A.D.D.

Every once in a while, a loudmouthed political observer will say something so outlandish, so irresponsible, so shocking, and so technically true that he (or she) will receive a call from the White House asking them to tone it down. Bill Bennet (morality author, gambler) said this last week:

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down."

He continues:

"That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

Sure it would take a while, and you'd be aborting a lot of potential greatness as well, but aborting all the black babies would decrease crime. You could completely eliminate crime by aborting every baby born from this point on. No babies, no future criminals. Of course we could try a different approach, say encouraging healthy families and home lives for America's children. This would allow a little more satisfaction and continuation for the human races, and is perhaps is an approach more suited for a morality expert. Nonetheless, the fact remains that aborting all black babies would decrease the crime rate, and it does go to prove the point he was originally trying to make, which is that the ends do not always justify the means.

Naturally, Howard Dean has offered his two cents. He said the comments were "hateful, inflammatory" and asked whether they represented the values of the Republican party.

Yes they do. We Republicans love abortion. Just not of fetuses because that would be a sin. We prefer to abort babies that are already alive, or more acceptably, "post-birth abortion" of "extra-wombial fetuses." That's why the Herod/Ramses II '08 ticket is so highly anticipated.

This idea isn't new. In his book, "Freakonomics", Stephen Levitt established a statistical link between abortion and crime rates. Abortions, Levitt argues, are mostly prusued by those aho cannot provide a stable home for the child anyway, decreasing the amount of those children who grow up and become criminals.

Jesse Jackson said the remarks were "blatantly racist", and Scott McClellan said that the President said that they were "not appropriate." As for me, well I am one of the hapless victims of "What Bill Bennet Said A.D.D.," so

During the first days after the nomination of Harriet Miers, I was reading through a Reuters piece on the circumstances surrounding the nomination when I found this direct quote towards the middle of the article.

Bush said Miers would not legislate from the bench and would strictly interpret the Constitution, his code language for a conservative philosophy.

So much was said to me in that sentence that my head began to spin. First of all, the liberal bias in the media should be acknowledged. Not because it's a surprise, but because it's important to know where this thought comes from. Secondly, what Conservatives see as a formula for a good, responsible judge is seen simply by Liberals as code language for Conservative principles. Which leads to the most important thing that was said here: Liberals don't like to uphold the Constitution.

Constitutionally, legislation is supposed to happen in the legislative branch, and all legislation must fit within certain guidelines laid out in the Constitution. Apparently this is only a Conservative philosophy at this point. When you watch closely, you'll see that Liberals can't win in the legislative process, so they need to bend the rules of the Constitution to squeeze their agendas into place. Their contortionism must be applied to both the process and the ideas themselves, therefore strictly interpreting the Constitution is not only a Conservative philosophy, it is a very anti-Liberal philosophy as well. So when I said that Liberals don't like to uphold the Constitution, what I really meant to say was that in reality, Liberals can't uphold the Constitution. At least not if they plan on having any relevance in today's political system.

It's Monday again, and all sorts of stuff is going on. This must mean it's time again for the Monday Stew, ideally suited for the blogger with A.D.D. Leading the press is Bush's new Supreme Court nominee. I figured he'd select a controversial and dangerously Liberal candidate. After all, you can't replace O'Conner with someone predictable now can you? Apparently this one has never been a judge, and according to some, she's never been a Conservative. Austria has stopped being a jerk and is letting the EU talk turkey with Ankara. Schroeder apparently has seen the writing on the wall, and after dragging the country through several weeks of uncertainty has decided that he has exhausted his options and now all of a sudden does not want to stand in the way of a stable government. What a guy. Los Angeles firefighters are containing the first of the county's annual series of forest fires, utility workers are camping out in Texas to help clean that mess up, while some Kansas residents are preparing to clean up after the floodwaters recede. It looks like we have a long winter ahead of us. Paramount films has decided it doesn't have a spine and is going to release it's films in both HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats. What does this mean to you and me? Don't go out and convert your entire video collection into either format until the industry figures out which one is better. Despite the high gas-prices, industry had a big boost last month, thanks to Katrina and Rita. Brad and Jennifer's divorce is final, and they sold the home they owned together. I just can't bring myself to care. The Nobel Peace prize went out to the two Australians who discovered helicobacter pylori. Yeah, I thought they deserved it too. Boeing recently ran a magazine ad that depicted soldier's rapelling onto the roof of a mosque complete with a caption: "It descends from the heavens, Ironically it unleashes hell." Apparently it doesn't seem to kiss up to America's most sensitive minority as much as everyone would have liked, so Boeing has apologized. That's too bad, for a while I was considering going out and getting me one of those Osprey aircrafts. Oh well.

Last Saturday marked China's 56th anniversary under Communist rule. Yes, 56 years and going strong. The article I read was pretty standard, with party leaders praising their success. What struck me was the problems that China is facing 56 years after Communism was established there. Namely, the income gap between rich and poor. I thought the general idea of Communism was to make everybody equal. Why aren't they taxing the rich and spreading it around to make sure everybody has the same income? Rather than fueling economic expansion for people of all income levels, they seem to be simply ignoring the poor, and focusing their attention on the rich as they try and increase their stake in global economics. I don't know how they can call their system Communism, or even "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" as it clearly doesn't accomplish the general goal of Socialism or Communism. China's system has transformed into what looks to me like Dictatorial Capitalism, where they have absolute control over parts of their economy that remain completely domestic. The same parts which happen to be failing miserably. The PRC is losing it's control over their country, and the only thing allowing them to cling to power is their obstruction of the flow of information. Something that they can't base their legitamcy on for very much longer.