Minor Thoughts from me to you

White House Seeks CEOs' Help - WSJ.com:

Mr. Gould said the group would talk about inspiring top performance from government employees. Then he explained that this inspiration would have to be done without much in the way of financial bonuses, threats of firing or promotions that leapfrogged the normal civil-service rules.

What's left, exactly? Inspiring speeches? I don't see that doing much to inspire a career bureaucrat in a secure job to suddenly do something new and disruptive.

Just in case you're case curious, the current projected 10-year U.S. budget deficit is now $9.1 trillion. That's on top of the $11.7 trillion of debt that the U.S. currently owes. The Wall Street Journal has further information on the rather grim news.

CBO predicts that debt held by the public as a share of GDP, which was 40.8% in 2008, will rise to 67.8% in 2019--and then keep climbing after that. CBO says this is "unsustainable," but even this forecast may be optimistic.

Here's why. Many of the current budget assumptions are laughably implausible. Both the White House and CBO predict that Congress will hold federal spending at the rate of inflation over the next decade. This is the same Democratic Congress that awarded a 47% increase in domestic discretionary spending in 2009 when counting stimulus funds. And the appropriations bills now speeding through Congress for 2010 serve up an 8% increase in domestic spending after inflation.

Another doozy is that Nancy Pelosi and friends are going to allow a one-third or more reduction in liberal priorities like Head Start, food stamps and child nutrition after 2011 when the stimulus expires. CBO actually has overall spending falling between 2009 and 2012, which is less likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth.

Federal revenues, which will hit a 40-year low of 14.9% of GDP this year, are expected to rise to 19.6% of GDP by 2014 and then 20.2% by 2019--which the CBO concedes is "high by historical standards." This implies some enormous tax increases.

CBO assumes that some 28 million middle-class tax filers will get hit by the alternative minimum tax, something Democrats say they won't let happen. CBO also assumes that all the Bush tax cuts disappear--not merely those for the rich, but those for lower and middle income families as well. So either the deficit is going to be about $1.3 trillion higher than Washington thinks, or out goes Mr. Obama's campaign promise of not taxing those who make less than $250,000.

What would the deficit projections look like it the CBO forecasts matched Congress's behavior? Even more depressing. The Concord Coalition publishes a "plausible baseline" that uses more realistic assumptions. They project the 10-year deficit as $14.4 trillion.

If we continue on the spending path that we're on, we'll more than double the national debt in only a decade.

One more thing. These numbers are what the budget looks like before passing a healthcare bill that's forecasted to add another $1 trillion to the deficit all by itself.

Democrats Affirm Support for Daschle

Senate Democrats rallied around Obama's Health nominee Tom Daschle, despite his failure to pay over $100,000 in taxes in a timely fashion.

And that, right there, is what's wrong with Washington. Last night, I heard political analysts on CNN saying that Daschle would likely be confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services because "he's really very embarrassed by this" and "it's hard to overstate just how much he's liked and respected in Washington".

Well, he's neither liked nor respected in my household. If I had "failed to pay over $100,000 in taxes in a timely manner" I'd be more than just embarrassed. I'd be on my way to prison after a high-profile prosecution by the IRS. The IRS, you may remember, is headed by tax cheat Tim Geithner.

I have two questions: 1) why do President Obama's appointees get to ignore the rule of law and escape the consequences of their inaction? 2) What happened to the change that President Obama was supposed to bring to Washington? At least President Bush's appointees set the example by paying their taxes. And, if they didn't, their nominations were withdrawn.

This is certainly change, but it isn't the change I expected.

Hate flying? Don't blame it on the evil "free-market", "private" airlines. There are huge chunks of the system that they don't control. There are also many decisions that they don't get to make, thanks to government regulations. Add air travel to the list of hated things that government is partially responsible for screwing up. Scott McCartney writes about some of the details in the Wall Street Journal.

Last year, nearly one-quarter of all U.S. airline flights were delayed, and the average delay was 55 minutes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Passengers lost 112 million hours of time spent waiting, according to estimates compiled by GRA Inc., a consulting firm, based on Department of Transportation data. That's 12,785 years worth of waiting time.

And that doesn't count the delay already baked into airline schedules. On average, U.S. airline flights were scheduled 15 minutes longer in 2006 than in 1997, based on the same distances, according to a study by researchers Steven Morrison and Clifford Winston. Compare current airline schedules to old timetables and you'll find that it apparently takes 25 minutes longer to fly from New York to Los Angeles than it did 10 years ago.

Delays cost airlines $8.1 billion in direct operating costs in 2007, mostly burning extra fuel and paying crews for the extra time. That's more than the U.S. industry has ever earned in a year. Cutting delays can boost productivity, help the environment, reduce foreign oil imports and make the airline industry more financially stable.

More than 1,600 flights last year sat for longer than three hours waiting to take off, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

How is that the government's fault? Well, they control the old, out-dated, and insufficient air traffic control system.

The root of most of the travel problems is a creaky air-travel system run by the FAA that struggles to meet today's demand and certainly can't handle future growth. It's basic national infrastructure in need of modernization. The skies are our interstate highway system and we need new freeways.

The current time-table for modernizing air-traffic control covers 20 years, and the history of the effort is filled with delays. What's needed is a full-court press.

Former FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey says the transformation to a modern system can "absolutely" be sped up. She says the FAA can quickly put in more departure and arrival routes that take advantage of advanced navigation equipment already on a lot of newer aircraft, and if the government makes a bigger commitment to modernize, it will rev up improvement even further by spurring bigger investments by airlines. So far, airlines have been cautious about buying new equipment before the FAA can put it to good use.

"A bigger government commitment in this area, though modest by most standards, makes the business case work for the airlines to equip much of the rest of their fleet," Ms. Blakey said.

Many industry watchers would like to see the FAA split into two parts: a safety regulator for airlines, airports and air-traffic controllers, and a separate air-traffic-control system run in a business-like manner by a not-for-profit entity, not government.

One major reason to split the FAA is that the agency today is both the safety regulator and the operator. In air-traffic control, the FAA regulates itself, leading to potential conflicts of interest.

Dorothy Robyn, a principal of Brattle Group and the White House transportation adviser in the Clinton administration, says the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations in which air-traffic control is still operated and regulated by the same agency. This summer she proposed that a split would enhance safety and at the same time yield faster progress on modernization.

"The problems of the air-traffic-control system are the predictable result of flawed public policy," Dr. Robyn says.

Air-traffic control is a high-technology business these days, requiring lots of investment in new equipment and lots of focus on productivity and service. Traditional government agencies aren't particular good at that, especially when constrained by federal budget rules and sometimes micromanaged by Congress, which often dictates which town will get a new control tower or runway.

Just one more reason why I'm thankful that we have a government to watch over us and protect us. Or not.

I always like a story that points out how supposedly wise government employees manage to destroy the very thing they're trying to protect. Today, the Wall Street Journal fingered the Federal Reserve for much of the turmoil of the last year.

But the larger story is that the global economy is fast popping its latest monetary bubble, the one over the last 14 months in commodity prices and non-dollar currencies.

The original bubble was in housing prices and mortgage-related assets, which the Federal Reserve helped to create with its negative real interest rates from 2002 into 2005. This was Alan Greenspan's tragic mistake, not that the former Fed chief will acknowledge it.

As for the second bubble, this one began in August 2007 with the onset of the credit panic. This is Ben Bernanke's creation. The Fed chose to confront the credit crunch as if it were mainly a problem of too little liquidity, not fear of insolvency. To that end it flooded the economy with money, while taking short-term interest rates down to 2% from 5.25% in seven months. The panic only got worse, and this September's stampede finally led the Treasury and Fed to address the solvency problem by supplying public capital and numerous guarantees to the financial system.

The Fed's liquidity burst nonetheless sent markets for a 14-month loop, as the nearby charts indicate. The Fed created a commodity bubble of record proportions, with oil doing a round trip in a single year from $70 up to $147 and back down to $69 yesterday. The dollar also plunged along the way against most global currencies, notably the euro, as the bottom chart illustrates.

The dollar price of oil and the dollar-euro exchange rate are probably the two most important prices in the world. They represent a huge share of global commerce, sending signals that shape trade and capital flows. When those two prices move up and down so sharply in so short a time -- based more on fear and expectations than on economic realities -- they distort price signals and can lead to a misallocation of resources. Commodity prices have now fallen back to Earth, as the reality of global recession hits home and the Fed can't ease much further. Meanwhile, the euro has fallen from the stratosphere as Europe heads into recession and the dollar becomes a safer haven in a world of fear.

Another reader of The Corner sent an interesting email.

... This is not 1932. Despite having Sarbanes Oxley, the SEC, the FDIC, CRA, TVA, Social Security, Progressive Taxation, Medicare, Medicaid, a high Corporate Tax, the EEOC, tens of thousands of pages of federal regulations, and a $3 trillion plus federal budget, we find ourselves in a severe banking/credit crisis. For almost 3 weeks Paulson and Bernecke have pulled every financial rabbit out of their hats but they still cannot stop the panic on Wall St or the liquidity crisis. Despite having a federal regulatory apparatus that would have been unimaginable in 1929, this nation experienced 2 rather huge market bubbles (Tech stocks 1995-2000, and Real Estate 2003-2007), and all of the greed those kind of bubbles produce.

... The Fed cannot keep pouring cash into the markets; nor can it continue to spend taxpayers money like a teen with his/hers father’s Visa Card on a shopping mall bender. The federal deficit is already at a level no one can begin to imagine. The market has already punished some of the worst offenders, with probably a few more banks waiting in the wings. Who will be left to regulate? Will higher taxes, stiffer government regulations and intrusions work? Will resurrecting Glass/Stengall restore market and credit confidence? This is not 1932. The government is now the prime source of insurance and mortgages. Could it be that both the financial sectors and public sectors got too large to manage? Could it be that the new robber barons are not sitting in boardrooms, but on Capital Hill and in K-Street offices? Perhaps the panic’s root cause is that no investors can trust a financial system that is filled with so many conflicts of interests?

I think it is now dawning on some that there will be no government "solution" to this mess. The continued panic and credit crunch illustrates this. FDR came in to a federal government with a budget just a tad larger than PBS's budget today. Seventy six years and trillions of dollars later, we have come to the end of the FDR model.

That sounds about right. It would be hard for government to spend more than it already does (or is planning to). Somehow I don't think that even more spending will rescue us.

The Corner on National Review Online.

In America, are we ruled by men or by laws? Theoretically, we're ruled by laws -- everyone is under the law and no one escapes justice. In practice, that's not true. And the very people who are charged with enforcing the law are often the first to ignore the law.

Take the traffic laws for instance:

Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are "one of their own" or related to someone who is. The Register used public records laws to obtain OCTA computer logs for the 91 Express Lanes and found 14,535 unpaid trips by motorists with confidential plates in the past five years. A Register analysis showed that was 3,722 separate vehicles, some running the toll road hundreds of times.

Among the top violators on OCTA's list were Dwight and Michell Storay (he's a parole agent with the Department of Corrections), with 622 violations and Lenai and Arnold Carraway (she's an Orange County social worker), with 239 violations.

Some police officers confess that when they pull over someone with a confidential license plate they're more likely to let them off with a warning. In most cases, one said, if an officer realizes a motorist has a confidential plate, the car won't be pulled over at all.

"It's an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy," said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years. "Nine out of 10 times I would."

Many police departments that run red light camera programs systematically dismiss citations issued to confidential plates.

"It's a courtesy, law enforcement to law enforcement," San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Lee said. "We let it go."

It's not a "courtesy". It's breaking the law. These police officers should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. I'm as angry about this practice as I was the last time I wrote about it. It is wrong -- absolutely wrong -- for justice to be perverted this way. Being related to a police officer -- being a police officer -- does not make you special. It does not exempt you from following the rules. The police should know better.

Let me be blunt: any officer that would do this does not deserve to wear the badge.

No More Mike's Hard Lemonades For Me:

OK, perhaps it is a guilty pleasure, but I enjoy downing a couple of Mike Hard Lemonade's on a hot afternoon. Now, it seems, the Food Nazi's at the Center for Science in the Public Interest want to stop me.

Public Citizen's blog announced that CSPI plans to sue the beverage sellers, asking for disgorgement of profits from flavored malt beverages, unless they agree to take them off the market. Their theory? By making flavored alcoholic beverages that taste good, they are effectively marketing to children.(Because, after all, adults don't like beverages that taste good.)

(Via Coyote Blog.)

Mike's Hard Lemonade is one of the few alcoholic drinks that I actually like. (The other, Smirnoff Ice, is almost certainly on their hit list too.) I'm going to be quite ticked if any judge actually rules in favor of these know-nothing busybodies.

I don't trust police officers. Here's another story illustrating why:

Unfortunately, Arizona Sheriffs, including our own egregious Joe Arpaio here in Phoenix, still have a wild west mentality:

On the night of July 29, 2007, Dibor Roberts, a Senegalese-born American citizen living in Cottonwood, Arizona, was driving home from her job as a nurse's aide at an assisted living center located in the Village of Oak Creek, an unincorporated community near Sedona. Along Beaverhead Flat Road, an unlit, unpopulated route through the desert, she suddenly saw flashing lights in her rearview mirror. Fearful of stopping on a deserted stretch of pavement, especially in light of reports she'd heard of criminals impersonating police, she decided to proceed to a populated area before stopping the car, thenearest such area being Cornville, an unincorporated settlement along the road to Cottonwood. She slowed her car to acknowledge the flashing lights and continued to drive. Her decision wasn't especially unusual -- in fact, it's recommended by some police departments....

On Cornville Road, well before the populated area, Sheriff's Sergeant Jeff Neunum apparently tired of waiting for Roberts to reach a settled area. While he was, in fact, a police officer, he now proceeded to justify every fear an American may have about rogue cops. He raced his cruiser in front of Roberts's car, forcing her off the road. He then smashed her driver's-side window with his baton and grabbed a cellphone she was using to check his identity. Accounts vary at this point. While police deny it, the press has reported that Neunum dragged Roberts from her vehicle, threw her to the ground, and handcuffed her while driving his knee into her back.

All of this because she was going 15 miles over the speed limit on a deserted rural road.

(Via Coyote Blog.)

And please don't say that the cop's actions were justified because she was breaking the law. Two wrongs don't make a right -- didn't your mother teach you that?

How's this for economic freedom:

The state of Pennsylvania has shut down the eBay business of Mary Jo Pletz, who started the endeavor so she could earn money at home while caring for daughter, who had developed a brain tumor.

Not content with merely running her out of business, state officials are also prosecuting her. One inspector who visited her home threatened that they were "drawing a line in the sand."

Her crime? Selling goods on the Internet without an "auctioneer's license." Weirdly, they're also threatening to take away her dental hygienist's license.

(Via The Agitator.)

I think someone once complained about that type of thing.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance

The city of Madison believes that if it limits your freedom it can truly make you safer. Next up on their agenda: plastic water bottles.

The city of Madison, enamored of bans on everything from smoking to phosphorus fertilizers, may be setting its regulatory sights on another target -- plastic.

In coming months, the city's Commission on the Environment is likely to begin discussing bans on the sale of bottled water at public events and the use of plastic grocery bags.

Jon Standridge, chairman of the commission, said members voted unanimously at the end of last year to place both items on upcoming agendas.

"Each year toward the end of the calendar year we sit down and talk about what people are interested in," Standridge said. "We ask if something is an environmental problem and if it is worth taking up. And if it is worth taking up, is there something we can do?"

...

Regardless of what happens, Dreckmann said, discussion of the issue is important because it will make people more aware.

"Whether or not we actually do something about it, it's just good to raise the consciousness of people, to have them think about the environmental consequences of drinking bottled water instead of just turning the tap."

If water bottles are really, truly a problem let's fix the problem. Calculate how much they add to the cost of the city's garbage costs. Count how many of them are sold in the city. Put a city tax on each water bottle sold, equal to the disposal cost. In other words, put a price on the damage that the water bottles are doing. Then, let consumers decide whether or not they want to pay that price.

Maybe a per-bottle trash tax isn't the best way to pass the cost along to the consumers. But it's a better way than simply banning the bottles and leaving consumers no choice at all. Why is the Madison city government so opposed to choice and freedom?

Since when did playing poker become illegal?

Another Dumb Poker Raid:

Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week. If California is like most states (and I believe it is), a poker game is only illegal if the house is taking a rake off the top. In this case, it looks like that "rake" was the $5 the extra the hosts asked from each buy-in to pay for pizza and beer.

Police also took a 13-year-old girl out of the home, away from her parents, and turned her over to child protective services. In addition to the charge of running an illegal gambling operation, the hosts are also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Good thing the poor girl was saved before slouching toward an inevitable life of crime.

...

This account suggests the police hinted to individual players that the hosts may have been cheating or defrauding them, though that's not apparent in the news accounts. Firsthand accounts on poker sites have only good things to say about the hosts. Of course, even if the hosts were cheating, it wouldn't justify a full-on raid, particularly in mid-tournament. The SWAT tactics seem more like intimidation. Raiding in mid-tournament also ensures there's a $1,300 pot to seize for the sheriff department's general fund.

(Via The Agitator.)

Well, the Chinese have stopped even pretending concern for the welfare of the foreign peoples to whom they export. As if shipping potentially hazardous tires, dolls, wooden art sets, and even faulty fortune cookies wasn't enough, now they're selling people missiles.

But Saudi Arabia, a country so renowned for being concerned with safety that it still doesn't allow women to drive, has taken a stand. Its own Interior Ministry recently

"made its largest terror sweep to date, arresting 208 al-Qaida-linked militants in six separate arrests in recent months... The ministry said members of [one] cell were planning to smuggle eight missiles into the kingdom to carry out terrorist operations, but it did not say what kind of missiles or what the targets were. [The newspaper] Okaz reported Sunday that the missiles were already inside Saudi Arabia [when they were confiscated]."

A Minor Thoughts source also confirmed that lead-based paint was used to decorate the weapons.

How's this for on the job competence?

According to the lawsuit, about 9 p.m. June 15, Vega came to Guardi's and ordered pasta salad. When Mendez walked into the cooler to get the food, Vega asked Mendez's wife if she wanted to see Vega scare her husband. She said "no," according to court documents.

Then, Vega allegedly pointed the gun at Mendez's head and fired, causing the prongs to stick to Mendez's right temple and collarbone. Mendez went into convulsions and later became unconscious. He also bit off a piece of his tongue, the lawsuit said.

Vega is accused of immediately removing the Taser prongs, which caused Mendez to bleed profusely. Vega then called for back-up, and a supervisor and two detectives showed up and confiscated bloody towels, Mendez's bloody glasses, the Taser prongs and the video surveillance equipment in the restaurant, the lawsuit claims.

Reading a prepared statement, Zabrocki said Vega was conducting a routine check on the business when he noticed his Taser safety deactivated. While resecuring it, the Taser accidentally discharged, striking Mendez in the head and chest and knocking him to the ground, Zabrocki said.

It really doesn't matter which version of this story is true. Officer Vega should be fired either way. He was either guilty of gross misjudgment for using a taser to play a "prank" or he was guilty of gross incompetence for pointing his taser as somebody while adjusting the safety.

The first law of firearm safety is "thou should not point thy weapon at people". For violating that rule one or another, for hurting the very people he was sworn to defend, Officer Vega should be fired.

He won't be. The police department will call the entire thing an accident, verbally reprimand the officer, and sweep the entire incident under the rug. Rather than standing up to protect their reputation, the police department will stand up to protect "one of their own". And that's why it's getting harder and harder to trust America's police officers.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that two homes were invaded recently, by robbers looking for drugs.

"These guys kicked in the doors of people 's residences who had nothing to do with the drug trade, " said Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "It was a terrible event for both couples. "

And a violent one, especially for the women in each couple.

In the first attack, at about 2:55 a.m. on Sachtjen Street on the North Side, the woman was hit in the head with a pistol that one of the two intruders was carrying when they burst into the couple 's bedroom and demanded to know, "Where it at? " according to a police report. They fled without taking anything after the man in the couple yelled at them to leave.

In the second break-in, at about 3:30 a.m. at an apartment on Pike Drive on the South Side, the intruders kicked in the couple 's front door and punched the woman in the face while yelling "something about money and drugs, " the couple told police.

The men in that case rummaged through areas of the apartment before leaving. And again, one of the two intruders was armed with a handgun.

"The couple could not think of any reason why someone would try to rob them, " the report said.

This is a horribly, horribly ironic story. Why? Well, it reads exactly like the stories I've read about cops kicking down the doors of the wrong house, looking for drug dealers. The treatement is exactly the same however. Homeowners terrorized, brutalized, and left without an apology for compensation for damages. Don't believe me?

How about this?

The couple baby-sitting their grandchildren when police mistook their home for a drug dealer's residence has been awarded a $325,000 settlement, their attorney said yesterday.

That's when, without a warrant authorizing entrance into the home of William and Sharon McCulley, but rather with an "anticipatory search warrant" that authorized them to search any property where the marijuana was transported, police entered their home.

Though the Toyota truck they had been following and the transported box wasn't at the McCulley's home, police then threw Sharon McCulley on the ground next to her grandchild and handcuffed her, pressing a gun so hard into her head it left a circular mark, according to the complaint.

Her husband, William McCulley, who has a severe nerve disorder and has a walker and leg brace, was also ordered to lie on the ground, but was unable to do so quickly because of his disability. Thrown to the ground by an officer, William McCulley's implanted electronic shocking device to alleviate pain malfunctioned causing him to convulse, court documents state.

Or this?

The three defendants were among a group of DEA agents who burst into the couple's home Dec. 19 using a search warrant signed by a Sonoma County judge for an investigation of a cross-country shipment of six pounds of marijuana.

No drugs, drug residue, money or weapons were found during the search of Keane's house.

Strange, 63, said in the suit that a DEA agent held her down with a boot on her head as agents stormed through the house yelling, "Where are your weapons?" and "You know why we're here."

Or this?

Williams said he believes the team was supposed to be raiding a parolee's home Aug. 24 when they inadvertently hit the wrong door.

Officers ended up at the home of David and Lillian Scott, just off Rancho California Road.

Lillian Scott said she and her husband were in the living room discussing family plans, their 15-year-old daughter was in the garage with two friends and their 16-year-old son was in another room feeding the Scotts' 5-month-old baby.

That all changed at 9:35 p.m. she said, when Temecula police officers -- four or five, she's not sure -- carrying rifles charged though the unlocked front screen door and ordered the couple to the floor.

"Two of them came over and put handcuffs on the two of us," Lillian Scott said. "We asked what we had done wrong and didn't get an answer."

Elsewhere in the house other officers handcuffed their daughter and her two friends.

"(The officers) told them to get down on the f---ing floor," she said.

Her 16-year-old son, who was feeding the baby, was also ordered to the floor and handcuffed, Scott said.

From the other room, Scott heard her infant crying.

"I asked if my baby was OK and the officer told me if I moved he was going to put a bullet in my head," Scott said.

Or this

Law-enforcement officers raided the wrong house and forced a 77-year-old La Plata County woman on oxygen to the ground last week in search of methamphetamine.

The raid occurred about 11 a.m. June 8, as Virginia Herrick was settling in to watch "The Price is Right." She heard a rustling outside her mobile home in Durango West I and looked out to see several men with gas masks and bulletproof vests, she said.

Herrick went to the back door to have a look.

"I thought there was a gas leak or something," she said.

But before reaching the door, La Plata County Sheriff's deputies shouted "search warrant, search warrant" and barged in with guns drawn, she said. They ordered Herrick to the ground and began searching the home.

"They didn't give me a chance to ask for a search warrant or see a search warrant or anything," she said in a phone interview Thursday. "I'm not about to argue with those big old guys, especially when they've got guns and those big old sledgehammers."

Or this guy, who accidentally tripped his own security system?

"I felt a lot of voltage going through my body," Mr. Hicks said recalling the events of that late July weekend. "That's what woke me up."

Jumping to his feet, Mr. Hicks was aware of an intense sensation between the shoulder blades of his 150-pound body. It didn't stop there. His whole body felt as if it were on fire.

... According to Mr. Hicks, the cops were skeptical. "How do we know that you're who you say you are?" the shorter of the two cops asked.

At that point, the cop holding the Taser squeezed the trigger, sending Mr. Hicks into paroxysm of agony. It was not a short jolt like the first one he received. He fell to the floor. His screams woke the neighbors.

"What do you want?" Mr. Hicks asked. "Please stop [shooting] me." The shorter cop helped him to his feet. Swaying unsteadily, he offered to show them his identification. They searched him and found his wallet. After inspecting it, they threw the wallet on the coffee table.

"I told you I lived here and that I'm the legal resident," he shouted, believing he finally had justice, common decency and the angels of heaven on his side. A staff member at the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania, Mr. Hicks counts himself on the side of the law-abiding citizen.

The cop with the Taser squeezed the trigger again, anyway. Mr. Hicks flapped his arms wildly, but didn't fall. All he could do was scream loud enough to be heard all over the Mon Valley.

After removing the pellets from his bloody back, the cops handcuffed Mr. Hicks and led him out his front door to a police van. They did not read him his rights, Mr. Hicks says. The back of his shirt was soaked with warm, sticky blood.

Meanwhile, cops from six neighboring boroughs searched the house for other "burglars."

Mr. Hicks' mother, Arlene, arrived just as her son was being escorted out the door. She had Mr. Hicks' 11-year-old daughter and a niece in tow. "Why are you arresting my son?" she asked. The taller of the two cops answered that he "didn't have to tell her anything."

When Mrs. Hicks persisted, he said her son was being arrested for "being belligerent."

Ah, yes. Belligerence. A crime truly worthy of repeated tasering, false arrest, and a night in jail. Sounds to me like the cops were angry because the rest of the world doesn't take them nearly as seriously as they take themselves. Of course, they won't face any discipline for the behavior. Honestly, I'm more frightened of hopped up SWAT teams than I am of actual criminals.

President Bush: "General Musharraf, you can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time."*

General Musharraf: "Aren't you?"

President Bush: "...Uh... Well.... Hell. Yeah."

My coverage of several extremely important news stories has prevented me until now from replying to the recent posts of my friend and webmaster Joe - but much like my standing up for terrorists' rights earlier this week, I now find myself wishing I'd acted far more quickly. Perhaps I could have saved Joe some embarrassment.

Embarrassment like this picture.

Or the substantially different but equal embarrassment of my correcting him when he declares, in reaction to news that America's Christian conservatives are considering forming a new party, that

"I’d love to see legitimate competitors to the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, that would take an election cycle or two to fully emerge. Until then, the only thing a new party would do is pull votes away from Republicans and towards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama... [and] the next election could have big consequences... Right now, I’ll take a candidate who merely promises to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court."

Alas.

The problem with Joe and The Anchoress's assertion that lack of conservative unity in '08 will lead to the Socialist States of America is one of perspective. Is saving our freedom important? Well, it's certainly not a non-issue, but it was never the primary focus of the Christian as portrayed in the New Testament. Despite living lives far more imperiled by an oppressive (and foreign) government than today's Americans, the Christ of the Gospels and His followers in Acts never bothered to chase the political freedoms for which so many of their fellow Jews longed. Jesus pointedly refuses to get caught up in an ongoing tax debate (Matthew 22:21). And if compelled (likely by Roman soldiers, many scholars say) to accompany a man one mile, Jesus recommends in Matthew 5:21 the faithful go with him two.

Clearly, Jesus and His early disciples placed far greater importance on social change "from the ground up" - fixing people's souls rather than fixing the system under which the people lived. Small wonder, too, if one considers their ministry within the context of the Bible's other teachings on the nature of Man; after all, when God has made clear that men are not capable of saving themselves, how useful can a government system created and run by men really be? When God has made clear that the war for Man's immortal self is an internal struggle, rather than dependent on external factors, why expend our limited resources in ultimately fruitless endeavors to sustain a safe environment in which to live?

And they are fruitless endeavors. We American Protestants probably need to be reminded of that more than anybody. Although we rarely say so anymore, many of us still vaguely believe the U.S.A. to somehow be a holy land - a God-loving, God-blessed sidekick to Israel. Its divinely-inspired protector. Its big, protective buddy in the cell block.

This is why in Christian fiction about the end of the world, such as the Left Behind series, the U.S. is usually defeated by the Antichrist rather than a party - or Heaven forbid, the vehicle - to his ascension. This is also why the U.S.A., in some form or other, always happens to still exist in Christian fiction during the end of the world; few of us consider the likelihood that much like the Romans, we're likely little more, ultimately, than a particularly bright flash in the pan, and one which will grow progressively dimmer as History marches farther and farther - who knows how far, before Judgment Day? - past our crumbling remains.

Because we think we're special, a nation-state worth preserving in God's sight. But we aren't. And if the concept of the U.S.A. isn't worth preserving, then why do we American Christians (not "Christian Americans", note) spend so much of our God-given time and energy trying to preserve it?

The answer is, I am told: so we can defend the Church.

After all, in the United States the Church is currently free from persecution, and capable of supporting other churches in more dangerous countries because of that. Children may be educated about their LORD Jesus without fear; so may adults. Surely, any reasonable person might claim such a state of affairs is worth saving.

Which is why it's a good thing people like me are around to provide an alternative to reasonable people - because sometimes they're wrong. Such a state of affairs is not worth having, at least not unconditionally, as its proponents basically suggest when they present us the false dilemma of choosing 'twixt two evils. It makes no sense to seek protection of our spiritual kingdom at the cost of our spiritual integrity; it makes no sense to gain even the whole world, if we lose our souls (Mark 8:36).

So what must we as followers of the Christ do? Dr. Dobson himself actually put it very well in a recent (albeit sickeningly fluffy) interview on Townhall.com.

"You start with a moral principle. You have to make your decisions about who’s going to lead you not on the basis of pragmatics—not on the basis of who can win or who’s ahead in the polls or who has the most money or who’s the most popular. You begin by saying what are the irreducible minimums that I believe in, that I care about; what are the biblical values I cannot compromise."

After that, you don't let a bunch of Chicken Littles scare you into budging from those values. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, President Hillary Clinton will steal what meager treasure you have amassed here on Earth, you remind them that the only treasure you consider important waits for you in Heaven. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, Democrats will decide how to run your health care, you remind them that government-run health care is scarcely persecution of the saints. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, pro-abortion judges will sit on the Supreme Court, you remind them that what they are asking you to do is consider voting for a pro-abortion candidate.

Because it ultimately doesn't matter if the very fate of America is indeed at stake in 2008. Jesus doubtlessly knew His own chosen people were to be crushed and scattered by Rome within fifty years of His ministry's end. Even faced with that looming darkness, however, He did not sacrifice the purity and focus of His ministry.

He did not, and you will not, because you both know that whatever the situation today, you will scarcely remember it an eternity from now, when you walk in the fields sprung up from an old world's ashes.

Above: That is not Tony Snow. Not Depicted: Fan blowing her hair.

Below: Who cares? Not Depicted: Fan blowing their hair.

So, by now you've undoubtedly noticed (yeah, like fun you have) that radio and television veteran Tony Snow is no longer supplying the U.S. with its daily news from the White House. Mr. Snow vacated the position of White House Press Secretary on September 14th, citing his current level of pay as the reason; he informs us $168,000 per year is too small a stipend on which to raise his family (I'm actually not making this up). Let's all just give thanks real quick Mr. Snow was President Bush's Press Secretary, rather than his Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Leaving all that aside, however, I'm going to miss Mr. Snow. When the personality first took over the position of White House spokesperson, he was a breath of the freshest air, replacing former Press Secretary Scott McClellan's absolutely abominable performances with a friendly and unflappable show. McClellan seemed incapable or too scared of thinking outside of his pre-written script. He'd often repeat its wordage several times over the course of one interview to a plethora of very different questions, as though it were a magical chant that would eventually make all the bad reporters with their mean questions just - go - away. In short, the man was a dull robot.

Not so Mr. Snow: As a major player in news broadcasting, he had no problem dealing with his former brothers and sisters of the press - and what's more, he could keep his sense of humor as he did it.

From the 24th of '06:

MR. SNOW: [Saddam Hussein] willingly accepted the feeding tube today. It will be in, at a minimum, until Thursday. It has to be in for reasons that I don’t understand for 72 hours.

[REPORTER]: I don’t know the specifics, but how does one willingly accept a feeding tube?

MR. SNOW: I guess, you say, do you want a feeding tube? And he says, yes. And they say, okay, we’re going to give you one. This apparently was a consensual feeding tubing.

I wrote over a year ago on this site that "I can’t believe it; reading a press briefing transcript is no longer headache-inducing. Even if the next president is a Democrat, he/she should keep this guy." It's too bad his extreme poverty has led him from us.

That said, onto the much-begged question: how well's his replacement stack up?

Well, she's certainly easier to look at; in fact, judging from any picture you'll see of her, and taking into account her fiery temper, Dana Perino has a real shot of knocking out Ann Coulter as premiere Republican sex symbol*.

She's no stranger to the press office, either; she's been Tony Snow's deputy for a while now, so she's definitely up to snuff on how everything works.

But in front of the cameras?

I've already mentioned Ms. Perino's temper. She definitely gets flustered more easily than Snow ever did, and when she's been given a particularly tough stance by the President to defend, that's no help. Reading a transcript of one of her question-and-answer sessions with reporters, you'll be struck by how glad you are that you didn't watch it on television - because it really is that painful. The press pool and the situation in general practically begin out of hand and only deteriorate as the briefing goes on, until finally Helen, apparently altogether forgetting that she's there to interview Perino, starts passionately editorializing on U.S. torture tactics - at which point what is, again, supposed to be a "Q&A;" session totally devolves into outright argument.

Q How do we know that it's over now? How do we know -- there's testimony, there's still testimony, there's secrecy. Do you think that alleged terrorist is not going to know he might be tortured by the U.S.? Our whole methods are so abominable, horrific. And I think we're really a shame.

MS. PERINO: What about the people who cut off the heads of American soldiers and put them on the video --

Q That's horrible. We're not --

MS. PERINO: Yes, really bad. We don't torture. We get the terrorists here and we interrogate them.

Q The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, which you keep bringing up...

Occasionally she allows her panic to result in her saying absolutely baffling things, too.

"Q Well, could you ask [the president his opinion on the bill]? I mean --

MS. PERINO: No, I'm not -- I'll see. If I see him I'll ask him.

You'll ask him "if you see him"? Um, Dana - you're his spokesperson.

On the plus side, Ms. Perino's willingness to fight back against a room full of Democrat reporters shows she has enough confidence and knowledge to speak off-script. That's impressive. And her mean streak isn't wholly unappreciated, either. It's rather endearing when she mutters that it's fine by her "if MoveOn.org and the unions, which seems like a match made in heaven, want to get together and waste another two weeks and lots of money to try to pressure votes, when any reasonable person can look at this and realize that in the House they are not going to get those votes to override the President's veto..."

Dana Perino clearly has personality, then, and more importantly, she obviously believes in what she's doing (something Mr. Snow actually didn't have going for him, having freely admitted at his tenure's start that he and the president didn't see eye to eye on all issues). Still, one must remember: there's a difference between calling the White House's press corps on when it crosses the line and establishing a regularly hostile environment, which is the last thing the president needs right now. Perhaps Ms. Perino errs too far in that very direction and bites off heads more often than she should.

Come to think of it, I notice a worrying propensity for her to interrupt reporters before they even finish their questions. If a reporter is jumping on a soap box or taking too long, asking them to hurry it up is obviously within the press secretary's mandate, but many reporters don't seem to manage to get a full sentence out before she starts answering.

Q Dana, do you know if the President has talked to Senator Domenici since Domenici made the --

MS. PERINO: Yes, I believe that Senator Domenici spoke to the President day before yesterday..

She needs to rein in her eagerness.

All told, I'll give her 2 stars out of 4 - serviceable. Perino's no horror like Mr. McClellan but nowhere near a star like Tony Snow. She hasn't yet found her footing on the stage, consequently appears awkward, not in control, grasping - which some might argue to be an accurate representation of the administration at present, but which is certainly not at any rate a helpful one.

Of course, as President Clinton's first press secretary George Stephanopoulos said during his first press briefing: "[This job's] OK... It's, uh... kinda hard."

That it is. One could go further and say the position of White House Press Secretary, like the position of POTUS itself, has the maddening ability to make some of our country's most capable men and women look like totally incompetent morons.

But at least Ms. Perino knows it. From her first solo press briefing on September 17:

Q On a personal note, what are your goals, your aspirations as Press Secretary?

MS. PERINO: Just to get through this.

*Which you wouldn't think would be that difficult. For my money, I never got what Conservatives saw in Ms. Coulter anyway. She's decently pretty, sure, but a skeleton, which doesn't exactly scream "Va voom!", y'know? Now, your correspondents here at Minorthoughts.com could show you "Va voom!", but the women in our lives have informed us quite bluntly they'd better never appear on here.

It used to be that a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now? The government snoops on you through your children. Woe be to the person that does anything the government finds questionable.

I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter's annual checkup. Her pediatrician grilled her about alcohol and drug abuse.

Not my daughter's boozing. Mine.

"The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it's too much," my daughter told us afterward, rolling her eyes in that exasperated 13-year-old way. "She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house."

I turned to my wife. "You took her to the doctor. Why didn't you say something?"

She couldn't, she told me, because she knew nothing about it. All these questions were asked in private, without my wife's knowledge or consent.

"The doctor wanted to know how we get along," my daughter continued. Then she paused. "And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable."

Great. I send my daughter to the pediatrician to find out if she's fit to play lacrosse, and the doctor spends her time trying to find out if her mom and I are drunk, drug-addicted sex criminals.

That's just disturbing, on so many levels. I absolutely hate the idea that the government would automatically consider me to be a danger to my children and would snoop behind my back looking for any evidence to convict me and take them away from me.

It gets worse.

We're not alone, either. Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad's "bad" behavior.

The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore "legal barriers and deference to parental involvement" and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

And that information doesn't stay with the doctor, either.

Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, "Does Daddy own a gun?"

When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc.

If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying.

But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family's (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad.

Ya think? These doctors are state officials are turning lawful actions into near crimes. What gives them the authority to do that?

And people wonder why I have such a strong dislike for doctors. Maybe it's because so many of them think that it's their God-given right to be interfering, know-it-all, tin-pot dictators in charge of making sure society is healthy and pure.

Hardly.

We'd all do well to occasionally remember what exactly we mean by the word "freedom".

I thought about that as I read through the Heritage Foundation's Freedom Index for 2007, a list which rates each of 161 countries in the world according to that country's level of economic freedom - that is, the level of control private citizens are given over their own earnings.

Now according to the Heritage Foundation's scale, the citizens of any country with less than a rating of 80% are not to be considered "free". Which is a fair enough suggestion, we Minor Thinkers will suggest; after all, who can really claim with pride, "I am master of 4/5's of my fate"? One might very forgivably consider the possession of 4/5's of freedom a good time to start planning a government overthrow.

Unfortunately, by that yardstick only seven countries in the world qualify as "free".

They are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

In the various separate categories of ratings ("Freedom from Govt.", "Monetary Freedom", "Investment Freedom", etc.), only Hong Kong is found completely acceptable, save in the field of "Freedom from Corruption" (the only field not directly tied to government policy); all other countries dip below the 80% level in one category or another and simply possess an average of at least 80%.

Hong Kong.

It's a single metropolis in a world of metropolises, and it's presently the only society on Earth wiithin which you are always more than 9/10ths your own master.

And back in 1997, I notice, Great Britain tossed it to China's Communists.