the all searching eye

I’m at work doing some research, and I came across a case where a prison inmate raped a female prison guard. The facts went thus:

“Appellant, a 29 year old male inmate at a state prison, raped the victim, a 25 year old, 94 pound female guard, in a bathroom adjoining the cell-block day room. The rape was accomplished by superior physical strength and the use of a sharp screwdriver-type weapon held against the victim’s throat.”

All this time, I’m wondering how the 94 lb female became a prison guard…

The Legend of Hugo Chavez continues. This time, he has attacked Mexico’s leader, President Fox, saying:

“Hay una copla en mi llano, usted que es hombre de caballos. Yo soy como el espinito, que en la sabana florea, le doy aroma al que pasa y espino al que me menea. No se meta conmigo, caballero, porque sale espinao”.

He had more to say. Here is a more complete account. Unbelievable.

While I am not in love with George W. Bush’s recent Supreme Court nominee, I have been disillusioned with Ann Coulter lately. When it came to John Roberts, she argued that he was “unaccomplished,” and that being from Harvard was meaningless. I believe the exact words were:

“He went to Harvard! And Harvard Law! (Since when does that impress right-wingers? So did Larry Tribe. It is one of the eternal mysteries of the world that liberals are good test-takers.)”

Suddenly though, Harvard graduates go from being “good test takers” to:

“The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155. The average LSAT at Harvard is 170. That’s a difference of approximately 1 1/2 standard deviations, a differential IQ experts routinely refer to as “big-ass” or “humongous.” Whatever else you think of them, the average Harvard Law School student is very smart.”

Since being a Federal Court of Appeals judge and a veteran government lawyer is not quite accomplishment enough for Ann Coulter, I don’t know what is. In fact, Roberts had more experience on the Federal court than Clarence Thomas did at the time of his nomination–and we know that Thomas is one of her favorites.

Of course, I don’t need to tell her any of that. After all, she is has suddenly decided that Roberts is exactly the type of person suited for the Supreme Court of the United States:

“Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts.”

Now Ms. Coulter is essentially making the same argument about Miers: that she is unaccomplished. Of course, add to that that she may not be a good test taker–which Ann now says indicates a “humungous” gap between her intelligence and that of an Ivey Leaguer (like Ann).

I’m also confused about what Ann wants in a Justice. Does she want one who will decide cases “our way” (In other words, the way of the majority party)? or does she want a Justice who will refrain from deciding social policy issues, and who will exercise a passive role (this is what she said she liked about Scalia). She wants them to lean with the majority on social policy issues, yet she wants them to refrain from deciding social policy issues.

So is Ann crazy? Schizophrenic? No. Unfortunately, it is much less exciting. In the end, she is proving to be full of hot air. She knows where her bread is buttered, and she knows the pulse of her readership. For that reason, she is not afraid to sacrifice ideological consistency and coherence to keep an exciting, well-read column. She relies on smear, and when the subject of choice becomes yesterday’s news, she turns her invective on the next flavor of the week.

Yes, Ms. Coulter is a good writer. Yes, she’s smart. She’s also funny, clever, and quick-witted. But, what does she really think? I don’t think we know from her writing. Therefore, I don’t think we conservatives can safely rely on her to make our arguments for us, or to chuck bombs at the left. In fact, we don’t even need her. The left has driven itself into near-obsolescence without anyone’s help.

Articles and editorials abound hyping the growing selectivity of elite colleges and of parents’ obsession with getting their children into one. However, this website of an admissions consulting firm will take you into the true twilight zone behind this craze. For example, the mission statement says:

IvyWise is an educational consulting company committed to providing comprehensive admissions counseling services to students and their families worldwide. IvyWise counselors are devoted to educating and guiding students through each step of the application process, enabling students to gain admission to the most selective nursery schools, kindergartens, secondary schools, colleges and universities, and graduate and professional schools

Well-to-do parents have so fallen off the deep end that they are paying five figures to get the upper hand in admissions processes. Unfortunately, this trend represents a growing materialism in our society. Yet, I do not want to give the impression that companies such as IvyWise are the problem. In fact, they derive their existence from the social factors that have created this ultra-competitive meritocracy which now reaches into the lives of toddlers.

At any rate, I was seriously disturbed at the concept of admission coaching for nursery school. I leave it to you to decide whether I am overreacting.
Abuzachary

A very popular T-Shirt among young Argentines reads El Che es Nuestro (Che is ours). Interestingly enough, very few of those wearing the shirts can tell you what Che did or stood for–besides fighting the United States. Of course, Ernesto Guevara’s countenance graces college dorms the world over. Many a resident of the Basil Al-Asad Student Housing center at the University of Damascus has hung out a poster paying homage. American college students also seem to be enamored with him and his stick-it-to-the-man, underdog facing the lions image. If only they realized that Ernesto wasthe embodiment of “The man”. In other words, he was the power and the oppressor, along side Fidel Castro, that savaged the anti-communist peasants in the countrysides of Cuba. A recent article by Humberto Fontava directs some very important criticism at the view of Che the guerilla and points us to another hero whose face ought to represent sticking it to the man in every sense of the word: La Niña Del Escambray.

P.S. I discovered something very interesting. If you search Google images for “Che Guevara”, it yields over 21,000. Searching La Niña Del Escambray yields 0. Searching under her real name, Zoila Aguila, yields 0. Apparently, her image just is not as compelling as Che’s.

P.P.S. I am adding this to my post since it represents almost the exact sentiments I previously expressed here.

Adhere to the journalistic values of honesty, courage, fairness, balance, independence, credibility and diversity, giving no priority to commercial or political considerations over professional ones.

This is the first article of Al-Jazeera’s Code of Ethics, and it reflects the ideal for which most other mainstream news sources strive. Unfortunately, a quick scan of Al-Jazeera’s reporting on any given day verifies that the news agency seeks the exact opposite. To illustrate this, I have drawn a story reported by the BBC and by Al-Jazeera. The story refers to Pakistan’s new crackdown on foreign students at madrassas (religious schools). I chose the BBC to represent a western version of the story specifically because they are not generally characterized as pro-American. Now, to the story:

In the both versions, the basic story is the same. However, the devil is in the details. For example, the BBC quotes Pakistani President Gen. Musharraf saying

We will not allow madrassas to be misused for extremism, hatred being projected in our society.

In addition, the BBC article mentions the fact that one of the recent London bombers studied at a Pakistani madrassa. Finally, the BBC reports Tony Blair referring to “extremism” and “radical madrassas in context of the bomber who had studied in Pakistan.

But, the BBC article then presents another view of the madrassas. The students themselves are acknowledged:

The students said they were there simply to learn and were “more disappointed than angry” at the terror links.

To finish the article, the BBC recognizes that many of the poor and rural turn to the madrassas for their education. I think this passes as a balanced report.

Al-Jazeera paints a dramatically different picture of the incident. First of all, they never hint that any London bomber studied in one of the madrassas. Instead, they mention that Blair’s reasoning for urging a crackdown was that some of the bombers had recently visited the country.

Unwilling to purport any terrorist ties to the schools, Al-Jazeera moves on to tell us how great they are:

Madrassas offer free religious education and board for more than one million Pakistani children, especially in areas neglected by state education services. Some have been targeted for preaching hatred against the West.

If this is so important to Al-Jazeera, they should be glad that Pakistan is denying foreign students Visas to study at the madrassas. After all, those foreign students are essentially taking food out of the mouths of the “more than a million Pakistani children neglected by state services”. But, Al-Jazeera is not afraid of a little self-contradiction in the fight against America.

Instead of recognizing the terrorist activities, Al-Jazeera claims that they are targeted for preaching hatred to the West. After that, Al-Jazeera throws a curve:

Some schools were set up as military training sites during the 1979 to 1989 US-backed war against the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The implication is that any militant element related to the madrassas is the fault of the U.S.

Al-Jazeera also mentions President Bush’s phone call to Gen. Musharraf in order to discuss the “war on terrorism” (yes, those quotes come from Al-Jazeera, not me).

So, connecting the dots, we see that under pressure from America, Pakistan is unjustly depriving poor and rural students of their education (that the state can’t provide) in a misguided attempt to curb anti-Western teaching. What is the Arabic word for Uncle Tom, by the way?

If you want to read both stories and decide for yourself, here they are:
BBC
Al-Jazeera

Remember that John Travolta movie with the thrilling, though outlandish plot involving a deranged criminal stealing his nemesis’ face? Well, now reality seems to be catching up with fiction. This NY Times article talks about the possibilities of face transplants. While my immediate reaction was: wow, now criminals can effectively dissapear, I found in the article talking points for other sides to the inevitable ethical debate surrounding this possible medical breakthrough. Read it here (you need a subscription).

In the past few years the RIAA got a lot of attention in the media because of lawsuits raised against consumers for illegal file sharing. Since I was a missionary in Argentina when the issue initially exploded, I did not become aware of the problem until the post-Napster days. Since then, however, I have made some observation about the recording industry’s conduct and have written the following. I have not provided links to all of the newspaper sources cited, but I’ve given the references. (more…)