7.24.2007 | Outrage of the day

When can a man rape a seven-year old and walk away? Why, when he can claim to not understand English. Of course, that should be the politically correct "alleged" rapist. Yes, we are all innocent until proven guilty, blah blah blah.

This particular defense hinges on another allegation: that the court system could not find an interpreter who could translate from English into an obscure language called Vai. The accused is originally from Liberia, where at least three people speak this dialect. Perhaps more than three, but, hey, who's counting?

The outrage? The judge, in Montgomery County, Maryland (which runs a violent shade of blue on the political spectrum), dismissed the charges. Something about a speedy trial, and other alleged constitutional requirements.

From a WaPo story, the basics:

Prosecutors in Montgomery County said yesterday that they intend to ask an appellate court to overturn a judge's dismissal of a case against a Liberian immigrant charged with raping a young girl. The judge had ruled that repeated delays caused by the court's failure to find an interpreter fluent in the accused man's native dialect had violated his right to a speedy trial.

Now, what's missing from this little story about a politically correct judge is this little fact, not reported in the WaPo story but heard on Fox News: the perpetrator is a graduate from a high school in...drum roll please...Montgomery County, Maryland. Which prides itself on having really, really good schools.

Assuming that this is true, on what planet was this judge living? And what is the obligation of a court to provide translation assistance when the accused has graduated from one of the best school systems in the country? One must also assume that the perp was not taught in his allegedly native language of Vai, although, given that it's MoCoMd, he could have been taught in Spanish or in ASL.

I'd say that political correctness has become more important than justice, at least in Montgomery County, Maryland. Perhaps I'll rob a bank, and, when caught, claim that I can only understand Martian.

7.23.2007 | "a politically correct primate"

Ah, shades of Margaret Mead . We have the bonobo apes, close cousins to the chimpanzee, and a prototype for how feminazis would organize us. From the July 30, 2007 New Yorker (as previewed in today's Wall Street Journal), the essence:

Bonobos seem to organize themselves without the use of hierarchies, have more sex than is necessary for reproduction, and share food. For many, writes the New Yorker's Ian Parker, bonobos are a more palatable human ancestor than their close relatives, the chimpanzees, who struggle against each other for status and occasionally divide into civil war. They have attained an image in the media and among conservationists that is "equal parts dolphin, Dalai Lama, and Warren Beatty," he writes.

What a bunch of sweeties those bonobos are. But wait, there's more, screams the feminazi infomercial:

However, a large part of bonobos' good reputation comes from their behavior in captivity. Indeed, the bonobo expert most quoted in the media, Frans de Waal, a professor at Atlanta's Emory University, has never seen a bonobo in the wild. Mr. de Waal says that while captivity can change an animal's behavior, captive bonobos' behavior can still be usefully compared to captive chimpanzees's behavior. "The bonobo is female-dominated, doesn't have warfare, doesn't have hunting," he says.

"The bonobo is female-dominated." Hillary, your time is near...

Unfortunately for those who envision a female-dominated, peaceful, sharing and caring society (unofficial motto could be: no running with scissors, boys...), it all ain't quite what it's cracked up to be:

There are also many anecdotes of violent bonobo behavior. Jeroen Stevens has seen five females attack a male and gnaw off his toes. While zoos keep bonobos in small groups, they might behave more violently in larger groups. During a recent experiment studying bonobo diet in Frankfurt, a male surprised researchers by becoming aggressive after his calorie intake was reduced -- successfully fighting against females who had dominated him. Gottfried Hohmann, who has studied bonobos in the Congo since 1989, has seen a group of females attack a male for 30 minutes straight.

Hmm, tasty. Male bonobo toes...The conclusion is to be wary of global expectations based on one's political philosophy and not backed by adequate data. The author of this article quotes the academic "expert" (sorry for the scare quotes; I have great difficulty envisioning an academic who is truly expert in anything that goes on in the wild) with this note of caution:

"Those who learn about bonobos fall too much in love," says Prof. de Waal. "All of a sudden, here we have a politically correct primate, at which point I have to...calm them down: bonobos are not always nice to each other."

How very understated: the gang attack and biting off of toes is "not always nice." Who knew?

7.13.2007 | future orientation

From my native burg, the latest in the nanny impulse from Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mr. Bloomberg appears to be a well-meaning and fairly competent mayor, as much as anyone can be in the suicide stew that is New York City.

But Mayor Mike has a fatal flaw: he's a white limousine liberal, sort of like the man who bears the burden of sending the city into its death spiral: John Vliet Lindsay, elected mayor in 1965, and who served as the poster boy for the term "limousine liberal."

Lindsay, may he rest in peace (d. December 19, 2000), was a gawdawful mayor. He pandered, he socialized, he caved in to every special interest group that could get some poor, suffering minority to front for them. Lindsay served as panderer-in-chief of the city for eight years, by which time the damage was done. And wasn't undone until Rudy became mayor in 1994. (don't blame me; I voted for Bill Buckley...)

Getting back to Mayor Mike, now he's unveiled what is to be the Next Big Thing in welfare: paying people to do what they should do as human beings and parents. The concept is to pay welfare queens for things like sending their kids to school, getting them library cards, getting the little bastards (hey, just stating a fact here) free health care, etc.

Heather Mac Donald lays all of this out in an article in the Weekly Standard. The basic problem facing the underclass? Something Ms. Mac Donald reminds us in not new:

After the urban riots of the 1960s, political scientist Edward Banfield observed that the central trait separating the poor from the prosperous is future orientation. His insight has never been improved upon. The middle and upper classes defer gratification and invest effort in self-improvement, Banfield wrote in The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of our Urban Crisis; were the underclass to do so, they would not long stay in the bottom economic tier.

It's not race; it's not ethnicity; it's not religion. What is at the root of multi-generational poverty is this lack of a "future orientation." Yes, prosperous Baby Boomers are notorious for indulging in instant gratification. But most of them are able to keep up that Pottery Barn - Whole Foods lifestyle despite this.

The urban poor stay down because of folks like John Lindsay and Mike Bloomberg who govern with the assumption that po' folks 'jist too dumb to do anything on their own, and need rewards for what the rest of us do.

Ms. Mac Donald summarizes by noting that this idiotarian scheme of Bloomberg's is, basically, a bribe to the bottom-dwellers:

Should the Bloomberg payment experiment go large-scale, as its architects hope, it will create a bizarre caste system, in which one part of society bribes the other to behave in ways that the paying class regards as basic to responsible human life. So far, the Bloomberg administration has not articulated any principle for distinguishing who is in that paying class, and who in the payee class, other than a crude income test. The program will enroll families at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level. How will the administration explain to parents at 140 percent of the federal poverty line that their children should attend school simply because it is in their long-term self-interest, when their neighbors are getting paid for the same behavior?

If this is the sort of thing that Mayor Mike has in mind should he run for president, I'd say let's invoke the ABM Treaty: Anyone But Mike.