I Bow To Thee

I'm guilty of the occasional run-on sentence, but Dennis Kucinich kicks my ass in this area:

Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.

Someone should have told him not to do two series in one sentence. Properly, this statement would have been broken up like this:

Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness. They deserve a world free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.

Then again, I'd be allowed to work on the Kucinich campaign around the time that Ralph Nader voted for someone other than himself.
I'm a little worried that the Kucinich candidacy could split the left even further, although Kucinich seems pragmatic enough to give up with a decent grace and give his support to the Democratic candidate eventually chosen.

Sometimes the insistence on the Democratic candidate's having credibility regarding terrorism sounds like one of those election-year sops, the way that every candidate traipsing through Iowa must put his hand on his heart and pledge allegiance to ethanol subsidies.
But it isn't like that.

People are sincerely and justifiably concerned by the threat of terrorism. Despite having gotten on with our lives after Sept. 11, we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next terrorist attack.

I don't think that it will come in the form of ballistic missiles, so I find Bush's resurrection of missile defense (Star Wars) to be a poor use of our terror-fighting budget.
(Incidentally, there should be such a budget; fighting terrorism shouldn't eat up our schools, hospitals, research institutions, etc. The amount of money we spend on preventing terrorism should not be limitless.)
I don't think the next attack would have come from Saddam Hussein's direction, so the war in Iraq was not justified on that basis.

But fears of terrorism are not baseless and must be addressed constructively by a good president. They should not be amplified, or irrationally hyped, but they cannot be dismissed simply by calling for peace.
Americans feel that they are under attack, and the successful candidate will have a plan to prevent terrorism that minimizes the harm done to our other interests: liberty, privacy, due process, good international relations.

Free Willie Eats Pet Chicken

I have a little sympathy for animal rights/liberation types, but stories like these make me feel like steak-eating, PETA-hating grouch:

Days after 10,000 mink were released from a farm in southern Snohomish County, hundreds of the animals not yet captured have converged on local farms in search of food.
The animals had killed at least 25 exotic birds and attacked other livestock in the area.
"Over half our livestock was shredded. Murdered. Eaten alive," said Jeff Weaver, who discovered the dead birds on his farm Thursday. "These are not like regular farm animals. They're our pets."

I don't believe in mink-farming, as mink appears to be a purely luxury item with little serious practical value. Unlike the cattle whose hides are used for leather products and whose meat is consumed as food, mink are raised entirely for their fur; everything else is thrown away.
That said, the people who released the mink from the farm are well-meaning idiots.

Animal activists argue that while the farm animals' deaths are unfortunate, it proves minks raised in captivity can survive in the wild.

Mink that are killing farm animals and pets are not surviving "in the wild," they are exploiting other animals that are in captivity.
Even if the nature/civilization binary means anything, there's not much "wild" left in Washington State that would be hospitable to captive minks. I doubt that they could compete with real wild animals. Instead, they are eating chickens and ducks.

"The amount of suffering that has been prevented by releasing them from cramped cages and freeing them from an extremely cruel death more than justifies a temporary disruption to the ecosystem," said veterinarian Andrew Knight, director of research at the Seattle-based Northwest Animal Rights Network.

Yes, because starving to death or getting shot or trapped by an angry farmer is such a nice way for a mink to die.
As chicken breeder Diane Sallee says, "The people who do these things don't think it through." But you'd think that after the fact, they would be more thoughtful and perhaps apologetic. Judging by Knight, they aren't.
Apparently their heroic virtue in releasing the animals from what probably were inhumane conditions -- small space, insufficient air and sunlight, etc. -- compensates for not bothering to provide for the mink once they escaped the farm.

It was entirely possible to have done this responsibly. The Animal Liberation Front could have recruited people who were willing to take the mink in as animal companions. Instead, they preferred to fantasize that thousands of mink could be taken off a farm and, in some magical way, care for themselves.

"I'm not into anyone running around with fur coats on," [Weaver] said. "But you cannot let 10,000 semicarnivorous animals out without having serious consequences."

Anorexia vs. Healthy Eating... That’s a Tough One

I was reading a little about the South Beach Diet that's being strongly advertised lately (I get a pop-up every time I visit the NYTimes website), and it’s as dismaying as most diets.

The advice is sound, no doubt, but I doubt that it’s useful for people who are seriously overweight, as it requires such a huge change in mindset. Take their words of wisdom regarding how to eat in fastfood joints:

Can you stick to the South Beach Diet at a fast-food restaurant? It isn't easy. The emphasis in fast food is on big, sweet, fat, and fast -- everything that has made obesity such a problem in America today. If you start by eliminating all the main attractions, however, and limit yourself to salads and plain grilled chicken breasts, you might be okay. Here's more:

What you can't have:
· Burgers. Too many saturated fats in the meat and the cooking oil; too many carbs in the bun.
· Fish. The breading and the cooking method make it even more fattening than the burger.
· Chicken nuggets or fried chicken. Like the fish, they're a lot of deep-fried bread over a little meat, all of which has been cooked in a trans-fatty substance.
· Fries. The worst part of the meal from the glycemic-index point of view (especially with ketchup).
· Soda. It's a pure sugar rush. Look at how fast-food restaurants emphasize their worst fare-even the offer to "supersize" is simply a way to sell you excessive amounts of the cheapest part of the meal, the soda and fries.

What you can have:
· Salad with oil and vinegar instead of any other dressing.
· Plain, grilled chicken breast (in the places that serve it).
· Water or coffee.

It’s all true, but if the dieter could stand to go to McD's and eat salad without a real dressing and grilled chicken without mayo, he wouldn’t need to be dieting in the first place. As success story "Judy H." says, "I don't go to any fast-food places at all anymore, though, because there's really nothing I can have."

Or the dessert strategy of eating only three bites. Anyone who has the self-restraint to get a dessert, eat three bites and then put the rest away probably isn’t overweight.

Of course, if you can give your life over to Dr. Agatston, the online program looks promising.

The South Beach Diet Online is a fully interactive weight-loss program designed to help you track your progress, stay motivated, and reach your goals. As you're guided through the three-phase system, you'll get:
· Personalized progress reports
· Customized meal plans
· Round-the-clock support
Tools to track your weight, phase, and diet goals
A nutrition tool and meal planner
An automated shopping list generator
Member questions answered by Dr. Agatston
Support from a community of thousands like you
Delicious and healthy recipes

Anecdotally, I would assume that women comprise the majority of dieters in this country, yet the South Beach diet seems oddly male-oriented with its emphasis on "belly fat first." Women tend to carry their extra weight in their hips and thighs.

Not That I'm Obsessing

Via the Curmudgeonly Clerk, a lawyer explains why he'll vote for Prop. 12. Essentially, his argument is for freeing the hands of the Legislature, which have been undemocratically tied by the Texas Supreme Court.

He makes some good points about law and politics, but still fails to address the fundamental issue, which is that capping non-economic damages in lawsuits is taking power away not from trial lawyers or judges, but from the third and most important party in the courtroom: the jury.
I see nothing democratic about telling the ordinary Texans who serve on juries that they are too stupid to know the appropriate amount of money to award a plaintiff. And that is the real problem that no one, especially the proponents of Prop. 12, wants to talk about.

Some people think the solution to dumb juries (and Lord knows that all the ignorance and prejudice of the average person becomes magnified once he becomes a juror) is simply to limit their powers, or take them out of the equation altogether.
As I have said before, I prefer making the juries smarter instead of trying to minimize the damage that a stupid jury does.

What Is Popular

(The Poster.)

"You have a movement among the ultraleft to discredit me and Fox News Channel any way they can," O'Reilly said yesterday. "They can't win the debate. They can't win the ratings war.
So let's turn to defamation and we'll hide behind the satirist's label to defame. We don't have to be honest and accurate.
It's a charade -- people see it for what it is. It had to be exposed, and that's what that lawsuit did."

(via Kurtz)

Probably I am reading too much into an off-the-cuff remark, but Fox News host Bill O'Reilly appears to think that there is some connection between winning The Debate and winning the ratings war -- between being even somewhat right, and being popular.
I don't quite see how "the ultraleft" (and if the Nader-hatin' Franken is the ultraleft, what is the nearly three percent of the country that voted for Nader?) has failed to win The Debate. I'm not even sure where The Debate is being held. As usual, no one told me...

But on what basis have people like Al Franken shown themselves unable to win the debate?
Has supply-side economics been shown to be a clearly effective strategy in improving the lives of all Americans?
Does abstinence-only, or abstinence-mainly, sex education do a better job than all-the-options sex ed of minimizing unwanted pregnancy and STDs?
Is failing to teach children accepted scientific theories and having them pray making them better people?

As for "hiding behind the satirist's label to defame," I thought that being unable to appreciate such satire was characterized by Ann Coulter -- a chief practitioner of this style -- as a sign of liberals' lack of humor. I'm wishing for your death! It's funny!

Anyway, if anyone knows where The Debate is happening, please let me know. I'd like to get in on it.

Accent Adaptation

Ahh, I do it too.

I was just calling the county voter registrar/ elections administrator to get my application for ballot-by-mail for my birthday election. (The registrar said she knew how to spell my last name, which surprised me. Must be a bad heart in her family.)
Actually, first I called the Texas Elections people, and the woman there gave me the local number. But just three minutes of Texas Southern accents had me starting to drawl too!
I tell you, it's infectious. Especially when your voice already sounds funny from strep throat.

Better Late Than Never... Right?

Just in time for the Prop. 12 vote, the Houston Chronicle has a story about the guy Dad should be ranting against, instead of beating up on the trial lawyers:

Wealthy Houston orthopedic surgeon Eric Heston Scheffey, sued for malpractice at least 78 times and forced to make medical liability payments in 45 cases totaling more than $13.3 million, will have his license temporarily suspended by the state agency that regulates doctors.

This man is on crack. Literally.

In 1986, the medical board placed Scheffey on probation for 10 years after he was arrested during the 1985 Memorial Day weekend with 30 grams of cocaine in his Jaguar. Five days before the arrest, a Scheffey patient, 43-year-old Mary Tywater, died on the operating table.

You need to be drug-tested regularly to fold clothes at Wal-Mart, but surgeons can be cokeheads. What a country.

Quote of the Day

"CNN has renamed Lou Dobbs Moneyline because, let's face it, it wasn't much about money some days. It's been renamed Lou Dobbs Tonight because CNN would not let him rename it I'm Lou Dobbs, Not Some Darn Islamist."
-- Washington Post TV columnist Lisa de Moraes
(reminding me of an idea for a sitcom: "My Bud Muhammed," which would even come with a title theme based on the Tori Amos song)

Ritual H-Town Humiliation

I begin to suspect that there is a permanent assignment at the New York Times to write something libelous-except-it's-true about Texas every month or so.

The Times continues to pursue the already-fruitful story of how school administrators in the Houston area have falsified records in order to present their failing schools as ones in which no child is left behind (see Herbert, too). Last month, it was about the misreporting of dropouts as "transfers." Today, we see that officials also fantasize about where students go after graduation.

[F]rom 1998 to 2002, Yates High reported that 99 percent to 100 percent of its graduates planned to attend college.
Across town, Davis High School, where students averaged a combined SAT score of 791 out of a possible 1600 in 1998, reported that every last one of its graduates that year planned to go to college.
Sharpstown High School, a high poverty school that falsely claimed zero dropouts in 2002, also reported in 2001 that 98.4 percent of its graduates expected to attend college.

The dropout/transfer mix-up was driven by the desire to inflate schools' performance rankings, while the unrealistic figures regarding collegiate futures seem to have come as an automatic reaction. People working in schools apparently lie automatically whenever they are asked how the kids are doing.

Another former principal, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, contended that lower-level administrators inflated their figures in the hope of attracting the children of active, involved parents. More students also mean more money from the state. On paper, her school claimed that almost all of its graduates were headed for college. In fact, the principal said, most of them "couldn't spell college, let alone attend."

That's momentarily a little funny, but really quite terrible.
Texas's own absurd form of affirmative action -- the "top 10%" plan that requires all state universities to open their doors to any graduate of a Texas high school who finished in the top 10% of his class -- has led not only to overstuffed college classrooms but also to ever-more unprepared college freshmen. Sadly, in the lowest-performing schools one can graduate as one of the "smart kids," and then get blown away by the first semester at UT-Austin.

Matthew Rivera, a 1999 graduate of Worthing High School here, said that most of his classmates probably hoped to attend college. But for many of them, the encounter with higher education proved brutal.
"Getting into college is not hard at all," Mr. Rivera said. "Staying in is hard." Mr. Rivera and two of his friends, Worthing classmates, began college in 1999. Only one graduated this spring.

I don't share the mania of College for Everyone. Too many people go to college without benefiting appropriately from it, and would be better off if they entered the workforce immediately or received specialized vocational training.

Mr. Rivera plans to attend vocational courses in radiology this fall, which he hopes will help him land stable employment at a decent salary. He now holds down three jobs, one as a waiter.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the kids who had no real plans to go to college said that they were going anyway, because we've turned college into the default instead of one option among many.

Much of this is the fault of employers, who have the bizarre notion that one needs a B.A. in order to be a bank teller.
Many people are too educated for their jobs, and we could be a more productive and well-suited society if people worked at the jobs for which they felt prepared, and went back to school when they needed a particular sort of knowledge or training to advance to the next level. High-level education, like youth, is probably wasted on many of the young; older scholars generally prove to be far more motivated.

This is not at all to say that I am OK with how state legislatures and the Bush Administration are shafting public institutions. People who really want or need to study Shakespeare and physics in order to do what they want with their lives ought to be able to do so, without incurring staggering debt loads or spending an extra three semesters trying to get into that last required class.

Appease the Dumbass Base!

The Bush Administration has gone from punishing organizations based on disproven allegations, to punishing organizations based on guilt-by-association with those who were the subject of the disproven allegations:

The State Department has discontinued financing for a small but well-regarded AIDS program for African and Asian refugees because it contends that one of the groups involved in the project supports forced abortions and involuntary sterilization in China, officials said this week. [...]

State Department officials acknowledge that they have no evidence to suggest that Marie Stopes is involved in forced abortions or involuntary sterilization, and the group itself says it has been trying to end forced abortions in China and to expand voluntary family planning.
But State Department officials say one problem is that Marie Stopes works as a partner in China with the United Nations Population Fund, a group that was barred from receiving aid last year after the Bush administration determined that it had violated a 1985 law barring the financing of any international group that "supports or participates in the management" of forced abortion or sterilization.

Of course, President Bush's own fact-finding team determined that UNFPA was not involved in China's violations of reproductive rights, and recommended that the $34 million appropriated by Congress, on the longstanding condition that none of it be spent in China, be released to UNFPA.
But this is the faith-based administration, and they continue on their merry way as though something they've decided in their own minds to be true -- UNFPA's participation in forced abortion or sterilization -- actually is.

The author of the article must have a strong stomach for irony; she ended her report with this quote from a State Department official,
"We were disappointed that for reasons of solidarity with Marie Stopes that they should refuse our money. We had hoped they would show more humanitarian statesmanship than that."

Quote of the Day

"The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It's served us well for 200 years, and we don't appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?" -- Jay Leno

Happy Birthday

InstaPundit is celebrating his today, and, anticipating light blogging, points readers to Virginia Postrel.

Her brief post on "immigrants emigrating" surprised me; a Dallas resident ought to know better. She says,

Once they get established in the United States, immigrants who come into the traditional gateways, including California, leave for Sunbelt states like Texas[...]
This phenomenon means that immigrants in California will be disproportionately poor and unassimilated, adding to the other reasons why immigration is a hotter issue in California than in Texas.

First of all, Texas is one of the traditional gateways. I have not only geography, common sense and personal experience to back this, but the article Postrel links:

The report also shows that a smaller share of new arrivals are settling in states that have been immigrant magnets. About 60% of the foreign-born who came to the USA between 1995 and 2000 went to California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New Jersey, down from 73% a decade earlier.

Texas may be receiving immigrants who initially landed in other states, but it starts with plenty of its own.

Far more important to the difference in immigration debate between Texas and California is the level of care the state feels obliged to provide.
Texas doesn't give much to anyone -- citizen, documented worker or illegal alien -- and so immigrants are seen as more of a source of cheap labor than as a burden on public services. When you're delivering crap public school education, what's one more kid in the classroom?
California, on the other hand, is trying to maintain a higher level, which makes an influx of new residents more taxing (both literally and figuratively).

Speaking of birthdays and Texas, the state votes on Proposition 12 on my birthday. Thanks, y'all.

The Curmudgeonly Clerk has an excellent round-up of links regarding this proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution, which would cap damages (of the pain-and-suffering, punitive variety) in civil lawsuits. Successful plaintiffs still could obtain full compensation for medical costs and lost productivity, but not for the recurring aches in their backs or inability to play golf or have sex.

My dad, among other people who favor the change, considers it necessary to stop the increase in the size of malpractice awards. He thinks juries are too easily affected by the sobbing testimony of the injured party (or, in the unfortunate event of that person's decease, of her friends and family) and therefore give out excessively high awards.

I doubt that he would care about the size of the awards except for the fact that the malpractice insurance companies (the ones who pay out) justify jacking up their rates of coverage by pointing to these expensive lawsuits.
Frankly, I think my dad can afford it, but physicians who practice in lower-paying specialties, and general practitioners, really are getting hurt by this. The cost of malpractice insurance for ob-gyns, for example, can be prohibitive, because poking at women and delivering babies is high-risk -- thus requiring a lot of coverage -- but not high-return.

This being Texas, it does not occur to anyone to attempt some alternative strategies to address the problem of doctors' having to pay extremely high malpractice insurance rates.

No one in state government seems to have considered having the Texas medical board, which certifies doctors for practice, crack down on bad doctors who, like bad drivers, increase costs for everyone else.
According to Public Citizen, less than 5% of doctors account for over half of all malpractice awards, and less than 2% account for over a quarter of all awards. Consider this specimen:

Physician Number 37949, licensed in Texas, settled or lost 13 medical malpractice suits involving improper treatment or improper performance of surgery between 1990 and 1997. Two of the suits involved the same allegation: a foreign body left in the patient during surgery. Damages to this doctor’s patients exceeded $2 million. This doctor has never been disciplined by authorities in Texas.

Note that settling a suit is not equivalent to admitting fault. Insurance companies pressure doctors to settle malpractice suits instead of bringing them to trial because the companies assume that this will be cheaper for them, regardless of the cost to the doctor's reputation.

If there is a genuine concern that the cost of malpractice insurance is decreasing the availability of medical care, why not have the state of Texas run the insurance pool?
Private companies take the insurance money and speculate in the markets -- hence their sudden poor-mouthing in the wake of recession. They also take on high-risk business that can crumble and leave them insolvent.
I'm all in favor of investment and capitalism and apple pie (especially apple pie), but if we don't want doctors' med-mal rates to be determined by how well the insurance companies' portfolios are doing, then either we require companies to 1) stop putting money into fluctuating areas; 2) separate their med-mal business from everything else; or 3) have the state do the insuring.
It shouldn't be difficult; the doctors would pay in, the state would pay out for settlements and lost suits. The state also would become incentivized to take licenses away from doctors who were repeatedly negligent in order to save itself some money.

The Curmudgeonly Clerk concludes,

I am inclined to think that Proposition 12 is overly broad in the remedy that it prescribes.
Assuming without deciding that Yes On 12 et al. are correct in their assessment regarding existence of a medical malpractice crisis, its causes, its effects, and even its solution, why propose such a radical cure? That is, why amend the Texas Constitution so as to grant the legislature power to limit non-economic damages in all areas of the law rather than in healthcare litigation alone?
This particular aspect of the recommended treatment strikes me as being analogous to unnecessary surgery.

The "why" is pretty obvious to those who have followed the tort deform debate in Texas:
complaints about doctors' being driven out of practice by the cost of malpractice insurance is the perfect cover for pushing through a measure that, presented in naked honesty as an attempt to remove the burden of expensive lawsuits from corporations, would have raised even more of a ruckus than the current proposal.
People don't want doctors to be unable to practice, so if the issue is presented as "Vote Yes or go without medical care," they'll pull the lever for Prop. 12.

If you haven't guessed, I'm more opposed to Prop. 12 than is the Clerk. Even if it is restricted to healthcare litigation, it will be an excessive response to the problem. I would prefer to attempt other remedies before choosing to amend the state constitution and limit the decision-making power of juries in civil suits.

The ugliest fight of the session, which naturally had nothing to do with the $10 billion deficit, was over tort deform, yet again. As you recall, the state has already been through two major rounds of tort deform, and each time we are promised that if we will just give up even more of the right to sue doctors and corporations that have done us terrible damage, insurance rates will fall, "frivolous" lawsuits will disappear, our teeth will be whiter, our breath fresher, and there will be sunshine and joy in Mudville. Every time, they promise us the world, and every time it doesn't work -- because we never regulate the insurance companies. So they come back and do it again.

This is, I think, a fundamental difference in perspective for liberals and conservatives. Conservatives appear to prefer giving incentives and assuming/ hoping that certain results will follow, without tying the incentive to producing that result.
Take reducing taxes for businesses as a way to encourage hiring. I'm perfectly happy with using lower taxes as an incentive to increase employment, but we have to making hiring a condition of getting the tax breaks. Otherwise, how can we ensure that the incentive actually will produce the desired consequence? (Or, in The Onion's example, assuming that deregulated energy companies will use their profits to update the power grid.)
Similarly, the proponents of Prop. 12 assume that insurance companies will use the increased revenue produced by not having to pay high awards to reduce their medical malpractice rates. But there is nothing in the amendment that requires them to do so.

Patrick Rose, the young UT Law student representing Dripping Springs in the Texas Legislature, had the right idea. He amended the House tort-reform bill to require a medical-malpractice insurance rate rollback -- a smart move that helped to get him named "Rookie of the Year" in Texas Monthly's annual rundown of the Best and Worst legislators.

Before we can fix the problem of excessively high rates, however, we need to stop a bad "solution." Don't forget to vote no on September 13.
Fellow absentee voters: Friday, September 5 is the last day to accept an application for a ballot to be voted by mail; Saturday the 13th is the deadline to receive that ballot if sent within the U.S., Monday the 15th if sent from outside the U.S.

UPDATE: Burnt Orange recommends Dr. Rangel's argument for Prop. 12, but color me unimpressed (though not maroon).

First, Rangel spends his entire time bitching against trial lawyers, even though trial lawyers are not the ones who make the multi-million dollar awards. Juries are.
Joe Schmoe, who is outraged by a doctor's malpractice and decides that by gum, Jenny from the block deserves $10 million, is the person who decides.

Yet I never do seem to hear tort deformers telling us how evil the average men and women who sit on juries and who, let's face it, aren't always the brightest Crayons in the box, are. Nope, it's all the trial lawyers' fault.
Someone unacquainted with the American civil law system could be forgiven for thinking that there is no jury and that plaintiff's attornies decide guilt and penalty, going on the rhetoric of those who want to limit juries' powers without actually saying a word about juries and their flaws.

Rangel ventures toward Constitutional analysis with somewhat unfortunate results, alternatively misidentifying the Eighth Amendment's prohibitions of excessive bail and fines, and of cruel and unusual punishments, as the Fourth and Ninth Amendments.

More seriously problematic, he conflates the civil and criminal justice systems in a way that would goosebump a libertarian. The entire Bill of Rights is intended to preserve the rights of individuals (and perhaps of states) against the government.
The Seventh Amendment specifically guarantees the right to trial by jury for all civil suits, and is separate from the Sixth Amendment that mandates the right to a jury for criminal prosecutions. This ensures that a tool of the government -- i.e. a judge -- cannot make these decisions.
It is the basis of the recent Supreme Court rulings in Ring v. Arizona and Apprendi v. New Jersey, which said that juries, and not judges, must do the crucial fact-finding to give the death penalty or any sentence higher than the ordinary statutory maximum.
The Sixth and Seventh Amendments are all about empowering juries, not judges and certainly not legislators.

Of course, my real problem with Rangel's defense of Prop. 12 is that it doesn't answer any of my objections.
He doesn't talk about the fact that the majority of successful suits are brought against a small minority of doctors;
that insurance companies are just now crying because of the collapse in the financial markets in which they invested;
that there is no assurance that giving away juries' power to set non-economic damages would keep med-mal rates reasonable.

Counting at a New Location

The Head Heeb has a new home for online Arrival Day festivities.

Poetry and Ibuprofen

Not a bad mix; thanks to Will for the former and my roommate for the latter.
Coincidentally, Rita Dove is a Poet-in-Residence at my alma mater, and you can enjoy her contribution of the four millionth volume in UVA's library collection here.

Bombay

Here's the kind of news that makes one's own troubles seem small:

In a haunting replay of the 1993 Mumbai blasts, over 65 people were feared killed and more than 100 injured when two of explosions ripped through busy areas of the commercial capital on Monday afternoon.
While 42 people were killed in a blast at the crowded Mumba Devi temple, unconfirmed reports said 25 had died in a similar explosion at the Gateway of India.

This isn't even as bad as past incidents of terrorism.

Shaken eyewitnesses said this was the worst-ever such incident in Mumbai. Monday's incidents were shockingly reminiscent of the March 12, 1993 serial blasts, when 257 people died and 713 were injured. Twelve blasts had hit the city between 1.28 and 3.35 pm in the wake of heavy rioting after the Babri Masjid demolition.

The Babri Masjid was the Islamic mosque destroyed by Hindu activists in order to build a temple on what they claim is the site of Lord Ram's birth. Today's bombings appear to be a response to the latest development in what may be the world's bloodiest and stupidest theological dispute.

Monday's blasts took place minutes after the Archaeological Survey of India claimed in a Lucknow court that it had found remains of a temple during its excavation at the disputed Babri Masjid Ram Janmbhoomi site in Ayodhya.

Ironically, the frontpage of indiatimes.com features a daily poll that asks, "Can a court verdict on Ayodhya issue ensure peace and communal harmony?"

Sure it can -- right after the judges are killed by either Hindus or Muslims, depending on that verdict.

Crescat Insensible

Brain continues too clogged to read law review articles, but it can analyze a poor argument against the do-not-call registry.

I won't get into Balko's remarks regarding the commerce clause and how it should have prevented Congress from enacting the legislation in the first place.
I am neither a constructionist nor a libertarian and see no reason why Congress should not legislate on a matter of interstate commerce, which telemarketing calls quite clearly are.

This is the weirdest part of the whole article:

I suspect a large percentage of people who have put themselves on the do-not-call list, then, have added their phone numbers to protect themselves from being propositioned with business offers they may not be able to turn down. They're using it to protect themselves from themselves. Were this a private remedy, I'd have no problem with that.
But it isn't.
"Do not call" proponents have asked the federal government to save them from themselves. And while conservatives may not see a problem here, it ought to set alarm bells off for libertarians. It isn't the responsibility of the state -- and most certainly not the federal government -- to enact policies that inhibit private contracts. Even contracts we may later wish we had never entered into.

1) Balko might be correct in his suspicion that many people who put themselves on the do-not-call list are using it to protect themselves from themselves. But what does that have to do with those of us who put our names on the list so we wouldn't be getting calls that never would produce results?

2) I cannot think of a private remedy that would allow people to keep telemarketers from calling them, without blocking calls from other people.
Suppose we had the technology to have the telephone equivalent of the Junk Mail blocker on Hotmail, so that all calls coming from numbers not previous approved went to a separate area, perhaps being automatically routed to an answering machine. That would be an ideal solution for some people, but for many others, it would cause them to miss calls -- sometimes very important ones that should have been answered immediately -- that they didn't want to miss.

3) The do-not-call registry inhibits the creation of private contracts only insofar as the sexual consent requirement inhibits the creation of children. If you wanna go out and make a contract, or make a baby, go for it! Have fun!
But you shouldn't have the possibility of contract-making forced upon you, even if you're going to refuse. Particularly in the privacy of your own home, you should be able to pass your time without being forced to hear commercial appeals.

Balko's attempts to analogize telephones to other forms of communication fall flat.

It's no different than buying a television. You understand that there's a spectrum out there that's publicly owned (we can disagree on this, but that's another argument). You buy a TV, you plug it in, and you understand that even though it's your television, you will from time to time be subject to solicitations from advertisers.

Perhaps Balko isn't familiar with how televisions actually work.
You can use a television without being subject to soliticitations -- it's simply a matter of how you use it. My grandmother has a TV in her room that never has advertisements on it because it's used entirely to watch movies.
If you use your TV to watch network television, of course you're going to see advertisements. How do you think the programming on networks is paid for, with fairy gold? In return for free entertainment, you sit through commercials (unless you channel surf or Tivo).

The same applies to Balko's comparison of telephones and the internet; you don't see advertisements unless you go to websites that are using them for revenue. (Or if your ISP pops them, but in that case you're probably exchanging lower rates for this annoyance.)
If your homepage is something from the federal government, and you never venture to a website that uses ads to support itself, then you shouldn't be seeing advertisements. But if you want to enjoy the free content on the New York Times's website, you have to put up with the nonstop advertising for the South Beach diet.

Telemarkers do not provide any service in return for the time they take. They do not help pay my telephone bill, or provide information or entertainment that I want. So why should they be allowed to bother me?

Will Baude justifies the commentlessness of his blog with a mix of good and not-so-good points. Taking them in order:

1) I don't consider having more voices on a blog to be a problem of clutter. Comments appear in a separate area than the main posts, and it's very obvious which voices are those of the bloggers and which are those of the commenters.

2) People who don't have blogs of their own and who are reluctant to e-mail the weblogger have no way to express their reactions. Most of the time, I don't have so much to say in response to a blogpost that I'll link to it, but I frequently have enough to say that I'd like to be able to post a comment.

3) Can't argue with this, though I don't like to give up something just because of the opportunities for its abuse.

4) This doesn't quite make sense. If a counter-argument isn't clear and reasonable, then the blogger shouldn't feel any need to respond to it. I've gotten some weird comments that I don't bother noticing at all.

5) Ego :-P

6) The rule for self-referential group-blogs probably should be that all responses from members of the group-blog should be made in the form of posts.

7) There's no reason why comments should make a blog harder to read. If Yglesias posts on some particularly incomprehensible philosophical issue, I'm not at all slowed down by the comments; I just scroll right past that post.
As for hidden gems, if there's no comments then there's no way to get those gems in the first place. If the person running the blog finds a comment particularly worthwhile, she'll generally put it up as an update to the original or make it the base of a new post.

The main thing I like about comments on my weblog, as opposed to private e-mails to me, is that it allows readers to interact with each other independently of me.

Last month, I posted about the problem of religious misunderstanding, which caused a couple of people much more knowledgeable about Ayodhya and Hinduism than myself to start a dialogue on whether Lord Ram really is an important deity historically or if He's just been politicized recently.
(The only bad thing about comments: good material can disappear when your former comments service decides to delete your account without warning.)