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The Court, The Times, and Guns

Posted by lge on Friday, June 27, 2008 3:31:30 PM
The New York Times is not amused at the Supreme Court's decision upholding the Second Amendment:
The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia's gun-control law.
I kinda agree. Guns can be destructive, just as crack and other illicit drugs can be destructive. We should ban guns, just like we banned crack, and then we won't have any more trouble with those two things.
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The Supreme Court -- Right By Mistake?

Posted by lge on Friday, June 27, 2008 3:01:08 PM
On the matter of "no death penalty for child rapists" -- I have had qualms about that penalty also, though of course, not on the same grounds as the Supreme Court, whose reasoning is like no earthly creature's.

My idea of justice comes from the Old Testament, the foundation of Western civilization and our ideas of justice. And that Book says, we shall exact "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life...."  But notice -- a life for a life, and no more.  A child rapist doesn't kill the child (at least not literally), so it seems hard to get around the conclusion that no life should be required where there was no loss of life.

By the same token, I have had a problem with multiple death penalties where only one victim was killed. If a mob or gang kills one guy, it seems wrong to sentence more than one member of the gang to death. "A life for a life" -- not two for one. Kill the most guilty, and send the rest to jail.

Contrariwise, I show my own inconsistency by saying, I think we should have the death penalty for people who physically mutilate their victims. People who dismember, chop off parts, mutilate their victims without killing -- they're beyond the pale. It would be best if we could similarly mutilate them, but that's barbaric, cruel and unusual. So I would support the death penalty for such heinousness.

But as for the child rapists, the Court just ruled on the basis that "We don't like it." Then they made up some sophistry or specious line of double-talk, to give a pretense of making a legal argument. That's what they always do -- which is why they're our rulers, our keepers, the real Ayatolla-like power behind our ostensibly democratic  government.
 

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Zimbabwe : "No justice, no peace!"

Posted by lge on Friday, June 13, 2008 10:44:57 PM
From Yahoo News:

Zimbabwe leader warns of violence if he loses vote
Fri Jun 13, 2:42 PM ET

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe said Friday that his supporters are ready to fight if the opposition wins an upcoming presidential runoff election, hardening the rhetoric of a campaign that already has seen widespread violence against government opponents.
I'm even prepared to join the fight," the 84-year-old Mugabe told a conference of his party's youth wing.
Mugabe said the veterans of the war of independence in 1980 had approached him after the first round of voting in March and threatened to take up arms again if opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai wins the June 27 runoff.
Then Mugabe led the crown in shouts of "No justice, No peace!"

Jesse Jackson announced he would be flying to Zimbabwe because of reports that blacks were being disenfranchised. Jackson said he knew the election was being stolen from Mugabe. He demanded a recount and vowed to hang every white person named Chad.

It's deja vu all over again.

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Fuel Cells And Environmentalists

Posted by lge on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 7:10:58 PM

 The Say Anything blog reports this story:

        Honda has announced that the company’s new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity is now available for lease to customers . . . in the Torrance, Santa Monica, or Irvine areas of southern California. . .

I don't get this enthusiasm for hydrogen fuel cells. As I understand it, the hydrogen is produced from natural gas. Well, natural gas burns. You don't need an elaborate process to turn it into fuel. Many businesses maintain fleets of natural-gas vehicles for city driving. So why bother with a technology that's not yet really economically feasible and that involves unneeded effort? Why not encourage more natural-gas vehicles? And also electric vehicles, along with many, many more nuclear power plants? And drilling for offshore oil -- before the Soviets and Mexicans and Chinese get it all?

I guess it's because of the spoiled-brat environmentalists: they always want something else; that's always their real technology of choice--  something not yet developed or not possible on a large scale. Enviros like windmills; they oppose all energy available for use now on a mass scale.

They have a puerile view of science and like the whiz-bang Buck Rogers notion of fuel-cell technology. They oppose the whole idea of burning, even if it's natural gas; it's a kind of primitive superstition with them -- more a nature-cult taboo than any calculation of the real effects of anything on the environment. And they just want to oppose development, production, economic activity of any kind. They don't want to solve our energy or economic problems; they just want to see their idiotic nature cult enacted into law. They're a pernicious influence.


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