Andy writes:

Roger, I'm not interested in writing for dying magazines like The New Republic. I already wasted too much time dealing with the American Spectator. Law journals are probably more worthwhile.

Incidentally, after all the mockery of Donahue here and elsewhere, I see that he has surpassed Chris Matthews with Guiliani and Schwarzenegger in the ratings. See drudgereport. Talk about 3 guys who are lost and clueless! Maybe Guiliani and Schwarzenegger can go to Mexico together, with Matthews reporting.

A topic on Roger's blog is how O'Reilly is criticizing Ashcroft's federal intrusion into the sniper case, which perhaps the White House ordered. Why do we need the feds chasing TV coverage here? It wouldn't surprise me if they bungled the investigation. Long list of previously bungled investigations by feds.

I finished Starr's book. Basically, his sop to equality means he's wrong on immigration, feminism, and the gay agenda -- three of the biggest issues.

Speaking of feminism, I realized that its real popularity is with unsuccessful, educated women having more successful husbands. It's the contrast between Hillary Clinton, smarter but less successful than Bill, and Margaret Thatcher, successful in her own right. I bet a study of donors to Emily's List would confirm a high percentage of educated wannabees, and relatively few women accomplished in their own right.

John writes:

It is increasingly clear that the presidential candidates in 2008 will be Hillary Rodham Clinton (Dem) and Rudolph Giuliani (RINO). These are the two with a clear shot, and I don't see anybody standing in their way.

Except for Bush himself, Hillary and Rudy are, by far, the most effective campaigners and most lucrative fund-raisers for their party's candidates this year. No one else is even close.

For example, Rudy was in St. Louis yesterday speaking at a Talent fundraiser. Rudy was careful to point out that he and Talent "don't agree on everything" but "share an essential Republican philosophy."

Conventional Wisdom is that a New Yorker can't be elected president. But that rule doesn't apply if both parties nominate New Yorkers.

Conventional Wisdom is that Dems have to nominate a Southerner for president because, if they don't, the entire South will go Republican. But if Repubs nominate Giuliani, the Dems have a good chance at the entire South after all.

Like Reagan in 1974, Giuliani has 6 years out of office to run for president. The way is clear; no other potential candidates are anywhere in sight.

Someone asked for an example of families who were not able to obtain religious exemptions even after going to court. Here is one from a couple of months ago. An Arkansas kid tried to get a religious exemption from the HBV vaccine requirement, but lost in court because the law restricted the exemption to members of "recognized churches".

The judge, Susan Webber Wright of Clinton sexual harassment fame, said that the law discriminated against individuals with sincerely held individual religious beliefs. The ruling doesn't really make much sense. The outcome was that the kid could not get the exemption.

A major theoretical physics journal has published a paper that appears to be a hoax. It has a lot of advanced buzzwords in it, but the content is nonsense. The author denies that it is a hoax, and the mainstream press doesn't want to write about it because they cannot tell who is right. Read about it here.
This is a little embarrassing for the theoretical physics community. The editors goofed.

Today's NY Times tells the story of the Salem witches. Among the facts: 54 confessed to being witches! Someone who confesses is not necessarily guilty. Maybe the devil made them confess?

Fox's O'Reilly Factor is getting annoying. He now claims that there is a right/left consensus that AG Ashcroft should be fired. He admits that he disagrees with the left-wing attack on Ashcroft, but now he got sucked in by a Maryland prosecutor claim that the Muhammad, the DC sniper, was about to confess. It is just a prosecutor's turf battle, that's all. I doubt that Muhammad was about to confess, but what difference does it make? They caught him with the murder weapon and the getaway car.

Some anti-gun freaks just cannot resist lying about guns. Bellesiles's fraudulent anti-gun book got glowing reviews in much of the media, and hardly any of those reviewers have issued a retraction now that Bellesile has been fired from his tenured professorship and his lies exposed.

Volokh found one magazine that issued a retraction, but he notices that the retraction is filled with anti-gun lies! When Volokh called him on it, the reviewer said:

I do not know what the official NRA position is ... I'm sure that I have heard many gun rights supporters say that "every colonist had a flintlock over the mantle" or words to that effect. ... However, I have neither the time, the resources, or the interest in tracking down those kinds of quotes.

IOW, the reviewer is just another lying anti-gun hack who is only disassociating himself from Bellesiles because Bellesiles had his reputation ruined.

John sends this column about California becoming an anti-business welfare state. It looks like Gray Davis will be re-elected, so the bad trends will continue.

John Lott says that ballistic fingerprinting for guns may not work. We should soon find out. New York and Maryland have started recording the ballistic fingerprints of all new handguns sold. They haven't solved any crimes with the help of the database yet. If they solve a lot of crimes, I am sure other states will follow suit. If they don't, then it is just a big waste of money.

John sends this story about a link between a vaccine and mad cow disease.

PBS Nova is showing a special on Galileo tonight. I'll be interested to see if it repeat the common myths about Galileo and his dispute with the Pope.

Update: Much of the show was indeed devoted to Galileo's dispute with the Pope. Most of the commentary came from the author of a book about some letters written by Galileo's daughter. It would have been better to have more commentary from people knowledgeable about the scientific/theological dispute.

The show ends saying that Galileo's controversial book was one of the greatest astronomy books ever written, and refers the viewer to the web site for what Galileo said about tides. On the web site, you can learn that this great book espoused a completely wrong analysis of tides as Galileo's main argument for the motion of the Earth.

The show says that Copernicus's model was simpler than Ptolemy's, and that it had two motions for the Earth. Actually, Copernicus explained the Earth in terms of three motions. And it wasn't so simple either, because it used a lot of epicycles.

The Pope is ridiculed for this statement, made while sentencing Galileo in 1633:

The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.

Galileo had been allowed to use this proposition as a useful hypothesis for doing calculations, but not to claim that it had been proved true or to give his own Scriptural analysis in support of it.

I don't know about the Scriptural analysis, but someone should have said that modern Physics is much closer to the Pope's view on this point than to Galileo's. The proposition that the Sun is the center of the universe and does not move from its place is indeed absurd and false. Motion is relative to a frame of reference. With respect to a reasonable frame for the Earth, the Sun orbits the Earth. With respect to a reasonable frame for our galaxy, the Sun is on an orbit in the Milky Way, and rotates.

Galileo had some brilliant arguments in favor of the Copernican model, but there were some legitimate scientific reasons for preferring the Ptolemaic model. It was actually Kepler's improvements to Copernicus that gave a more accurate model. (Kepler was a contemporary of Galileo, but Galileo did not espouse Kepler's model.)

The PBS transcript is now online.

The PBS film is not as bad as some other sources. Eg, Here is a Stanford history course on Galileo that says in its course description:

In 1633 the Italian mathematician Galileo was tried and condemned for advocating that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the cosmos. The Catholic Church did not formally admit that Galileo was right until 1992.

You could not find a scientist anywhere who thinks that the Sun is at the center of the cosmos. That idea has been dead for 100 years. There is no way the Catholic Church would admit in 1992 that the Sun is at the center of the cosmos. That would be much sillier than what it said hundreds of years ago about Copernicus.

Silly lawsuit of the day. A Swedish company is suing Reuters for linking to a financial report on its web site.

Another silly legal claim. Microsoft is trying to stop K-Mart from selling a subsidiary in bankruptcy court, because it has non-transferable software licenses. Software should be transferable just like everything else.

Congratulations to the Anaheim Angels for winning the baseball World Series. The AP reports:

A day before the World Series started, reliever Scott Eyre gave the San Francisco Giants the only scouting report they really needed. "Don't look at the Rally Monkey! He will jinx you," the pitcher said. "I'm serious."

The Angels played some inspired baseball. Not everyone was intimidated by Barry Bonds.

John sends this TNR column supporting Lessig's attack on copyright extension. I agree with some of his conclusions, like:

Now the Court has before it a law that is constitutionally offensive on every level: It clashes with the explicit limits on Congress's power set out in the text and original understanding of the copyright clause, it represents a naked transfer of wealth to a handful of greedy heirs of pop-culture icons from the '20s, and it threatens to constrict public domain on the Internet for generations to come.

But some of his facts and arguments are dubious. Eg, he says:

The reason the Supreme Court got out of the business of striking down acts of Congress in the mid-twentieth century was that it presumed that economic interests could ordinarily fend for themselves in the political process.

No, the reason is that President FDR intimidated the SC by threatening to expand it and pack it with political hacks who will rubber-stamp his misguided and socialistic programs. Eventually, the SC capitulated, and FDR did pack it with political appointees who ruled that Congress can regulated a farmer growing vegetables for his own consumption. If that could be justified, then there were no practical limits on what Congress could do under the Commerce Clause.

Andy writes:

Jeffrey Rosen is misguided in implying that Professor Lessig seeks a reduction in government copyright power ("Mouse Trap," Oct. 28). Rather, his briefs and oral argument endorse congressional power to extend copyright retroactively for old works, if conditioned on a quid pro quo like restoration activity. Lessig thereby petitions the Supreme Court for better government, not less government. Rosen is right that the 20-year copyright extension should be stricken, but that can only happen by embracing less government.

Slimy lawyer of the day. Robert Blake's lawyer, Harland Braun, says he will defend a murderer but not someone who appears on TV. Blake agreed to a TV interview, so Braun quit being his lawyer, saying "I don't think there's a criminal lawyer anywhere in the country that would allow this."

I hope Blake hasn't paid this scumbag lawyer. Blake is a famous actor, and he needs defense in the court and in the media. An honest defendant should be willing to tell his story to anyone. This lawyer seems to be more on his own ego trip than to defend the interests of his client.

Another paper says:

Loyola University law professor Stan Goldman said Braun is correct that Blake could hurt himself in the interview and that if Blake was defying Braun now he would probably do it again.
"Lawyers have to know their clients are going to take their advice," Goldman said. "They tell their clients, 'Either I am the lawyer, or I'm not the lawyer.' If Blake does this now, what's he going to do later."

How do these lawyers get the idea that the client is their personal slave? The lawyer works for the client. There is no reason for the client ever being required to do what the lawyer asks.

Watsonville Calif. is voting on water fluoridation. A fluoridation proponent complains:

William Jarvis liked to put on water fluoridation debates for his students at Loma Linda University's School of Dentistry. He would ask them to vote twice -- before the debate and after.
``We always had people favorable toward fluoridation before the debate and less favorable after,'' said Jarvis, who retired two years ago as professor of public health and preventive medicine.

Debates expose these facts:

1. Scientists no longer believe that they have evidence that fluorization has a systemic benefit. (Ie, the only known benefit is topical, meaning from direct contact between fluoride and teeth, and not from consumption of fluoride.)
   
2. Fluoridation does not benefit those who brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste.
   
3. At least 10% of the population shows adverse medical effects of consuming too much fluoride.
   

Update: A measure to stop fluoridation passed by 32 votes. The city says that it is going to fluoridate anyway.

Andy writes that the Baltimore Sun reports that a lot of military pilots have quit because of the anthrax vaccine.

Don't believe any statistics you read in Harper's Index. Every month, they get debunked in the Smarter Harper's Index.

Why wasn't Malvo deported, once INS determined last year that he was an illegal alien?

Why didn't the feds circulate his fingerprints to Alabama law enforcement?

Why were the police profiling the sniper as a white man, when only 55% of US snipers are white? According to the Wash Post, the DC sniper car was spotted at least 10 times in the search, but it apparently didn't match the profile. It seems to me that an unemployed man named Muhammad driving a old beat-up Chevy Caprice with an illegal alien should have matched the profile.

"We were looking for a white van with white people, and we ended up with a blue car with black people," said D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. ...

Another witness, a restaurant employee in the area, said in an interview that he also saw a Caprice slowly driving away but did not volunteer the information to police until after the suspects were arrested, because he assumed agents were looking for a white van. [Wash Post]

I don't want to blame law enforcement, because some of them did a very good job. But when we are at war with foreign Mohammedan terrorist, you would think that federal policy would focus on the people who are causing the most trouble.

John sends this Wired story about EBay not letting someone sell his own music. Sounds bad, but this blog has an alternate view.