The Top 10, Plus Truth

Behold! The Top 10 Arguments For the Mandate, Refuted By Truth!
Salute to Frank Weathers of YIMCatholic, who consistently writes better stuff than I do.

EDIT: More truth,from The Crescat: Sex Is Not a Medical Emergency! Salute to Thomas L. McDonald of God and the Machine at Patheos.

A piece of truth

Salute to Mark Shea, the Anchoress, Frank Weathers of yimcatholic at patheos, etc. etc. etc.

On infanticide (blogrollin')

There is apparently a pair of bioethicists who claim it is moral to perform post-birth abortions, which are somehow not the same thing as infanticide, in spite of both being the act of intentionally slaying an infant member of the species Homo Sapiens. I have no intention of linking to the article. Rather, I link to William Briggs' most excellent fisking, in which he points out the myriad of fallacies, false premises, non sequiturs, and most important, their failure to point out with anything approaching precision when infanticide becomes moral.

Salute to John C. Wright, comments further.

Justice and Prison

I have thought for some time that our prison system was unjust. It turns out that it's also unneccessary. An article in the New Yorker addresses both the injustice of our prisons, and what reduces crime.

One problem is that our justice system is misnamed. It is a criminal prosecution system. Its interest is not in justice and common law, but in statues, regulations, and procedural correctness. Prosecutors do their best to ensure that exculpatory evidence is never introduced, and work assiduously to avoid jury trials (to save time and money), and juries are never told to consider justice in convicting and giving sentencing recommendations. Is this a prudent way for a just society to order their priorities? Are time and money more important than justice?

A more just punishment would involve restitution, not incarceration. Stealing should involve not just paying back what you stole, but being forbidden the opportunities you used to steal. Embezzlers should not be allowed to go back into positions where they have authority over money.

Crime is prevented by simple things like reducing opportunities to commit them. Dr. Ruwart pointed out almost 20 years ago that if you reward police for reducing crime, instead of convicting criminals, they will act to do so -- and save us money in the process.

Another simple way to reduce crime is not punishing people for owning or using a little weed. (No, I don't use or approve of weed. I'd rather have a drink myself, even though I can readily recognize that ethanol causes a lot more adverse medical outcomes, that can easily be a lot more serious.) Relegalizing opioids and cocaine can come later.

The inoffensive guy in the glasses more or less represents Rep. Lamar Smith. The things he's talking about in the third and fifth panels are provisions of HR 1981, the so-called "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act", aptly nicknamed the "Keep Every Americans' Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act." (You can sign a petition opposing HR 1981 here.) More information from TechDirt here and here.

Studios and Samizdat

Just read a couple of great articles on copyright infringment over at forbes.com: You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You and Lies, Damned Lies, and Piracy.

They both mostly cover the same ground: one of the biggest reasons that people use samizdat rather than buy content is because it is easier. The MPAA could build something like Steam or iTunes, and blow giant holes in the number of samizdat downloads. Another is that movies are grossly (and grotesquely) overpriced, both in production and for the end-user. And studios and labels are increasingly profitable, even as samizdat increases.

On so-called Piracy

Words mean things. Piracy means ship-to-ship armed robbery and hijacking on the high seas, even today; witness Somalian pirates. There is piracy in the Carribean sea as well. The act involves threats to people's lives and property.

Samizdat (from "same as that") was a practice used to escape censorship in the Soviet union -- to type out a verbatim copy of a banned book, generally on a manual typewriter. It is a much better word than piracy to describe modern methods of copyright infringment, which threaten only royalties, not anyone's lives or actual property. You can expect me to use it instead. I encourage you to do the same, even though those in the networks will not, because they are beholden to the labels and studios.

What SOPA and PIPA are meant to do

I just saw a headline that has put SOPA and PIPA into perspective: BTJunkie voluntarily closes file-sharing website (more from ZDNet, Loopy Gadgets, and the Guardian).

The goal of SOPA/PIPA is not to stop piracy.

It is nothing less than to put an end to user-generated content on the Web.

That's the real goal of MPAA and RIAA in all their censorship moves and DRM strategies -- to ensure they have a monopoly on distribution of entertainment media worldwide.

They want to eliminate every form of competition. They want to ensure that all independent entertainers are crushed, so that everyone who wants any sort of entertainment will have to come to them, cash in hand. They want to ensure that every musician will have to come to them, cap in hand, to sign away all of their rights and money, in order to make the move from street corner busker/ garage band/ small local club band to the big time. They want to ensure that nobody ever successfully distributes a film without the studios getting their piece of the action.

And this plays into the hands of a censorious government. Never forget that big government and big business are in bed together and feed each other. Big business wants an unfair advantage. Big government wants to control personal expression. An oppressive government cannot afford free expression; it's far too likely to express, in a way that people can easily see and share, that the government is oppressive and corrupt.

BTJunkie's self-takedown is not ONLY stifling piracy, is not ONLY stifling Linux ISO distribution (most Linux ISOs are distributed over bittorrent to save costs) ... I have no doubt that it is also stifling the efforts of many independent artists, without labels or studio contracts, to get some market share and mind share.

Telling the Truth

John C. Wright posts about Christopher Stasheff, the only SF author who had the guts to put the truth about chastity into the mouth of one of his characters. Go and read it, as it is an EXCELLENT explanation of the spiritual dangers of fornication.

Sign Frank's Petition!

Frank Weathers, of YIMCatholic at Patheos, has created a petition to ask that the vile HHS mandate to require Catholic institutions to directly fund gravely evil acts in contradiction of religious liberty. Go and sign. Yes, you have to create an account. Be not afraid!!

Petition page here

Incidentally, Frank has yet another one of those Catholic blogs far superior to mine.

Dolan's Jan 25 op-ed

I searched around the internets, and found Abp. Dolan's Jan 25 WSJ op-ed, without hacking my way through the Wall Street Journal's paywall. Go and read it.

One thing he points out, which far too many people neglect or allow themselves to disregard, is this:

The rule forces insurance companies to provide these services without a co-pay, suggesting they are “free”—but it is naïve to believe that. There is no free lunch, and you can be sure there’s no free abortion, sterilization or contraception. There will be a source of funding: you.

There is no free lunch, anywhere. Somebody always pays for whatever you may be given. In far too many cases, it is you, in ways you will not be able to see.

The Problem with Patents

Source: http://frugaldad.com

the obvious problem is that the Patent Office refuses to chuck even the most absurd applications, such as throwing a stick to play fetch with your dog, or the combover mentioned above.

SOPA and PIPA

are the acronyms for the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, bills currently being rushed through Congress as quickly as possible. As written, both will enable censorship of vast swaths of the Internet (like, any site that includes user-provided and/or generated content). Here's the rundown on why SOPA and PIPA are very bad ideas. That they are largely unconstitutional is a pretty good first reason.

Call and/or email your assorted congresscritters. Don't bother write at this point; envelopes are subjected to huge delays to protect Congressional staff personnel from biological and chemical weapons. I doubt even a postcard could get through in time. You can find your representative at House.gov and your senators at Senate.gov. A brief search and a couple of links will get you to a page with their office number (dial direct instead of trying to go through the switchboard) and email address.

Salute to Mark Shea.

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

I've posted about the Photoshop Effect before. It is a pernicious toxic excretion of the Culture of Death that warps our sexuality.

Catholics and Libertarianism

Some people think that between these never the twain shall meet. Ryan McMacken begs to differ with Six Myths Catholics Tell About Libertarians. Go and read it, so you know what the false differences are.

Are there real differences? Surely so. The Church believes it is appropriate for the State to restrain immorality such as pornography, contraception, and fornication by law. Libertarians do not. But I think a more laissez-faire state is better for the Church than any other. Certainly we would not have Belmont Abbey going to court for the right to enroll their employees in a health insurance plan which does not fund grave sins like contraception and abortion, or Christian counseling students told that they must never allow their belief that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and that same-sex attraction is gravely disordered to affect how they perform their jobs.

A more laissez-faire state would also provide a better means of obtaining Distributist ends. Distributism favors smaller enterprises, and more widely dispersed ownership of the means of production. Big corporations typically must rely on powerful governments that can override the property rights of individuals. Nearly anyone who wants a large parcel of land in any sort of urban area must get the local government to declare current property "blighted" (thus taking its value away from current owners) or use eminent domain (directly taking property from current owners) or some other trick to do so in a time and cost efficient manner. Without the county or the city or the state or whoever to force current owners to give up their property, they would only rarely be able to get really big.

But what do you think?

Let Your Voice Be Heard

Salute to Fr. Z, who posted this on the 28th.

So, in association with a story about how the bishops don't want to place orphaned children with unmarried couples, the NYT posted an online poll, asking if the government is trampling on religious rights, and MSNBC posted it here. I said that they were.

Blast from the Past

I have maintained for years that taking government money is bad for Christian charity. And right about the end of this article about Obamacare on Catholic Lane it would seem that Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, IL, and Steven Mosher agree with me.

Read This Book.

Salute to Fr. Gordon Macrae.
Buy a copy for your pastor. Buy another for your bishop.

Occupy Wall Street

It turns out OWS has a real list of real demands. Naturally, domestic press either hasn't a clue or refuses to cover it, but (according to Naomi Wolf in the Guardian whose article you should read) the top three demands are (I quote):

1. [G]et the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.
2. [R]eform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
3. [D]raft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

These are none of them entirely bad ideas. I can deal with some sort of blunting of the Citizens United ruling, even though I think the good guys won. It certainly allows the richest people or groups to give the greatest exposure to their message, but without it, many worthwhile messages were completely stifled. I would far rather we had real freedom to campaign on whatever message we wanted, as long as we were telling the truth, but for as long as honesty is entirely optional and slander and libel are completely acceptable in campaign speech, we have to have something.

Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was a buyout of Republicans by Citigroup; John Dingell (D-MI) said that it would result in banks "too big to fail" that would have to be bailed out. But then the anti-redlining regulations were added, to help Clinton in his dream of subsidizing the housing of people who were unlikely to pay for their own homes with the Community Reinvesting Act, by transferring all the risk from the banks to the federal government. That has ALSO helped to set us on our current train-wreck financial crisis. I would like to see a return of at least the conflict-of-interest regulation that the Glass-Steagall Act act imposed.

That third item? It has my FULL SUPPORT. What they are talking about there is plain, simple, pure plunder by law, also known as corruption.

Ms. Wolf also makes a pretty good case that the crackdowns were coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security (which department is a reason to spit upon the memory of the 2d Bush presidency if ever there was one). And as she has said, it's no wonder these people are having the $#!t kicked out of them at the behest of the federal government.

The Thinking Behind SOPA

This deserves wider attention:

Some things not addressed by the video:
ANYONE may accuse a site or host of providing pirated content. When this happens, the host has five days to rectify the situation, or their whole site goes down. And there is no due process to determine if the content is legal or infringing IP laws. What's more, there's no penalty for making a false accusation.

Do you see why this is so huge a stick with which to capriciously beat people completely off of the internet that even Microsoft opposes it in its current form? Currently, it might be enforced by removing entries from domain name servers. But when that fails to completely stop piracy, enforcement will require the active blocking of IP addresses. And when that fails to completely stop piracy, it will require deep packet scanning and a complete criminalizing of all encryption not handled by the NSA.