Are Savages Noble?
Posted: May 24, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Child neglect, Instapundit, Monogamy, Noble savage, Nuclear weapon, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Solidarity, War Leave a comment »MOSTLY SAVAGE
“It may astonish you readers, as it initially astonished me,” Diamond writes, “to learn that trench warfare, machine guns, napalm, atomic bombs,
artillery, and submarine torpedoes produce time-averaged war-related death tolls so much lower than those from spears, arrows, and clubs.” So how can this be? Because “state warfare is an intermittent exceptional condition, while tribal warfare is virtually continuous.”
This shouldn’t be so astonishing, really. Plus:
A 2012 study in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B noted that the “anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 percent
of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife.” Yet in modern times normative monogamy has become dominant around the
globe, increasing social peace by reducing competition among men. The researchers further noted, “Compared to monogamous societies, polygamous cultures see more rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery, fraud, child neglect and child abuse.”
It is not too far of a stretch to think that although societies practicing marital monogamy are historically fewer in number, their comparatively stronger social solidarity has helped them out-grow and out-compete polygamous competitors. And the spread of monogamy has plausibly contributed to the lower levels of violence in the modern societies.
That shouldn’t be so surprising either.
via Instapundit
Google actually does something patriotic
Posted: May 24, 2013 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere | Tags: Iraq, Daily Caller, Wisconsin, Google, Sparta, High school, Doodle 4 Google, Brady Leave a comment »This has to be some sort of mistake.
Wisconsin high schooler Sabrina Brady’s best day ever was when her father returned home from an 18-month deployment in Iraq. Now, the country can share that moment with her, when Brady’s doodle is featured on the search giant’s homepage this Thursday.
After 130,000 submissions and millions of votes, Sparta, Wisc., resident Brady today was named the 2013 U.S. Doodle 4 Google National Winner.
Her image, titled “Coming Home,” tells the emotional story of her family reunion — the black-and-white journey of a child running toward her soldier father, ending in a colorful hug that will leave even the hard-hearted tearing up.

She’s not scared of him?
She’s not spitting on him?
And Google picked it anyway?
Weird.
(Hat tip: Andy at AoSHQ)
via The Daily Caller
“The people are always most in danger when…”
Posted: May 24, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Noonan, PEGGY NOONAN, United States, Wall Street Journal 1 Comment »”…the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
Who said that?
Alexander Hamilton, that’s who.
The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan lays out the known facts of the IRS case and concludes that it requires a special prosecutor. She’s right, and frankly, it’s amazing how in a week, the American media has pretty much come around from the question of if a special prosecutor is needed for the IRS investigation, to how broad should be the limits of the special prosecutor’s investigation?
But here’s where Noonan gets it wrong. Right in the last paragraph:
“Again, if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now—if the internal corruption within it is not broken—it will never stop, and never be broken. The American people will never again be able to have the slightest confidence in the revenue-gathering arm of their government. And that, actually, would be tragic.”
Actually it wouldn’t be “tragic” if the American people were not to have confidence in this or any arm of their government. It would be exactly what the Founders called for.
My favorite quotation from the entire 85 editions of the Federalist Papers is this one from Federalist 25 by Alexander Hamilton:
“The people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.”
In fact, you could almost sum up the gist of the entire Constitution with that single statement, as the Constitution attempted to set up a system where no branch of government was in sole possession of the means of injuring our rights. How far we have strayed, however, when the wing of the government that determines how much of our labors are to be taken into the Federal trough also inquires about our associations, our religious practices, and soon, our medical care.
Peggy, you are right to call for a special investigator. But you are wrong to assert that it is a tragedy if, as a result of this scandal, we no longer have confidence in the IRS. The real tragedies would occur as a result of believing that any branch of government was deserving of our unsuspicious confidence.
via BobKrumm.com
The Real Voter Suppression of 2012
Posted: May 23, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room | Tags: Cleta Mitchell, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Scott Walker, True the Vote, Voter ID laws, Washington Post Leave a comment »Voter ID didn’t reduce turnout, but the IRS may have.
The 2012 election season was filled with angry cries of voter suppression,†almost all of them regarding attempts by states to require voter ID and
otherwise improve ballot integrity. Bill Clinton warned that “there has never been, in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting” the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.†Democratic-party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said “photo-ID laws, we think, are very similar to a poll tax.
All of this proved to be twaddle. An August 2012 Washington Post poll showed nearly two-thirds of African-Americans and Hispanics backing photo ID. The Census Bureau has found that the rate of voter turnout for blacks exceeded that of whites for the first time in the 2012 election.
But it now turns out there may have suppression of the vote after all. “It looks like a lot of tea-party groups were less active or never got off the ground because of the IRS actions, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker told me. Sure seems like people were discouraged by it.
Indeed, several conservative groups I talked with said they were directly impacted by having their non-profit status delayed by either IRS inaction or burdensome and intrusive questioning. At least two donors told me they didn’t contribute to True the Vote, a group formed to combat voter fraud, because after three years of waiting the group still didn’t have its status granted at the time of the 2012 election. (While many of the targeted tea-party groups were seeking to become 501(c)(4)s, donations to which are not tax-deductible, True the Vote sought to become a 501(c)(3).) This week, True the Vote sued the IRS in federal court, asking a judge to enjoin the agency from targeting anyone in the future.
Cleta Mitchell, True the Vote’s lawyer, says we’ll never know just how much political activity was curtailed by the IRS targeting. She has one client who wanted to promote reading of the Constitution, but who didn’t even hear back from the IRS for three years – until last Monday, when the IRS informed this client that some questions would be sent.
“I was about to file with the IRS when other tea-party groups started to get harassed,” Pennsylvania activist Jennifer Stefano told Time magazine. “I remember checking with the IRS to see if they wanted the group [Facebook] page or my personal page, and they said ‘All of it.’”
The IRS claims that all of the delays and information demands were rooted in mere mismanagement and misjudgment, a stance that began to look even shakier yesterday when Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s exempt-organization division, took the Fifth Amendment before a House committee.
Darrel Issa: Lerner Waived Her 5th Amendment Rights By Offering Her Claims Before Invoking Her Right to Silence
Posted: May 22, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Al Gore, Allah, Darrell Issa, Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Internal Revenue Service, United States Congress, United States congressional hearing, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Leave a comment »She’ll be recalled tomorrow.
What I expect is that she will be forced to invoke the 5th for each of a series of pointed questions, such as her previous refusal to investigate an illegal Al Gore donor, and her previous hardline stance against Christian organizations. As well, of course, about her complicity in the IRS scandal.
She will look very bad doing so.
I didn’t know the law on this and Allah recaps it at the link: While you may not selectively invoke the 5th in a criminal trial, you probably can at a Congressional hearing, so she won’t be held in contempt.
She will, however, be made to look awful, which sounds about right.
via Ace of Spades HQ.
3 More Reasons to Fear the IRS
Posted: May 22, 2013 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere | Tags: Atlas Shrugged, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Tax exemption, Tea Leave a comment »So the IRS has admitted to sitting on applications for tax-exempt status by Tea Party groups for political reasons.
According to the government’s own investigation, applications containing terms such as Tea Party and Patriot were singled out for delays and holds even as groups with liberal-sounding names like “Bus for Progress” and “Progress Florida” sailed through the process.
President Obama said “the report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable” and even fired the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service.
Regardless of how this particular scandal shakes out, there’s still going to be at least three good reasons to be scared as hell of the IRS.
1. It’s always been a political weapon.
John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon all sicced the IRS on enemies and dissenters. And they were just following in the footsteps of Franklin Roosevelt, whose son said his father was “the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution.”
2. Its rulings are super-complicated and capricious.
The federal tax code is longer than Atlas Shrugged, Ulysses, and the Old Testament put together. It’s so complicated that even former IRS commissioners need help preparing their returns.
3. It’s Obamacare’s enforcement mechanism.
Starting next year, the IRS will be the cop patrolling the Affordable Care Act’s mandates, with the agency overseeing some 47 tax provisions related to Obamacare. You won’t just be reporting income anymore. You’ll be explaining when, where, and how you bought health care as well.
via Reason.com



In a chilling development, footage emerged of one of the suspected killers, apparently explaining his terrifying actions. In the clip, obtained by ITV News, he is heard to say: “We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.” In an extended version on The Sun website, the man adds: “You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bussin’ our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace.” The attacker, who spoke clear English without a foreign accent, is then seen walking towards the victim, who is lying in the street. Another man is standing by a car that has collided with a road sign.

