms of rank and file membership, than today. More on that later.

In the meantime, while the political value of opposing "shall issue" has proven to be virtually nil, some former opponents are coming on board. The rank and file of the National Association of Chiefs of Police Minnesota Sheriffs' Association have both come out in upport of the MPPA.

So the traditional trope "Law enforcement opposes this" is false.

For all that, it's not all roses for supporters of freedom and opponents of Victim Disarmament. But more on that later.

THE PROPOSAL
The nuts and bolts of the proposed law have changed a bit. The changes could be "good" or "bad" depending on your point of view, but we'll come back to that.

While this year's bill is still being drafted, here are the salient points to look out for. Applicants must apply to a County Sheriff, and:

Be 19 years of age or older (down from 21 last session)
Pass a rigid background check, and show no record of
felonies

violent misdemeanors

alcohol or drug abuse
violent mental illness (no violence or threats
against self or others)

presence on any law-enforcement watch lists (like the Gang Task Force list of known bangers)

Pass a skills course, teaching the practical AND legal
aspects of armed self-defense, given by a recognized
and licensed handgun self-defense instructor,
Fork over $50, of which the Sheriff gets 80%.
Then - and here's the big change from previous years - the County Sheriff would have the ability to deny the license for cause. The applicant would have the ability to appeal the denial and challenge the given causes to a judge.

BUT WHY?
I've been writing about the MPPA in one form or another for the last seven years on this list. I've spend a fair amount of time and effort explaining the benefits of "shall-issue" laws (or, in the case of the new MPPA proposal, "just-about-always-issue" laws). And I'm sure I will again.

But suffice to say they boil down to three main points:
At best, violent crime drops.
At worst, violent crime does not rise
Since 1983, 25 states have adopted one form' of shall-issue law or another. NONE have repealed it. In fact, in no state has any repeal effort gotten any steam, and in many states, some of shall-issue's former opponents are now on board, or have at least retracted their earlier opposition.

So it's off to the Capitol we go!

HANDICAPPING
And when we get there, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Good: The House and the Governor are both solidly pro-MPPA. The winning margin of two years ago is solidified, and Tim Pawlenty will pitch in when the chips are down. And the Senate is much more closely-matched than it was two years ago, when only two votes separated us from that year's MPPA passing into law.

Bad: While the Senate is a closer race, the DFL still controls it - and by all indications, committee chairs are going to be even more dogmatically Metrocrat than ever before. And that is the victim-disarmament lobby's only real hope this session - keep the MPPA, whether a standalone bill or amended to another bill, bottled up in committee. So while Democrats (other than Roger Moe) backed away from Gun Control like a toddler from an oopsie this past election, you can expect the back-room finagling to be absolutely epic. Keeping potential victims disarmed is core DFL orthodoxy - one must not expect them to go gently.

MN-CCRN has won some incredible victories - basically, they've found almost every vote that CAN be considered "swing" on this issue, and turned most of them. To have come within two votes in

a Senate that was DFL-controlled, and whose GOP caucus wasn't much farther to the right, was an amazing feat. And there may be a few more swing votes out there - and a few state legislators who

know full well that the state's firearms owners are among the most enthusiastic and diligent voters of all.

Highly-placed sources at MN-CCRN say that when they first went out to campaign for concealed carry reform, they gave themselves "a 30% chance of passing, and a 70% chance of NOT passing a law. Today, we have an 80% chance of passing, and a 20% chance of not passing" some sort of concealed carry reform law.

This is the year. I've been saying it for two years, and I believe it in my bones. This is the year our racist, sexist, paternalistic carry law gets scrapped once and for all.

See you at the Capitol!
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 05:05:30 PM

I Have a Theory - So in the past few weeks, liberals have been yakking about the influence of the conservative media (Fox, talkradio and the mostly-conservative blogosphere), and a few have been asking "where and how can we get something like that - a media outlet that'll be biased for us?

After I stopped laughing, I thought about it for a moment. Yeah, the major media are left-of-center on most issues, but for the most part it's subtle, rather than the explicitness of a Rush Limbaugh or a Bill O'Reilly. While most "hard news" coverage slants left, most mass-market punditry slants right. Not for lack of trying - the media keeps tossing liberal pundit-wannabees against the wall nationally (Jim Hightower, anyone? Phil Donahue?) and locally (the "Morning Spin", Ron Rosenbaum, and most columnists). None of them really succeeds commercially - because nobody really watches/listens to them.

15 years ago, stations AM broadcast band started carrying Talk Radio - at a time when many industry types figured the AM band wasn't long for this world as a medium for commercial radio. Today, it's at least as profitable if not moreso than the FM entertainment band.

And I thought - what if the left were to find some moribund media outlet that had nothing to lose, moved in, and stacked the lineup with the likes of Begala, Carville, Donahue...

Well, I can't make it up fast enough anymore.

Here's the big chance!

UPDATE: An email correspondent writes:
I don't really think RR is a liberal. While neither he nor MO are right-wingers, they are well to the right of Barbara Carlson. Admittedly, that's not too hard.

I like Rosenbaum, even if he is repetitve. He's pretty much a genuine lawyer and I think his perspective is a good counter-weight to Jason's idle con-law musings (even tho I agree with most of it).
Perhaps that's true. Both Rosenbaum and his foil O'Connor are to the left of Lewis (not hard to do, either). I haven't listened much to him - and the shows I heard may well have been skewed farther left than the norm.

So it's a fair point - Ron Rosenbaum is hardly a "left-wing" talk show host.

Still, I'll stand by the point - genuine liberals are a total stiff on the radio. Think of the liberals they've tried to float at KSTP over the years - Nick Coleman, Jim Klobuchar, Katherine Lanpher's pre-MPR incarnation - all of them stiffed (although it didn't help that they were all virtually unlistenable).
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 04:41:56 PM

Kopfschmerze - The German government, under Social Democrat Helmut Schöder, just can't win. It barely squeaked back into power in last fall's elections, it ticked off the Social Democrat base by sending troops (their elite HSK commandos) to Afghanistan, and now they're trying to split the difference between involvement (allowing US overflights and use of bases in Germany) and detachment (providing no material support for any invasion) - and getting hammered from both sides in the process.
Recent days have seen the Schröder government playing a delicate balancing act, attempting to improve damaged relations with the United States by pledging logistical cooperation in any campaign against Iraq, but continuing to insist Germany will not offer active military support.
One measure of the strains the issue is putting on the cabinet came on Thursday when Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul accused the United States of “pure cynicism“ in its Iraq policy.
Watch the German Green party implode the same way the DFL just did, once war actually begins.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 03:41:42 PM

Light Day - I had the same headachey crud yesterday and this morning that's laid half the office low this week. And it's been a crunch week at work, with a zillion deadlines.

So I'll be catching up this evening, and probably blogging up a storm over the weekend.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 12:34:34 PM

Glorious Lucre - Hey, thanks to those of you who contributed the first dollars to my tip jar! I truly appreciate it!

Hopefully the DFL won't come after it too soon...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 12:33:30 PM

Deficit - The Strib notes something the DFL can't seem to - this is as big an opportunity for the GOP as it is a risk.
"If a $3 billion deficit was an opportunity to reform, a $4.5 billion deficit creates a real urgency for change," said David Strom, the league's legislative director. The league, financed largely by Republican business leaders, promoted the no-tax pledge in the recent election campaign that Pawlenty adopted.
Last night, Jason Lewis pointed out that
the 4.5 billion dollar estimate is most likely pessimistic (while granting that the deficit is serious)
The deficit is about the same amount as that by which the budget is supposed to rise in the next biennium - and freezing the budget would go a long way toward solving the problem, and
an improving economy will most likely take care of the rest
I'm not sure that freezing the budget will solve the entire problem, any more than keeping alcohol out of reach of an alcoholic will cure alcoholism. It's for sure that raising taxes will only make the long-term problem worse.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/5/2002 08:26:57 AM

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

If We Make Politics Criminal, Only Criminals... - DJ Tice writes about the growing "criminalization" of many simple poliical activities.
Consider the case of St. Paul's Greg Copeland ...Copeland stands indicted by a Ramsey County Grand Jury for a gross misdemeanor. His alleged "crime" is that he made an innaccurate political claim when he called himself "the only pro-life candidate" in an election field. Copeland's plight has received almost no public attention. He is due to appear in court next week.

Unusual as it is, Copeland's prosecution seems of a piece with a strange and increasing modern intolerance of politics and a widespread eagerness to run to court with election disputes. To wit:

• Gov.-elect Tim Pawlenty was fined the past campaign for (horrors!) cooperating with the political party that nominated him.

• Taking their cuefrom the 2000 presidential election, which triggered an historic courtroom war, national Democratic Party leaders boasted repeatedly this year that they had 10,000 lawyers at the ready to file election challenges across the country. (Blessedly, little came of this.)

• Sweeping restrictions on political expression — called "campaign finance reform" — took effect last month. Their doubtful constitutionality will immediately be tested at the Supreme Court.

Copeland has been indicted under old and frankly weird Minnesota election statutes. State law, believe it or not, makes it a serious crime to distribute political appeals containing statements one knows to be false or where one simply shows "reckless disregard" about their accuracy.
Now, in a way, these bizarre prosecutions based on byzantine laws may, in the long run, be a good thing. If we subject politicians to the consequences of too many laws, maybe they'll develop some empathy for the rest of us.

posted by Mitch Berg 12/4/2002 08:37:34 AM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

European Naivete - Peter Ross Range, editor of the Democratic Leadership Council's "Blueprint", has this very interesting take on the perception gap in foreign policy between us and the Germans.
The lack of nuance in the German perception of U.S. policies is sometimes breathtaking. One of the more preposterous arguments I heard came from a top Schröder advisor during the chancellor's election night party on Sept. 22. "You don't just go roaring into a war you haven't thought about," he said, clearly unacquainted with the debate raging for months in the United States. "And besides, Baghdad is not so far away from us." Right: only about 2,000 miles and light years of involvement.

Such misperceptions are driving a wedge between the United States and its friends in Europe. Our relationships with them are fundamentally shifting, and will probably never be quite the same again. We must hope that the Germans someday grasp the fact that just as Dresden was a defining moment for them—130,000 people killed in a single night's bombing—the 9/11 attacks have become one for us. One can only hope it won't take another Dresden—or a Paris or Berlin terrorist catastrophe—to achieve that understanding.
Now, I get very upset when I hear the likes of Ann Coulter poo-poohing the notion, to say nothing of the substance, of our allies' involvement in the war so far. For better or worse, few of their militaries are designed to be able to pick up and move anywhere - they were built to fight a war, at home, against the USSR during the Cold War. It'll take a massive realignment of priorities to change that. And for all that, our allies were there in Afghanistan; the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Germans, Norwegians and Danes all contributed their special forces to the hunt through the Hindu Kush for Al Quaeda - all of them excellent troops, on a par with anyone we have.

Geitner Simmons, where I first found this piece, had this to say:
the United States is going to need allies. The current America-as-hegemon environment isn’t likely to last; even the seemingly intractable Cold War conflict eventually evaporated. In coming decades, other centers of power will arise in the world. Sure, the United States is likely to remain the dominant power, and thankfully so. But over time it would hardly be a surprise if we saw slippage in our ability to convince or coerce other governments. And we could well face problems in exercising our sovereignty to use military force, given the way some NGOs and diplomats are working to reshape international law.
The unanswered question being "what is international law, and how much attention do we, its chief enforcers, need to pay to it?
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2002 04:45:11 PM

Another Late One - Work is eating my brain today - but I'll put some stuff up this evening.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2002 02:29:38 PM

Spin Alert A group of Houston citizens, sick of their neighborhood being ignored by the police, have armed themselves and taken to the streets - or, as the Houston Chronicle says, "HoustonChronicle.com - Weapon-toting neighbors declare war on local thugs".

The article does its best to subtly discredit the citizens involved:
Assistant Chief Charles McClelland said the group's efforts could backfire and touch off a new gang skirmish -- one between the residents and street thugs.
I think they might know that, Mr. Assistant Chief. I believe that's why they're patrolling the streets:
Black takes issue with what he sees as neglect from the Houston Police Department and the Anti-Gang Office. Gangs have their way on East End streets, he said, urinating in yards, selling drugs in plain view and robbing homes.

From his porch, Black said, he has not seen enough police to deter the criminals.

In addition to Black, the 13-member group includes a pipefitter, a man who resisted a gang invitation, a man whose wife was beaten by gang members, a young woman and eight other men.
No mention of the members' race, meaning they must be mixed; otherwise, there'd have been an "all-white" in there somwhere.

How about the other officials involved?:
Adrian Garcia, director the Anti-Gang Office, said forming an armed posse is "a crazy remedy. We would never encourage residents to do that."
I wonder if their "anti gang task forces" work as well as the one in Minneapolis? Y'know, the one that has been utterly unable to make a significant dent in gang activity in South Minneapolis in the past 17 years?
A violent response to street thugs might only foment more violence, Garcia said. The gang task force, he said, instead tries to find creative, peaceful resolutions to street conflicts.
"Might only foment more violence"? "Please, Mr. Banger, I'm not trying to foment anything..."
In a 1998 case in southeast Houston, Garcia's office found that a family feud centering on two young lovers had sparked what seemed to be a gang war.
And, Mr. Garcia, might any of the "family feuders" have also been gang members? Might that possibly have been wny the "family feud" got violent in the first place?
If a real resurgence in East End gang activity is occurring, Garcia said, it may be because some leaders convicted of crimes in the 1990s are making parole.
Here in Minnesota, we know all about violent criminals getting out out parole.
Garcia also noted that Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their neighborhoods to the degree that Black describes.
Rarely!

When the Personal Protection Act passes, I'm going to apply for a permit so fast, the scent of burning rubber will still be in the air when I get home.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/3/2002 08:27:14 AM

Monday, December 02, 2002

Datecrime - I'm going to take you to a place that few want to go - a place where a strong stomach is as priceless your Mastercard.

That's right. My personal life. Do what you need to protect the children, then get back here.

I've alluded in a few posts to some experiences I've had while dating. An email corresondent wrote in response to one of them:
I believe you are missing something on this. The date who can't go on dating you because you are
a Republican does this because, to her, you are evil. I mean that. Most people cannot see being romantically
involved with someone who is inherently immoral.

You and I define someone's morality by what they do - how they act - but not everyone does, especially modern
liberals. Their morality is defined by what you believe. It is a fact that Bill Clinton treats 21 year old women like garbage
and is at least probable that he is a rapist. Nevertheless, he is a good person because he is pro-choice and so forth. He
believes the right things. Garrison Keillor is nasty to people in person because treating actual human beings with dignity
simply is not part of his definition of what makes a good person.
All fair points for discussion.

Here's how it's played out in that comedy of errors called "My personal life".

The first was a woman who, near the end of a very nice second date, started talking politics. Bear in mind, we'd had two superb dates, and things were looking just fine. But once I said the "R" word, she looked at me with the look a parent gets when their toddler has plopped next to the toilet. "If you'd told me that before we went out, I'd have never dated you!", she said. She'd had just enough good breeding to almost, but not quite, cover the hissing incivility between the lines. We had one more phone call - the very definition of "perfunctory". And I learned my first lesson.

But not in the sense that it did me any good!

Different woman: while discussing perhaps going out, she did a Google search for my name. Sh found a few references to my conservative ideals. She sent me an email: "You seem like a nice guy, but I'm a peace-loving DFLer who believes in peace and justice and equality". An email protesting that I am equally in favor of peace, justice, equality, love, brotherhood and truth went unanswered.

Yet another woman, with whom I'd clicked pretty famously in person and by phone. She also Googled me, and sent me yet another "Dear Mitch" email: "I think our differin political perspectives would cause us a lot of problems. I will not be writing you again".

Now, I know that the situation is reversed at times - but in every case I've personally heard of, it's been on the grounds of some deep emotional issue: Christians angry over abortion; former Marines who'd never date an anti-war protester; stuff that was personal and attributable to something a person had explicitly done, not just beliefs. I have yet to hear of a Republican dump a Democrat purely on the basis of broad beliefs. Has it happened? Sure, but not to anyone I know. In the meantime, I and several conservative, recently-divorced friends have had exactly the same experience.

Could it merely be that we're all ugly and lousy dates? Well, me, sure. But not all of them!

At any rate, the swiftness and vehemence of the disengagement reminded me in every case of, for example, a Jewish person cutting off contact with a goy, or someone who had discovered some drastic difference in lifestyle or worldview - like if they'd discovered their suitor was a felon!

But in no case was there any vast, gaping divide in education, expeirence, life story...no, just political party.

Am I wrong? Has anyone had a vastly different experience? I can't collect much hard evidence on this, but anecdotes are more fun anyway...
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 09:54:19 PM

Due to Gun Control - According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, the UKhas the worst crime rate in the indusrialized world.

But wait - don't the gun control advocates still cite the UK as an example of all the good befall a gun-free society?

Instapundit notes that it's not totally about gun control, but that
Gun control is just the most visible symptom of a systematic surrender to society's worst elements that has been the core element of British crime strategy for over fifty years. Gun control is bad in itself, but it can only exist in a setting in which the right to defend oneself against aggression has already been devalued in a way that makes crime much more rewarding, and hence much more common. That's what has happened in Britain, and it's why the historically low British crime rates have skyrocketed.

The good news is that things have gotten bad enough that there are now voices of sanity being raised. The bad news is that the authorities still haven't caught on, responding to cellphone theft by putting up posters telling people to keep their cellphones out of sight in public.
The steady dripping of fact is slowly getting through.

Very slowly.

(via Instapundit, obviously)

posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 09:01:16 PM

Aaaagh! - Work has reared its head today. I'll blog more tonight/tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 04:31:27 PM

Problem Solved - All the world's problems, solved right here.

You're welcome.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 04:31:08 PM

Homeless - The left usually portrays homelessness as a byproduct of capitalism.

William Tucker shows how it's really a result of shackling the free market with government interference - and its unintended consequences.
In "New Homeless and Old" (1989), Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton demonstrated how Chicago entrepreneurs once bought abandoned factories and partitioned them into hundreds of small bedroom cubicles, renting them for $2 a night. These "partition hotels" accommodated thousands - until they were condemned in the 1970s. Homeless populations emerged shortly thereafter.
...and much more.

(via Powerline)
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 07:31:15 AM

On the One Hand... - People, especially in New York and northern New Jersey, are pretty touchy about terrorism.

On the other hand, some people need to relax just a tad.
posted by Mitch Berg 12/2/2002 06:52:16 AM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive