A George Bailey Moment

The attempt to hear both sides in the Schiavo atrocity ought to be one long George Bailey moment -- that moment in It's a Wonderful Life when he comes to his senses about the job offer from the putrid Mr. Potter. No, dammit -- there is only one "right" here!

If you don't have a sick feeling in your stomach over this one, I pity you.

Terri Schiavo was killed horrendously, in a manner that would land you in jail if you did it to your pet. Not only was the tube providing her food and water removed, but -- by court order -- her poor parents, and anybody else who cared, were barred from attempting to feed her or give her water normally, BECAUSE SHE MIGHT CHOKE!

The long and short of this case is that you have no right to life. If Michael Schiavo -- who had "moved on," fathering children with another woman despite his continuing marriage -- had, with a mere allusion to a supposed comment by his wife some twenty years ago, the full weight of the Florida and US judiciaries behind his quest to murder his wife because she had become inconvenient to him, nobody is safe.

What's more, the left that shrilly and ceaselessly cried "Constitutional crisis" over efforts to hold President Clinton to any legal accountability is utterly silent about the court trampling of legislative mandate in this case, a trampling boasted of by the judges themselves! From the original judge who never saw fit even to visit Mrs. Shiavo for himself, to the federal courts that openly defied the law passed requiring them to review the case anew, we have a full-blown crisis of authority underway. Unelected judges have now placed themselves as final arbiters over everything, your life included, and the clear letter of the law be damned. This is chilling.

We failed Terri Schiavo. What a sad day for our nation.

Will we also fail to reclaim the liberty we've lost to these lawless, arrogant, totalitarian monsters of the courts?

Read Nat Hentoff for more.

UPDATE 3/31: Also read this by William Anderson.

The Schiavo Lesson

The tragic tale of Terri Schiavo will soon end with her death. We will never know whether this outcome was the one she wanted or not, and I won't dwell on the debate, which can never be settled, over which side of her family was in the right.

What we can take away from this sad saga is yet another lesson in how our unelected judges have freed themselves from any adherence to law. Congress convened in extraordinary circumstances to pass a law requiring the federal courts to look at the Schiavo case afresh. They did not; indeed, they made a point of ignoring the law and sticking their judicial finger in the eye of the US Congress.

All this comes at the same instant as the unbelievable opinion of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the case of the juvenile death penalty. The "justice" clearly structured his thinking to ignore our laws and the US Constitution, and to substitute in their stead international opinion and treaties of which the US is not part, all to come to a conclusion that supports chiefly the personal opinion of one Anthony Kennedy.

It is past high time we begin the long road of addressing this growing problem of illegal judicial activism. Judges who acknowledge no higher authority than their own enlightened opinions are in violation of their oaths, and should go.

UPDATE 3/26: Here's an excellent article by Thomas Sowell on the matter.

Harvard Deserves the Ridicule -- Now for Banishment!

Our most brilliant and enlightened citizens, the faculty and students of Harvard University, have hit rock bottom and begun digging.

This crew is obviously not content with the pummeling the university has received since its womenfolk, and their equally effeminate "male" colleagues, threw their hissy-fit over the politically incorrect ruminations of their president, Lawrence Summers, some weeks ago. Now each group has weighed in with its own individual fainting spell over Summers's pointing out the obvious fact that there are innate differences between men and women -- at least between those men and women who aren't coddled and idiotic Harvard professors and students.

Summers hasn't helped matters with his odious repeated self-flagellations. A real man in the real world would have had the guts to stand by his statements, but at Harvard such things aren't allowed. And Summers surely doesn't want to relinquish his comfy sinecure for anything as passe' as intellectual rigor or principal.

The most valuable outcome of all this would be that the rest of us out here in Hickville see this appalling display by these coddled "superior intellects" who nonetheless display a stupidity beyond belief, and vow never to cast a vote for anyone who has ever had a thing to do with Harvard -- indeed, it would be best if none of our politicians from here on out had ever come near our elite "institutions of higher learning."

I Should be Able to Win the Tour de France

I'd really like to win the Tour de France.

After all, I've been cycling pretty seriously for most of the last quarter-century. Oh, sure, I like beer and fast food more than I like serious suffering. Oh, and I dislike riding in the rain and snow and cold so much, I generally put on ten pounds every winter; even though I take them off again, the cycle certainly does put me well below the international elite in the cycling world.

But what kind of society do we live in when a man has to sacrifice everything even to race internationally, much less ever to win a thing, and much, much less ever to even finish the grandest Tour of them all? And don't even talk to me about genetics; sure, I'm heavily muscled and sweat too much to be an efficient cyclist even when I'm in superb shape. But you're nothing but a Nazi if you dare say that nature has anything to do with my not being on the top of the podium in Paris. Such things ought never be uttered, and anyone who would dare utter them should lose their livelihoods.

Silly arguments? Surely. And the exact things our "intellectuals" have been heralded for shrieking about in the wake of Harvard president Lawrence Summers's comments about the dearth women in top university science positions.

If our intellectuals are blathering morons, where does that leave the country as a whole?

Why Does Breastfeeding Make People into Raving Jihadist Lunatics?

My wife has been breastfeeding our baby boy.

It's not going well. He's a lazy eater and falls asleep while nursing. In his first two weeks, he gained almost no weight at all. So first she followed the advice of her "lactation consultant" and tried very minimal formula supplementation with a system that basically ensured he'd get next to nothing extra.

After that got us nowhere, she did her own thing and is now combining nursing with supplemental bottle feedings of both pumped breast milk and formula. Our little guy is doing great. My wife will probably switch to all formula in the near future.

To many of the "experts," though, this brands my wife as a child-abusing Nazi.

What the hell is wrong with these people who will hear the cries of countless women who have similar problems -- women who are literally getting no real sleep at all and who are in constant pain -- and insist they continue with the "natural" breastfeeding program or be considered forever as failures beneath contempt?

Someone needs to smack these people. All the La Leche zealots who think they're saints for imposing their misguided ideology on millions of women who don't have my wife's intestinal fortitude to stand up to these bullies and point out the incontrovertible fact that they don't have a clue what the hell they're talking about -- those folks really, really need a smack-down. Now.

More Evidence that "South Park" is the Most Intellectual Show on TV

Tonight's South Park took on the hippies and anti-capitalist, anti-corporate dope-smoking morons. A paraphrased excerpt:

Hippie #1: "We're gonna build a world where there's one guy who makes bread, and another guy who takes care of public safety..."
South Park kid: "You mean like a baker and a policeman?"
Hippie #2: "No, man, can't you imagine a world where people offer services in exchange for the services of others?"
South Park kid: "Yeah, it's called a 'town.'"

Sure, reading Smith's The Wealth of Nations or Hayek's The Road to Serfdom or Bastiat's The Law may give you better bragging rights -- but they won't teach you the realities of economics any better than this episode could.

Idiot Watch

One of my greatest misgivings about having a child is the constant parade of complete morons I'll now have to have contact with. It started with some of the nurses I wrote about a couple posts back, and will continue through teachers, coaches, and so on for rest of my life.

But of course, the motherlode of idiots will be fellow parents, as evidenced by this article about "parenting coaches." This beggars belief. Here's one gem of a passage (but just one among many, sadly):

Another time, when their daughter resisted going to diving team practice, Ms. Vandon said: "I was so torn, I didn't know what to do. I called Jennifer and she was like 'bam.' In 10 seconds she had the right answer. My daughter had to go."

Do you suppose "Ms. Vandon" also calls Jennifer to see whether she should wipe her ass or not? Holy crap, I hate people.

I'm Overweight... Yeah, Right

Not that it will quiet the braying ninnies who want the feds to step in to force people to stop being fat pigs, but the Body Mass Index (BMI) is a sick joke.

Do we have too many fat people? Oh yeah. We also have too many people who drink too much (I think I really do fit here), eat too much junk food (here, too, probably), watch too much TV (nope, not here), and know too much about baseball (and definitely not here). So what? That's an inevitable outcome of something I like to call "freedom." Not that that word means anything to nutjobs like Kelly Brownell or Marion Nestle or all those turds from the Center for Science in the Interest of Making Us Feel Smart and Important by Forcing Our Uneducated Opinions Down Your Throat, or any of the pinheads who are on this "obesity epidemic" bandwagon. Speaking of which, we also have too damned many people who have so little to do, they can be on a goddamned "obesity epidemic" bandwagon.

Anyway, here's an actual media report about how stupid the BMI is.

But they didn't need to tell me. Y'know, I hike about twenty miles a week, just to keep some snap in the ol' legs during the snowy months. During the spring, summer, and fall I bike four to six days a week, and for the past six years I've finished the Six Gap Century, a 100 mile extravaganza of pain in the mountains of North Georgia, over the same roads Lance and his fellow pros race on in the Tour de Georgia.

But I have a BMI of 26 or 27, depending on whether it's winter or not. Anything over 25 is overweight. Oh, yeah, and I wear size 32 pants -- just like I have since I was a senior in high school. (That was in '82/'83.)

By the BMI, a third of American adults are overweight. I'm one of them. And all the while, the nice woman who sits next to me at work harangues me for being too skinny. I'm neither, really, but I'm closer to too skinny than to too fat. The braying ninnies need to shut their stinkin' yaps.

Read This George Will Column...

...which neatly encapsulates all that's wrong with last week's Supreme Court ruling on capital punishment.

Any reasonable reading of Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion leads inexorably to the conclusion that he is thoroughly inept. That he had four other justices concur with his appalling mishmash of personal opinion and references to wholly inappropriate treaties, laws, and international notions indicates the sheer awfulness of the court with which our country is currently saddled.

The coming Bush appointments will be vital. Sadly, it seems not many of the incompetent five in this case will go anytime soon.

Baby Stuff

My first son was born a week ago today.

Now, I could launch into one of those treacly perorations about the miracle of life and how you never know how much you can love another being and blah blah blah. Hey, I think it's really cool to be a dad, and quite frankly my boy is the most beautiful baby ever born, but folks who go on and on like that have issues.

Instead, I will first point out how amazing it is to see real pros in action. My boy was breech, so in we went for a C-section (and by that I mean, in my wife went to have her belly slit open like a grouper, and in I went to watch). The anesthesiologist was not only great at what he did, but he actually explained things and made us feel better during what was a very tense situation. And man, the surgeons and OR nurses -- they sliced and diced and never once let on that this was anything but a quiet day in the office for them! And so everyone is healthy -- thanks to all of them for that!

But I will also point out that medicine is one area where you should be able to expect consistent answers and advice. But after the birth, we had a steady string of nurses taking care of my wife, and it seems every one had a different story. No sooner had one told us to do this for the baby and that for my wife's incision, than the next one on shift would tell us the exact opposite! Whazzupwitdat?

And plus, you'd think medical professionals would actually want to hear a patient's complaints before rendering judgment. The other day we went for a first checkup at the pediatrician's office. The surly nurse who checked the baby out "listened" to my wife's question about his wanting to feed constantly, and said, "It could be gas. You know about what you shouldn't eat when you're nursing, right -- chocolate, coffee, and broccoli." Uh... A) How did that even apply to my wife's question? And, 2) Why is this nurse telling us this pantload like she has any clue what she's talking about? In this case, the very non-medicine-practicing hottie buxom British chef-ess Nigella Lawson is right: a nursing woman should eat everything, so the baby will learn to tolerate everything! (I'm no doctor, but you don't suppose "allergies" are skyrocketing because nursing moms only eat noodles, and then their kids only eat noodles till they're thirty, do you? Huh?)

Ah, well, thank goodness for the Internet. Nowadays it's best to ignore most advice and research stuff for yourself. You still probably shouldn't attempt a home C-section, but you can certainly ignore the less-able "help."