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More Bob Stapler.

I am not quite sure how I missed the story on L.A. marijuana vending machines, but leave it up to California to lead the way in liberal weirdness. DEA is furiously trying to close this down, but you can bet our doper-friendly Federal 9th District courts will do their part to keep it going.

As a long time resident of Absurdistan, I thought I’d heard it all, but this item definitely caught my eye.  A church for atheists?  What’s that all about, you may well wonder.  Apparently, atheists have "spiritual" needs too.  Just don’t call it spiritual within their hearing.  The author of the piece is Jewish, but sees no irony in a Yom Kippur service in which G*d is unwelcome.  Yom Kippur is, literally, our day of atonement.  If not to G*d, to whom does she atone.  If only to each other, then you don’t need a special day for that.  Just do it.  Personally, and despite the irony, I see this as a positive development not to be discouraged; even if fails to address the core issue of a higher connectivity.  However, there is also a sinister side to this business because a Seattle atheist has succeeded in stripping local police chaplains of their cross insignia; making the job one of tending emotional needs without reference to spiritual.  So, one overwrought atheist gets to decide for the rest of us we have no need of spiritual counseling in our darkest hour.  No doubt he thinks he’s done Seattle cops a favor freeing them from superstitious bondage.  But, imagine you are a Catholic police-officer who has just killed in the line-of-duty (maybe for the very first time), and no priest is available – just some assigned counselor/former chaplain who must now tip-toe around your spiritual agony.  You are wracked with guilt and in need of immediate comfort Catholic-style, but are denied that in favor of therapeutic rationalizations that are technically correct but devoid of any squaring matters with G*d.  Sorry, but this is a life-taking (however much justified) that we who believe in a higher accounting can’t take so lightly.  Priests, rabbis and chaplains only facilitate these conversations, and are in no position to substitute for our Creator.  I just hope this atheist never finds himself in need of police protection, because I’m guessing those cops may hesitate ever so slightly knowing he’s the guy who denied them spiritual assistance. 

FEMA is again under attack in Louisiana because trailers used to temporarily house evacuees have been found to be mildly toxic.  The toxicity in question is from formaldehyde used in the materials of construction.  No one has claimed FEMA forced people to live in said structures, only that FEMA did not provide something more to their liking.  One question that leaps to mind is (beyond that of looking gift horses in the mouth): why are these people suing FEMA (who merely contracted for the structures) and not the trailer builders or construction material makers who were in a position to prevent it?  FEMA had no way of knowing these units were built from improper materials and no means of preventing it without sending an army of inspectors that would have delayed occupation for weeks, leaving the good folks exposed to the elements.  Had they done that instead, we can be pretty sure these same fine people would be suing FEMA for "indecent exposure."  So, once again, no good deed goes unpunished.

Also in the lawsuit subheading we find Rudy Guiliani’s son, Andrew, suing his college to play golf, and the liberal-blogs are having a field-day skewering him and his lawsuit.  Even so, I am inclined to agree Guiliani should drop this. 

Elsewhere, the lust for lawsuits has been likened to an addiction we all suffer, whether as addict or bystander.  The cost to taxpayers of frivolous lawsuits is estimated in the hundreds of billions, making it as costly as the budgets of some states.  The list of actionable offenses has grown from simple physical-injury and financial-loss to accountability-transference, emotional-liability, activism and avoidance; and includes such things as: fast food addiction, jilting, jet-ski hijinx, desperate botox house-babes, end-of-world paranoia, zoo-ride entrapment, environmental shakedowns, prisoner complaints, unsolicited picture taking, ADA manipulation, TV addiction, Blackberry addiction, technology addiction, tanning addiction, road hazards, and addiction to non-addictive medications, to name but a few.  This list doesn’t include many legitimate offenses that are, nonetheless, greatly abused for personal gain.  The motivation behind these suits is not always money, even when the tax burden is just as heavy.  Some litigants are motivated by vindication, revenge and/or ego (sue others just to prove they matter).   Many small businesses and outreach programs complain these lawsuits do more harm than good, and in need of serious reform because they discourage both enterprise and charity.  Consider, how many of us think twice before rushing to the aid of a stranded motorist (thinking we could be sued if our good deed goes awry) or eliminate some weed-choked habitat on our property before the environmentalists can strip us bare. One blogger contends that most of these suits are between companies; and don’t, therefore, impact the rest of us.  However, that argument misses unrecovered costs, policy changes, useful product eliminiation, R&D and FDA approval delays, and passthrough price hikes.  Another source argues tort-reform is a smokescreen for a corporate push to limit liability.  Fair enough, but that hardly refutes that it is costing taxpayers billions or that it does real harm.  I doubt regulation alone is the answer and think making litigants (and their lawyers) pay at least some of the cost of these lawsuits a better idea.  House bill H.R. 4571 (2004) went some ways toward achieving the latter, but still left much to the discretion of judges whose sympathies are more with fellow lawyers.  In any case, Congress tabled the bill, suggesting it's unlikely we’ll see this or any similar relief soon.

I guess the Left is still smarting we made such a big deal over the Breck Boy’s $400 haircuts, because they’re making an even bigger fuss over McCain’s $520 shoes.  There are at least two differences I see in the stories of Edwards and McCain.  First, we had a lot of fun with Edwards' hair, whereas this story has an un-mirthful tit-for-tat quality.  Straight out of the gate, Isabel Wilkinson (the Huffington Post writer who first exposed McCain’s misstep) is straining to make his shoes "un-American" (they’re Italian) as well as a matter of political misjudgment.  Secondly, there’s no suggestion here McCain did not pay for his own shoes.  If you recall, Edwards only reimbursed his campaign for the haircuts after it became public knowledge.  It didn’t end there either, because it was soon discovered he’d done the same on other occasions; refuting that he’d made simple accounting errors.  Both Edwards and McCain are wealthy men and if they want to blow $400 to $500 on creature comforts that’s their lookout; but only one of them is such a cheapskate he’d stick the cost of those haircuts to his supporters.

Baltimore City schools have been on life-support following a move by the Maryland State Department of Education 1½ years ago to take over managing the schools due to abysmal test-scores and a spending scandal.  Then Baltimore Mayor O’Malley fought spitefully against then Governor Ehrlich and Superintendent Grasmick to retain control of the schools.  Now, the Baltimore Sun is reporting a miraculous double-digit improvement in the scores of the state’s two worst districts, justifying a move by (now) Governor O’Malley to force the schools out of state receivership (a stain on his otherwise stained record).  State or city management is rather moot, at this point, as the architect of the debacle is now in solid control of both.  Explanations for the scores range from crediting No Child Left Behind, to the leadership of Advisory Board CEO Alonso, to claims the takeover was premature and would have happened even without state intervention.  I happen to agree with the second half of this last claim, but not for the reasons given.   As this critique by an ex-teacher turned crusader shows, all of the claims are bogus, testing is a tool for squeezing ever larger taxes from us, and is so politically tainted as to be meaningless.  Testing has little to do with accountability or performance, but everything to with power, job-security, perception and funding.  Scores are invariably reported as improving even when they are not or are unsupported by student comprehension; and the pattern of sudden double-digit improvement is suspiciously common to troubled schools.  So next time little Johnny comes home crowing about his school’s test scores, say, "That’s nice dear," and grip your wallet.

Jesse Jackson has found a new pulpit in the MSM from which to dispense firebrand bombast.  His premier opinion-piece attacks the recent Supreme Court, D.C. gun-ban decision, and opines, “More people will die from gunshots” as a direct result of this decision.  Well, no actually, even a recent Harvard study was forced to conclude there is no correlation between gun proliferation and homicide rates.  Other studies, most of them conducted to find such a correlation, find only the opposite of that assumed (i.e., gun-murders go down slightly as guns increase) and even a CDC survey of 51 legitimate studies fails to show any tendency of control measures to reduce gun-deaths.  Last year, Jackson managed to get himself arrested protesting before an Illinois gun-shop in a trademark, choreographed, high-profile exhibition of indignation.  I understand why white middle-class liberal suburbanites fear guns, and I even get it that urban blacks put an unhealthy mistrust in cops arriving on the scene in the false hope this disarms urban thugs more than it puts them at risk.  But what motivates Jackson (who has more armed bodyguards than a congressman, whose mansion doubles as fortress, and, for whom, every cause has a silver-lining)? Certainly he can’t squeeze much from gun-shop owners, so he must be after bigger fish.  If Jackson is for gun-control, it seems probable he’s found some means of shaking down gun-makers and/or local governments in exchange for the Jackson stamp-of-approval.  Regardless of motivation, not only is his logic faulty and his facts blatantly false (e.g., allegation the U.S. has the highest fire-arm murder rate in the world: Russia 29.5, Columbia 29.6, Brazil 10.6, Mexico 9.9, Estonia 8.1, U.S. 3.7 per 100,000) but reads so bland he seems unconvinced of the malarkey he metes.  Preaching from ignorance, however, does not seem to deter the good reverend so long as it nets him sufficiently generous contributions.

Not all studies are this reliable, and the gun studies I cite are more interesting in that they mostly admit failure to prove the effectiveness of gun-control.  The medical establishment may still be struggling toward this level of intellectual honesty as shown by this recent obesity study from the New England Journal of Medicine.  Bibbins-Domingo Ph.D. (&co) has put together some impressive verbiage, graphs, and numbers, but no raw data.  Their study (or survey) suggests there’s a fat epidemic underway and the health risks are multiplying dangerously.  What may be wrong with this picture is a) the study data (given by reference only) is less than a decade’s worth – yet the health extrapolations made are multi-decadal, and b) no comparison is made to obesity rates in this period to rates in prior periods that would justify some of the authors' assumptions (or not).   Particularly disturbing is the assumption that obesity rates today are much higher than in past, yet no real evidence of said assertion exists because it has only been in the last decade we’ve begun collecting this data.  Recent changes in the way obesity is measured further distorts the picture, because part way through this same decade we began classifying people as obese who formerly were classified as over-weight.  It is intellectual dishonesty claiming a sudden epidemic of fat when all that has really changed is a bar has been raised.  We’ve seen this same sleight of hand used in public policy initiatives ranging from second-hand smoke to ozone-depletion.

That’s the news from Absurdistan.  I hope the news, where you are, is all good.