Hall of Shame

The American Thinker has put together a list of MSM deceptions going back decades, along with a followup list.
He asks:

These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?

I suspect the answer is “yes”. Fauxtography, in particular, has been much enabled by Photoshop. But the press has been lying for a long, long time.

Update:

Miniter writes How The New Republic Got Suckered. I don’t think a passive verb is appropriate. Did you know what position Beauchamp’s wife holds at TNR? And who the only person to be fired over the incident is?

Not to be missed.

Missing no opportunity to trash the free market

James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic, says he has no idea how to protect your kids from the lead in Chinese-made toys.

No family without its own metallurgy lab can reliably tell safe toys from risky ones. This is a useful reminder that while market forces are marvelous, they’re not the answer to all problems. (Let’s spell it out: a strictly market-based answer would mean waiting to see which kids got sick, hoping parents could figure out why, and assuming that their knowledge would guide future parents’ purchases.) Public health regulations, enforced in both China and America, are a crucial part of the answer.

Regulations! Government is the answer!

Quite the straw man he set up there. Waiting around for kids to get sick is not the only strictly market-based answer. How about parents deciding not to buy Chinese-made toys while their kids are in the few years of risk for exposure? Once your kid is past the point of sticking random things in his mouth he’s safe. You can’t get lead poisoning from paint if you don’t at least lick it. So parents of infants and toddlers just give up Chinese toys for, at most, four or five years.

There would be a dip in Chinese toy sales. That would pressure Chinese toy makers to clean up their act. And what’s the name for that pressure? Hmm?

Regulations are fine when they reflect reality. That would include regulating the lead content of paint on children’s toys, obviously. He’s right, it’s only part of the answer. But crucial? Debatable.

ID Meets Its Match

As is to be expected of any fraudulent philosophy, its worst enemy turns out to be its own proponents. I was urged by the latest podcast from The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe to read Judge Jones’ 2005 decision in Kitzmiller. This was the case in Pennsylvania where the school board and the “Intelligent Design” movement were sued for putting a “disclaimer” into 9th-grade biology texts in an attempt to supplant the theory of evolution with their own.

Jones is thorough, thoughtful, and scientific. (Three things refreshing in a judge.) The decision is here in PDF format. Some of the most damaging testimony came from Professor Behe, Mr. ID himself. It includes gems such as this:

In fact, on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not “good enough.”

And this footnote made me laugh out loud.

The one article referenced by both Professors Behe and Minnich as supporting ID is an article written by Behe and Snoke entitled “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues.” (P-721). A review of the article indicates that it does not mention either irreducible complexity or ID. In fact, Professor Behe admitted that the study which forms the basis for the article did not rule out many known evolutionary mechanisms and that the research actually might support evolutionary pathways if a biologically realistic population size were used.

The decision is recommended reading unless you want to hold on to the false dichotomy presented by the ID movement, namely that acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory somehow disproves the existence of God. Judge Jones does an excellent job at dismantling that fallacy.

Tangled Web Watch

A very nice graph from the Counterterrorism Blog shows just how hip-deep in the poo that Saudi-funded, unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-supporting gang at CAIR is in Islamofacism.

If you have the patience for a slow-ish Java app, you can get the live version here.

Call It What It Is

It’s war.

We cannot simply re-classify or redefine the actions of those who kill us and openly seek to destroy us. When a state’s military conducts regular attacks upon another, it is by definition an act of war. We may not like it. We may even try to redefine it. And we may ultimately decide that such provocation does not warrant an in-kind response. But it is what it is, regardless. We need not conflate the “non-state” or “sub-national” definition of a terrorist group in order to justify targeting – militarily or financially – any state or group that kills or seeks to kill our civilians or soldiers.

As unclear and muddled as is Bush’s response to the war with Iran, I fear an even less productive and muddled response from a Democrat president.

When do we get a grown-up in the White House again? It’s been a long wait.