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Mark Steyn reports on the Conrad Black trial for the NY Sun. He’s been in the courtroom for three months and Pickerhead has often wondered why. His comments on our legal system might make the effort worthwhile.
… Point one: I’m amazed at how few trials there are. The federal courthouse isn’t one of these 19th century deals with pillars, it’s a Mies van der Rohe office block built in the Sixties and I’m in a courtroom on the 12th floor. There are two other courtrooms on the same corridor and gazillions more on the floors above and no trials are going on in any of them but ours. If you want to get away from the media hubbub of the Black trial and find a quiet corner to snore the afternoon away, the best place to go is one of the other courtrooms. You could hunt buffalo on the vast empty plains of these courts. There are no trials taking place. Trial by jury, which is one of the most fundamental rights extending back through the U.S. Constitution to English Common Law and the Roman Empire and the Athenian Republic, is in terminal decline in this country. …
While Mark’s been in Chicago, demographic concerns show up in Contentions as Gordon Chang worries about the effects of China’s policies.
… This massive experiment in social engineering has caused a rapidly aging China—it is often said that the country will grow old before it becomes rich—and has skewed demographics: there are now about 118 boys for every 100 girls, and in a decade there will be about 30 million excess males. Many have speculated about the social consequences of such a demographic imbalance. Some believe that the overabundance of young men—“bare branches,†in popular terminology—will lead the country to war, while others merely see increased prostitution, trafficking in females, and assorted other criminal activity. Whatever happens, it’s clear that none of the policy’s byproducts is socially desirable.
If demography is destiny, then China is in for a disturbing future. And it is clear that the one-child policy is destabilizing the present. Population control through repression, as the Rongxian and Bobai disturbances suggest, is completely unsustainable.
It’s timely to repeat a Victor Davis Hanson column from last August.
… For about the last half-century, globalization has passed most of the recalcitrant Middle East by — economically, socially and politically. The result is that there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world — but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity — such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism — too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.
At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism. …
That makes a good set-up for a post from the Captain.
Megan Stack writes a fascinating account of her experiences as a woman in Saudi Arabia, stationed there for the last four years by the Los Angeles Times. If anyone wonders what being a woman in Saudi Arabia means, Stack gives a firsthand account of the demeaning and oppressive existence that all women — Western or otherwise — endure in the Kingdom. …
Roger Simon posts on the same LA Times article.
IBD with the latest Carter editorial.
Great column on Rachel Carson by John Tierney.
For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school — and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.
If students are going to read “Silent Spring†in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled “Chemicals and Pests.†It was a review of “Silent Spring†in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.
He didn’t have Ms. Carson’s literary flair, but his science has held up much better. He didn’t make Ms. Carson’s fundamental mistake, which is evident in the opening sentence of her book: …
Michael Barone with interesting GOP numbers.
John Stossel’s weekly wonders why profit is a dirty word.
Quote of the day is from Mencken. Spotted by Samizdata.
Good Walter Williams column.
… Liberals love to talk about this or that human right, such as a right to health care, food or housing. That’s a perverse usage of the term “right.” A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different; it does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn’t produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That’s because, since there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I’d like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person. …
You’ll love how Teddy’s friends in congress are going to help his fight against the wind-farm. From Classical Values.
There is a move afoot in Congress to require new wind turbine project developers to do environmental impact statements on potential bird kills by turbines and to monitor wind sites for bird deaths. …
Remember our favorite from Mark Twain is, “There is no native American criminal class, except for congress.” That would explain Nancy Pelosi’s son’s new job. Country Store with details.
Dilbert, Scrappleface, and Borowitz are here. www.pickerhead.com