Read it.

Just might be.

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No one ever proposed a radical restructuring of the criminal justice system, one that would replace jury trials with a supposedly superior system of charge-and-sentence bargaining. Like the growth of government in general, plea bargaining slowly crept into and eventually grew to dominate the system.

This is because prosecutors have an incentive to get through lots of cases quickly with as high a conviction rate, no matter for what, as possible, because they’re using it as a stepping-stone to the next political office. The system is structurally defective. (Just like our legislative process.)

From a defendant’s perspective, plea bargaining extorts guilty pleas. People who have never been prosecuted may think there is no way they would plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. But when the government has a “witness” who is willing to lie, and your own attorney urges you to accept one year in prison rather than risk a 10-year sentence, the decision becomes harder. As William Young, then chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, observed in an unusually blunt 2004 opinion, “The focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted away from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused.”

The trope ‘Admit your guilt and you’ll get a lighter sentence; be a butt about it and we’ll throw the book at you’ is a standard one in cop shows, to the point where more people consider it some sort of law of nature. The fact that juries are composed of people from the left side of the IQ bell curve — and that everyone is aware of that fact — certainly doesn’t help. Having watched ‘juries’ deliberate through one-way glass during trial practice exercises in law school, the last thing I would want is for my fate to be in the hands of a typical jury.

One point often stressed by progressives is that trials bring scrutiny to police conduct. But when deals are struck in courthouse hallways, judges never hear about illegal searches or detentions. This only encourages further misconduct. Conservatives, meanwhile, are right to wonder whether overburdened prosecutors give the guilty too many lenient deals. Why should an armed robber get to plead guilty to a lesser crime such as petty theft?

Modern courts aren’t about justice, they’re about resolution. Getting the case resolved is what goes on ‘your permanent record’ as an attorney or judge; justice doesn’t enter into it.

It is remarkable how few people will openly defend the primary method by which our courts handle criminal cases. The most common apologia for plea bargaining is a pragmatic argument: Courthouses are so busy that they would grind to a halt if every case, or even a substantial share of them, went to trial. But there is nothing inevitable about those crushing caseloads. Politicians chose to expand the list of crimes, eventually turning millions of Americans into criminals. Ending the disastrous war on drugs would unclog our courts in short order.

Shooting one-in-ten legislators whose session ended with more laws on the books than when they started would be another effective method, and (I suggest) much more satisfying to the public.

But that’s me.

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So I have 1 can of soda or beer. How much ice do I need to cool that off? Well, how cool do you want it? Oh, you can’t decide — well that is ok. I will make you a nice plot of final temperature of drink vs. the amount of starting ice. Remember, I am assuming the drink (and the aluminum can) start at 22 ^oC.

The key here is that the change in energy of the ice (turning to water) plus the change in energy of the drink must be zero. I can write this as:

Hey, this is science.

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With the impending demolition of Columbus, Ohio’s failed downtown mall, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on all of the urban planning failures of the past, and all of the things that, while they were successful in a sense, had serious unintended consequences: urban renewal, pedestrian malls, highway mania, single use zoning, federal housing subsidies, etc. It seems to me that almost every urban planning approach du jour ends up, over time, either not accomplishing the things it was touted as delivering, or brought serious negative side effects. Why is this?

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Geologists say they’ve uncovered expansive new deposits of rare earth minerals, buried within a seabed some 20,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean surface. Research leader Yasuhiro Kato estimates that the deposits contain anywhere from 80 to 100 billion metric tons of rare earths, which, if commercially viable, could pose a serious threat to China’s global hegemony.

And it couldn’t happen to nicer people.

Watch it.

Because your life will never be the same.

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One of the most tedious aspects of the homosexual-activist movement is their incessant whining. They whine about people being intolerant, when they are one of the most intolerant groups on the planet. They whine about persecution, when they are the petted and pampered mascots of the chattering classes, the fashionable accessories of the establishment, beneficiaries of preferences and plaudits showered upon them by those who thereby pat themselves on the back for their broadmindedness. They whine, whine, whine until one longs to take them by the nose and say, ‘Look, we don’t hate you because you’re homosexual — we hate you because you’re assholes!’

Steve Sailer declares the game afoot.

The hunt for the Great Bright Illegal continues. Everybody who is anybody keeps proclaiming that we are lucky to be getting all these highly talented illegal immigrants from Mexico, but, as the decades and generations go by, it’s hard to come up with very many names of high achievers to anecdotally illustrate the bromides.

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Reading the Declaration of Independence 235 years after it was written, it’s kidney-punchingly obvious that the United States government has become precisely the sort of bloodsucking tyrant against which the Founding Fathers revolted.

Wakey, wakey.

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If one thinks about it, the world will never run out of oil.  As oil becomes scarce, consumers will necessarily turn to an alternative before the supply runs out.  Whether it is due to a realization that oil is scarce – if only in an economic sense – or due to a concern for global warming, we can see the signs of a shift in consumption.  Most automobile manufacturers have some pure electric or electric hybrid car project in development or in production.  There are even hybrid Formula One racecars.  (What would Enzo think?)  It is only a matter of time that the automobile is electric.  It seems not too far-fetched that oil consumption might drop.

As a commodity, oil is of course limited. But as a resource, it is essentially unlimited, not just because they keep finding more of it, but because people will stop using it and go on to something else when it becomes sufficiently scarce to be expensive. So anybody who goes around whining ‘OMG, we’re going to run out of oil!’ can be legitimately treated as an idiot.

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I say, let’s just mash all of the latest technologies together and see what kind of a game that makes, what? Jolly good.

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THE UNITED States and the People’s Republic of China are locked in a quiet but increasingly intense struggle for power and influence, not only in Asia, but around the world. And in spite of what many earnest and well-intentioned commentators seem to believe, the nascent Sino-American rivalry is not merely the result of misperceptions or mistaken policies; it is driven instead by forces that are deeply rooted in the shifting structure of the international system and in the very different domestic political regimes of the two Pacific powers.

Now that Russia is no longer a serious threat, apparently we can look forward to war with China. Let’s hope India is on our side.

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I guess, now that Senator Hutchison is retiring, Senator Cornyn has decided to take up the Texas RINO badge.

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Charles Imwalle, 41, of Lake Mary filed a lawsuit Monday against Winn-Dixie and Passion Growers LLC claiming he suffered pain, disfigurement, medical bills and lost wages after pricking his finger on a thorn from a rose he purchased from his local Winn-Dixie in February, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Thursday.

Goodness, what a prick.

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the easy questions.

Exactly how smart is Obama? He is represented, by self and media lickers-and-kissers as “the smartest guy in the room.” Yet as far as I can see, there’s absolutely no documentation for this claim.

The thing is, for the purposes of politics, it doesn’t matter. The Guy On The Left is automatically considered to be the smartest guy in the room, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Consider AlGore — it doesn’t matter that he talks like a retard, and believes absurdities that a six-year-old would turn up his nose at, he’s by definition a Smart Guy because he’s on the Left.

Consider George W. Bush. It doesn’t matter that he graduated from Yale and from Harvard Business School, credentials that most Crustians would give their left nut (if they could find it) for; he’s not on the Left (I’m damned if I say he’s on the Right), so he’s a dumbass.

Consider John Kerry. It doesn’t matter that his GPA at Yale was less than that of George W. Bush, universally accepted as a dumbass; he’s a Smart Guy because he’s on the Left.

And the examples could be multiplied endlessly. It wouldn’t surprise me for some Crustian thumb-sucker to describe Joe Biden as ‘brilliant’, and Joe Biden couldn’t score in a Trivial Pursuit game with a block of tofu.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Reading the New York Times is much like reading Pravda back when the old Soviet Union was in power — you know more or less what the Party line is this week (and ‘this week’ is the important part, because it can change, often dramatically and without warning), so the only unknown quantity is how tortured a sophistry is going to be served up in pursuit thereof.

Timothy Egan is billed by the Times as writing ‘on American politics and life, as seen from the West’, the ‘West’ in question apparently stopping at the Hudson River. His trope this week is the common one of ‘well, these right-wing nuts bitch and moan about government spending but they’re getting X amount from a government program’, as if that were some sort of ‘Aha! Caught you in the depths of hypocrisy, we have!’

Uh, no.

First of all, so long as the Crust tout public schools (and lock poor minority kids into those failing schools by killing school voucher programs) while sending their offspring to Sidwell Friends, it continues one of those speck-in-the-other-guy’s-eye-beam-in-your-own moments. I’ll listen to you bitch about my dirty hands once you’re done with your shower, thanks.

Secondly, an obsession with hypocrisy as the most heinous of sins is a distinctively adolescent trait, one that nominal adults ought to have gotten over lang syne. Guys, grow up; there are people out there who are trying to kill us and destroy our civilization, and I suggest that’s a bit more important than domestic witch-hunts.

And thirdly, so long as those opposing government spending continue to do so no matter where their own money comes from, there’s no hypocrisy involved … unless the opposition were merely pro forma and not intended to be effective, which none of these puling whiners can demonstrate.

The law is the law, and it does not say — nor can it say — that only those who support a program are allowed to take advantage of it. For people who work against a program, and who would kill it if they could (which the Crust is very careful not to allow), to leave the advantages of that program while it exists to the jackals of the Crust is a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder. The fundamental argument against any entitlement program is that it is, in the long term, unsustainable; for right-thinking people to shun the program merely delays its inevitable collapse and encourages proponents to say ‘See? It’s not a bad as you said it would be!’

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And there was much rejoicing.

Oxford comma: Eats, shoots, and leaves.

Inferior comma: Eats, shoots and leaves.

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And, quite frankly, never gave a shit about….

The Other McCain likes the Bezos position. Watch the video.

What it is, really, is an attempt by state governments to impose a tariff on goods sold by out-of-state mail-order vendors, thus usurping the power to regulate interstate commerce, which the Constitution specifically delegates to the federal government.

Whether individual customers order by mail or over the Internet, the transaction is the same, and there is extensive legal precedent that out-of-state mail-order vendors cannot be compelled to collect state sales taxes on such transactions.

Sometimes the doctrine of pre-emption is your friend.

The Amazon links on my blog are merely advertisements, for which I collect a (small) commission based on the sales generated by readers clicking through. California’s argument is like saying that, if a magazine based in New York published an advertisment for a Texas-based mail-order company, this advertisement constitutes a basis for making the Texas company collect New York sales tax.

I’m convinced.

Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director of the Performance Marketing Association, stated, “The devastation is immediate, because the law went into effect upon signing.We tried to communicate to the Governor that this bill would only lead to dramatic income loss of small businesses and job loss, and he signed the bill anyway.”
Similar legislation has been proposed in numerous other states, only to be rejected because those elected officials recognized these proposals do not generate any additional sales tax revenue and, in fact, harm small businesses. When out-of state retailers stopped advertising on in-state websites, the states collect no new sales tax, and in fact lose income tax revenue.

Funny how that works….

Meanwhile, smart people in California are doing the only thing smart people in California can do: Get the hell out of California!

Indeed. Don’t be the last guy out, or you’ll have to turn off the lights … if there are any left.

Read it.

The wrinkles that develop on wet fingers could be an adaptation to give us better grip in slippery conditions, the latest theory suggests.

So why do our faces get wrinkled as we get older? Some scary thoughts there….

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Ponder a world in which teachers engage in ‘industrial action’.

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Gotta like that.

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In other news, Bashar al-Assad claims that time is running out for Hillary Clinton.

Let’ see who leaves office first.

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The problem isn’t that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone.  The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. I’ve written before that the TSA should be abolished. The latest outrage is just more evidence in the case against a government administration we would be better off without. The Transportation Security Administration does not provide transportation security. It provides what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.” The effect of the all the trimmings and trappings at airport security is to give travelers the impression that the government is going about Very Serious Business. The net effect, though, is perhaps a trivial increase in safety achieved at massive costs in terms of time, treasure, and lives: it is well known that driving is more dangerous than flying. By making flying less convenient, we encourage people to drive more.

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To me, the most offensive of the many abhorrent usages now current is the treatment of “data” as a singular noun. A person who says “data is” is at best an ignoramus and at worst a Philistine.

Preach it, brother.