The New York Times reports that more than 1 in 100 adults is currently in prison. A law professor tries to justify this:
But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits: lower crime rates.”
In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.
The problem with this type of argument is that there are other less costly ways of reducing the crime rate: namely, decriminalizing half the inane crimes that call for imprisonment currently.
Talking about cost:
It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.
Granted, these numbers cannot be looked at without context. Many people in prison are in poverty so would likely be receiving some sort of state benefits anyway. However, working from this angle may be an alternative tactic for libertarians to express their opposition to paternalistic laws: "Even if I grant you that [insert supposedly self-harming behavior here] has negative effects, couldn't such behavior be condemned in a less-costly (non-governmental) manner?"
As someone who sometimes likes to indulge my morbid fascinations (a trait inherited from my mother, who loves walking through graveyards), I sometimes get caught up in research frenzies for things that are just horrible. As a single example, I'm captivated by totalitarian dictators and what goes on in their psyches as their drive their countries toward ruin.
And in that light, last night I spent a couple of hours rewatching a lot of the footage of "America's Most Hated Family," the Phelps Clan. AKA the ultra-bigoted Westboro Baptist Church. If you haven't come across them, you might want to check out their charming work, including websites GodHatesFags.com, GodHatesAmerica.com, and GodHatesSweden.com (Sweden??). Also this:
Oh, and these are the people who picket the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq. Because, you see, America has become a nation of "fag-enablers" and anyone dying in its service goes straight to hell.
I've followed these people before but I was watching a lot of their interviews again last night and couldn't help but notice something. See for yourself: That's pretty representative of them all. No doubt: watching a Fox News anchor tell this woman to go to hell feels satisfying and even righteous. But from the standpoint of rational (here meaning "internally consistent") the crazy lady is the clear winner.
If you watch all the interviews, Phelps gets screamed at by pretty much everyone, but if you listen carefully, you have to admit that she consistently advances a kind of crazy logic. If you just accepts the premise (1) the Bible is literally the word of God, is this woman wrong? She certainly knows the Bible in and out and all its exegesis (in one interview, she embarrasses an Anglican priest by correcting his quotation). Turns out Shirley and most of the family are constitutional lawyers (the better to protect their free speech, you see) and they've clearly applied the same kind of logical to their holy book, turning it inside out and figuring out exactly what each phrase means.
I won't claim any kind of expertise, but I'm willing to bet that their reading of the Bible is the most accurate and that they are, in that sense, the most "Christian" denomination in America. None of which makes them even the slightest bit less repulsive, but it does make them a lot more interesting.
When the Fox anchor tries to have Christian-off with Phelps (as most of her interviewers inevitably do), the anchor ends up looking foolish. Once you grant Shirley the premise that the Bible is a source of authority, you've lost, because she knows it better than you. Interviewers would do much better to press Phelps on why she believes in the Bible. Notably, no one does this.
Ayn Rand once said something like "The way I have lived my life is merely an epilogue to my writings. It consists of a single sentence: And I mean it." The Phelps Clan mean it too--more than any other Christians I'm aware of. They seem to have sat down and said, We believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, so let's actually follow exactly what it says. In the process they've exposed what a hateful little desert religion lies at the heart of Christianity.
99.9% of Christians obviously reject these awful conclusions, but the point is that they do so only by ignoring the parts of the Bible they don't really like. Which is fair enough. Someone once said that civilization's progress was mostly reducible to deciding to ignore the man in Rome with the funny hat. That would be fine--I don't begrudge anyone their superstition, if it makes them feel better--except that some minority of religious people try to justify their personal prejudices with the unexpurgated parts of that desert morality.
Sorry, but no. If you're going to discard the sections of the book that you don't care for, it makes it even worse that you would use it against gays, because now it's literally nothing more than a screen for bigotry. Give Shirley this: she's sincere. But I'd like very much never to hear from anyone else that homosexuality must be wrong because God said so and God's word is inerrant, because the person making that argument is either delusional or lying.
I'll just close with the best interview that I can find with Shirley. Long but very, very worth watching:
You are going to be fined: For your Non-Existent Unlicensed TV!
I've been getting a bizarre string of letters from the British "TV Licensing" Office ever since I moved into College. I live in a dorm room, not an apartment, to clarify. I have received numerous letters threatening investigation if I don't pay the 100-something pound licensing fee required for a TV. The problem: I don't own, nor have I ever owned a TV. In order to "opt out" of this scheme, you need to make several calls to the TV Licensing Office. Well, now I am officially "under investigation". My latest letter from them says: "The enclosed document sets out the key points of television licensing laws and your legal rights, which will be relevant should you be interviewed under caution and summoned to court." And, apparently "Detection equipment will be used" so long as "it is necessary and proportionate to do so": in other words, no search warrant is necessary for the use of detection equipment. More disturbing than the licensing fee really is the whole holier-than-thou attitude that they take, thinking that it is OUR obligation to bend over backwards to help them with their unwarranted investigations in the first place.
When people are transported from prisons to courts to attend their hearings, they are jammed in a tiny room where they can barely stand. ... "From the [truck] in which a newly arrived stage [of prisoners] is brought... employees of the colony line up, equipped with special means -- rubber truncheons and dog handlers with work dogs. . . . During the time of the run, each employee hits the prisoner running by with a truncheon. . . . The convicts run with luggage, which significantly complicates the run. At those [places] where employees with dogs are found, the run of the convict is slowed by a dog lunging from the leash." ... Not surprisingly, suicide attempts at these colonies are common. ... Now reports of torture are systematically ignored or suppressed while regional governments refuse to act on evidence of abuse.
This from the paper that has shamelessly promoted American torture (though they prefer the Orwellianism "enhanced interrogation techniques"). From the paper that frequently publishes John Yoo, author of the memos that argued that torture is perfectly legal is the President orders it. Which of the snips above couldn't be said about US policy during the so-called War on Terror?
Well, there was one thing you couldn't say about American policy: "Mr. Ponomarev doubts there has ever been an explicit directive from Mr. Putin ordering the kind of treatment they mete." We know that the orders were explicit and came from the the president and the secretary of defense.
Kudos to WSJ for condemning barbarism in an increasingly authoritarian Russia. I would love for them to turn a critical eye on themselves and run a series of articles, "We panicked and made a ghastly mistake. We're sorry."
As you can see, I haven't been blogging as regularly in the past few weeks, and now I've decided to take a little blogging holiday. My co-bloggers will still be here, but I need a break, mostly because I'm working on a few big projects right now and need to focus on them. And blogging around the primaries has stoked my worst wonky habits and utterly prevented me from going political cold turkey this year. So much for New Year's resolutions.
I'm sure I'll be back here before too long. If you never hear from me again--as might happen if we face the nightmare of a Hillary-McCain election--you can assume that I've moved either to a canal-side apartment in Amsterdam or to a Nepalese ashram to be alone with my thoughts.
Separation of Sports and State is a new credo we may need to adopt. Republican Senate Judiciary leader Arlen Specter is bullying NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to explain why he destroyed the evidence from the infamous "Spygate" scandal, in which the New England Bill Belichick have already been punished by the NFL; yet, Specter thinks it's the government's role to impose more justice in the NFL.
Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the matter could put the league's antitrust exemption at risk. In a phone interview with the Times on Thursday, he said the committee at some point will call on Goodell to address the antitrust exemption as well as the destruction of the tapes.
So, let me get this straight: Specter is threatening to bully the NFL by taking away the NFL's antitrust exemption on an issue that is totally unrelated to antitrust, an issue which the government as absolutely no jurisdiction over. At least in Congress's overreach in the steroids scandal, there IS an illegal substance involved; there is absolutely NOTHING illegal involved with the NFL's conduct: the NFL has private rules just like any other private organization and they punished the New England Patriots who broke their rules. Unfortunately, it seems as if the steroid scandal has given Congress, and Specter in particular, a renewed arrogance and sense of megalomania with regards to the professional sporting industry.
"The beauty of America is that a person can come and even make a disruption, and you know what, that person is not going to be taken out and shot." --Mike Huckabee, as anti-war protesters were led away from his reception in San Francisco.
That's a pretty low bar you're setting there, Mike.
