"6 Months to Nukes"

When I read this article today, I couldn't help thinking to myself that this tune sounds a little bit familiar. Then I remembered President Bush saying this just slightly more than 3 years ago:

Today Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should his regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.

"Dee doo doo doo, dee da da da" is all I want to say to you.

Home values and CPI

Don Boudreaux, chairman of the George Mason University Department of Economics, weighs in - tangentially - on the housing bubble with this entry in his blog at www.cafehayek.com.

Willamette Week goes through government leaders' garbage

After the district attorney, police chief, and mayor vocally defended the Portland Police Department's practice of going through people's garbage (arguing that it becomes public property when placed out on the street for pickup), reporters for Willamette Week went through their garbage. Suddenly, the police chief and mayor changed their positions (though I suspect they were legally right in the first place, and fools for not using shredders). The mayor went so far as to threaten legal action, even though all they got was her recycling (her trash was up against her house on her property, and they chose not to risk trespass). Only the DA responded without being upset.

They got the police chief's credit card number, found that his wife is a member of Focus on the Family, a summary of his wife's investments, an email to the mayor about his application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a cigar stub, and "a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe."

March of the Penguins: Argument for Monogamy and Intelligent Design?

Michael Medved recently wrote that the documentary film "March of the Penguins" "passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." Andrew Coffin writes that the movie makes "a strong case for intelligent design." These claims have been rightly ridiculed all over the blogosphere.

Ed Brayton notes that there are gay penguins, as does the Reason magazine blog.

Pharyngula notes that the penguins stand by while their eggs or children are eaten, that they get new breeding partners each season (so it's serial monogamy without long-term commitment), and their practices could only have been designed by a cruel and heartless designer.

Carl Zimmer points out that if we are going to take lessons in morality from the animal kingdom, there are even more horrific examples available, which is also pointed out in the book and British TV series Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation.

The Panda's Thumb provides a similar list of links to the above, and there are enjoyable and informative comments at each of these sites, such as one commenter on Zimmer's site who pointed to this article about Boston's lesbian swans.

The variation of deviant activity in nature is greater than it is within the human species alone. I look forward to seeing an Intelligent Design theory that attempts to explain it.

Do-it-yourself satellites

This CNet article talks about the CubeSat program, which allows students to design, build, and launch their own satellites into low earth orbit (240-360 miles). The cost is about $40,000 to build and $40,000 to launch; the article quotes a Stanford professor calling these the Apple IIs of satellites.

Phoenix City Council election

City Councilman Mike Johnson was re-elected in my district (District 8) with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Al Sharpton protege, teenage Reverend Jarrett Maupin. Maupin, who was featured in a recent New Times article which leveled charges of institutional racism against my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, was apparently a Republican when he was at Brophy. Today he heads Sharpton's National Action Network in Arizona and has a show on Air America in Phoenix.

UPDATE (December 22, 2006): A lot of the links above have gone bad. Confirmation that Maupin was in the Young Republicans at Brophy can be found on this Brophy graduate's blog.

"Under God" is unconstitutional in Sacramento, again

The Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit's previous ruling in his case, and entered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the "under God" language. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there's no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time.

This will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making "under God" unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of Day 2 of his confirmation hearings) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said in his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief):

DURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking -- I think you've alluded to this -- is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers?

ROBERTS: Yes.

The court's decisions in that area are quite clear.

And I think the framers' intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart -- a conscience from which the government would not intrude.

Pentagon drafts new policy on first-strike use of nuclear weapons

Today's Washington Post reports that

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The new doctrine has not yet been approved by Rumsfeld.

Designed for Iran and North Korea?

Rehnquist remembered, Rashomon-style

Clint Bolick and Alan Dershowitz have written two very different--yet only occasionally directly contradictory--rememberances of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Bolick, in a piece distributed by the Goldwater Institute and published in the Arizona Republic, describes Rehnquist as a conservative, moderating influence on a liberal court, advocating state's rights, school choice, and presiding over a court that has been "usually (though less frequently lately) siding with individual liberty over state power." Dershowitz, on the other hand, in a piece published on the Huffington Post, describes Rehnquist as a bigot who enjoyed racist and anti-Semitic jokes, who defended the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson as a law clerk for Justice Jackson, and who began his legal career as a Republican thug who obstructed African-American and Hispanic voters at Phoenix polling places.

Bolick gives a more nuanced view that actually addresses more of Rehnquist's work on the court (though less than I would have expected), while Dershowitz emphasizes evidence of Rehnquist's personal character which mostly derives from before he was on the Supreme Court. I was surprised that Bolick didn't mention some of the recent cases (such as Raich v. Ashcroft and Kelo v. New London) where Rehnquist voted for liberty (and was unfortunately in the minority).

Yet I have no doubt that there is accuracy in both descriptions. Bolick has in the past seen people as defenders of liberty who have done much to destroy it, such as former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Dershowitz alternatively takes courageous stands in defense of liberty and crazy stands which oppose it.

One area where I was less than impressed with Rehnquist was on religious liberty, specifically for nonbelievers. He (like the majority) went the wrong way on Elk Grove v. Newdow (the Pledge of Allegiance "under God" case) and (unlike the majority) the wrong way on the McCreary County v. ACLU case (Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky courtroom which included a written statement that the display was "in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics").

Space Opera in Scientology

Tomorrow's featured article on Wikipedia is "Space Opera in Scientology Doctrine," a very well-written entry that tells you pretty much all you need to know about Scientology's cosmology. Oh, the entry on Xenu is also a good one.