Stoned Drivers

At Los Angeles Times, "Stoned drivers are uncharted territory":

Flores had run off the road and killed a jogger, Carrie Jean Holliman, a 56-year-old Chico elementary school teacher. California Highway Patrol officers thought he might be impaired and conducted a sobriety examination. Flores' tongue had a green coat typical of heavy marijuana users and a later test showed he had pot, as well as other drugs, in his blood.

After pleading guilty to manslaughter, Flores, a medical marijuana user, was sentenced in February to 10 years and 8 months in prison.

Holliman's death and others like it across the nation hint at what experts say is an unrecognized crisis: stoned drivers.

The most recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana.

In California alone, nearly 1,000 deaths and injuries each year are blamed directly on drugged drivers, according to CHP data, and law enforcement puts much of the blame on the rapid growth of medical marijuana use in the last decade. Fatalities in crashes where drugs were the primary cause and alcohol was not involved jumped 55% over the 10 years ending in 2009.

"Marijuana is a significant and important contributing factor in a growing number of fatal accidents," said Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy in the White House and former Seattle police chief. "There is no question, not only from the data but from what I have heard in my career as a law enforcement officer."

As the medical marijuana movement has gained speed — one-third of the states now allow such sales — federal officials are pursuing scientific research into the impairing effects of the drug.

Another reason why druggies are losers.

Obama Administration Seeks Warm Relations with Islamists

The Wall Street Journal reports, "U.S. Reaches Out to Islamist Parties":

The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration's realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm's length.

Speaking to reporters during a visit Thursday to Budapest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration is now seeking "limited contacts" with Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections slated for later this year.

"It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence," Mrs. Clinton said. "We welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us."

Seems to me some folks were rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood as a governing party in Egypt just a few months ago. I'll check for a link. Meanwhile, here's this from Frank Gaffney, "The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood":

The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows:

"The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.

Read it all at the link above. And see also, Andrew McCarthy, "The Obama Administration Opens Formal Contacts With the Muslim Brotherhood." And Big Peace, "No Evidence Muslim Brotherhood Is Committed To Democracy."

Progressives Raise Pressure for Ginsberg Retirement

Althouse blogs this report from the Associated Press: "Justice Ginsburg's Future Plans Closely Watched." And this is fascinating:

Ginsburg, the second woman on the bench, has only to look at the first for a cautionary tale about retiring. Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in 2005 in part so she could take care of her ailing husband, John. Two months later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in office.

Meanwhile, John O'Connor's health declined much faster than his wife anticipated and he soon was living in a nursing home in Arizona. Would she have quit the court had she known what awaited?

In retirement, O'Connor has maintained a busy schedule, hearing cases on federal appeals courts as well as advocating for Alzheimer's funding, improved civics education and merit selection, rather than partisan election, of state judges.

O'Connor, now 81, also has said she that she regrets that some of her decisions have been "dismantled" by the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito, who took her seat in 2006, has voted differently from O'Connor in key cases involving abortion rights, campaign finance and the use of race in governmental policies.

O'Connor regretted retiring not long after she left the job. She was pressured out at the time, and she's spoken out against it in later interviews.

John Lennon's Second Thoughts

Recall that by 1979 John Lennon was becoming outwardly conservative.

From David Swindle, at FrontPage Magazine:

How will the Left respond to these revelations? If the first reaction at The Los Angeles Times is any indication, the attempt might be to damage the credibility of the witness. Tony Pierce does not even bother commenting on the claims and instead noted that Seaman plead guilty in 1983 to stealing photos, journals, and letters from Lennon.

Jon Wiener at The Nation also jumped on this strategy to defend the icon he wrote a whole book promoting. Wiener went further though, trying to pass off a bland written statement in support of a group of striking workers and an ambiguous comment that the 1960s “gave us a glimpse of the possibility” of a better world as evidence that Lennon died a progressive. (At Salon Justin Elliott regurgitates this weak tea response.) Wiener ends with another ad hominem against Seaman, noting the former personal assistant also tried to “cash in” on his Lennon connection before with a book. Wiener fails to explain what financial stake Seaman could possibly have today in telling lies about Lennon’s politics.

It’s worth remembering that The Nation was the publication with the longest track record of defending the innocence of the Rosenbergs — regardless of every new piece of evidence to emerge over the last 30 years.

The problem with this kill-the-messenger strategy is that it labors under the mistaken impression that Seaman’s anecdotes are the only proof of Lennon’s Second Thoughts. As soon as one starts looking at Lennon circa 1980 as a Reagan conservative, more and more long-available evidence comes into focus. Old, familiar statements suddenly make sense in a new way. Some writers had even already theorized of Lennon’s political shift.

Well, progressives still have Paul McCartney!

Read the whole thing anyway. Progressive heads exploding at the news! You gotta love it!

More on Amazon Affiliates

I know I've posted on this, but I'm still bothered by the Democrat budget in California, which imposes taxes on online sales from the state, also known as the "Amazon tax," since one of the biggest companies affected is Amazon.com. One of the things I miss about being an affiliate, is that whenever I mentioned a book --- which is pretty often --- I would link to Amazon's associate's link and I could earn a referral commission. That's not an option any more. So now it seems weird linking books knowing that a referral fee could be earned --- and an earning opportunity lost. Anyway, Robert Stacy McCain wrote about his referral success. Every now and then a reader will buy an expensive product through a referral link and that sends a large commission to the blogger. Some time back a reader bought an $800 bunk bed through my links, and I received a hefty commission for the purchase. That was nice. And Robert writes on those as well:

Somebody got a sweet deal — only $499! — on that piece of high-end home video equipment via one of the Amazon links here, which earned me a sweet $20 commission through the Amazon Associates program.

And Robert shares this video of Jeff Bezos:

Meanwhile, I rarely link him but I'll break my rule to send readers to Little Green Footballs for some lulz. Charles Johnson is perterbed by Amazon's decision to pull out of the state, but not so much that Democrat tax hikes are destroying free enterprise in California.

Typical. Charles Johnson's a bleeding-heart progressive with psychological problems. No surprise he'd back big government over business.

Anyway, Common Sense Political Thought has an entry, "Amazon.com going Galt Updated, Saturday morning."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Amazon, California play waiting game in sales tax fight":

Amazon.com Inc. is sticking by its vow not to collect California sales tax on Internet purchases — and state officials must decide what to do about it.

But the showdown over the new tax collection law that took effect Friday could be months away. Companies don't send the taxes to the state until the end of each quarter, which means the California Board of Equalization won't know officially about Amazon's refusal to collect them until Oct. 1.

The tax-collecting agency said Amazon accounts for about half the Internet sales in California from large out-of-state firms that, prior to the new law, did not have to collect sales tax for the state. It said the new law would capture about $317 million a year in sales taxes that previously went uncollected.

Amazon, based in Seattle, has said repeatedly that it would not collect the California sales tax, calling it an unconstitutional infringement on interstate commerce.

Such defiance sets up a major legal battle by this fall, though Amazon could first challenge the law in court, as it has in New York. It has lost a trial court ruling there and has an appeal pending.

Amazon is "going to fight in every state where it can fight," said Tracey G. Sellers, managing director of the Tampa, Fla., office of tax firm True Partners Consulting. "It's going to be years before this whole issue is settled" in the courts.

Amazon declined to say whether it would sue to overturn the new California statute, though state officials expect a lawsuit.

More at that link above, but California officials are looking to novel ways at making this unconstitutional law work:

The new law also gives the Board of Equalization the authority to develop new theories that would establish a nexus or legal connection, making Amazon liable for collecting California sales taxes.

"This swings the gate wide open to establish nexus as we see fit," said Betty Yee, a board member who spearheaded the agency's support for the law. But she acknowledged that any other theories the board devises would probably be tested in court.

As wee see fit? Gotcha.

The Future Still Belongs to America

Great piece from Walter Russell Mead, at Wall Street Journal:

It is, the pundits keep telling us, a time of American decline, of a post-American world. The 21st century will belong to someone else. Crippled by debt at home, hammered by the aftermath of a financial crisis, bloodied by long wars in the Middle East, the American Atlas can no longer hold up the sky. Like Britain before us, America is headed into an assisted-living facility for retired global powers.

This fashionable chatter could not be more wrong. Sure, America has big problems. Trillions of dollars in national debt and uncounted trillions more in off-the-books liabilities will give anyone pause. Rising powers are also challenging the international order even as our key Cold War allies sink deeper into decline.

But what is unique about the United States is not our problems. Every major country in the world today faces extraordinary challenges—and the 21st century will throw more at us. Yet looking toward the tumultuous century ahead, no country is better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities or manage the dangers than the United States.

RTWT.

There's not a lot to quibble with, although Mead might underestimate the challenge of transnational terrorism --- which is promoted by powerful regional states --- to the stability of the international system. If the issue is geopolitics and the rise and fall of great powers, then, yes, America's well positioned for continued primacy for generations. Other than that, I think folks will appreciate systemic arguments like this when the economy's expanding and unemployment's declining.

Iran Sends Arms to Iraq, Afghanistan

At Wall Street Journal, "Iran Funnels New Weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan."

TEHRAN—Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has transferred lethal new munitions to its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, according to senior U.S. officials, in a bid to accelerate the U.S. withdrawals from these countries.

The Revolutionary Guard has smuggled rocket-assisted exploding projectiles to its militia allies in Iraq, weapons that have already resulted in the deaths of American troops, defense officials said. They said Iranians have also given long-range rockets to the Taliban in Afghanistan, increasing the insurgents' ability to hit U.S. and other coalition positions from a safer distance.

Such arms shipments would escalate the shadow competition for influence playing out between Tehran and Washington across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by U.S. preparations to draw down forces from two wars and the political rebellions that are sweeping the region.

The U.S. is wrestling with the aftermath of uprisings against longtime Arab allies from Tunisia to Bahrain, and trying to leave behind stable, friendly governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran appears to be trying to gain political ground amid the turmoil and to make the U.S. withdrawals as quick and painful as possible.

More at the link.

This is classic international politics. I'm reminded of how the Soviet Union saw an improvement in the world correlation of forces after the American withdrawal from Vietnam. By the late-1970s the shift of influence and momentum in the Third World had shifted to Moscow. Iran can't operate on a global scale as the Soviets did, but most of the important developments in national security right now are in the Middle East and South Asia. And given how poorly the Obama administration has responded to current events, Egypt's revolution for example, and the political cut-and-run from Afghanistan, things aren't likely to improve a whole lot in the short term.

VIDEO: Marisa Miller at Boston Common Magazine

See, "Marisa Miller Breaks the Mold."

Also at Marisa Milller's blog.

Conservative Women Under Attack

More conservative female abuse.

Sean Hannity with Ann Coulter. It's excellent, especially the Obama gaffe montage:

British Youth Can't Read or Write

At Telegraph UK, "Too many young people are unable to read, write or communicate properly and do not work hard, a business leader claimed, as mass immigration is named by the Government as the biggest threat to challenging the benefits culture." (Via Theo Spark.)

Well, if it's any consolation to the Brits, Americans don't know when we severed ties from the mother country. At Marist Poll, "Independence Day — Seventeen Seventy When?" And, "Don’t Know Much About History?"

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Sexual Assault Prosecution Collapses: Accuser's Credibility Destroyed

Interesting story at New York Times, "One Revelation After Another Undercut Srauss-Kahn Accuser's Credibility." (At Memeorandum.)

This isn't something I followed closely. These are serious allegations, but that Strauss-Kahn's a socialist made it amusing, especially in that he was expected to be the next Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency.

And more at this Nightline report, which has some strong statements from the plaintiff's attorney:

Also at Telegraph UK, "Dominique Strauss-Kahn walks free after maid rape case crumbles."

BONUS: At Legal Insurrection, "Strauss-Kahn and credibility problems."

NewsBusted: "Democrats say Republicans are sabotaging 'economic recovery''

Via Theo Spark:

Romney Keeps Sights Set on Obama, Economy

At Wall Street Journal, "Republican Front-Runner Looks Past Primary Rivals, Casts Himself as Party's Likely 2012 Candidate."

Romney's far ahead the polls, but Bachmann's had the buzz this last week and Palin's again in the news with "The Undefeated" premiere. It's hard out there for a front-runner!

Michelle Goldberg: 'A Feminist With Paranoid Fantasies About Christian Fundamentalists Taking Away Her Sacred Right to Choose'

Robert Stacy McCain has an outstanding piece on journalist Michelle Goldberg: "Daily Beast Writer Claims Obama Is a Victim of Washington’s ‘Pundit Class’."

Stacy says he's never heard of Michelle Goldberg, and he writes:

So she’s a “senior contributing writer” for media grand dame Tina Brown, a feminist with paranoid fantasies about Christian fundamentalists taking away her sacred Right to Choose, and an award-winning author who has written for a half-dozen other liberal outlets.

I can't claim the same ignorance of Michelle Goldberg. I own a copy of Goldberg's book, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World. I read the first few chapters but had to put it down because I was getting nauseous at the literal campaign of death Goldberg advocates.

Anyway, here's Goldberg on communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

The Democrat Party Has Always Been the Party of Racism

Andrew Klavan (via Self Evident Truths):

Lucy Pinder Lynx Effect

A new ad campaign, from The Lynx Effect:

Lynx is Axe in the U.S., which has been accused of "encouraging sexual promiscuity and sexism."

See also, Mirror UK, "Lucy Pinder takes over from Kelly Brook as new Lynx girl."

And here's a Rule 5 roundup:

At Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart: Emily Scott."

And at Bob Belvedere's, "A Little Hump Day Rule 5: Dorothy Mays And Valerie Lane."

Don't miss: Astute Bloggers, Blazing Cat Fur, Bob Belvedere, CSPT, Dan Collins, Doug Ross, Gator Doug, Irish Cicero, Left Coast Rebel, Mind-Numbed Robot, Legal Insurrection, Lonely Conservative, PA Pundits International, PACNW Righty, Pirate's Cove, Proof Positive, Saberpoint, Snooper, WyBlog, The Western Experience, and Zion's Trumpet.

And my friends Marathon Pundit and Marooned in Marin.

More, at American Perspective, Maggie's Notebook and Zilla of the Resistance.

Drop your links in the comments!

Gay Sexual Abandon and the Perverse Inversion of Values by Same-Sex Extremists

That's the takeaway for me, from this long piece at the New York Times, "Married, With Infidelities."

Gay sexual abandon. Meaning the gay rights movement is expanding the boundaries of what's morally acceptable to accommodate a model of openly aggressive sexual abandon. Gays want sex when they want it, with whomever they want it, wherever they want it. And they're not afraid of saying it, at all. The Times interviews Dan Savage, the author of the homosexual advice column "Savage Love." Yeah. Savage. And open. Savage is all about openness in marriage. For example, if you're not sexually satisfied, tell your spouse. Say you need more. Get approval and go get laid somewhere else. Savage's mantra is "good, giving, and game," GGG for short. Be good, giving, and game for sexual freelancing. It's a different kind of morality, you might say. Here's this from the article:

Savage’s honesty ethic gives couples permission to find happiness in unusual places; he believes that pretty much anything can be used to spice up a marriage, although he excludes feces, pets and incest, as well as minors, the nonconsenting, the duped and the dead. In “The Commitment,” Savage’s book about his and Miller’s decision to marry, he describes how a college student approached him after a campus talk and said, as Savage tells it, that “he got off on having birthday cakes smashed in his face.” But no one had ever obliged him. “My heart broke when he told me that the one and only time he told a girlfriend about his fetish, she promptly dumped him. Since then he had been too afraid to tell anyone else.” Savage took the young man up to his hotel room and smashed a cake in his face.

The point is: priests and rabbis don’t tell couples they might need to involve cake play in their marriages; moms and dads don’t; even best friends can be shy about saying what they like. Savage wants to make sure that no strong marriage ever fails because an ashamed husband or wife is desperately seeking cake play — or bondage, urine play or any of the other unspeakable activities that Savage has helped make speakable. If cake play is what a man needs, his G.G.G. wife should give it to him; if she can’t bring herself to, then maybe she should allow him a chocolate-frosted excursion with another woman. But for God’s sake, keep it together for the kids.

Okay. Right. What else did Savage do up in his hotel room with the young cake boy? Pattycakes? Folks should read the whole thing when they have a few minutes. And I'll tell you: Savage Love won't work in my house. My wife and I are traditional. We love each other exclusively. And we do so because that's how we conceive marriage. When you marry you're committing to that one person you want to share your life with, exclusively, "forsaking all others." There are lots of reasons for this. But most of all is the integrity of the institution itself, and what it means for the sanctity of vows, honesty, and the regeneration of families. Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller have a child by adoption. How's that going to look as the child get older and sees his parents f**king around with whoever they want? And back to the article, Savage talks about how a man would feel giving his wife permission to have extramarital affairs, but then he realizes he can't abide by the thought of someone else vaginally penetrating his wife. You think?!!

I don't look at the gay marriage issue from a religious perspective primarily, because the argument against gay marriage is at base socio-biological, about preservation of families and society, and the regeneration of cultures. It's about preserving that which is eternally right and good. There is nothing natural about same sex marriage in terms of creating life and living in commitment for strength and safety in family. Same sex couples cannot naturally reproduce, and marriage is most basically about binding one man and one woman for the purpose of natural regeneration. For the gay movement to abandon that to uncontrollable desires is obscene. But there's the morally religious argument as well, seen today at the Wall Street Journal, "Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution."

The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it's facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.

To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can't Christians just join the revolution?

And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, "The Honor Code," moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we've witnessed on the question of homosexuality.

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than "moral deficiency."

The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals win and the conservatives lose. Next, the denomination ordains openly gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions.

This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we believe that the Bible is God's revealed word, we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. We believe that God has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only points the way to holiness, but to true happiness.

There's more at the link, and see also Maggie Gallagher, "New York's GOP Lets Down the Base."

The media may portray the New York victory as the decisive turning point that makes gay marriage inevitable across the country—as they almost always do. Yet every victory for our marriage tradition that I have personally helped make happen was heralded as impossible: from Prop 8 in California, which overturned a state supreme court decision imposing same-sex marriage; to overturning gay marriage in Maine in 2009 through the referendum process; to blocking gay-marriage bills in New Jersey, Maryland and Rhode Island; to passing a marriage amendment through the Minnesota legislature that will go to the people in 2012.

Our string of unheralded victories is possible only because the American people, though they have few visible champions, continue to stubbornly believe that gay marriage is not a civil right and that marriage is different for a reason: These unions make new life and connect children to a mom and dad.

Gallagher's group, the National Organization for Marriage, has pledged $2 million to defeat New York legislators who voted for the bill, and they're gleefully targeting freshman Republican Senator Mark Grisanti, one of the lawmakers who flip-flopped on the issue.

Anyway, at Keith Olbermann interviews Savage at the clip. The political and religious discussion, with sex talk, is at the second half. Savage is super articulate. He makes sexual abandon and immorality sound cool. He jokes about people who "butt f**k" and then offers himself up to Tony Perkins. Savage also goes off on people with strong values as being religiously abused. The most interesting argument is that Savage claims that you can't hold traditional values and also be friendly with gays or have good friends who are gay. Savage perfectly embodies gay bigotry. He says if you are traditional on marriage you must instinctively react violently to gay people. That'a lie that makes people of values primitive. It's also fundamentally dishonest. But this is how gay activists win. They paint conservatives as potentially violent anti-gay extremists, and people of values, because they have values not to offend, capitulate. That's how the gay thuggery of sexual abandon wins. It's evil.

Democrats and the Epic Housing Crisis

A great read.

At IBD, "The Angst of Phil Angelides."

A Soldier's Mother — Letter to Hedy Epstein

I regret I haven't been reading her blog like I used to, but this is linked at Memeorandum, and it's worth sharing big time: "Hedy Epstein - A Personal Message":

Your participation, in the flotilla brings shame to you and worse is a betrayal of your family, those that died in Auschwitz. It is hard to comprehend how distorted your view of life, of Judaism, and of Israel must be to bring you to the point that you sail against your own people. Yes, you’ll say you sail for human rights, for humanity and some such nonsense but last year’s flotilla – and very likely this one, displayed the worst of humanity.

There is no humanitarian crisis – so says the Red Cross just two months ago. What arrogance you have to think you know better. You, who make your life in America, dare to tell us how we should live in this land, in this area.

Had there been an Israel when your family was taken to Auschwitz, Israel would have saved them – as we have saved Jews all over the world. No, we are not going to be victims ever again, nor are we interested in making the Palestinians victims.

Now go read it all.

And at communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

Glenn Beck's Last Show on Fox News

Here's part of the show, the introduction:

I'll update with the full clip later. Meanwhile, from Gabby Hoffman, at Washington Times, "Glenn Beck ends popular Fox News show to start GBTV."