April 23, 2015

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Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit devotes his weekly TODAY column to the story about the Wisconsin gestapo featured in April 21 Pickings.

When Vladimir Putin sends government thugs to raid opposition offices, the world clucks its tongue. But, after all, Putin’s a corrupt dictator, so what do you expect?

But in Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors were raiding political opponents’ homes and, in a worse-than-Putin twist, they were making sure the world didn’t even find out, by requiring their targets to keep quiet. As David French notes in National Review, “As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren’t enough, next came ominous warnings. Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends. … This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform.”

Is this un-American? Yes, yes it is. And the prosecutors involved — who were attacking supporters of legislation that was intended to rein in unions’ power in the state — deserve to be punished. Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents, and to discourage contributions to political enemies, is a crime, and it should also be grounds for disbarment.

If Republican officials treated political opponents this way it would be national news. But when Wisconsin’s Democratic apparat behaved like Putin’s thugs, it got little attention from the “mainstream” media. One of the good things about Scott Walker’s presidential run is that it will bring these abuses national attention. They deserve it, and the perpetrators deserve punishment.

 

 

FBI Director James Comey stepped in it last week when making comments on the Holocaust and its perpetrators. David Harsanyi has comments.

So a bureaucrat used some clumsy wording. That’s no reason to start whitewashing history

In a speech explaining why he requires all his new agents to visit the HolocaustMemorialMuseum, FBI director James Comey said this:

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.”

This muddled statement outraged Poland’s Foreign Ministry, who “summoned” the U.S. Ambassador Stephen Mull to protest and demand an apology. And an apology was offered, of course. Mull emphasized that the position of the United States is that “Nazi Germany alone bears responsibility” for the Holocaust, even if nothing in Comey’s speech maintained otherwise.

Hungary, where the anti-Semitic far-right Jobbik party has been doing pretty well for itself lately, was also slighted.

There isn’t much to be gained from re-prosecuting the crimes of Nazis or their accomplices, especially when Jewry is faced with a similarly potent, if less dangerous (for now), strain of anti-Semitism emanating from the Middle East. What is perplexing, however, is that Comey chose Hungary and Poland, rather than a host of other nations with populations far more enthusiastic about the extermination of European Jewry—countries like Austria, Rumania, Croatia, France, Latvia, or Ukraine.

It almost as if the director of a department that deals with domestic intelligence and security service of the United States should not be giving speeches about this sort of thing. …

 

 

Cathy Young writes in Newsday about mis-guided leftist, cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

Four months ago, a dozen people, mostly cartoonists and journalists, died in an attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because its provocative fare angered religious fanatics.

A week ago, a leading American political cartoonist receiving a top journalism award gave a speech blaming the victims and decrying “free-expression absolutism.”

It was a shameful moment for American journalism. But it should also be a moment of truth that reveals how anti-liberal — and how intellectually hollow — the modern left has become in its fixation on “privilege” and identity politics.

The cartoonist was Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, chastising his murdered colleagues while speaking at the George Polk Awards at Long IslandUniversity. Charlie Hebdo, Trudeau asserted, violated the first rule of satire — to side with the “non-privileged” against the powerful — by provoking Muslims with cartoons of Muhammad: “By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings . . . Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech.”

Hate speech? The cartoons did not mock or vilify Muslim immigrants but used images of Muhammad to lampoon Islamic extremism. …

 

 

A Wall Street Journal report on deaths in oil storage facilities makes you wonder how this could have gone on so long. After all, OSHA which investigated the fatalities, was supposed to be able to connect the dots. Another example of mis-placed belief in the competence of government? 

The deaths of Trent Vigus and at least nine other oil-field workers over the past five years had haunting similarities. Each worker was doing a job that involved climbing on top of a catwalk strung between rows of storage tanks and opening a hatch.

There were no known witnesses to any of the men’s deaths. Their bodies were all found lying on top of or near the tanks. Medical examiners generally attributed the workers’ deaths primarily or entirely to natural causes, often heart failure.

But in the past few months, there has been a shift. Though still unsure of the exact cause of the deaths, government agencies and some industry-safety executives are now acknowledging a pattern and are focusing on the possible role played in the deaths by hydrocarbon chemicals, which can lead to quick asphyxiation or heart failure when inhaled in large quantities.

In the meantime, federal agencies and industry-safety groups are planning to send out a joint alert to the oil industry as early as this week, warning of the potential for imminent danger from inhaling hydrocarbons, according to several people involved in the effort. Much of the industry remains ignorant of the possible risks, they say. …

 

 

Brain Blogger post says musical training makes kids smarter.

… Multiple studies suggest that learning to play a musical instrument early in childhood induces long-term intellectual benefits that stay well into adulthood. One recent study demonstrated that children aged around four-and-a-half who learned music for about a year displayed improved cognitive functioning than their untrained peers.

Musical training affects the oscillatory connections in the brain related to executive functions like reasoning, switching between multiple tasks, forming working memory, planning and executing, and problem solving. Children who undergo musical training for a sustained length of time tend to have superior cognitive abilities in these specific domains. Musical children also tend to learn and perform better in subjects like languages and mathematics than their non-musical peers.

These findings do not come as a surprise. Sustained and intense musical training demands that individuals focus intently on dynamic sensory (auditory and visual) and motor signals. These are high-level cognitive abilities that go on to affect learning and performance in non-musical spheres as well.

It is also believed that intense musical training enhances the ability of the practitioner to string together abstract concepts and think relationally to make sense of these. This is why some scientists believe that musical training improves mathematical skills and non-verbal IQ. …

 

 

From a blog named War On The Rocks, we learn about the importance of colonial taverns.

… However, … the taverns’ most important role in society (and American history) is the role they played in the beginning of the Revolutionary War. As anger spread throughout the colonies, many took to the tavern to discuss, argue, and debate what needed to be done. One location in particular, Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern (or as Daniel Webster put it “the Headquarters of the Revolution”) played host to the infamous “Sons Of Liberty” who, presumably after a couple of pints of spruce beer or molasses-infused porters, plotted the “Boston Tea Party.” It’s not hard to imagine why a couple of ales could have played a role in nudging along the idea of dressing like a Native American and dumping some of the East India Company’s finest tea into Boston Harbor.

The implications of the tavern go beyond just the spread of ideas. Two of our nation’s most significant institutions, the Freemasons and the United States Marine Corps, trace their origin back to the same colonial taphouse. According to historical records, the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia hosted the first meetings of St. John’s Lodge No. 1 (the first American lodge of the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple). On November 10th, 1775, the tavern also became the birthplace of the United States Marine Corps. Historically, the tavern was a popular destination for military recruitment, with Ben Franklin recruiting for the Pennsylvania Militia there in 1756. Eventually, the tavern would play host to Washington, Jefferson, and the First Continental Congress, who would task the tavern’s owner, Samuel Nicholas, “to raise the first two battalions of Marines” out of the tavern’s guests (although some speculate this occurred at another tavern owned by the Nicholas family, the “Conestoga Waggon [sic]”). The USMC still commemorates November 10th annually, with Marines everywhere raising a glass in honor of the Tun Tavern. …

 

 

Andrew Malcolm with Late Night Humor.

Conan: Turns out, Hillary is not the first woman presidential candidate. That was Victoria Woodhull who ran in 1872. Her running mate was a young, scrappy John McCain.

Meyers: A new poll in Cuba shows that President Obama is more popular there than Fidel Castro. Then again, so is putting your whole family on a raft in the middle of the night.