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Mark Steyn says the digital superstate is useless when it matters.
Every time I go on his show, my radio pal Hugh Hewitt asks me why congressional Republicans aren’t doing more to insist that the GOP suicide note known as “the immigration deal” include a requirement for a border fence. I don’t like to tell Hugh that, if they ever get around to building the fence, it won’t be to keep the foreigners out but to keep you guys in.
I jest, but only very slightly and only because the government doesn’t build much of anything these days – except for that vast complex five times the size of the Capitol the NSA is throwing up in Utah to house everybody’s data on everything everyone’s ever done with anyone ever.
A few weeks after 9/11, when government was hastily retooling its 1970s hijacking procedures for the new century, I wrote a column for The National Post of Canada and various other publications that, if you’re so interested, is preserved in my anthology “The Face Of The Tiger.” It began by noting the observation of President Bush’s Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, that if “a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach, Florida” and “a Muslim young man” were in line to board a flight, he hoped there would be no difference in the scrutiny to which each would be subjected.
The TSA was then barely a twinkle in Norm’s eye, and in that long ago primitive era it would have seemed absurd to people that one day in America it would be entirely routine for wheelchair-bound nonagenarians to remove leg braces before boarding a plane or for kindergartners to stand patiently as three middle-age latex-gloved officials poke around their genitals. Back then, the idea that everybody is a suspect still seemed slightly crazy. As I wrote in my column, “I’d love to see Norm get his own cop show:
“‘Capt. Mineta, the witness says the serial rapist’s about 5’10″ with a thin mustache and a scar down his right cheek.’
“‘Okay, Sergeant, I want you to pull everyone in.’
“‘Pardon me?’
“‘Everyone. Men, women, children. We’ll start in the Bronx and work our way through to Staten Island. What matters here is that we not appear to be looking for people who appear to look like the appearance of the people we’re looking for. …
J. Christian Adams explains why the Arizona voting rights decision was a big win for the right.
Something perverse happened after the Supreme Court’s decision today invalidating citizenship-verification requirements in Arizona for registrants who use the federal voter registration form. The Left knows they lost most of the battle, but are still claiming victory. That’s what they do. Election-integrity proponents and the states are saying they lost, but don’t realize they really won.
The Left wins even when they lose, and conservatives are often bewildered and outfoxed in the election-process game.
Earlier today, I called the decision a nothingburger. After re-reading the case and reflecting a bit more, it’s clear that the decision was a disaster for the Left and their victory cackles are hollow — and they know it.
Worse, conservatives dooms-dayers who have never litigated a single National Voter Registration Act case have taken to the airwaves, describing the case as a disaster which invites illegal-alien voting.
In the last year, I’ve litigated five NVRA cases and worked on the preemption issues for years, and there is more to cheer in today’s opinion than there is to bemoan. Those complaining about the opinion don’t understand what the Left’s goal was in this case: total federal preemption. On that score, Justice Scalia foiled them; indeed, the decision today was a huge war won, even if the small Arizona battle was lost.
From my time in the Justice Department Voting Section, I can remember intimately the wars over some of the preemption issues decided today. …
Streetwise Professor caught a Putin rant.
At a reception on the occasion of Russia Day, Putin held court, and talked about . . . the United States. After awarding the State Prize to Sergei Nikulin, head of the bureau that designed a new nuclear missile designed specifically to defeat US missile defenses, Putin launched into a disquisition on American history:
Pooling together traditional Soviet-time propaganda clichés, Putin recalled the US “genocide” of Native Americans, slavery and racial segregation that is still, according to Putin, very much evident in the United States today. Putin deplored the US nuclear bombing of Japanese cities in 1945 and expressed doubt that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin would have dropped an atom bomb on Nazi Germany if the USSR obtained nuclear weapons in 1945, when an overall victory was already assured. After expressing his “personal opinion” that Americans and their leaders are worse than Stalin, Putin acknowledged that the US is basically a democratic country, built on the principle of individual rights and freedoms, whereas Russian society is built on “collectivism,” which makes it fundamentally different. The Russian national soul, according to Putin, is eternal and directly connected to God, unlike, apparently, the pragmatic American one—“so it is very hard for us to understand each other, but it is possible sometimes”.
Russian soul, blah blah blah. Interesting, that, during a week when a survey was released showing that Russians were among the least religiously observant people in the world. And as Felgenhauer notes, rather than being a narod united in collective solidarity, Russian society is atomized: the Russian social capital account is heavily overdrawn. In other words, Putin’s characterization of Russia is a crock.
We are so in Putin’s head. He is obsessed with the US. Can you imagine any US president discussing, say, Russian conquests in the Caucasus, or Central Asia?
There is one part of Putin’s remarks that is particularly outrageous: ”Putin deplored the US nuclear bombing of Japanese cities in 1945 and expressed doubt that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin would have dropped an atom bomb on Nazi Germany if the USSR obtained nuclear weapons in 1945, when an overall victory was already assured.”
That is more than a crock: it is an ahistorical outrage. …
Streetwise Professor also posts on Putin’s theft of Bob Kraft’s Super Bowl ring.
Vladimir Putin has done some outlandish things, but I think this takes the trophy. Or the ring. The Super Bowl Ring.
You might recall that Kraft in 2005 joined a cadre of businessmen to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. The Patriots owner walked into that meeting with a jewel-laced Super Bowl XXXIX ring on his finger, but left empty-handed.
“I showed the president my most recent Super Bowl ring,” Kraft said at the time, per The Boston Globe. Putin “was clearly taken with its uniqueness … at that point, I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin.”
Not so fast. Kraft now admits Putin nabbed the ring — worth upwards of $25,000 — without his consent.
“I took out the ring and showed it to (Putin),” Kraft said this week, per the New York Post. “And he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”
That’s the head of the Party (and State) of Crooks and Thieves: leading by example!
The only thing that is worse than Putin’s in-your-face thievery is the Bush administration’s craven response:
Kraft kept his wits about him and complied with a call from the White House, in which a George W. Bush handler told him: “ ’It would really be in the best interest of U.S.-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present.’ “
FFS. No wonder Putin thinks he can get away with about anything when dealing with the US. Because he can. I think he tries this stuff to see what he can get away with. He gets away with it . . . so he pushes it even more. He’ll keep pushing until someone pushes back.
Here’s my idea. Have Ray Lewis let Putin hold his Super Bowl ring, and pray that Putin tries to pocket it. And we can make money off this by putting it all on pay-per-view.
Marc Perry celebrates the internal combustion engine.
The automobile stands as an enduring symbol of mobility and opportunity in America — and of innovation that’s at the core of our nation’s economic strength and prosperity.
Yet the conventional gasoline-powered engine is sometimes disparaged and treated as if it’s yesterday’s technology. Listening to politicians, environmentalists and media pundits, you might think that the gas engine is inefficient and old-fashioned, a relic of the past that ought to be replaced by alternative automotive technologies like electric cars and plug-in hybrids.
But a good look at the latest advances in the gasoline-powered engine — and those on the horizon — jars this opinion, and the surge in U.S. oil production from shale drilling further refutes the idea that conventional engines are old technology.
Already powering more than 230 million cars in the United States, internal combustion engines have the potential to become substantially more efficient, while providing economic and environmental benefits that extend well beyond the money consumers save at the pump.
Imagine if your car uses advanced computing to control fuel injection far more precisely than before, improving the fuel efficiency of big cars by more than 15 percent. Or what if your car is able to knock another 30 percent off fuel consumption — and corresponding greenhouse-gas emissions — by partly cooling hot exhaust gas before it is pumped into the engine?
Diesel engines, which are more efficient than gasoline engines, might also take off in the U.S. …