Tag: Leviathan

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Criminals are often poor people who are led away in chains and go to state prison, for decades or lifetimes, for using guns as weapons against taxpayers. Politicians wear nice suits, drive luxury cars, and when they go to prison—federal prison, and only for a few months—they go away for using government as a weapon against taxpayers.

—

It is all about power in the end. – John Kass, Chicago Tribune, Of course it’s fair that they have guns and you don’t

RTWT – it’s worth your time.

Of course, politicians only go to jail if they use that weapon too obviously. Generally they get off scot-free.

More Unintended Consequences

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More Unintended Consequences

Or were they really unintended?

Do you own a turbo-diesel pickup truck? Buy it on the understanding that you could get good performance and fairly decent mileage, and your fuel would cost less than gasoline? Do you own a diesel car for the same reasons?

Are you now pissed off that diesel costs more, significantly more, than gasoline? Have you been blaming it on Congress for passing “low sulfur” restrictions? Do you believe that it costs more at the pump because it costs more to refine?

You’d be wrong.

One reason why diesel fuel today is higher priced than gasoline is because of the unintended consequences of the 2007 EPA mandated ULSD (Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel) fuel – and not necessarily because it costs more to produce…

Everything changed in October of 2006, when the new U.S. ULSD regulations were implemented. Current U.S. ULSD is regulated to contain no more than 15-parts per million sulfur. In actual practice, U.S. ULSD contains just 7 or 8-ppm, which perhaps not coincidentally allows our ULSD to meet the somewhat stricter 10-ppm sulfur regulations in Europe. So, ULSD produced here in the United States has, for the first time, become acceptable for use in Europe. According to a 2/08 article in Reuters entitled “ANALYSIS-Exports keep U.S. diesel prices above gasoline“, they reported that U.S. diesel fuel is currently being exported in quantity. The economics of “Supply & Demand” no longer apply to the U.S. diesel fuel market. American truckers could boycott diesel fuel, and it wouldn’t necessarily produce lower diesel fuel prices.

According to a June 2008 article at MSN, entitled: Why is the U.S. exporting gasoline and diesel?, they report that U.S. oil companies were exporting more than 1.8 million barrels of crude oil, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products per day. The top five buyers of U.S. petroleum products were Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands, Chile and Singapore. This article also indicated that Venezuela owns three CITGO refineries in the United States, and that about 30,000 barrels of refined products per day are being shipped back to Venezuela, where government-subsidized gas/diesel is currently being sold for a whopping $0.19 per gallon. If we weren’t exporting diesel fuel, there would be more of a surplus, which could result in parity between gas and diesel fuel prices. What can we do? What should we do?

Hey, Maxine Waters and Maurice Hinchey, how about we “socialize” CITGO’s refineries? I’m sure your good buddy Hugo Chavez wouldn’t mind a bit!

In associated news, the same article reports:

Surprisingly, most of the world’s “unconventional” sources of oil exist right here in the United States. These unconventional sources include the vast oil shale deposits called the Green River Formation, which are found spanning an ancient 17,000 square mile lake bed beneath Colorado, Utah and Wyoming (80% on federal lands). Oil shale can produce anywhere from 22-40 gallons of oil per ton of oil shale. A barrel of crude oil contains 42 gallons. Based on current extraction technology, at least 100 billion barrels of “commercially viable” crude oil is thought to exist in Green River Formation. (Note: the total amount of all oil shale within the U.S. is thought to contain a staggering 1.4 trillion barrels of crude oil, which is more than four times the estimated historic levels of oil found beneath Saudi Arabia.) With a current U.S. consumption rate of 20 million barrels per day, 100 billion barrels of crude oil derived from oil shale could meet all of the U.S. oil consumption needs for another 14 years – all by itself. See: www.fossil.energy.gov to learn more.

Shell scientists have created the technology required to economically extract large amounts of crude oil from oil shale without wrecking the environment. In fact, Shell’s method is capable of extracting high quality light crude oil from oil shale deposits utilizing heated wells – not a rock mill operation, which does little damage to the environment. According to a November 2007 article in CNN Fortune – online magazine, a Department of Energy study was referenced that indicates the Green River deposits are predicted to produce 2 million barrels of oil per day by 2020 and as many as 5 million barrels per day by 2040 – assuming of course, that the environmental lobby and Washington could be convinced that the future of the U.S. depends on us becoming energy independent. Indeed, this level of production would rival that of the largest conventional oilfields in the world. 2007 estimates for cost per barrel came in at a low of $30/barrel, while cost estimates for a broader range of oil shale deposits range from a low $30 to as high as $90 per barrel. Shell’s production methods are expected to yield more than one million barrels of oil per acre. Keep in mind that the Green River Formation encompasses 17,000 square miles.

I was certain I’d referenced Shell’s extraction technology, called the “in situ conversion process” here before, but damn if I can find the piece now.

This One’s for Most of the Marbles

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This One’s for All Most of the Marbles

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet…and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths….When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms. – Alex Kozinski, dissenting (PDF file) the denial of an en banc rehearing of Silveira v. Lockyer in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, May 6, 2003

On March 9, 2007 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit found in favor of the plaintiffs in Parker vs. District of Columbia, for the first time overturning an existing gun law on the grounds that it violated the individual right to arms that is protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The D.C. Circuit is only the second to have found that the Second Amendment does, indeed protect an individual, and not a collective right. The first was the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S. v. Emerson decision of October, 2001 wherein the Court decided that the right protected was an individual right, but the law in question met that court’s understanding of “limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country” – “albeit likely minimally so”.

Emerson and Silveira (along with the 9th Circuit’s Nordyke v. King and Hickman v. Block before it) represented a “circuit split,” wherein different circuits of the Courts of Appeal held different understandings of a fundamental Constitutional question. Emerson was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the appeal was denied. Silveira was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the appeal was denied.

Parker was appealed to the Supreme Court as D.C. v. Heller, and appeal was granted.

Oral arguments were heard on March 18, 2008.

It is most probable that the Supreme Court will hand down its decision tomorrow, the last Monday of this term.

The fundamental question at hand, and the only one I expect the Court to actually rule on, is whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, and that handguns are such arms as are protected by that Amendment.

I do not expect SCOTUS to rule on any other topic. Not on the level of scrutiny, not on the standing to sue of the other plaintiffs in the Parker suit (Dick Heller was the only person found to have standing to sue.) Not on the question of what other weapons are protected. And, most definitely, not on whether the Second Amendment is “incorporated” under the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause against infringement by state governments.

This one’s for most of the marbles. IF our side wins (and after the Boumediene decision, I’m no longer quite as sanguine), there’s still a long way to go.

And a Democrat Congress to approve new judges for at least the next two, probably four, and possibly sixteen or more years.

But as early as tomorrow we will get to see, again, just which Justices on the Supreme Court are willing to “constitutionalize their personal preferences.”

UPDATE: As usual, the GeekWithA45 says it better than I can.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

The bobsled is already over the edge of the slope, all we can do is try and ride out the bumps.

At least future generations won’t damn us, since they’ll be unable to read. – Tamara K.

Bringing you the finest in black, black snark since August, 2005

Watermelons

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You know, “Green on the outside, Red on the inside.”

This is pretty interesting. Via American Digest comes two links to two connected pieces; one by author Orson Scott Card, the other, a bit lower, by Rev. Donald Sensing.

From Card’s piece, Obama’s Real Religion:

Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism.

Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us with a vital service; and it doesn’t take any faith to believe in the findings of genuine scientists doing science properly.

No, I’m speaking of the religion. It’s not an organized religion (though the U.N. did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of human-caused global warming), but neither was the English Puritanism that it so strongly resembles.

But don’t take it from me. Take it from Freeman Dyson.

—

…in a recent review in the New York Review of Books, he wrote the following paragraphs that refer specifically to the Religion of Environmentalism:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming … miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific.

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.

The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good.

The worldwide community of environmentalists — most of whom are not scientists — holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate.

Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true.

Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice.

Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

Barack Obama’s comments, however, reveal him to be in the religious-faith category. The Environmental Puritans believe that any opposition to their dogmas is heresy, and that anything that doesn’t match their vision of how humans should live is a sin.

Since their vision of how humans should live is “without making any difference in how the world would be without humans,” we are all, alas, sinners. However, some are more sinful than others, and the United States is the most sinful of all.

No, not China, because the Environmental Puritans, like the rest of the world, expect America to live by a higher standard than other nations. Fair enough — we claim to be a special nation, and so we should meet a higher standard.

Still, the Environmental Puritans agree with the ayatollahs on this one point: America is the Great Satan. And Obama echoes that view when he refers to our gasoline consumption, our eating, and our air-conditioning and heating as if they were sins for which we are accountable to the rest of the world.

RTWFT! I mean it.

I have a Freeman Dyson quote on the wall of my office. I brought it from my previous job where it hung for about ten years. It says this:

Engineering is very different from physics.

A good physicist is a man with new ideas.

A good engineer is a man who makes something that works with as few new ideas as possible.

Sexist.

But you get the point. Dyson is a physicist, and a damned bright one. He’s also quite the engineer.

Rev. Sensing takes off from Dyson’s book review in his piece Environmentalist religion explained. Here’s a couple of excerpts:

There are other religions than Judaism and Christianity, of course, but modern environmentalism was born in the West, whose cultural heritage and common languages are steeped through and through in Christian tradition, which was itself a daughter of Judaism.

The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: “fall from grace,”), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.

Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism.

—

Dyson wrote that, “Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.” I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people’s lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism’s successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That’s our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

Again, RTWT. Including the links.

All of this has me deeply concerned.

Why?

Back when I wrote True Believers I was not aware of Eric Hoffer and his book True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, but I was pointed to it by a comment, I got a copy and read it.

And was disturbed. Two months later I wrote Reasonable People, drawing on a lot of what I was reading in Hoffer’s book. For example:

The True Believer, being written in the immediate post-WWII years, was primarily about the mass movements of Italian and German Fascism and the rise of Communism, but Hoffer did not limit his observations. He reflected on mass movements throughout history, including the Zionist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia, the French Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and others. He makes a point, in fact, that,

When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with any particular doctrine or program.

Which explains in a sentence the current enthusiastic crossover between the eco-movement, the gay-rights movement, the anti-war movement, the socialist movement, et al.

And:

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves — and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.

It is obvious, therefore, that, in order to succeed, a mass movement must develop at the earliest moment a compact corporate organization and a capacity to absorb and integrate all comers. It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated. Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins.

—

The milieu most favorable for the rise and propagation of mass movements is one in which a once compact corporate structure is, for one reason or another, in a state of disintegration.

—

The general rule seems to be that as one pattern of corporate cohesion weakens, conditions become ripe for the rise of a mass movement and the eventual establishment of a new and more vigorous form of compact unity.

Reasonable People was largely about “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” but it had broader application. I wrote:

What we have in America today is the result of about a hundred years of Leftist influence in American culture, best exhibited by the rise of “Transnational Progressivism” (read the whole thing) – an ideology that essentially places the blame for all iniquity around the world at the feet of a single enemy, the United States; and one group in the United States, heterosexual conservative white males. That’s rather narrow. For some it’s just “white people.” For others it’s anyone who is “conservative.” (Especially if they, themselves, are white males.) For groups outside the U.S., (and some inside it) it’s more broadly “Americans.” However defined, this group is symbolized in effigy at the present time by one individual – George W. Bush. But that won’t last forever.

Remember Hoffer’s words: “It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.” It doesn’t matter if the idea is illogical, ridiculous, or outright insane. It matters if you can mobilize the disaffected to the cause.

What we are seeing today is the coalescing of a new mass movement. There are many disaffected out there who are members of various fringe groups and organizations – the ones Dr. Santy defines as those who “hate Bush because he stands between them and the implementation of their collectivist “utopian” vision.” But the efforts of the Leftist intelligentsia and the “underclass” have splintered our culture. We are no longer “one people.” We are no longer one culture made up of many smaller, meshing cultures. We are “Red America” and “Blue America.” There is sand in the gears, and corporate cohesion is being lost. As a result there is a slowly rising tide of the disaffected, frightened of the future and looking for someone to blame and someone to promise them utopia.

Hoffer again:

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: “No…. We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.”

Meet the new Jews, and George W. Bush as Satan incarnate.

I gave very serious consideration to ending the essay right there, and probably should have.

So, where are we now? Bush is on his way out. Either Obama or McCain is on his way in. As Orson Scott Card predicts, “(I)f Obama gets the whole ignorant-of-history-and-world-affairs vote, he’ll win by a landslide.”

After doing the research for The George Orwell Daycare Center essay, you can imagine what I think is most likely.

What concerns me is that there really is a large portion of the population really ready for a mass-movement. That was obvious to me back before 2005. Right now they’re splintered, but as Hoffer notes, “It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.” The religion of environmentalism is well organized and well prepared. After all, Dyson notes that “The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.” My own grandchildren among them. We’re bombarded daily by the media. Anthropogenic Global Warming isn’t even questioned in the Legacy Media. It’s accepted as fact.

So we have the necessary framework, and the necessary population. We have the necessary target of hatred now that G.W. is on his way out. Driving around doing my errands this afternoon, I was tuned into a local weekend talk show, Inside Track. It’s run by our own local Libertarian and co-hosted by a center-Lefty. Usually interesting. Today they had a caller who was nearly apoplectic about (and I paraphrase) “300 pound Americans driving their gas-hog SUVs,” among other things.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

All we need is one “compact corporate structure” in a state of disintegration and a Charismatic Leader.

Looked around lately?

Collapsing bridges?

Fuel prices?

Food prices?

Floods?

Tornadoes?

Elections?

I understand that a lot of people believe that the Mayan calendar runs out on Dec. 21, 2012, predicting an apocalypse.

Maybe they’re on to something there.

UPDATE: Tangentially related content here.

UPDATE, 7/3: Eric S. Raymond states Why Barack Obama sets off my “Never Again!” alarms

Yup.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money, only for wanting to keep your own money.

‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer. – Joseph Sobran

More of that “right-wing language manipulation.”

The Socialist Party

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The Socialist Party

Bernie Sanders (Socialist, VT) is, at least, honest about what he is. Rep. Maxine Waters let her true colors show a couple of weeks ago (Marxist Red, of course). Now, via Unix_Jedi, Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York, “member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling” has done the same:

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

Thank you, Mr. Hinchey, one more elected official violating the oath you swore to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Do you have a Ché flag in your office?

Stay tuned for the next two Quotes of the Day.

UPDATE: Jeff has a question for Reps. Waters and Hinchey.

So What’s the Answer?

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I had an interesting lunch with a coworker today, an Obama enthusiast. We’ve traded barbs and had some extended discussions over our differences in political outlook in the past, and he acknowledges that some of my positions are, even to his worldview, not wrong.

He’s an open-minded kinda guy.

So he asked me, “How do we fix it?”

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. And tonight when I got home and checked the blog and the comments, I ran across this:

Kevin, if there is an honest history written of these times, it will agree with your premise that the gubmint school system was the essential mechanism by which the American people were tamed, neutered, and fitted with their slave collars.

Each of us has a sacred obligation not only to resist the coming Night, but to teach the ones behind us the difference between Night and Day.

See this quote from Fjordman here:

I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed, and perhaps shouldn’t be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies, it also has too many internal contradictions. If we define the “system” as mass immigration from alien cultures, globalism, Multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of “tolerance,” then this is going to collapse.

It’s inevitable.

The goal of Western survivalists — and that’s what we are — should not be to “fix the system,” but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes. We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve.

Let’s roll. – Cabinboy

So, what’s the answer? What went wrong? Assuming we get the chance, how do we correct the problems for Constitutional Republic of the U.S. V2.0?

I told my colleague the same thing that Fijordman said, the system cannot be fixed. Two hundred-plus years of entropy have eroded the mechanism past the point of repair. The basic design was outstanding, but nothing is ever perfect.

Unfortunately it started off with an inherent flaw, the acceptance of chattel slavery. Granted, the whole thing was a no-go without that compromise, but we’re still suffering the after-effects 219 years later. And, as pragmatic as the Founders were about human nature, I still think they underestimated human corruptibility and the human will to power. Back when I first saw Joss Whedon’s film Serenity, these lines struck me perhaps the hardest:

Sure as I know anything, I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They will swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that.

It faintly echos Robert A. Heinlein from my favorite novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.

In fact, I just had an argument discussion with a commenter on that very topic a couple of days ago. And I admit that to some extent I’m on the “stop people from doing as they please” side when I think they’re bats*!t crazy. Sorry. Guilty as charged. But at least I don’t think we can make people better.

But we have to design around entropy.

Back when I wrote Game Over, Man, I quoted Mike from the now-defunct Feces Flinging Monkey on the topic of our legal system:

Personally, I think that the (unfortunate) bottom line is that the future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court’s willingness to periodically reexamine the law. Lawmakers, and law enforcers, will always push the limits, and they will always win occasional gains. If the court is unwilling to revisit these issues over time and correct the damage done, then it’s “game over” no matter what we do. This makes it a little easier for me to accept changes in the law where the cost is low and the benefits are significant. If I can’t count on an occasional review, then the game is already lost.

I then went on to point out to him that no such review really exists. Judges who wish to (in Alex Kozinski’s words) “Constitutionalize their personal preferences” go ahead and do so, leaving honest and honorable judges below or on the same judicial level stuck with bad precedent. And if higher courts refuse to review (and they can), or worse, refuse to overturn (and they have), then cancer sets in, and cutting out that cancer later is painful and difficult, as we may be about to learn once again.

Second, as I noted in When Your Only Tool is a Hammer, and again Saturday in Pressing the “Reset” Button, Part II, the job description of legislator is “lawmaker“. It’s what they do. Rev. Donald Sensing put it quite graphically a while back:

A long time ago Steven Den Beste observed in an essay, “The job of bureaucrats is to regulate, and left to themselves, they will regulate everything they can.” Celebrated author Robert Heinlein wrote, “In any advanced society, ‘civil servant’ is a euphemism for ‘civil master.'” Both quotes are not exact, but they’re pretty close. And they’re both exactly right. Big government is itself apolitical. It cares not whose party is in power. It simply continues to grow. Its nourishment is that the people’s money. Its excrement is more and more regulations and laws. Like the Terminator, “that’s what it does, that’s all it does.”

So for me, Priority Number One is limiting the number of laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, precepts, proscriptions, regulations, and rules. Priority Number Two is periodic review of all existing laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, precepts, proscriptions, regulations, and rules. ALL of ’em. That ought to keep the legislatures and courts busy enough to at least help with Priority Number One.

Honestly, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. So what are YOUR ideas?