Google Wimps

This is pathetic. They may be innovators, but they are also cowards.

UPDATE: Tom Smith's take:

I don't understand people. If I had more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes, I would say, you know, I started this f*&%ing company, and we're not going to help some nightmare tyranny postpone its already long overdue demise. I might be somewhat less rich as a result, but I can already afford my own 747, so who cares? I mean, seriously. If the Nazis had won the war, and you owned a search company, would you acceed to their request not to allow google.tr to search "missing jews"?

Stay Married, or Else....

My Georgia legislature, busy, being busy-bodies.... C'mon, it's a contract.

Pouting Thomas

Have I mentioned that I love Justice Thomas lately?? The MSM seems to be reporting that Thomas predictably dissented in yesterday's Gonzalez v. Oregon decision thereby proving his devotion to Scalia'esque nanny-state moral conservatism. Well, perhaps they should try reading his opinion...; but, I suppose that would involve too much work in the form of actual self-guided analysis. See Jacob Sullum's Reason piece for a quick reflection here.

In his opinion, Thomas is obviously sticking his thumb in the eyes of his fellow Justices by abiding by their abysmal majority decision in Raich and simultaneously pointing out their obvious contradictions in the process. Thomas asserts:

The majority's newfound understanding of the CSA as a statute of limited reach is all the more puzzling because it rests upon constitutional principles that the majority of the Court rejected in Raich. Notwithstanding the States' "traditional police powers to define the criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," the Raich majority concluded that the CSA applied to the intrastate possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes authorized by California law because "Congress could have rationally" concluded that such an application was necessary to the regulation of the "larger interstate marijuana market..."

I agree with limiting the applications of the CSA in a manner consistent with the principles of federalism and our constitutional structure....But that is now water over the dam...

In other words, what the hell do you people really believe?? It also seems that the suicide-advocates in the case, perhaps intentionally, missed an opportunity here by failing to address the potential unconstitutionality of the CSA. Both Thomas and Scalia go out of their way to point out that the question of constitutionality was not before the court. Too bad. It would have been interesting to see what the plurality would have looked like in such a scenario. Would Kennedy and the Raich majority sustain the constitutionality of the CSA under the Article I commerce power and still limit its reach? Would Scalia again show himself to be a fair weather federalist on issues that test his religious views? Although O'Connor appears to be only consistent voice looking solely at the vote tally, I think that once Thomas saw the inevitability of the pro-federalist outcome, he jumped on the opportunity to show the hypocrisy of his colleagues. Very nice.

When Cameras Ain't Rolling...

...the Dem[agogues]ocrats tend to dissapear. From the NRO, via Prof. Smith:

I'm sitting in the hearing room, in back of an impressive and historic panel of federal Circuit Court of Appeals judges who have served with Judge Alito.

Judge Becker is testifying that Sam Alito is not an ideologue ....
Have never seen him exhibit a bias ....
In civil rights and employment discrimination cases....
I think the public does not understand what happens when you become a judge .....
Sam has great respect for precedent ....

The only Democrat Senators who bothered to stay on the dais are Leahy and Feinstein. Almost all the Republicans are there. Most notably, Senator Chuck Schumer got up and left right before the judges began to speak. Not only do they not care about the Judges' testimony, apparently, they don't even care about the disrespect for these judges that the bench of empty seats on the Democrat side bespeaks.

Heh.

Alito Shoe'ing It

Intrade has Alito at 92. Looks like a breeze. Regardless of your views on his appointment and confirmation, watching a certifiable law-geek like Alito run mental-circles around his lightweight, yet monster-ego'd, inquisitors (such as Chucky Schumer) has to make you laugh.

Cheers to Prof. Smith for the link.

Congressional Term Limits

George Will is on a role. In what seems to be a trend of late, I whole-heartedly agree with him here. And, at the risk of sounding smug, I have been saying this for a long time:

The way to reduce rent-seeking is to reduce the government's role in the allocation of wealth and opportunity. People serious about reducing the role of money in politics should be serious about reducing the role of politics in distributing money. But those most eager to do the former -- liberals, generally -- are the least eager to do the latter.

Based on the abismal example provided in the last 5 years, I do not think that the Repubs are all that eager to clamp down on their new-found source of power either. Such a shame. Realizing that we will never see a day when members of Congress limit their own ability to spread the wealth among their respective "contributors" and buddies, I believe that the term limits-avenue is our best possible option. Who knows, a Roberts-Alito court may throw Thornton out the window. Give it a go.

Steyn on Islamists

Here is a real kick-in-face article by Mark Steyn. Although it has a slight scent of xenophobia on the surface, I think that there is alot of truth in the piece. And whether you buy into the premise or not - it is a heavy-hitter in the provocative sense. Here is a teaser:

The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.

Whoa... It's long - but I highly recommend reading the whole thing.