The reliably zany Scott Austin responds to Tim’s guest op-ed in the ODE. As we predicted, it’s a laugh riot.

And yes, Timothy, I’m starting this response out by indicating your insatiable lack of comprehension by correcting your erroneous error of assuming that the national government is somehow the “federal” government. Don’t forget that the “federal” government is defined as the combination of the national, state, and local governments inclusively.

This raises many questions. Can you have an “insatiable lack” of something? Are “erroneous errors” worse than the other kinds of errors, or not so bad? And while his last sentence certainly would imply that marriage is a “federal” issue, does he really mean to say that absolutely anything else at all – from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Eugene smoking ban – should be construed in this way? Don’t we then have an identical dispute over which bit of the “federal” government should be sticking its nose into people’s wedding plans?

Then there’s this gem:

…Jarrett White and those of his ilk who look back on the Confederacy as some beacon of light in a smoke-filled, poorly lit room at the seedy basement of a strip club…

Pause for spit-take. Did he actually imply what I think he just implied about the College Republicans and the Confederacy?

We then learn that

Relying on Supreme Court precedent is at best unavailing…

As opposed to just making this shit up, we presume. There’s more, but I don’t want to hog all the fun. One more question, though: can we amend the Constitution to get this guy off campus already? I’m pretty sure we can make a case that it’s a federal issue.

(Let’s use the main thread for this one, folks. I hope we’ll have some responses that run over a thousand characters. Dan, Tim, I’m looking at you…)

It looks like some Hindu militants got dumped before Valentines day again. I don’t know about anyone else, but this looks like a fun tradition that needs to be kicked off on this side of the world. Just think, on February 14th, we could all wake up, pray to Vishnu and beat the hell out of happy people.

On this note, I think I am going to start looking more into the Eastern religions; I’ll bet they have other holidays where they violently assault people.

If you’re on the brink of the traditional Valentine’s Day pit of existential despair this year, there’s a special place that you can go. You can’t mend a broken heart, you can’t put your arms around a memory, you can’t take your love to town, you can’t violate that restraining order, and you can’t get served any more of those fancy whiskey drinks once you’ve started crying in them. However, you can be enlightened and uplifted by the stylings of… well, of he who needs no further introduction from me.

Why must it work this way? Why must a hierarchy of love exist? Why must we divide the concept? Don’t we know divided love can’t work?

Enlightened and uplifted yet? I thought so. This is a pearl from start to finish, folks, right from the moment he adds “a state of total confusion” to his outlook in the first paragraph. And there are more tantalizing glimpses of the inner man to come:

Unfortunately, I am not equipped with the knowledge to make a successful critique of monogamy, so I won’t even try.

If you read between the lines here, I think he’s trying to tell us that he’s got game like Parker Brothers.

It’s only the obligation-based aspects of monogamy that bother me.

See? He’s a stone-cold player. Mind you, you can replace the word “monogamy” in that sentence with virtually anything. Especially “journalism”. Virtually every line here demands its own rejoinder, but I’ll stop at one more:

What confuses me is how someone can claim to “love” another person and yet still condone, or do violence, [sic] to another. How can we hold our girlfriend’s and boyfriend’s hands in joy, but then berate a stranger based on the lone fact that he or she is unknown as we pass each other on the streets?

Because we’re in a bad mood? Because we mistrust strangers? Maybe because they write breathtakingly shitty columns in the local student newspaper? Because strangers stole our wallets and ran over our dogs? Who the hell knows? The pledge to unconditionally love all beings – “living and non-living”, even – doesn’t just devalue the notion of love, it renders it utterly meaningless. That may be the idea, of course: this is the kind of writing that just sucks the marrow out of any concept it brushes up against.

Someone at the R-G deserves a cookie for this one: Eugene Bible Falls On The Road.

Alas: this is the final Tru Calling recap. Television Without Pity is sending the show off to the graveyard called “Permanent Hiatus.” To mark the occasion, Shack works himself up into some kind of human tornado of rage, the culmination of which is almost-germane enough to quote at length:

I hate this show more than any bad television I’ve ever watched. I think it’s because I’m an editor now at a daily newspaper. Every day, I go through the stories by reporters who work their asses off for little pay. And then I make them fix things. Sometimes I make them call people at inopportune moments in order to gather some detail that I think is important to the story. I make them rewrite huge chunks of story. I make them go back to places they’ve already been to in order to get more information. Sometimes I tell them their stories aren’t going to run as planned. It creates stress and resentment sometimes. I don’t do it to be cruel — I do it because I want the stories to be right. I do it because I want to do right by our readers. I do it because I want the reporters to improve their skills and move on to better things. I do it because I want to improve my skills and move on to better things. And every week, I sit down and watch a bunch of people who are making undeserved amounts of money for this shit, where nobody can be bothered to make sure the script even makes any sense — a show where people think we’re too stupid to remember the most basic plot elements, so they have to spell it all out for us like magnetic letters on a board in pre-school. And yet the plots still don’t make any sense. This show is a slap in the face of anybody who actually cares at all about storytelling. I’m glad I got so many kind words about the recaps, but I’m also glad we’re killing them.

There. All those Tru Calling recaps turned out to have something to do with journalism. Somehow, I just knew they were relevant.

And so does Jacob Levy. The major points about the FMA are covered in posts here, here and here. Levy and Volokh make a persuasive case against the FMA. Levy mainly arguing that it is a nearly unprecedented way to mandate state law, and Volokh arguing that the FMA will reach much farther and have much harsher consequences than its proponents would like everyone to think. Interesting stuff, on the whole.

I’m going to guess that it’s the groom.

The Democratic Presidential Field!

Portland blogger Paul Nickell covers the reasons why Measure 30 didn’t manage to pass even in tax-friendly Multnomah County. Here’s an excerpt:

“…[I] would wager that most citizens think the tax system exists to focus first on education, public safety, municipal infrastructure (streets, bridges, sidewalks) and protecting vulnerable persons. We can all argue about the next tier of needs (creating a healthy business climate, building parks, supporting the arts, creating urban renewal – you name it), but they are not and never will be in the first tier.

Contrast this to the scenario we see today: Citizens cry out for a safe city; city leaders talk of major league baseball. Citizens yearn for repaired potholes and sidewalks, city leaders talk of extended streetcar lines. Citizens longingly remember affordable water bills; civic leaders talk about buying the power company. Citizens demand a just and fair police bureau; the civic leaders are silent. And so on, and so on.”

Nickell, to be fair, also notes a interesting fact that the anti-tax groups didn’t mention: That Oregon has the lowest business tax burden in the nation.

(via Portland Communique)

After due deliberation, that’s the only conclusion I can draw from this cartoon, which argues that “real homeland security” demands that we eliminate criminal trials for sex offenders; in their place we ought to substitute miraculously gathered and irrefutable “hard evidence” of guilt that leads to immediate execution.

No other reading of this cartoon is tenable. Perhaps Mr. Baggs intended to satirize society’s tendency to jump to conclusions about individuals accused of a sex offense, to “convict them in the court of public opinion.” But if this reading is indeed the one contemplated by Mr. Baggs, then why the bit about scientific or photographic evidence taking the place of the judge and the jury? Or all that blaring text urging us to implement, again, “real homeland security” in order to exact “swift justice for the families of America?” What did he mean, finally, by “!!!”?

This is not the first cartoon in which Mr. Baggs has let his authoritarian visions come unbidden. See, for instance, this celebratory gush over D.C. Sniper John Muhammad’s conviction and penalty of death. (This cartoon was first grappled with on this blog here.) At the time, its message seemed a tad ambiguous, but in light of today’s cartoon, the meaning is clear — the justice system deserves commendation for producing the right (nay, the inevitable) result desired by Mr. Baggs: bringing Muhammad to final justice.

But the Muhammad cartoon went beyond approving of Muhammad’s fate. It boldly advocated a quick return to medeival methods of criminal prosecution and punishment. First, in depicting Muhammad with his head on a stump, awaiting the ax, Baggs calls for a return to the gruesome executions of old. Second, Baggs would apparently revive Dark Ages-era methods of fact-finding in criminal trials by replacing human judges and juries with flocks of birds. In medeival times, such practices were the norm; the reasoning was that God would make His will clear through the actions of dumb animals and other forces of nature.

Obviously, Baggs has not yet figured out for himself what method of fact-finding would best supplant our current system. Scientific and photographic evidence (gathered and evaluated, presumably, by some omniscient and dispassionate god-computer), or divine intervention through the actions of birds? But what is worrisome is that he finds either one preferable to the adversary system and the sanctity of the jury. This, plus his obvious relish for execution in any form, make one conclusion crystal clear: Steve Baggs is a menace to civil society.

UPDATE: I’ve thought more about it, and am even more confused!

Apparently, Putin’s main challenger for the “presidency” of Russia has disappeared. Yeah, it’s from the NYT so take from it what you will, but it looks to me like the remains of the Soviet Union (and Tsarism before it) are still killing Russia’s people.

I’m blogging this for completeness’ sake more than anything, as I don’t have anything much against the latest from our furry friend at the ODE. Other than the spectacularly superfluous first four paragraphs, that is:

To illustrate: Picture, if you will, a smiling, bearded man walking the streets of Eugene in the heat of a clear, red summer day. This man wears nothing but sandals, a stark white flowing galabia (this is a loose Egyptian garment) and a blue baseball cap with the word “Kerouac” emblazoned on it.

When it comes to exercises in imagination, a bearded man wearing sandals walking around Eugene is not the toughest one I’ve had today. And actually, hang on a second:

Much like the sea itself, reading the poem [Kerouac’s “Sea”] was refreshing.

Oh, ow. No, really, that hurts. OK, the piece is pretty bad. Diane di Prima, a poet who I really hope is spared the AS treatment in a subsequent column, correctly diagnosed the problem here many years ago:

Quite a remarkable man, Paul Craig Roberts, with quite remarkable opinions and ways of expressing them.

This is too good to go uncompiled. For the past week, Eugene Volokh has been just pummelling Paul Craig Roberts for his bizarre and unsavory comments comparing the lot of today’s American taxpayer with that of an antebellum slave. It’s beautiful to watch. If you have a little while to read, try this, this, this, and the links sprouting from them.

Clayton Cramer has also got in on the act, here. He drily suggests that Roberts go on to compare the tax system to the Holocaust.

David Jagernauth has never said anything more true than this:

Furthermore — and I’d like to stress this point — I am not an economist. I am not good with numbers and really don’t understand budgets. I can’t even balance my checkbook. I am probably the last person on this campus who should be commenting on Bush’s $2.4 trillion proposal.

He then spends the rest of his commentary proving that point over and over again. It’s the typical “tax cuts for the rich and Bush really likes OOOIIIILLL” kind of crap that we see repeated all the time from these sorts of left-wing hangers-on. If he admits that he’s not an economist, and he admits that he’s bad with numbers, why does he write the rest of the goddamn column? Oh, I remember now, because when you’re on the left actually getting informed before you go spouting off doesn’t matter. I’d spend some time debunking his premises, assertions, and what he passes off as arguments, but I think we all know what I’m going to say about them at this point. Dave, I’ll make a deal with you, I won’t talk about whatever it is you’re qualified to talk about, if you stop spouting gibberish about the economy…capice?

The Daily Emerald printed a front page headline story that announced that an article printed on Jan. 29 (“Recycling to update sorting methods”) was entirely incorrect.

Emerald Editor in Chief Brad Schmidt writes two articles, one that corrects the mistake and another that apologizes for it.

From the apology:

“As mistakes are noticed, internally or externally, the Emerald does all it can to fix the error and ensure it doesn’t happen again. When Emerald staff members make large errors, such as spelling someone’s name wrong or distorting a vital fact, the newspaper prints a correction (usually on Page 3).

When the story is completely inaccurate, however, it is even more pressing that the wrong be made right. In this instance, I immediately took the story off the Emerald’s Web site to prevent more readers from being misinformed. I talked with Environmental Resource and Recycling Program Manager Karyn Kaplan to find out the proper facts. And I made the decision that — although Kaplan had sent out e-mails to properly inform the campus community and had said she felt the situation was resolved — the mistake had to be addressed in the same way it had been originally presented.

Today, on the same day of the week and in the same place on Page 1, the Emerald acknowledges that it grossly misinformed readers. For that we truly apologize.”

I’d have to say that this is a pretty gutsy and ethical decision on Schmidt’s part. Students never saw an admittance of a mistake by last year’s Ed-in-Chief Mike Kleckner when questionable news stories were printed by the Emerald.

I would link to the recycling article in question, but Google doesn’t seem to keep cached versions of news articles.