Archives for 2006

I suppose I could just do an update, but here it is, the order from Judge Michael Eubanks that keeps Cory Maye in prison for the time being, most probably for the rest of his life. Here’s Balko’s thoughts on the matter.

Do you understand why a few of those who are wrongly convicted of serious crimes are later exonerated and released? It’s always due to factual material evidence, i.e., undeniable evidence, such as DNA and so forth. Even still, the state, via its prosecutors and district attorneys, never stands in accordance with the interpretation and obvious conclusion rendered from such evidence, recommending release. No, they do their best to keep the wrongly accused convicts behind bars and/or condemned to die in the state’s death-execution chamber. They do this by obfuscating facts, introducing out-of-context assertions, pleas to "hard work" on the part of the state to get the conviction in the first place, and a host of other things.

And they sometimes succeed. They sometimes succeed even when the evidence is clear and objective. If they can use a technicality within the law to keep an innocent man convicted, then they easily ignore the whisper from their consciences, assuming it whispers to them even still.

But sometimes, the evidence is so great, so convincing, so clear that even Genghis Khan would blush to keep someone locked up.

Cory Maye remains in prison and will likely remain in prison for life because there is no question as to the basic facts of the case. The question is whether you have the right to shoot at intruders breaking into your house in the middle of the night in self-defense. The law generally holds that you do have such right. But not if its the state and its agents breaking into your house. Even if you don’t know its the police — indeed even if you believe it is a life-threatening intrusion — you still have no right to fire on cops. There is no material fact that will ever exonerate you, save the cops themselves admitting to a wrongful break in; and that’s only so because the cop’s stories will always be given all possible weight, no matter any other fact. Of course, given what is known about cops generally, just from what’s posted here, they will never say anything but that they clearly announced their presence.

Cory Maye sat on death row for five years and will now sit for life because he is a morally innocent man and the state is morally guilty. Shooting and killing a cop, an agent of the state is everything to this case.

Granting Cory Maye a new trial is to indict the state and put it on trial. To free Cory Maye is to convict the state. Cory Maye’s life, according to Judge Michael Eubanks, the prosecutors, many residents of Prentiss, Mississippi, and others is a very small price to pay to keep Big Lies propped up and maintained.

This is the sort of entry where you kinda have to know the players for it to make any sense, but whatever…

I used to read Ann Althouse regularly; as in, queued up in my RSS reader. I may have even had her on my blogroll at one time. She is a good blogger, really, and I often wished I had more time to read some of her entries. She’s pretty prolific. Takes really good photos too.

But c’mon, people. Did anyone really think she was anywhere near "libertarian" at a principled level? She’s a Reynolds clone. That is, her entire life has been invested in the legal profession, and just as with Reynolds, "libertarian" means something along the lines of "Efficient Minds and Efficient Markets (through Efficient Law)," if you catch the reference to the Reason tagline, though Reason certainly has that very same problem, and often.

I just can’t believe anyone finds this the least bit surprising. Virginia Postrel notes:

"Althouse was clearly out of her intellectual depth during the discussions…"

Uh, no shit??? Have you guys even read her blog for any length of time? Can you point to any post of hers, ever, where she elucidated an individualist or purely libertarian view with reference to freedom and liberty, as opposed to a more logical legal scheme? I dunno, I haven’t read her with any regularity in a long time, but I’d certainly be surprised to be pointed to anything that would even come close to my own standards.

Hell, if I want to read a conservative blog, I’ve got Kim du Toit and if I want to read pragmatic, consequentialist libertarianism, I’ve got Hit & Run. I’m certainly not getting any special insight on either front from Althouse that I’m not getting there, and certainly never any sense that she has the slightest clue as to what a moral principle is and how it would apply to politics.

Update: Althouse has posted a reply to Ron Bailey’s post linked above. You can read it, if you like, but when I see something like this…

"I came away surprised that some people, especially the libertarians,
were hardcore, true believers, wedded to an abstract version of idea
and unwilling to look at how it played out in the real world."

…such person has just disqualified themselves from any discussion or comment that would take place at my level. Hey, Ann? How about a principled opposition to racism, which apparently was your whole bugaboo, here? Are you "hardcore?" A "true believer?" "Wedded" to it? Can such principled opposition exist as an "abstract?" (note to readers: "abstract version of idea" is redundant, superfluous, and betrays an ignorance of what ideas really are.). Are you willing to be principally opposed to racism without having to "look at how it played out in the real world?"

Althouse is smart. Very smart. It just goes to show you how that’s not nearly enough.

How Very Unsurprising.

Something is being protected. I’ll leave you to discern just what that is.

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and read a book in essentially a single sitting — excepting, of course, the brewing and drinking of coffee and its consequences.

Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris, really is an excellent little book that ought to be passed out to every Christian you know and care about. It’s 90 pages. Two hours, max.

What’s it about?

"Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse."

I have spent quite a lot of time over the past few weeks and days familiarizing myself with the work of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Some of that I’ve posted here in the form of videos and such. What’s becoming clear is that non-belief, or atheism, if you will, is beginning to have a forum for discussion here in America. There’s a whole lot of ways that can go, so it will be interesting. Over the past month or so I’ve heard both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins interviewed on local talk shows, and I’ve also recently heard both numerous times on NPR.

I have become persuaded of at least one thing that is in direct contradiction to what I have believed for a long time. I had always reasoned that super technology was its own safeguard against mass destruction. In other words, the cultural evolution necessary to, say, gain the scientific and technological prowess to build an atomic bomb ensures that a society is rational enough to organize themselves such that wanton destruction does not take place.

But this only accounts for the first ones to come up with it. The copycats who come along later pass through no such evolution and so we are on the verge of 14th-century primitives having nukes (which, if you count Pakistan, they already do). As Sam Harris puts it:

"I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair.

"In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and
material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he
will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists,
liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The
cause of their confusion is simple: they don’t know what it is like to
really believe in God."

You all are already perfectly familiar with what it’s like to be an atheist. If you’re a Christian, consider Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Shintoism, Judaism, or any of the hundreds of others. You know perfectly well what atheism is, and how it’s arrived at. For most of you Christians, especially conservative, fundamentalist ones, the tenets of those other religions, faiths, or traditions seem to you as preposterous; ridiculous, laughable — and most certainly worthy of no respect whatsoever.

Welcome to my world.

People who know me know that I have nearly zero concern for environmentalist "issues." For instance, I’m fond of announcing to people that I do not go out of my way to recycle. I don’t object if it costs me nothing extra in dollars, time, or trouble to recycle, but I absolutely will not go an inch out of my way to do it. At the same time, I love nature, the animal kingdom, and support rational conservation efforts. I also recognize that most real environmental issues, to include the risk of extinction of important species (not all are), are fundamentally known problems with known solutions.

I have never, ever seen the environmentalist movement as anything more than a slightly more sophisticated and organized version of the Luddite movement. Of course, they’re all watermelons, now, so that’s something to be concerned about.

I’ve been saying it for two decades, at least. Over and over. To get from ‘A’ to ‘C,’ one must go via ‘B.’ Here, here, and here is one tiny example of why I’m thoroughly and completely unconcerned with the environmentalist movement, and will remain so. You "environmentalists" would do well to invest your time and effort on real problems, beginning first of with your sense of perspective and ability to think.