On July 4th, 1776...

...how old were the Founding Fathers?  These ages surprised me greatly – somehow, in all my history reading, I'd never quite grasped this:

Marquis de Lafayette	18
James Monroe	18
Gilbert Stuart	20
Aaron Burr	20
Alexander Hamilton	21
Betsy Ross	24
James Madison	25
Thomas Jefferson	33
John Adams	40
Paul Revere	41
George Washington	44
Samuel Adams	53
Benjamin Franklin	70

I'd always imagined this group being roughly contemporaries – and I'd certainly never registered just how young some of the key thinkers were.  That list makes me feel...humbled...

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,924...

Yesterday, a tiny little company providing encrypted email services, called Lavabit, rather abruptly shut down.  Their web site now has just this message:

Lavabit gained some notoriety recently because allegedly Snowden used it.  There's lots of speculation in the press about what provoked Lavabit's shutdown.  I think it's likely they were the recipient of a National Security Letter (NSL) requiring them to turn over metadata they thought should be private.

I want to focus on something other than Snowden's use of it, and the probably-not-coincidental appearance of an NSL.  I want to focus on the wrongness – the un-Americanness – of a mechanism like the NSL.  I (and many others) think it's a step way, way over the line between privacy and security.  It's also a gold-plated invitation for abuse, as the victim has no recourse at all – he can't even tell anyone (not even a lawyer!) what his problem is.  That's just wrong.  Even if you believe that Snowden was a traitor, even if you believe our government needs a way to snoop on this data...it's still wrong.  It's the wrong way to solve the problem, even if you believe there is a problem.

The existence of NSLs is one of the (unfortunately) many things happening to America in my lifetime that have started to make me wonder if this really is the best country for my family and I to be citizens of.  Before about 10 years ago, I had never had such a thought in my life...

America the Beautiful: Updated Lyrics...

By Tam, from View From the Porch:

Oh, beautiful for drone-filled skies
A tax code so arcane!
A voting class on their fat ass
From Houston to Fort Wayne!
America! America!
You voted stuff for free
You made your bed, ye overfed
Go watch some more TV!

I don't think she's celebrating Independence Day, either...

Independence Day...in Egypt...

The news from Egypt has been interesting and sometimes downright exciting over the past few days.  Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, was leading Egypt down a path toward an Iran-like fundamentalist Islamic republic – and the people of Egypt said (rather loudly) “No!”  If we are to believe the pronouncements of the Egyptian military that enabled Morsi's removal (and their actions are so far consistent), Egypt will get another bite at the apple – they get a “redo” on their constitution, and new elections.  It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next six months to a year.

While reading this news, I caught myself having an odd reaction, and it took me a while to figure out what it was.  It was envy, plain and simple.  I'm envious of the chance the Egyptian people have now to rework their government into something more to their liking.

Today is Independence Day here in the U.S., ordinarily a day I would enthusiastically celebrate.  Overeating and too much alcohol might be involved.  I don't feel much like celebrating this year.  The country whose independence I'd celebrate is slipping away, bit by bit.  Another slip happened this week: Obama, acting like the dictator he clearly would like to be, arbitrarily decided to delay enforce a law – he delayed the implementation of Obamacare for large companies.  He is exercising a power that our Constitution does not give him.  Under the Constitution, a president doesn't have the power to simply override a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.  Obama is doing it anyway, precisely as any tyrannical dictator would do.  Now perhaps there will be a lawsuit filed to prevent him from actually pulling this off, but in these days of complicity by both political parties, I'm not confident that such a thing will happen.

Why would Obama do this?  A reasonable question, and this one has a clear answer.  It's not the excuse that Obama is giving; that's just political cover.  The real reason is that his fellow Democrats are afraid of getting creamed in the 2014 election cycle – because they're afraid of the electorate's backlash when they find out what Obamacare will cost them once it's implemented.  This is especially true of some key Democratic constituencies: young people and minorities.  When these groups have to start writing the checks to pay for Obamacare, they're not going to be happy campers. 

So Obama waves his magical, tyrannical wand...and kicks the problem down the road another two years.

I'm envious of the chance the Egyptians have to adjust their government to something better.  We Americans need that chance.  We need a second Independence Day.  That's an Independence Day I would love to celebrate!

How America Lost Its Way...

Niall Ferguson on the same subject I wrote about a few days ago.  Here's just one of several excellent points he makes:

Who benefits from the growth of complex and cumbersome regulation? The answer is: lawyers, not forgetting lobbyists and compliance departments. For complexity is not the friend of the little man. It is the friend of the deep pocket. It is the friend of cronyism.

We used to have the rule of law. Now it is tempting to say we have the rule of lawyers, which is something different. For the lawyers can also make money even in the absence of complex legislation

Read the whole thing...

This is America?

Sarah Ingram headed the IRS' unit that oversaw tax-exempt organizations up until a short time ago.  She was the boss of that unit when conservative organizations were being targeted for tax-exempt application slowdowns and runarounds, and when conservative organizations and individuals were audited.  She's at the very center of the current scandal, and a completely relevant questions (all as yet unresolved) are:

• How much did Sarah Hall know, and when did she know it?
• Did Sarah Hall direct any of the conservative targeting?
• Did Sarah Hall, directly or indirectly, condone any of the conservative targeting?
• Should Sarah Hall have had the processes and procedures in place to detect and prevent the conservative targeting?

That last point may sound like a no-brainer, but it's really not – it depends substantially on how the IRS organizes its oversight and audit processes (I'm making the large assumption that they actually have such processes).

Now, given all those questions hanging over Sarah Hall, what's the right thing for the IRS to do with her?  You and I might say she should be put on paid leave while the investigation unfolds.  The IRS says she should be promoted and put in charge of the implementation of the parts of Obamacare that the IRS is responsible for.

That should terrify any American – the possibility exists that an operative devoted to abusing the IRS for political purposes just got placed in charge of access to healthcare for millions of Americans.  If you're not terrified, you might want to play a little connect-the-dots...

As I read this, I felt like I was reading about East Germany or Romania in the '60s – but I double-checked, and that article really is about America in 2013.

I want my country back.

Challenging Authorities...

Very interesting montage of individual Americans challenging checkpoint authorities...

Americas More Civilized Than We'd Thought...

Not now, but a long time ago – in the period before 1492...

Over the past ten years or so, scientists have made a number of discoveries about the broader extent and higher population than previously believed in “pre-historic” Americas.  Many of these discoveries have been in South America, particularly in Amazonia.  Here's one that is in the United States, giving strong evidence for a civilization there about 3,200 years ago that was capable of mustering thousands of workers to build a large earthworks.

It fascinates me that the evidence of human activity is so difficult to find and interpret, just a few thousand years after the fact.  I wonder what people a few thousand years from now will think about, say, the human occupation of Southern California?  Our artifacts look so permanent – especially on the time scale of a single human life – but clearly they are not...

Why America Is In Trouble...

The Internet makes information available to everyone, free of charge.  Sometimes it does much more, as (for instance) with the free educational material that's popping up all over the place.  What a wonderful opportunity people have today – with just a few clicks, they can sign up for (say) a course on calculus, or physics, or electronics.  How could anyone be against this? What a fine thing!

Whoops.

Minnesota has decided that this is most definitely not okay.  They've ordered Coursera (a free educational site) to stop delivering their content to Minnesota residents.

Doomed.  We're doomed.  Estonia is going to win...

Disturbing...

I happen to be a white male, so this is unlikely to happen to me were I to visit New York City.  But if it did happen to me, I would be royally ticked off.  Why are we doing this to American citizens?  Why are our courts allowing it?

This doesn't seem like the America I grew up in...



Just When I Feel a Glimmer of Hope...

...a news story like this one comes along, and crushes that hope like an elephant stomping on an ant.

I don't want to believe that any public official could be that stupid – but this story is multiply-sourced and appears to be completely accurate.  This does not bode well for my country's future...

The Gate Rule...

Peggy Noonan's lead this week:

There's something Haley Barbour reminded me of called the Gate Rule. The former Mississippi governor said it's the first thing you should think of when you think about immigration. People are either lined up at the gate trying to get out of a country, or lined up trying to get in.

It says something about the health of a nation when they're lined up to get in, as they are, still, with America. It says, of course, that compared with a lot of the rest of the world, America's economy isn't in such bad shape. But it says more than that. People don't want to come to a place when they know they'll be treated badly. They don't want to call your home their home unless they know you'll make room for them in more than economic ways.

It's a rather upbeat and hopeful piece – read the whole thing...

Myths of the American Revolution...

One of the things that fascinates me about reading history is the way each historian casts his or her own filters on their telling of the tale.  It's a rare historian who doesn't edit (especially by omission) the story to better fit their own notions and preconceptions.  The omitted bits often relate more of the objective reality of any particular historical event than the celebrated and generally recorded bits.  So I especially cherish those historical accounts whose very purpose is to relate those often omitted bits.  This article is of that genre, though I know (from other reading) that some of the “realities” mentioned are not particularly well documented, and may not actually be true.  It's still interesting reading, and provokes one to reflect about how history gets made...

Garfield Assassination...

A great short article on this bizarre chapter of American History...

Grade Inflation...

Just one more thing on my long, long list of things that are wrong with American education: grade inflation.

What is grade inflation?  Just look at the red line (percentage of students receiving an “A” grade) on the graph at right.  That's grade inflation.  Today nearly half of all grades given in colleges are an “A”.

This doesn't help the student at all.  People evaluating students on the basis of their grades will know, like I do, about grade inflation.  The same kind of grade inflation is occurring with GPA scores, too.  Grade inflation makes grades (whether letter grades or GPAs) useless as a way to assess a graduate's achievement.  This is precisely the same effect that affirmative action have.

So who is helped by grade inflation?  Short answer: the institutions of higher education.

Here are three articles (one, two, three) discussing both the facts and the impacts of grade inflation. 

Every time something makes me think about American higher education, I'm overcome with a feeling of impending doom.  Damn.  I need a drink...

Stop the Earth, I Want to Get Off...

I stole the title from Doug S., who sent this to me and ruined my whole day...

Fired for Doing Her Job...

We're talking about Naomi Schaefer Riley, a journalist who dared to make uncomfortable (and most definitely not politically correct!) observations about the value of Black Studies.  Of course, in modern America, that meant she had to be fired.

If you project political correctness forward, at some point it forces all thought to cease.  The “thought death” of America.  

Three perspectives from today's WSJ, from Naomi herself, from the editors, and from James Taranto.

The Wheel of History...

As I was reading this excellent post (at Sultan Knish by David Greenfield) musing on the patterns in human history, one paragraph caught my attention:

That is the thing about America that most Americans don't realize. For all the hopeful speeches made by American leaders about exporting the Des Moines way of life to Baghdad or Kandahar, what people in those parts of the world see when they look at America isn't democracy and freedom, it's wealth and power. Those are the things they want, and they don't understand why American leaders keep chattering on about democracy and freedom, no more than we understand why Muslims keep going on about the Koran.

Yes. That's exactly right, and exactly what so many Americans get wrong when they try to imagine what the people in other countries envy about America. 

I remember well my first explorations in Estonia, in the early '90s, when I met quite a few Estonians who had never before met an American.  Rarely did any of them evince interest in our freedoms or our government.  What were they interested in?  Hollywood stars (especially when they learned that I hailed from California, upon which they assumed I rubbed elbows with all of them).  Jeans.  Cars.  The first Gulf war.  In other words, the trappings of wealth and the evidence of power.

I've traveled in a lot of countries; had lots of conversations with people interested in America.  The few conversations I've had with people curious about our government and what it's like to live in freedom really stand out – for their rarity, mostly...

Plea Bargains...

Most criminal cases in the U.S. never go to trial.  Instead, the accused pleads guilty as part of a “plea bargain”.  This saves an enormous amount of time and money, and reduces the number of judges, courtrooms, prosecutors, etc. needed in the justice system.

It also leads, in some cases, to miscarriages of justice – in both directions.  That is, sometimes innocent people are pressured into pleading guilty to avoid the risk of long jail terms.  Sometimes (more often, actually) guilty people are pleading to lesser charges than they're guilty of – putting us all at risk of their repeat offenses.

But, what if...every defendant decided to insist upon their right (granted by the Constitution) for a trial by a jury of their peers?  Short answer: they'd crash the justice system, which doesn't have the resources to handle such a load...

Another interesting and thought-provoking read...

Locked Up...

The New Yorker has an interesting article on why America imprisons so many more people than any other country.  I have many disagreements with some opinions expressed, but I completely agree that our incarceration rate is symptomatic of some profound problem in our society.  It's a thought-provoking read...