Bride of Rove could use some schooling on topic of bloated federal salaries.

Evidently, she thinks they don't exist, and if they do exist, it's alright because they are all ex-military.

My comment:
I can tell you I know of a federal employee making between 50 and 66% more in federal service than she would for the same work in the private sector, and she has no military background.

“so when Beck rants that the Federal workers should make what the military make … I have no idea what the hell to say to that.”

I know what to say to what I just quoted there. It’s a question. “Do you think even a few years of military service should award somebody a 200% raise for the rest of their life, when they are no longer in the military?

The absurdity of Walter Shapiro.

Just to cherry pick at an immediately obvious weakspot, Shapiro seems to have sympathy with the comedian Lewis Black. Here's Black:

"So in the name of fighting terrorism, we're willing to start wars, waterboard people and kill civilians with unmanned drones. But the one line we won't cross is our waistline."

Here's reality.

There is no absurd aspect to the protest. Wars, the waterboarding of the three people who were waterboarded, and the use of drones in war are all actually likely to do some good--in fact we already know they have. Molesting a 3 year old can do no good at all, it is useless and expensive "security theater".

As for "suddenly frisky", what is suddenly true is that the searches are suddenly not merely useless but now intolerable.

I believe I am banned from Samizdata. Or in any case, they have chosen not to post the comment below.

I reply to Ian B and other posts made at Samizdata since this one.

Rejoinding in reverse order:

"They wanted simple services and austere
buildings and lay preachers and the like"

Correct to this point, then you go right off the rails.

"all of which are features of Islam which has never had that kind of "Romishness"."

It never had a centralized church hierarchy, you are utterly wrong in every other respect. You think the ivory tower snobbery between Qum and Mecca isn't huge, you're nuts. Lay preachers my butt.

Ritual not so much, outside of the fact every faithful Moslem has a prayer schedule like a 13th century monk, elaborate buildings--check, every time they had the money for it.

"in rejecting the idea that God makes you jump through hoops like a performing dog, they took the first step towards reason, even if they still maintained an irrational faith in other ways"

Yep, that pilgrimage is no hoop at all, and nevermind the whole halal thing. No magical hoops, keerist you're piling it up.

And...Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner, who mentions a very substantial way in which the Puritans were in no way like the Moslems, and a way in which actually the Roundhead's opponents were relatively more like them.

"I'm just not entirely convinced that a smutty cartoonist with no A Levels, let alone a degree, is the ideal person to write it."

Must be hellish internalizing a very classist, minimal upward mobility society's opinion of yourself. You've got at least as much hackery in you as any academic--so you're halfway there now! You already think Popper and Heisenberg are very meaningful in everyday life and that they had profound epistemological insights which have policy implications!

"Or, it was a few centuries ago."

Except it would be admitted even then that the Bible was not literally the work of God, and that men being flawed can only imperfectly receive God's inspiration.

"The point I made is that however honestly you have reached your opinion, you can't stop people believing other things- and I gave the example of the reinterpretation of the US Constitution- a far clearer document than any Holy Book- as an example."

And your insistence that those other "interpretations" are in fact honestly arrived at as opposed to being merely what is convenient for one faction is a prime sign you are not able to perceive reality. Language is not so mutable it has no practical meaning.

And yes I read the interview. Funny fiqh and sharia are hand in glove, if they're so different.

"He says quite clearly, and you're big on that I know Tom, that there is a distinction between God's Law and human understanding (interpretation) of God's Law."

I see no practical difference between him and what is now life in Saudi Arabia;as long as it is Islamic, he is fine with the tyranny of the general will. When he wants members of any religion and atheists to hold forth on the superiority of their faith, 1st Amendment style, in the "parking lot" of the Great Mosque in Mecca, while cart vendors sling pork kielbasa on buns and frosty beers to the tourists--when he propounds individual human negative rights are all that exist, and is unambiguous that statements to the contrary in the Koran are bunk--then he'll be evidence of an Islamic Reformation.

"You see, I don't "like him". "

Sure you do, you need him to be enough like what you need him to be--and he's enough like that you're going with it--that you can put on the rosy glasses and say Islam is on it's way to reform.

"He simply stands as an example of somebody doing what I suggested,"

Not yet he isn't.

"and which you insist is impossible, which is using/developing an interpretation of Islam which isn't Tom Perkins Islam."

And it isn't my Islam, it's Mohammed's invention, and he said it is the perfectly recorded message of God. Your argument is with him and his followers, not me.

"Because re-interpreting things to suit themself is what humans do."

Uh huh. Tool making yes, and also rationalizing. What you're saying is as sensible as saying 2+3=4, and that it's just another interpretation. Oh yeah, you can be an academic, even a Phd, in Philosophy.

"You can call it "making shit up" if you like. It doesn't matter."

A case in point, the collective right "interpretation" of the 2nd amendment. It was invented from whole cloth in the early 19xx years, and never had a trace of legitimacy, but you'd say it just another interpretation as valid WRT the source material as any other. In fact, by language you may feel now is overbroad, you did say that.

"I simply said that that is possible, because language is as ambiguous as its reader wants it to be."

But not honestly so. There is a point where an "interpretation" becomes a lie, and chucking the majority of the Koran will be required for Islam to Reform.

"Look, I get it Tom. Muslims are evil, and irredeemable, and nothing is going to divert you from that certainty of yours."

Islam as it is, yes. An apostate Moslem could very well be a right enough guy.

"Fair enough, you're entitled to believe what you want. But at the end of the day you're still going to have to explain why Dr Ahmed doesn't want to kill you, like he's supposed to in Tom Perkins Islam."

Again, that isn't my Islam, it's Mohammed's. If in fact he is unwilling to tolerate the use of violence to cause me or you to submit, or to prevent backsliding in for example Mecca, Dr Ahmed needs to explain to Mohammed why he is blowing off his holy writ, he need make no explanations me.

Here's someone I think is obviously not thinking things through to their necessary end or appurtenances.

In a comment to a Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, to the effect that America is edging towards boiling over, I see this comment, "I was with you up until the screaming babies on buses."

That quote is just a portion of the comment.

The comment is from Bill Smith, whom it seems imagines that immigration laws can be enforced without any screaming babies being forced onto busses, and who seem to feel mere negative feeling will accomplish the entire end of AZ's immigration law, and the 70% of Americans who favor it.

He is somewhat correct, most illegals will move, even back across the border, with relatively mild incentives to that end and with mild enforcement measures.

These should be deployed.

So should forcible repatriation (or even just expulsion into Mexico), when they do not consent upon discovery, and basic efforts should be made to discover if an arrested person is a legal resident. As a first measure persons found to be here illegally should be shoved across the border if they cannot be held for any other crime.

Comment taken from the Volokh Conspiracy, made in response to the notion May Day should be redesignated, "Victims of Communism Day".

"The thing about choosing May Day is that it seems to focus especially on Stalin, since the Soviet Union was so associated with that day."

Obviously, we wouldn't want to associate Stalin or May Day with communism.

Also from that comment thread, Personfrompoorlock writes that one of the reasons the US is so stable is that we let the dead bury the dead, so instead of bringing up the past by changing the designation of May Day, we should drop the idea.

When "Spread the Wealth" and "Made enough money" are on that ash heap, then we can talk.

On Bloggingheads, David Frum tells us that Obama is offering to have us clean a dirty stable that is in fact dirty, when it comes to reforming the government's intervention into healthcare. He makes this observation at about 29 minutes +/- 2 or so.

What I can't figure out is why all these smart "liberul" people can't figure out the problem is that the President is only handing out toothbrushes and bullsh!t for cleaning tools.

If you want to reform healthcare such that costs go down:

1) Limit "unlucky judgement call" malpractice tort damage awards to real damages, increasing to a low order multiple of that as bad judgement becomes inexplicable other than to be negligence. Punitive damages should be limited to cases of criminal malpractice where a conviction has been secured, and payment delayed until appeals are exhausted. At the discretion of the judge and/or jury, the losing attorney should pay.

Not the losing client, the losing attorney.

2) Competition across statelines should be allowed, with out-of-state companies not required to entertain local states' pet insurance mandates.

3) The money's spent on an individual's healthcare whether it is the person's own money or an employment "bennie", should be equally taxed or not taxed, whether or not it is an employment benefit. This will cost me money, I don't care, it's fair.

In the event an uninsured patient contracts something they will likely not live to pay for, then we have to decide that when the charity otherwise runs out, we'll keep them from pain as best we are able, but that they will be let to die from their illness without treatment which is possible. Then we need to agree that mandated treatment is not charity, it is socialism/communism, and it is never worth the price in the long run, and that in any case it is the political decision of the states and never the national government.

Unless, of course, an Article V procedure changes things. Fat chance.

Edited 20100501, removed 5 spam comments dealing with high yield investments.

Via Instapundit, this is so obvious it should never need be said.

WILL WILKINSON writes: It ought to be less embarrassing to have been influenced by Ayn Rand than by Karl Marx.