The Noble Pundit

Additions To The Book List

Just a quick not to let everyone know that I added a new book to the permanent section of the book list in the right sidebar, Ripples of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson. I heartily recommend anything written by VDH.

I have also added a section for magazine recommendations, starting off with National Review and the Economist. I'll be adding more suggestions there over time.

Also, I don't really expect to blog anything tomorrow as I have to work both jobs back to back and will probably be working from about 10 am to a little after midnight with an hour to drive between the two jobs (and the drive itself will take a minimum of half an hour.) Posting will probably also be light on Sunday as we're having the middle child's birthday party Sunday afternoon.

Good Advice For Kids

In light of the kidnapping and murder of Carlie Brucia in Sarasota this week, Donald Sensing has posted an excellent list of things that all children should be taught in order to help protect themselves.

Go over, take a look and spread the word.

The Imperial Judiciary

I've thinking more about the Massachusettes Supreme Court ruling that essentially legalized gay marriage. The more I think about the ruling and it's effects, the more I think that it will end of being one of the watershed decisions in our history. Not because of the issue at hand, but because it has put our nation in a fundamental crisis.

For a long time, many pundits have been quietly warning that we were leaning towards a tyranny of the judiciary. Our courts have always been powerful, but up until recently, they had acted with relative restraint. The stuck to their Constitutional mandate to simply interpret the review the laws to ensure that they were in accordance with the Constitution itself. But over the last 30 years in particular, since the Roe v. Wade decision, the court system has begun to expand its scope. No longer are they simply reviewing and applying the laws as written, they are now taking over functions of the executive and especially the legislative branches of government.

Courts will now routinely dictate funding requirements to the executive branch as a means of righting a perceived wrong. Activist judges will "find" new interpretations of law that essentially rewrite and pervert the will of the people as expressed through the legislative branch. Forget the Imperial Presidency - it doesn't exist. We, instead, are faced with the greatest concentration of power in America since we threw off the shackles of King George III. We are facing the Imperial Judiciary.

The gay marriage case simply goes to point out just how far along the path we have come. The judges have taken a article of law, written by the legislature, "found" an interpretation that has never been there before, and using that interpretation to dictate to the executive branch how they must conduct business. Four judges have overruled the stated desires of millions of Massachusettes residents. The few are dictating to the many.

So how do we end the tyranny? I don't have specific answers. I think though that it is critical that we use only Constitutionally acceptable checks and balances. Stop funding the judiciary. Find reason to impeach the worst examples. The only recourse that scares me is amending the Constitution. If we go that route, and it must not be discounted as a solution, we must ensure that any amendment serves only to limit the role of government, not to in any way, restrict the rights of the people. Our options are few, and our time is limited. If we don't act now, I fear that the situation will only get worse.

Now as for the ruling specifically, how do I see it truly affecting the issue of gay marriage? I think that it set the cause back by 20, maybe 30 years, at least.

The nation was in the beginning of a debate about the merits and drawbacks to gay marriage. Given time, I believe that a majority of Americans would have come to the conclusion that it was acceptable. Distasteful, perhaps, but as a people we tend to be pretty forgiving and accepting. It's time would have come.

But now, the debate has been squashed. Four judges have told us that we must accept gay marriage, because they think it's a good thing.

And people have reacted. For the folks in the middle, the ones who eventually would have swung the debate for gay marriage, they have now been polarized. Many are now absolutely - and irrevocably - opposed to the idea. Many, like myself, who support the idea are absolutely offended at the way the we were dictated to. I absolutely oppose the Mass Supreme Court ruling and hope that the people of the state find a way to get it overturned.

There are many debates that cannot be forced. Something as emotionally charged as gay marriage is one of them. This ruling will force gay marriages to be accepted in the legal arena - in some places, at least - but will end any hope of it being accepted in the social arena for many, many years.

This ruling is so out of the mainstream that even John Kerry, a man who professes to support equal rights for gays and lesbians, has come out and is taking the same position on this ruling as is George Bush - he opposes it.

The Imperial Justice System is coming. Do we really want to accept it?

Happy Birthday

Just want to say "Happy Birthday" from me and the little one to the middle child, who is turning 9 today.

Happy Birthday, kiddo!

A Defense Of John Kerry

By now it should be pretty clear to most readers that I am not a fan of the Kerry Crusade. I think that he is just about the worst possible choice for President, possibly with Kucinich excepted.

However, I recently read this article "What You Don't Know About John Kerry" over at NewsMax.com and I found one particular point that I feel is simply wrong.

In his testimony, Kerry claimed there was no communist threat and said: "In 1970 at West Point Vice President Agnew said 'some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse,' and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam. But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion, and hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country...."

OK, here I go: a defense of Kerry's statement.

When I read that statement, I see not a slam at the men in Vietnam, but rather the exhibition of a trait which I think is severly lacking in John Kerry: humility. It was probably the last time in his life that Senator Kerry thought that he might not be the end-all of end-all men. It was probably the last time in his life that he was possessed by a smug, arrogant, all-knowing attitude. I, quite frankly, am surprised to discover that the Senator has ever felt a sense of humility.

I'm not trying to take away from the efforts that our men in Vietnam put forth. Under the political restrictions and contraints, it was amazing that we were able to do as much as we did. If Johnson and Nixon had let the troops loose to prosecute the war properly, things would have ended up much differently. Did some bad things happen in Vietnam? Sure did. Vietnam was a war. And war is hell.

Walk up to any veteran and ask him if he thinks he's one of the best men in the country. Chances are he's going to say "no." Why? Because he has humility. He has lost a lot of the hubris and bravado that comes with youth, and has gained the wisdom and humility of experience and age.

The rest of the article is pretty accurate and informative. Kerry is not the same man that he is trying to portray himself as out on the stump. But in this one case, I think that he is unfairly being criticized for humility.

Approaching 40,000

I got to say that I like John Kerry doing so well in the primary season. Every Wednesday, I get another massive influx of Google hits for folks searching "John Kerry + gay marriage." Because of this push of hits, I'm going to go over 40,000 hits before my first blogosversery (coming up later this month).

With today's ruling out of the Massachusettes Supreme Court that will make gay marriage legal, I've been getting an even higher number of hits looking for stuff on the topic.

I still support the basic idea of gay marriage, but I do have concerns about the way it is being dictated to us by the judiciary. I would much rather see there be a national debate on the topic than to have a bunch of holier-than-thou judges sitting on high trying to bring culture to the great unwashed masses (which is the impression of their attitude that I get from reading excerpts of the ruling. Maybe I'm wrong, but....).

This whole issue is very dangerous to our system of government. We have overreaching judges, law makers who are afraid to exercise their Constitutional authority for fear of maybe being overruled, and executives who want to change our Constitution from limiting the rights of government to limiting the rights of the people.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens from here. I wish that the debate had been allowed to occur at a natural and reasonable pace, but it seems the debate is being forced. Hopefully we can still pull it off without deepening the divides between us.

OK, I Really Hate Spammers Now

So today, I get home and start downloading my emails and I see one pop up appearing to be from Amazon, saying my order has shipped. Now I know that I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in almost a year and that I've never even mentioned the fact that I have a wish list at Amazon (I do, but I'm not sure what email address I have it under.) But when I opened the email, it turned out to be porn spam.

And not just "normal" porn spam, no it has to be some kind of real sicko spam.

I want to find some way to keep pulling their email pictures from their site to keep burning up their bandwidth uselessly. I've also forwarded a copy of the email to Amazon for them, as I'm sure that they won't be any too happy about their site being used for pitching porn. It sure got the spammer's message in front of me.

If anyone has any ideas (legal, please - although I wouldn't mind entertaining the grey area ideas also) as to how I can get back as these weasels, I would be appreciative.

Government Spending and Statistics

Dean Esmay has begun another of his usual quality discussions, this time regarding the matter of an article by Stephen Moore and what Dean calls his fundamental errors.

I read the article by Mr. Moore and was not impressed. Dean is correct in that Mr. Moore appears (but it is not clarified) to be talking mainly about the rise in absolute spending since 1940. Further, Moore never acknowledges the population boom that has occurred since 1940 and how that would, in fact, lead to a substantial increase in the absolute level of spending.

But while Dean rants and rails, he also misses a fundamental point. Government spending is about to hit it's highest levels since the end of WWII. Look at this release from the Heritage Foundation.

In 2003, inflation-adjusted spending topped $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II.

Mr. Moore's premise is correct. Government spending is reaching its highest levels since the 1940s. His argument was flawed and poorly supported, but in the end, it was accurate.

But this is not to say that Dean is wrong either. There is, even in the per household number, a significant component of spending tied to the population boom. Baby boomers are coming of retirement age now. As they start to collect Social Security, they are also contributing to the rise in government spending. So the expansion of population does have some significant effect now.

The biggest concern that I have about the rise in per capita government spending is that at the end of WWII, we were spending the majority of our money on defense. Now we are spending on social programs - bread and circus, if you will. Great nations do not survive on the basis of a strong welfare state, they survive based on a strong national defense. Many of the Greek city-states proved it. Rome proved it held true on a large scale. And the lesson has been repeated many times in the intervening 1600 years since the fall of Rome.

60 years ago, we were the Arsenal of Democracy, not because of Social Security spending, but because of our commitment to defense. We won the Cold War, not because of welfare or the Great Society, but because of Reagan's 600 ship Navy, the B-52, the B-1B, the Ohios, the Army and a whole host of other defense related spending.

Spending money on social programs is not a bad thing in and of itself. But to really restrict the government's ability to adapt its spending to meet new threats (or to take advantage of new opportunities) is dangerous. $20,000 of government spending per household in a time of relative peace is simply too much. The last time we were at this spending level, we were fighting against two formidible, organzied, and powerful advesaries. This time we're fighting terrorists - a difficult and expensive task indeed - along with such threats to our society as a lack of golfing awareness in St. Augustine.

Our priorities are getting out of whack. The longer we keep spending like drunken sailors on payday, the more we put our long term security at risk.

And that is a tradeoff I don't like.

Super Tuesday

Well, Super Tuesday is coming to a close for the Democratic Party and with it, so appears to be several of the campaigns, at least on a practical level.

Kerry appears to have had another solid evening, winning Delaware, Missouri and Arizona pretty handily. Edwards took South Carolina, and is also showing strong in Oklahoma. North Dakota and New Mexico are both holding caucuses but no one really seems to be paying them too much mind.

Dean has once again failed to win anything. Lieberman bet it all on Delaware and appears to have come up snake eyes. Clark was respectable at least in Oklahome, and will likely officially take over the angry white man candidacy from Howie. Sharpton, well, Revrend Al showed miserably in South Carolina. Not good for the man who was betting it all on the southern minority vote.

Bottom line, Super Tuesday has functionally limited the field to Kerry, Edwards, and Clark as the dark horse outsider. Dean, Lieberman, Sharpton: all toast.

It will be interesting in watching the fight between Kerry and Edwards as it develops. Edwards is going to have to start tearing down the Kerry facade. Kerry is going to have to start defending and attacking against both Bush and Edwards. Watching them change their tactics which have worked well up until now should be fun.

I've said it many times before, and I'm going to say it again, Lieberman dropping out will be the greatest tragedy of the whole campaign. He was the most reasonable candidate the Democrats had. Watching Joe bow out with class and dignity was a definite contrast to the rest of the group. It is truly a disappointment.

Well, we've gone from 9 candidates to 3 real ones, one of whom is questionable. Next week we should get a couple more of official dropouts and possibly the functional elimination of Clark.

The field is narrowing and with the choices that are being made, so are the Democratic hopes of winning the Presidential election in November. This election may be one of the most clear deliniations between liberal and conservative that we've had in years.

Lawyers And Medicine

I was going to blog on this last night, but we instead went out to dinner with my sister to see her off before she left for Texas this morning. If you're ever in the Orlando area and are looking for a nice, but somewhat pricey meal with excellent food, atmosphere and wait staff, try Seasons 52 on Sand Lake Road, just west of International Drive. Well worth it. But I'm digressing already.

While I was at work yesterday, a commercial came on the radio from one of the local ambulance chasing firms which said, in essesence, "There aren't enough nurses in Florida" - a true statement - so "let's force doctors and hospitals to hire more nurses, pay them better, and reduce mandatory overtime." Followed by the usual "If you believe a loved one has been hurt do to a lack of skilled nursing staff, call us and we'll sue the crap out of whoever you want." (All of the phrases in quotes are paraphrased, by me, and are not direct quotes. The quotation marks are merely being used to highlight the gist of their message.)

Now doesn't that just sounds all nice and altruistic. The lawyers are now sticking up for the nurses and are going to force the big, bad, hospitals and doctors to hire more nurses, to give them all raises, and to cut back their hours. Nursing understaffing is a problem. This sounds great, using the legal system to correct an obvious wrong. What could be wrong with that?

The basic premise is what's wrong with it. The law firm is working on the assumption that there are a sufficient number of qualified nurses out there and that they simply aren't being hired in proper numbers. But that's not the case.

There is a real nursing shortage. We simply have more openings than there are qualified nurses to fill. And it's not as if the educational system around here is lacking for candidates either. The waiting list to get into some of the nursing programs can be as long as two years (known from personal experience with trying to get my other half into one). Some of the hospitals around here want so badly to hire more RNs that they even go as far as to pay for all the schooling on he understanding that you work for them for two years after becoming registered. They even hire you into another job in the hospital during your schooling. The problem here is not a lack of desire to hire on the part of the medical profession.

The problem here is twofold. One, there simply isn't enough capacity in the educational system to get more people through. The system is working at capacity, training nurses as fast as it possibly can. And two, there are a certain number of potentially excellent candidates, I don't know how many, who are turned off and scared away from even considering a career in the medical field, as either a doctor or a nurse, by the excessive litigation of the field.

If the ambulence chasers succeed in their quest to begin suing the medical profession for a lack of nurses, I fear that they will only succeed, not in improving the quality of care, but rather in diminishing the quality.

Smaller practices and hospitals that cannot afford to compete with the big players for talent will losing their nursing staffs and will be forced to close. The remaining facilities will be fully staffed, yes, but they will be far fewer in number and the wait, already outrageous, will become even more so. As more hospitals close, ambulences will have to travel farther to get their patients to care - a dangerous situation where every minute can count so much.

As the timeliness of the care declines, and as more people suffer the effects, the lawyers will of course then turn their sights to the closings and shrinkage of the medical profession as their new boogieman to explain why they should be be suing the hospitals.

Which brings us around full circle to the real motive behind the lawyer's great alrtuistic desire to help the nurses. They simply are looking for a way to go after the hospitals and their malpractice insurers as they still have the deepest pockets around.

In the end, they are creating a self-perpetuating cycle. There are too few nurses; there are two few facilities. Until we simply get more nursing students educated and in the system, there is no simple solution and certainly none that can be imposed by the courts.

The lawyers will simply raise the cost of health care even more, pricing more people out of the market. I know a little about on of the partners in this particular firm, he tries to play kingmaker in Florida politics, so I can certainly believe that he is fully accepting of the stratosphereic rise in the cost of health care, as it would bring us one step closer to realizing the dream of HillaryCare.

And then the lawyers would have access to the deepest pockets of all - the taxpayers.

This Weekend

Sorry about the lack of posts this weekend. I spent Friday and Saturday working over at the Church Street Ballroom (where I got an opportunity to listen to Lt. Governor Toni Jennings of Winter Park speak on Friday) and then I've been spending time with the family and watching the Super Bowl tonight.

I have been perusing the Internet some during the game and came across two very graphic and disturbing items (both were actually found via Drudge):

The first is disturbing more on an intellectual level, an article (link doesn't appear to be available at the moment) that details out some of the more disgusting parts of the German cannibal.

If that isn't quite enough for you, the Government of Israel has posted a video of the aftermath of the latest bus bombing. Before going over here, be warned, when they say it is graphic, it is graphic. I do think that it is instructive to remind us of just how devastating these terrorist attacks are on a human level. I challenge anyone to watch this and to find a rationale for why this should be acceptable behavior. There is no excuse for it. None.

Drudge also has one other headline with no links that I think merits some mention. He's talking about the Dean campaign and how they were providing valet parking at events and were also bussing in supporters to Iowa to pump up the apparent size of the crowds. So what? Yes, it was poor budgeting. Yes, it demostrates that they failed to develop a real, diverse support base. But it also simply demonstrates why the man does not have what it takes to be President. If he can't plan his campaign, why should we trust him to plan our national path for four years?