Re Iran: What Daniel Larison said. As citizens we should support the protesters, spread and disseminate their message, and shame the crackdown. The U.S. government should mostly just keep its mouth shut.
Kerry Howley on the too-easy terrorist smear.
Meanwhile, Bonne Erbe wants to do away with the First Amendment and “round up hate promoters before they kill.”
Defense Department quiz for new employees describes political protests as low-level terrorism.
As the rest of the world starts to realize the idiocy of marijuana prohibition, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) wants to dole out 25-year sentences to first-time offenders caught dealing so-called “high-potency” marijuana. Here’s a good debunking of the “Super Pot” panic.
Will Saletan touches on the old gotcha quiestion for the pro-abortion rights left: Should women be able to abort a fetus simply because it’s female? A similar question: Supppose science developed an in-utero test for homosexuality. Should women be allowed to abort a pregnancy because the fetus is gay?
Ohio town dusts off old law against parking on unpaved surfaces, starts ticketing residents for parking on their own gravel driveways.
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on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 8:57 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Parking on gravel story:
“City Councilman D. Michael Collins calls the ticketing “Mickey Mouse nonsense.” He has told residents he’ll try to have the citations rescinded.”
I hope he does, but he’ll be in a fight now with the police union, the rest of the city council, presiding judges, DA’s, tow truck drivers, and the people that pave driveways, because they were all looking forward to some easy money.
On the DoD link:
Power corrupts, as we all know. So, regardless of how great a foundation we have for our government, those in power will try to find ways to remain in power. As such, any protests or criticisms against them will cause them to panic and fear for their power (they are in “terror” of losing their power), hence the word terrorism in this context.
Saletan throws up one red herring after another. As an advocate for choice, I am amazed when I have to bring the argument back to its basic component. A woman has domain over her body. The decision is between her and her doctor. Simple.
The anti-choicers have a zillion ways to distract from this but the bottom line is this: Does the state have the right to interfere in the reproductive process?
Why is this one so hard to grasp?
I guess I qualify as a member of the pro-abortion rights left so let me answer that.
If we allow abortions and regulate it only in terms of how far advanced the pregnancy is, then yes, I would allow a woman to get an abortion for whatever reason she chooses no matter how repugnant I find her reasons.
We have always supported the right of people to have children regardless of why they want to have them including economic investments, additional farm hands, and potential donors for ailing siblings, why should we want to regulate a person’s reasons for having an abortion.
If you only support freedom for people to make decisions you agree with, than you don’t support freedom.
Then what do I know, I don’t think it matters why someone beats someone to a bloody pulp and don’t support hate-crime legislation so I am not sure if I am a lefty in good standing.
RE: Iran
Obviously I disagree. Obama needs to be careful with what he says but having the man who holds the most powerful democratically elected position on the planet come out in defense of those striving for liberty and freedom is win/win. I understand Mousavi isn’t really a much better person to deal with than ahmadinejad but the situation in Iran can be used to our advantage. Obama was elected based almost entirely on his ability to speak clearly and intellectually, maybe he should be using that ability.
I couldn’t imagine any way that the Erbe quote was going to look worse in context, but it did.
It’s not often people come right out and say they support some kind of ridiculous Minority-Report-esque thought-crime police, but there it is.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6501720.ece
Talk about taking “gun control” to the next level. The first “anti-stab” knife now available in the UK where apparently there is talking of banning traditional knives because of stabbings. LOL.
It scares the shit outta me every time I read someone, anyone, calling for a group of people to be “rounded up,” whether that group is pot-heads or white supremacists. It always conjures up images of roaming gangs of brownshirt thugs breaking down doors and hauling people away indescriminately….now that I think about it, we already have roaming gangs of brownshirt thugs breaking down doors and hauling people away indescriminately, but we sure as hell don’t need anymore loud-mouths like Bonnie Erbe whipping up the hysteria another notch.
>>>>A woman has domain over her body.<<<<<>>>Why is this one so hard to grasp?<<<<<
Because the baby is not part of the woman’s body. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Tokin42: I agree with the sentiment, but I disagree that any show of support from a US government official up to and including Obama would necessarily help the protesters at this stage. There is a danger in that part of the world to be seen as being too close to the US or tools of the US. The US has fomented revolution in the world and propped up dictators when our government thought it in our interest, especially in the Middle East, and Obama and the State Department need to be careful not to look like we are doing that now.
Again, I agree with your ends, just not your means.
I suspect part of the problem you’ll have getting the ‘pro-abortion rights left’ question answered is that few readers are lefty in the way I think you mean.
Support for unpopular and (to my mind) immoral choices which are within the law is a core tenet of libertarianism and I would expect answers 3 and 4 to be the norm here.
What the authoritarian left think of the matter is indeed an interesting question, although the ‘homosexuality’ part is probably a red herring because most of the people who believe that homosexuality is a sin or aberration of some sort believe that it’s a choice and so wouldn’t believe a test which purported to spot it in a foetus.
I find hate speech such a frightening concept. Although the CBS article does not show an example of this, there are plenty of people who will designate anything hate speech. Hell, being anti-government is essentially hate speech in the minds of many.
But moreover, can it be said that Bonne Erbe is promoting her own form of hate speech…towards hate speech? Kind of screams hypocrisy.
All tyrants share this same kind of reasoning. “People with differing opinions than me can be and probably should be considered dangerous, especially if they disagree with the restrictions I want to place on them.”
Re: abortion
Why shouldn’t the woman lose some of her body rights at some point such as when the fetus becomes viable and could live outside her body? Why does she get to kill a viable human being just because it is inside her? She had 6 months to make this call already!
#3.
it is hard to grasp because it is internally inconsistent. If a woman has domain over her body, then so does the child – regardless of his/her ability to verbalize those wishes. Your simplification of the issue to a simple “domain over her body” question is not an argument worthy of this site
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) must not have any teenaged children. It seems like it’s always the impotent who wanna regulate sex, the old and/or pious who wanna regulate drugs, people who don’t have to fight wanna make war, people who don’t have to earn money wanna restrict those that do, people who don’t use guns wanna restrict those who do… We need to require a few semesters of ‘mind your own fucking business’ before you can graduate.
even suggesting 25 yr sentences for marijuana should get him tarred and feathered. that and all the other stupid shit he’s done (like telling foreign govts to disregard our budget…) what an idiot.
@#2
We have to realize that it isn’t power that is to blame, but the fact that every politician is a fucktard. So…fucktards corrupt. And we’ve already reached a point of absolute fucktardation in the US political industry.
If Iran revolutionizes itself peacefully without foreign intervention, no one in the US government gets “paid”. Therefore, I give this a 0.0% chance of success.
Of course just like “Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall and ended Russian communism all before his pre-lunch nap”, Obama will take credit for “Liberating Iran”.
Smears are too easy under any number of names. “Terrorist” is just one of the more recent trends. People are quick to label people as perverts, extremists, pedophiles, predators, racists, and haters because they know it evokes an instant mindless revulsion from people and immediately characterizes the accused as being beyond a line anyone will cross to stand up for him or even question the validity of the accusation.
What I find really disgusting is that it’s so effective. It’s the rabid lynch mob mentality in a modern age where communication is so fast that you can suddenly find yourself condemned by the whole world before you even have a chance to respond to the charges.
Misusing labels like this convolutes the meaning of the words. This reminds me of when the feminist movement characterized pornography as rape.
Damn Radley. Usually you insert at least one humorous or uplifting link in the morning links. Where do I begin with a plateful of depressing stuff such as this?
If I were a hypocritical panties wetting idiot I might suggest rounding up all of the bill of rights haters before they permanently damage the freedoms that the founding fathers guaranteed and millions of people have sacrificed for, sometimes with their lives.
But I’m not. Idiots and cowards have freedom of expression, just like patriots do. I note that there was no place to leave comments to her execrable piece. I’d have gone through a registration hassle just to give the woman a piece of my mind.
#10
There are ways to do this without enabling the hardliners in Iran. Bernstein in a Volokh Conspiracy post uses almost the same idea that I believe… http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_06_14-2009_06_20.shtml#1245142397
Like I said, Obama doesn’t need to call for an uprising but he shouldn’t be letting the ayatollah off the hook. Instapundit posted a link a bit ago to a washington examiner editorial with the perfect headline “Don’t let a good Iranian crisis go to waste”
#3 Saletan throws up one red herring after another. As an advocate for choice, I am amazed when I have to bring the argument back to its basic component. A woman has domain over her body. The decision is between her and her doctor. Simple.
Using this logic, if the prospective father wants the woman to get an abortion but she refuses, he’s exempt from child support. Right? As only the woman can make the unilateral decision to create life.
#9 Because the baby is not part of the woman’s body. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Some would call that baby a parasite.
Oh boy! An libertarian abortion debate. Much heat and little light will be generated. Count me out.
Re Kerry Howley’s article…
It has long been a pet peeve of mine that we call people communists, fascists, terrorists, right-wing, left-wing, etc…when the definition of the term doesn’t apply to the person in question. From now on, instead of calling someone a terrorist or an extremist or whatever, I’m just going to call them a mother fucker. He or she may not actually fuck their own mom, but it’s more accurate than and -ist label like we so often like to do.
#21
Reminds me of the south park stem cell episode
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=1cu&q=south%20park%20stem%20cell%20christopher%20reeves&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
“This is starting to look like something we shouldn’t be a part of” (1 min in)
I have to agree that any official US government “encouragement” may be a negative for the Iranians. It’s not like we once fomented a coup there and set up our dictator or anything….oh wait.
Should women be able to abort a fetus simply because it’s female? A similar question: Supppose science developed an in-utero test for homosexuality. Should women be allowed to abort a pregnancy because the fetus is gay?
Yes and yes. I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be so difficult.
The logical necessity from Ms Erbe’s comment is that she should be “rounded up and locked away” because she is advocating a hate crime.
“Some would call that baby a parasite.”
By that mode of thinking, my 8 yr old is a “parasite”.
Should I be allowed to kill him because I am tired of paying child support? (not that I would do any such thing, I love my kid, but just to make a point here :) )
“Should women be able to abort a fetus simply because it’s female? A similar question: Supppose science developed an in-utero test for homosexuality. Should women be allowed to abort a pregnancy because the fetus is gay? “
Yes and yes, next question.
Mattocracy,
Well said my friend, well said.
As a pro-life-leaning libertarian (and by that I mean somebody who finds certain arguments on each side of the issue compelling but is slightly more persuaded by this argument), I appreciate that most of you have no problem acknowledging that such behavior should be permitted. I can respect an opinion with which I disagree if it’s well-reasoned and consistent. I suspect many lefty pro-lifers would object to aborting fetuses because they’re gay/female/supply-siders/etc. and that’s why I can’t deal with many of the mainstream pro-choice groups. (On a side note, I also can’t deal with many of the mainstream pro-life groups because they’re likewise inconsistent in their positions).
Me too. Given the choice of discussing abortion rights or smacking my balls repeatedly with a hammer, I could go either way.
Dave, if you give us a video of the latter then I’m sure we’ll happily move on from discussing the former.
You may even become a youtube star and get invited to do reality tv.
Considering our history in the region, the USA doesn’t have a heck of a lot of credibility with respect to democracy in Iran. At this point, there isn’t much Obama or anyone in the US could say that wouldn’t make things worse.
Mayor Carty Finkbeiner (FINK’-by-ner) says he stands by the citations handed out last week by the Division of Streets, Bridges and Harbor. He says the tickets were issued under a city law against parking on unpaved surfaces, including gravel driveways.
The Mayor is a Fink!
I didn’t like what Bonne Erbe said, does that mean the government should suppress what she says too?
Carty Finkbeiner, for those who don’t know, is an absolute trip and one of the dumber folks you’ll ever not meet.
He gets a lot of credit in Toledo for the boomlet that city got in the 1990s, much like Clinton and/or Republican Congressmen take credit for the same.
Carty once actually phoned a constituent and verbally abused her because she wanted to keep chickens in her front yard.
He seriously considered an idea from a constituent that Toledo should move deaf people out by the airport.
He once wanted the whole city to boycott Little Caesar’s because they had the audacity to become involved with an arena project of which he disapproved.
Unfortunately, 90s nostalgia took over in 2004 (2005? Maybe?) and Carty got a third term as mayor.
Radley:
As a small favor, could you henceforth put all abortion items in separate posts, away from other issues.
Then those who want to reanimate that zombie fight can do it on their own and leave the rest of us in peace.
eh, well, as a veteran of the Abortion Wars, I have to say that it bears repeating that there is nothing straightforward about that debate, which is why it can be highly irritating to read “BODY SOVEREIGNTY! Simple! Argument over!”
No. That isn’t the way it works.
Radley, I could have saved you the trouble of creating your gender poll and suggested you post something about abortion. The comments generated on this topic tell you all you need to know.
That many of you men are bored or inconvenienced by this issue speaks volumes.
Nice going Balko. Now which site do you suggest I frequent?
I’m one of Mark Kirks peasants, er, constituents. He is – like seemingly every other Illinois politician – a douchebag.
A socialist friend of mine living in DC is having permit problems over her newly paved driveway. It was just a gravel pad, and at risk of incurring a violation because of the “parking on unpaved surfaces” crap. So she hires a contractor and gets a paved driveway. Now she’s in trouble for not having a permit for the driveway.
And of course, all her searching prior to the work yielded no helpful information.
She and her friends are being forced to acknowledge that maybe, maybe, the libertarians are on to something. Just this once, though!
“The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that kush sells for as high as $600 per ounce–creating the same profit potential as crack cocaine, according to Kirk.”
$600 an ounce is more than double the true price. Comparing marijuana to crack is completely insane. Is it legal for a federal officer to knowingly lie to the public?
Also gotta love abortion threads on sites where greater than 90% of the readers and posters are men!
Because men’s opinions somehow matter less?
#42 | Bee |
Oooooh, men bad, women good, got it. The family courts seem to think that too.
It has been fun watching the mods on my first post. Never had one go up and down so much.
Some clarification on that post: (I tend to just blurt out what’s on my mind :) )
1. After viability, I still place a higher value on the woman’s life than that of the “baby”. (perhaps exceptions where woman is in a coma and going to die already?)
2. Avoiding a scar or financial liability is not enough to kill a viable baby.
Now, that said, do I want politicians making laws about this stuff? HELL NO!!!!!
There is such a polarization on this issue that any law that makes it through the process will be heavily tilted toward one side or the other.
I’m just talking about what I feel is right. Just one man’s opinion.
I don’t think the wish to avoid this topic has anything to do with being bored or inconvenienced. I think the problem is that this issue is like asking which color is the best. Any proposed solution based on a person’s own, somewhat arbitrary, personal beliefs about the rights of the fetus, the rights of the mother, and the definition of murder is going to be unacceptable to a large part of the population who define those elements differently, so a political compromise that ensures everyone is equally dissatisfied is the only possible outcome. That hardly makes for an uplifting enjoyable debate.
Maybe we should discuss god instead. haha!
I personally prefer to cultivate and build on those perspectives we share rather than get entangled in angry denunciations of beliefs we passionately differ on, especially here where I have so much respect and admiration for the other participants.
Re: Parking on gravel.
I wonder just what legitimate governmental interest that supposedly serves?
If challenged in court, I really don’t see how the ordinance can survive, particularly if parking on one’s own property. But who knows. These days judges seem to have forgotten about constitutional legitimacy.
I couldn’t imagine any way that the Erbe quote was going to look worse in context, but it did.
Here’s some context that makes it worse: she graduated from law school (*). And yet she still doesn’t understand the First Amendment.
(*) Allegedly. Since her bio says that she was “on law revue at Georgetown,” I’m not sure how seriously to take it.
[...] Via Radley Balko. [...]
Even if a fetus is a fully formed person, a person does NOT have to let another person live inside her body. It’s a nice thing for her to do, but she doesn’t (shouldn’t) have to – and whether or not she does is none of the government’s business.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
Also conspicuously absent is the punishment for women who seek abortions. Women have been aborting unwanted babies since the beginning of time. Should they all have been imprisoned or executed?
I always find it amusing when the same people who would give a fetus more rights than a mother on the other hand tell children to “shut up and do what your mother/father/adult says” because they have no rights of their own.
Anyways…
Maybe Rep. Kirk should be more concerned with policing and giving long sentences to all our corrupt politicians who dick around with taxpayer money in these here parts (IL). And “super pot”. Ha! My maman and I were joking about that last night. We figure the only thing that “super pot” will make you do is eat MORE Cheetos and Oreos. Ooohhh! Everybody run!…to the store, we need more snacks.
@42:
Like the internet?
The smartest thing for Obama to do is to keep his mouth shut while his twittering, facebooking flower/hemp/Ivy League children commiserate with their Iranian counterparts and ferment revolution on the ground. One word from Obama and A’jad gets to go on his “Jews, Zionists, Israel, America, all want me to fail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” ranting, thus totally ending any hope of him failing.
If a women were to abort a gay fetus only because it’s gay, would that not be considered a hate crime?
I think abortion should be legal until the 23rd trimester. Then maybe there won’t be as many obnoxious children ruining my dinners out at nice restaurants.
“Even if a fetus is a fully formed person, a person does NOT have to let another person live inside her body.”
Well, then, get it out without killing it and give it away would seem to be at least an option.
@ Mary # 39
The reason I am not interested in an abortion thread is that the issue has been rehashed endlessly. I have not seen a new argument in 30+ years. The debate is going nowhere and most threads about it descend into ad hominem or are godwinned.
I am simply tired of hearing the arguments repeated.
(BTW: I am strong pro-choice, so don’t bother blaming my reluctance to debate this on mysogyny.)
One nice touch about the Bonnie Erbe column arguing for preemptive imprisonment of people for hate speech is that is it tagged as coming from the “Thomas Jefferson Street Blog”. How proud he would be to see his name associated with calls for state censorship of undesirable speech.
Thanks for posting that link. I am only about half way through, but I find it an impressively reasoned and thought provoking approach to the argument.
I think Aresen is right. We argue it here by repeating the same simplistic arguments that convince no one of anything. Only by questioning themselves is anyone ever likely to change their mind on this issue.
I think Ben Franklin started the abortion wars to sell his newspapers. This link may be the first new insight given to this wretched subject since then.
Thanks, Fay!
I dislike dealing in hypotheticals, but, here goes…
Suppose an accurate in-utero test is devised that can determine if a child will be homosexual:
1) How many microseconds will pass between the announcement and a “statementus Latinus” from the Vatican turning abortion from a no-no into a requirement if the test is positive?
2) How far will the heads of Pat Robertson, “Doctor” Dobson, and board of Focus on the Family expand before exploding?
Well, I’m not much for hypotheticals, either, but:
Suppose an accurate in-utero test is devised that can determine if a child will be a congressman?
Would you abort the fetus?
1) Yes
2)
NoYes3)
MaybeYes;)
As long as the anti-globalization movement wants to describe organized rioting as ‘political protests’, at least some protests ARE low-level terrorism.
Without knowing *anything* about Erbe, I took the article as sarcasm.
Rereading it now, maybe not.
“Because men’s opinions somehow matter less?”
Well, since a man can’t have an abortion, and can’t legally force a woman to have or not have one, arguably our opinions do matter somewhat less. Not a popular thing to say I know.
It occurs to me that the abortion debate for libertarians is a lot like a black hole for physicists. The Theory of Relativity works just fine at large scales. Quantum Theory works just fine for minuscule scales. However, neither quite fits with the other. A black hole is the one place in the universe where both theories must be invoked to explain the phenomenon, but because they don’t fit you get all kinds of problems, paradoxes, and plain old gibberish when you run the numbers. Likewise, abortion is the one place in the libertarian universe where the laws of liberty collide. It’s like dividing by zero or something.
If sex selection abortion was illegal, a woman could just make up another reason for the abortion, right?
the old gotcha quiestion for the pro-abortion rights left: Should women be able to abort a fetus simply because it’s female? A similar question: Supppose science developed an in-utero test for homosexuality. Should women be allowed to abort a pregnancy because the fetus is gay?
Yes, and yes. Where’s the gotcha again?