Octopodial Chrome

Today is Bill of Rights Day, the day in which we celebrate the guarantees of liberty in our federal Constitution. In Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton argued that listing some rights and not others would lead to protection for only those listed and not the unlisted. He was, of course, correct: despite the the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, there is no right which is not safe when the legislature is in session.

Still, the Bill is a great document, listing a few of the fundamental rights of a free people: to practise one’s religion; to speak; to publish; to assemble peacefully (this one gets stomped on all the time nowadays); to petition the State; to own and carry arms (this one is practically a dead letter across the entire United States); to be secure in one’s property (yeah, quartering troops seems a pretty minor deal now, but the principle is important; moreover the protections of the Fifth Amendment with regard to property have been severely curtailed); to be safe from unwarranted and unreasonable searches and seizures (this one has been gone by the wayside since Prohibition); to indictment and trial by a jury of one’s peers (this one has been watered down quite a bit); to not bear witness against oneself (I’d go further and argue that no-one should be compelled to give testimony against anyone else either); to be confronted by the witnesses against one (this one too has been curtailed, to our great shame); to compel witnesses to testify in one’s favour; to be assisted by a lawyer in court and to non-excessive bails, fines and punishments (this one is all-too-often misinterpreted). This is not a bad list to start with, although I would add others. Tellingly, I wouldn’t eliminate any of them. It’s a pity that my fellow countrymen, our legislatures and our courts disagree and have removed or weakened one after another.

And then there are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people and The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Well, we see how well that worked out.

Here’s a thought: this year, why not work with the Bill of Rights, rather than against it?

I just found a review if Fat, a wonderful new cookbook in four sections: butter, lard, poultry fat and suet/tallow. It sounds tasty.

Hat-tip to jackdied.

An elementary school in Georgia has banned sugar from its premises for a decade. Not only that, but every morning has a full hours of vigourous exercise and the students are taught proper nutrition.

Within six months of the sugar ban, students misbehaved 23 percent less than before and reading scores improved 15%.

Mens sana in corpore sano.

Reason has another great feature: a documentary about Hollywood’s sick love affair with Che Guevara. Guevara was a murderer who opposed the very sort of artists and musicians who now idolise him.

It’s considered cute and trendy to celebrate Communists like Guevara, Mao and Lenin—and yet they were responsible for more death and history than the deservedly-condemned Hitler!

A few months ago I bought a T-shirt with Che Guevara's image atop the legend Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Heh heh heh.

Now this is just hilarious: a group of drug legalisation activists set up a honeypot for police: they rented a home and proceeded to grow two small Christmas trees inside it. There’s nothing illegal about that, and yet somehow the police managed to get a search warrant and raid the home. What the police didn’t know is that they were on tape…

Radley Balko has some analysis: basically, it’s likely that illegal (under an opinion written by Justice Scalia and joined by Justice Thomas) thermal imaging was used to detect the grow lights, and that the police then lied on an affidavit, alleging either that they smelled marijuana or that they had been tipped off (neither would have been possible since no marijuana was ever produced or sold at the house), got a warrant and raided.

In a police department which followed the law, they would not be using thermal imaging. If the department followed the law, they would not lie on an affidavit. In this case, it appears that a lot of care was taken to ensure that there was no legal probable cause to raid the house.

Within 60 days the police have to release the warrant and the affidavit and we’ll see for certain. The question is—if they indeed broke the law, will the offenders be punished? We are a nation of laws, and our public servants should be scrupulous about following those laws. When they are not, they should be held accountable.

This is actually orthogonal to the issue of drug legalisation: even if you support drug prohibition whole-heartedly, you should be concerned when police and prosecutors break the law.

Tonight I upgraded to Fedora 10, which was relatively less painful than such upgrades have been in the past. One big problem, though, was getting Blosxom working. Try as I might, I kept on getting errors in /var/log/httpd/error_log stating Permission denied: exec of ’/var/www/blosxom/bin/blog’ failed.

After lots of playing around, I discovered the solution: just run chcon -t httpd_sys_script_exec_t /var/www/blosxom/bin/blog. It turns out the in the latest Fedora SELinux has pretty fine-grained controls and needs to be told that it’s okay to execute CGI scripts. Not a big deal, but not friggin’ documented anywhere!

Anyway, if you’ve been having this problem, there’s the solution.

Some time ago I predicted that forcing soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan to shave their beards would hinder our efforts to pacify that country (imagine, if you will, the trouble of ruling America with lisping legions in hotpants). Well, I was right: the Afghans do not respect men who look like boys.

Frankly, I think that the insistence on beardlessness is a bit strange. Hair on one’s face is no more a discipline issue than hair on one’s head: just slap some regulations on it, require neat military grooming and get on with life.

This comic is right on the money.

James S. Robbins has a good article on the aftermath of the Bombay attacks. I think he’s on to something. As to how to prevent such events in the future—I’m unconvinced that’s the right model. Sure, we should have some folks tasked with prevention, but they can’t stop every attempt. It’s far better to focus on appropriate means of response.

Imagine, say, that every able-bodied guest at the Oberoi had a weapon and military training…

Way, way too cool. Now, just figure out a way to set the chainsaw on fire in flight, and I think one will have developed the all-time ultimate weapon.